1. First Man in Rome

by Colleen McCullough

  Sulla snorted. "Oh, I know him," he said. "A visiting thrill seeker in the stews of a Rome that was mine, not his. And as crooked as a dog's hind leg." The white teeth showed, not the striking sight they would have been in a face even a little darker. "Which means, Gaius Marius, don't let him cock that leg and piss on you." "I shall leap very fast and well to the side," said Marius gravely. He stretched out his hand to Sulla, who took it at once. "A pledge, Lucius Cornelius. That we will beat the Germans, you and I."

  The army of Africa and its commander sailed from Utica to Puteoli toward the end of November, in high fettle. The sea was calm for the time of year, and neither the North Wind, Septentrio, nor the Northwest Wind, Corus, disturbed their passage. Which was exactly what Marius expected; his career was in its ascendancy, Fortune was his to command as surely as his soldiers were. Besides, Martha the Syrian prophetess had predicted a quick smooth voyage. She was with Marius in his flagship, replete with honor and gummy cackles, an ancient bag of bones the sailors a superstitious lot, always eyed askance and avoided fearfully. King Gauda had not been keen to part with her; then she spat upon the marble floor in front of his throne and threatened to put the Evil Eye upon him and all his house. After that, he couldn't get rid of her fast enough. In Puteoli, Marius and Sulla were met by one of the brand-new Treasury quaestors, very brisk and anxious to have the tally of booty, but very deferential too. It pleased Marius and Sulla to be graciously helpful, and as they were possessed of admirable account books, everyone was pleased. The army went into camp outside Capua, surrounded by new recruits being drilled by Rutilius Rufus's gladiatorial conscripts. Now Marius's skilled centurions were put to helping. The saddest part, however, was the scarcity of these new recruits. Italy was a dry well, and would be until the younger generation turned seventeen in sufficient numbers to swell the ranks once more. Even the Head Count was exhausted, at least among the Roman citizens. "And I very much doubt if the Senate will condone my recruiting among the Italian Head Count," said Marius. "They haven't much choice," said Sulla. "True. If I push them. But right at the moment it's not in my interests or Rome's interests to push them." Marius and Sulla were splitting up until New Year's Day. Sulla of course was free to enter the city, but Marius, still endowed with his proconsular imperium, could not cross the sacred boundary of the city without losing it. So Sulla was going to Rome, whereas Marius was going to his villa at Cumae.

  Cape Misenum formed the formidable north headland of what was called Crater Bay, a huge and very safe anchorage dotted with seaports Puteoli, Neapolis, Herculaneum, Stabiae, and Surrentum. A tradition so old it went back far before lore or memory held that once Crater Bay had been a gigantic volcano, which exploded and let the sea in. There was evidence of that volcanic activity, of course. The Fields of Fire lit up the night skies behind Puteoli sullenly as flames belched out of cracks in the ground, and mud pools boiled with sluggish plops, and vivid yellow encrustations of sulphur lay everywhere; vents roaring columns of steam popped up anywhere, and either closed up again or got bigger; and then there was Vesuvius a rugged, almost sheer pinnacle of rock many thousands of feet high, said once to have been an active volcano though no one knew when that might have been, for Vesuvius had slept peacefully throughout recorded history. Two little towns lay one on either side of the narrow neck of Cape Misenum, along with a series of mysterious lakes. On the seaward side was Cumae, on the Crater Bay side was Baiae, and the lakes were of two kinds one with water so pure and mildly warm it was perfect for growing oysters, one palpably hot and curling wisps of sulphur-tainted steam. Of all the Roman seaside resorts, Cumae was the most expensive, where Baiae was relatively undeveloped. In fact, Baiae seemed to be becoming a commercial fish-farming place, for half a dozen enthusiastic fellows were trying to devise a way to farm oysters, their leader the impoverished patrician aristocrat Lucius Sergius, who hoped to revive his family's fortunes by producing and shipping cultivated oysters to Rome's more affluent Epicureans and gastronomes. Marius's villa stood atop a great sea cliff at Cumae and looked out toward the islands of Aenaria, Pandataria, and Pontia, three peaks with slopes and plains at ever-increasing distance, like mountaintops poking through a sheet of pale-blue mist. And here in Marius's villa, Julia waited for her husband. It was over two and a half years since they had last seen each other; Julia was now almost twenty-four years old, and Marius was fifty-two. That she was desperately anxious to see him he knew, for she had come down from Rome to Cumae at a time of year when the seaside was squally and bitter, and Rome the most comfortable place to be. Custom forbade her traveling anywhere with her husband, especially if he was on any sort of official public business; she could not accompany him to his province, nor even on any of his journeys within Italy unless he formally invited her, and it was considered poor form to issue such invitations. In the summer, when a Roman nobleman's wife went to the seaside, he came down to join her whenever he could, but they made their journeys separately; and if he fancied a few days on the farm or at one of his multiple villas outside Rome, he rarely took his wife with him. Julia wasn't exactly apprehensive; she had written to Marius once a week throughout his time away, and he had written back just as regularly. Neither of them indulged in gossip, so their correspondence tended to be brief and purely filled with family matters, but it was unfailingly affectionate and warm. Of course it was none of her business whether he might have had other women during his time away, and Julia was far too well bred and well trained to contemplate inquiring; nor did she expect him to tell her of his own accord. Such things were a part of the realm of men, and had nothing to do with wives. In that respect, as her mother, Marcia, had been careful to tell her, she was very lucky to be married to a man thirty years older than she was; for his sexual appetites said Marcia would be more continent than those of a younger man, just as his pleasure in seeing his wife again would be greater than that of a younger man. But she had missed him acutely, not merely because she loved him, but also because he pleased her. In fact, she liked him, and that liking made the separations harder to bear, for she missed her friend as much as she missed her husband and lover. When he walked into her sitting room unannounced, she got clumsily to her feet only to find that her knees would not support her, and collapsed back into her chair. How tall he was! How brown and fit and full of life! He didn't look a day older rather, he looked younger than she remembered. There was a wide white smile for her his teeth were as good as ever those fabulously lush eyebrows were glittering with points of light from the dark eyes hidden beneath them, and his big, well-shaped hands were stretched out to her. And she unable to move! What would he think? He thought kindly, it seemed, for he walked across to her chair and drew her gently to her feet, not making any move to embrace her, merely standing looking down at her with that big wide white smile. Then he put his hands up to cup her face between them, and tenderly kissed her eyelids, her cheeks, her lips. Her arms stole round him; she leaned into him and buried her face in his shoulder. "Oh, Gaius Marius, I am so glad to see you!" she said. "No gladder than I to see you, wife." His hands stroked her back, and she could feel them trembling. She lifted her face. "Kiss me, Gaius Marius! Kiss me properly!'' And so their meeting was everything each of them had looked forward to, warm with love, fraught with passion. Not only that; there was the delicious delight of Young Marius, and the private sorrow both parents could now indulge for the death of their second boy. Much to his father's gratified surprise, Young Marius was magnificent tall, sturdy, moderately fair in coloring, and with a pair of large grey eyes which assessed his father fearlessly. Insufficient discipline had been administered, Marius suspected, but all that would change. A father, the scamp would soon discover, was not someone to be dominated and manipulated; a father was someone to reverence and respect, just as he, Gaius Marius, reverenced and respected his own dear father. There were other sorrows than the dead second son; Julia he knew had lost her father, but he now learned through Julia's sensitive telling that his own father was dead. Not before due
time, and not until after the elections which had seen his oldest son become consul for the second time in such amazing circumstances. His death had been swift and merciful, a stroke that happened while the old man was busy talking to friends about the welcome Arpinum was going to put on for its most splendid citizen. Marius put his face between Julia's breasts and wept, and was comforted, and afterward was able to see that everything happened at the right moment. For his mother, Fulcinia, had died seven years before, and his father had been lonely; if Fortune had not been kind enough to permit him the sight of his son again, the goddess had at least permitted him to know of his son's extraordinary distinction. "So there's no point in my going to Arpinum," said Marius to Julia later. "We'll stay right here, my love." "Publius Rutilius is coming down soon. After the new tribunes of the plebs settle a bit, he said. I think he fears they may prove a difficult lot some of them are very clever.'' "Then until Publius Rutilius arrives, my dearest, sweetest, most beautiful and darling wife, we won't even think about exasperating things like politics."

  Sulla's homecoming was very different. For one thing, he journeyed toward it with none of Marius's simple, unconcealed, eager pleasure. Though why that should be, he didn't want to know, for, like Marius, he had been sexually continent during his two years in the African province admittedly for reasons other than love of his wife, yet continent nevertheless. The brand-new and pristine page with which he had covered up his old life must never be sullied; no graft, no disloyalty to his superior, no intriguing or maneuvering for power, no intimations of fleshly weaknesses, no lessening of his Cornelian honor or dignitas. An actor to the core, he had thrown himself absolutely into the new role his term as Marius's quaestor had given him, lived it inside his mind as well as in all his actions, looks, words. So far it hadn't palled, for it had offered him constant diversion, enormous challenges, and a huge satisfaction. Unable to commission his own imago in wax until he became consul, or sufficiently famous or distinguished in some other way to warrant it, he could still look forward to commissioning Magius of the Velabrum to make a splendid mounting for his war trophies, his Gold Crown and phalerae and torcs, and look forward to being there supervising the installation of this testament to his prowess in the atrium of his house. For the years in Africa had been a vindication; though he would never turn into one of the world's great equestrians, he had turned into one of the world's natural soldiers, and the Magius trophy in his atrium would stand there to tell Rome of this fact. And yet... everything from the old life was there just the same, and he knew it. The yearning to see Metrobius, the love of grotesquery of dwarves and transvestites and raddled old whores and outrageous characters the intractable dislike of women using their powers to dominate him, the capacity to snuff out a life when intolerably threatened, the unwillingness to suffer fools, the gnawing, consuming ambition. . . The actor's African theatrical run was over, but he wasn't looking at a prolonged rest; the future held many parts. And yet... Rome was the stage upon which his old self had postured; Rome spelled anything from ruin to frustration to discovery. So he journeyed toward Rome in wary mood, aware of the profound changes in himself, but also aware that very little had actually changed. The actor between parts, never a truly comfortable creature. And Julilla waited for him very differently than Julia waited for Marius, sure that she loved Sulla far more than Julia loved Marius. To Julilla, any evidence whatsoever of discipline or self-control was proof positive of an inferior brand of love; love of the highest order should overwhelm, invade, shake down the spiritual walls, drive out all vestige of rational thought, roar tempestuously, trample down everything in its path as if some vast elephant. So she waited feverishly, unable to settle to anything other than the wine flask, her costume changed several times a day, her hair now up, now down, now sideways, her servants driven mad. And all this she threw over Sulla like a pall woven from the most clinging and tentacular cobwebs. When he walked into the atrium, she was there running wildly across the room to him, arms outstretched, face transfigured; before he could look at her or collect himself to feel anything, she had glued her mouth to his like a leech on an arm, sucking, devouring, wriggling, wet, all blood and blackness. Her hands were groping after his genitals, she made noises of the most lascivious pleasure, then she actually began to wind her legs about him as he stood in that most unprivate place, watched by the derisive eyes of a dozen slaves, most of whom were total strangers to him. He couldn't help himself; his hands came up and wrenched her arms down, his head went back and ripped her mouth away. "Recollect yourself, madam!" he said. "We are not alone!" She gasped as if he had spat in her face, but it sobered her into conducting herself more sedately; with pitifully casual artlessness she linked her arm through his and walked with him to the peristyle, then down to where her sitting room was, in Nicopolis's old suite of rooms. "Is this private enough?" she asked, a little spitefully. But the mood had been spoiled for him long before this spurt of spite; he didn't want her mouth or her hands probing their way into the most sequestered corners of his being without regard for the sensitivity of the layers they pierced. "Later, later!" he said, moving to a chair. She stood, poor frightened and bewildered Julilla, as if her world had ended. More beautiful than ever, but in a most frail and brittle way, from the sticklike arms poking out of what he recognized at once as draperies in the height of fashion a man with Sulla's background never lost his instinct for line or style to the enormous, slightly mad-looking eyes sunk deep into their orbits amid dense blue-black shadows. "I don't understand!" she cried to him then, not daring to move from where she stood, her gaze drinking him in not avidly anymore, but rather as the mouse drinks in the smile on the face of the cat: are you friend or enemy? "Julilla," he said with what patience he could muster, "I am tired. I haven't had time to regain my land legs. I hardly know any of the faces in this house. And since I'm not in the least drunk, I have all a sober man's inhibitions about the degree of physical license a married couple should allow themselves in public." "But I love you!" she protested. "So I should hope. Just as I love you. Even so, there are boundaries," he said stiffly, wanting everything within his Roman sphere to be exactly right, from wife and domicile to Forum career. When he had thought of Julilla during his two years away, he hadn't honestly remembered what sort of person she was only how she looked, and how frantically, excitingly passionate she was in their bed. In fact, he had thought of her as a man thought of his mistress, not his wife. Now he stared at the young woman who was his wife, and decided she would make a far more satisfactory mistress someone he visited upon his terms, didn't have to share his home with, didn't have to introduce to his friends and associates. I ought never to have married her, he thought. I got carried away by a vision of my future seen through the medium of her eyes for that was all she did, serve as a vessel to pass a vision through on its way from Fortune to Fortune's chosen one. I didn't stop to think that there would be dozens of young noblewomen available to me more suitable than a poor silly creature who tried to starve herself to death for love of me. That in itself is an excess. I don't mind excess but not an excess I'm the object of. Only excess I'm the perpetrator of, thank you! Why have I spent my life tangled up with women who want to suffocate me? Julilla's face altered. Her eyes slid away from the two pale inflexible orbs dwelling upon her in a clinical interest holding nothing of love, or of lust. There! Oh, what would she do without it? Wine, faithful trusty wine... Without stopping to think what he might think, she moved to a side table and poured herself a full goblet of unwatered wine, and downed it in one draft; only then did she remember him, and turn to him with a question in her gaze. "Wine, Sulla?" she asked. He was frowning. "You put that away mighty quick! Do you normally toss your wine back like that?'' "I needed a drink!" she said fretfully. "You're being very cold and depressing." He sighed. "I daresay I am. Never mind, Julilla. I'll improve. Or maybe you should yes, yes, give me the wine!" He almost snatched the goblet she had been extending mutely for some moments and drank from it, but not at a gulp, and by no
means the entire contents. "When last I heard from you you're not much of a letter writer, are you?" The tears were pouring down Julilla's face, but she didn't sob; just wept soundlessly. "I hate writing letters!" "That much is plain," he said dryly. "Anyway, what about them?" she asked, pouring herself a second goblet and drinking it down as quickly as her first. “I was going to say, when last I heard from you, I thought we had a couple of children. A girl and a boy, wasn't it? Not that you bothered to tell me of the boy; I had to find that out from your father." "I was ill," she said, still weeping. "Am I not to see my children?" "Oh, down there!" she cried, pointing rather wildly toward the back of the peristyle. He left her mopping at her face with a handkerchief and back at the wine flagon to refill her empty goblet. His first glimpse of them was through the open window of their nursery, and they didn't see him. A woman's murmuring voice was in the background, but she was invisible; all of his sight was filled with the two little people he had generated. A girl yes, she'd be half past two now standing over a boy yes, he'd be half past one! She was enchanting, the most perfect tiny doll he had ever seen head crowned with a mass of red-gold curls, skin of milk and roses, dimples in her plump pink cheeks, and under soft red-gold brows, a pair of the widest blue eyes, happy and smiling and full of love for her little brother. He was even more enchanting, this son Sulla had never seen. Walking that was good not a stitch of clothing on him that was what his sister was on at him about, so he must do it often and talking he was giving his sister back as good as she was giving him, the villain. And he was laughing. He looked like a Caesar the same long attractive face, the same thick gold hair, the same vivid blue eyes as Sulla's dead father-in-law. And the dormant heart of Lucius Cornelius Sulla didn't just awaken with a leisurely stretch and a yawn, it leaped into the world of feeling as Athene must have leaped fully grown and fully armed from the brow of Zeus, clanging and calling a clarion. In the doorway he went down on his knees and held out both arms to them, eyes shimmering. "Tata is here," he said. "Tata has come home." They didn't even hesitate, let alone shrink away, but ran into the circle of his arms and covered his rapt face with kisses.