1. First Man in Rome

by Colleen McCullough

  The three Gauls continued on up the slope inside the camp's main gates, challenged by no one until they reached the duty officer's table under the shelter of the awning outside the general's substantial timber house. "Gaius Marius, please," said the leader in flawless Latin. The duty officer didn't even blink. "I'll see if he's receiving," he said, getting up. Within a moment he was out again. "The general says to go in, Lucius Cornelius." he said, smiling widely. "Smart," said Sertorius under his breath as he brushed past the duty officer with waggling headdress. "Just keep your mouth shut about this, hear me?" When he set eyes upon his two lieutenants, Marius stared as intently at them as had Saturninus, but with less amazement. "About time you came home," he said to Sulla, grasping his hand warmly, then reaching to greet Sertorius. "We're not here for very long," said Sulla, jerking his captive forward. "All we came back to do was deliver you a gift for your triumphal parade. Meet King Copillus of the Volcae Tectosages, the same who connived at the annihilation of Lucius Cassius's army at Burdigala." "Ah!" Marius looked the prisoner over. "Doesn't look much like a Gaul, does he? You and Quintus Sertorius look far more impressive." Sertorius grinned; Sulla answered. "Well, with his capital at Tolosa, he's been exposed to civilization for a long time. He speaks Greek well, and he's probably only about half Gallic in his thinking. We caught him outside Burdigala." "Is he really worth so much trouble?" Marius asked. "You'll think so when I tell you," said Sulla, smiling in his most tigerish fashion. "You see, he has a curious tale to tell and he can tell it in a tongue Rome understands." Arrested by the look on Sulla's face, Marius stared at King Copillus more closely. "What tale?" "Oh, about ponds once full of gold. Gold that was loaded into Roman wagons and sent down the road from Tolosa to Narbo during the time when a certain Quintus Servilius Caepio was proconsul. Gold that mysteriously disappeared not far from Carcasso, leaving a cohort of Roman soldiers dead along the road, with their arms and armor stripped from them. Copillus was near Carcasso when that gold disappeared after all, the gold was rightfully in his charge, according to his way of thinking. But the party of men who took the gold south into Spain was far too large and well armed to attack, for Copillus had only a few men with him. The interesting thing is that there was a Roman survivor Furius, the praefectus fabrum. And a Greek freedman survivor Quintus Servilius Bias. But Copillus wasn't near Malaca several months later as the wagons full of gold rolled into a fish factory owned by one of Quintus Servilius Caepio's clients, nor was he near Malaca when the gold sailed away to Smyrna labeled 'Garum of Malaca, on Consignment for Quintus Servilius Caepio.' But Copillus has a friend who has a friend who has a friend who well knows a Turdetanian bandit named Brigantius, and according to this Brigantius, he was hired to steal the gold and get it to Malaca. By the agents of none other than Quintus Servilius Caepio, namely Furius and the freedman Bias, who paid Brigantius with the wagons, the mules and six hundred sets of good Roman arms and armor, taken from the men Brigantius killed. When the gold went east, Furius and Bias went with it." Never before, thought Sulla, have I seen Gaius Marius looking utterly stunned, even when he read the letter that said he was elected consul in absentia that just winded him, whereas this tries his credulity. "Ye gods!" Marius whispered. "He wouldn't dare!" "He dared, all right," said Sulla contemptuously. "What matter that the price was six hundred good Roman soldier lives? After all, there were fifteen thousand talents of gold in those wagons! It turns out that the Volcae Tectosages do not regard themselves as the owners of the gold, only as its guardians. The wealth of Delphi, Olympia, Dodona, and a dozen other smaller sanctuaries, which the second Brennus took as the property of all the Gallic tribes. So now the Volcae Tectosages are accursed, and King Copillus doubly accursed. The wealth of Gaul is gone." His shock evaporating, Marius now looked more at Sulla than at Copillus. It was a little story told in richly ringing tones, yes, but more than that; it was a little story told by a Gallic bard, not by a Roman senator. "You are a great actor, Lucius Cornelius," he said. Sulla looked absurdly pleased. "My thanks, Gaius Marius." "But you're not staying? What about the winter? You'd be more comfortable here." Marius grinned. "Especially young Quintus Sertorius, if he's got no more in his clothes chest than a feathered crown." "No, we're off again tomorrow. The Cimbri are milling around the foothills of the Pyrenees, with the local tribesmen throwing every last thing they can find to throw down on them from every ledge, crag, rock, and cliff. The Germans seem to have a fascination for alps! But it's taken Quintus Sertorius and me all these months to get close to the Cimbri we've had to establish our identities with half of Gaul and Spain, it seems," said Sulla. Marius poured out two cups of wine, looked at Copillus, and poured a third, which he handed to the prisoner. As he gave Sertorius his drink, he eyed his Sabine relative up and down gravely. "You look like Pluto's rooster," he said. Sertorius took a sip of the wine and sighed blissfully. "Tusculan!" he said, then preened. "Pluto's rooster, eh? Well, better that than Proserpina's crow." "What news do you have of the Germans?" Marius asked. "In brief I'll tell you more over dinner very little. It's too early yet to be able to give you information about where they come from, or what drives them. Next time. I'll get back well ahead of any move they might make in the direction of Italy, never fear. But I can tell you where they all are at this very moment. The Teutones and the Tigurini, Marcomanni, and Cherusci are trying to cross the Rhenus into Germania, while the Cimbri are trying to cross the Pyrenees into Spain. I don't think either group will succeed," said Sulla, putting down his cup. "Oh, that wine was good!" Marius called for his duty officer. "Send me three reliable men, would you?" he asked. "And see if you can find comfortable quarters for King Copillus here. He'll have to be locked up, unfortunately, but only until we can get him away to Rome." "I wouldn't put him in Rome," said Sulla thoughtfully, when the duty officer had departed. "In fact, I'd be very quiet about where I did put him, anyway." "Caepio? He wouldn't dare!" said Marius. "He purloined the gold," said Sulla. "All right, we'll put the King in Nersia," said Marius briskly.' 'Quintus Sertorius, has your mother got any friends who wouldn't mind housing the King for a year or two? I'll make sure the money's good." "She'll find someone," said Sertorius confidently. "What a piece of luck!'' crowed Marius. “I never thought we'd get the evidence to send Caepio into well-deserved exile, but King Copillus is it. We'll keep it very quiet until we're all back in Rome after the Germans are beaten, then we'll arraign Caepio on charges of extortion and treason!" "Treason?" asked Sulla, blinking. "Not with the friends he's got in the Centuries!" "Ah," said Marius blandly, "but friends in the Centuries can't help him when he's tried in a special treason court manned only by knights." "What are you up to, Gaius Marius?" Sulla demanded. "I've got myself two tribunes of the plebs for next year!'' said Marius triumphantly. "They mightn't get in," said Sertorius prosaically. "They'll get in!" said Marius and Sulla in chorus. Then all three laughed, and the prisoner continued to stand with great dignity, pretending he could understand their Latin, and waiting for whatever was to befall him next. At which point Marius remembered his manners and shifted the conversation from Latin to Greek, drawing Copillus warmly into the group, and promising that his chains would soon be struck off.

  3

  "Do you know, Quintus Caecilius," said Marcus Aemilius Scaurus Princeps Senatus to Metellus Numidicus, "I am thoroughly enjoying my stint as the quaestor of Ostia? Here I am, fifty-five years old, bald as an egg, lines on my face so deep my barber can't give me a really clean shave anymore and I'm feeling like a boy again! Oh, and the ease with which one solves the problems! At thirty, they loomed like insurmountable alps I remember it well. At fifty-five, they're piddling little cobblestones." Scaurus had come back to Rome for a special meeting of the Senate convened by the praetor urbanus Gaius Memmius to discuss a matter of some concern regarding Sardinia; the junior consul, Gaius Flavius Fimbria, was indisposed -a common occurrence these days, it seemed to many. "Did you hear the rumor?" asked Metellus Numidicus as the two of them strolled up the steps of the Curia Hostilia and pass
ed inside; the herald had not yet summoned the House to convene, but most senators who arrived early didn't bother waiting outside they went straight in and continued their talk until the meeting started with the convening magistrate offering a sacrifice and prayers. "What rumor?" asked Scaurus a little inattentively; his mind these days tended to be absorbed with the grain supply. "Lucius Cassius and Lucius Marcius have clubbed together and intend to put it to the Plebeian Assembly that Gaius Marius be allowed to stand for consul again in absentia, no less!" Scaurus stopped a few feet short of where his personal attendant had set up his stool in its customary front-rank position next to the stool of Metellus Numidicus, and with Metellus Dalmaticus Pontifex Maximus on his other side. His eyes rested on Numidicus's face, wide with shock. "They wouldn't dare!" he said. "Oh yes they would! Can you imagine it? A third term as consul is unprecedented it's to make the man a long-term dictator! Why else on those rare occasions when Rome needed a dictator was the term of a dictator limited to six months, if not to make sure that the man holding the office got no inflated idea of his own supremacy? And now, here we are with this this peasant making up his own rules as he goes along!" Metellus Numidicus was spitting in rage. Scaurus sank down onto his stool like an old man. "It's our own fault," he said slowly. "We haven't had the courage of our predecessors and rid ourselves of this noxious mushroom! Why is it that Tiberius Gracchus and Marcus Fulvius and Gaius Gracchus were eliminated, where Gaius Marius survives? He ought to have been cut down years ago!" Metellus Numidicus shrugged. "He's a peasant. The Gracchi and Fulvius Flaccus were noblemen. Noxious mushroom is the right way to describe him he pops up somewhere overnight, but by the time you arrive to weed him out, he's gone somewhere else." "It has to stop!" cried Scaurus. “No one can be elected to the consulship in absentia, let alone twice running! That man has tampered in more ways with Rome's traditions of government than any man in the entire history of the Republic. I am beginning to believe that he wants to be King of Rome, not the First Man in Rome." "I agree," said Metellus Numidicus, sitting down. "But how can we rid ourselves of him, I ask you? He's never here for long enough to assassinate!" "Lucius Cassius and Lucius Marcius," said Scaurus in tones of wonder. "I don't understand! They're noblemen from the finest, oldest plebeian families! Can't someone appeal to their sense of fitness, of of decency?" "Well, we all know about Lucius Marcius," said Metellus Numidicus. "Marius bought up all his debts; he's solvent for the first time in his rather revolting life. But Lucius Cassius is different. He's become morbidly sensitive about the People's opinion of incompetent generals like his late father, and morbidly aware of Marius's reputation among the People. I think he thinks that if he's seen helping Marius rid us of the Germans, he'll retrieve his family's reputation." "Humph!" was all Scaurus said to this piece of theorizing. Further discussion was impossible; the House convened, and Gaius Memmius looking very haggard these days, and in consequence handsomer than ever rose to speak. "Conscript Fathers," he said, a short document in his hand, "I have received a letter from Gnaeus Pompeius Strabo in Sardinia. It was addressed to me rather than to our esteemed consul Gaius Flavius because, as urban praetor, it is my duty to supervise the law courts of Rome." He paused to glare fiercely at the back ranks of senators, and contrived to appear almost ugly; the back ranks of senators got the message, and put on their most attentive expressions. "To remind those of you at the back who hardly ever bother to honor this House with your presence, Gnaeus Pompeius Strabo is quaestor to the governor of Sardinia, who to remind you! is Titus Annius Albucius this year. Now do we all understand these complicated relationships, Conscript Fathers?" he asked, voice dripping sarcasm. There was a general mumble, which Memmius took as assent. "Good!" he said. "Then I shall read out Gnaeus Pompeius's letter to me. Are we all listening?" Another mumble. "Good!" Memmius unfurled the paper in his hand and held it out before him, then began to read with a clear, crisp diction no one afterward could have faulted.