1. First Man in Rome

by Colleen McCullough

  By the middle of September the Teutones had passed through Arausio, and were nearing the confluence of the Rhodanus and the Druentia; spirits in the Roman fortress outside Glanum rose higher and higher. "It's good," said Gaius Marius to Quintus Sertorius as they did a tour "of inspection. "They've been waiting years for this," said Sertorius. "Not a bit afraid, are they?" "They trust you to lead them well, Gaius Marius." The news of the fiasco at Tridentum had come with Quintus Sertorius, who had abandoned his Cimbric guise for the time being; he had seen Sulla in secret, and picked up a letter for Marius which described events graphically, and concluded by informing Marius that Catulus Caesar's army had gone into a winter camp outside Placentia. Then came a letter from Publius Rutilius Rufus in Rome, giving Rome's view of the affair.

  I presume it was your personal decision to send Lucius Cornelius to keep an eye on our haughty friend Quintus Lutatius, and I applaud it heartily. There are all kinds of peculiar rumors floating about, but what the truth is, no one seems able to establish, even the boni. No doubt you already know through the offices of Lucius Cornelius later on, when all this German business is over, I shall claim sufficient friendship with you to be given the true explanation. So far I've heard mutiny, cowardice, bungling, and every other military crime besides. The most fascinating thing is the brevity and dare I say it? honesty of Quintus Lutatius's report to the House. But is it honest? A simple admission that when he encountered the Cimbri he realized Tridentum was not a suitable place for a battle, and so turned round and retreated to save his army, having first destroyed a bridge and delayed the German advance? There has to be more to it than that! I can see you smiling as you read. This is a very dead place without the consuls. I was extremely sorry for Marcus Aemilius, of course, and I imagine you are too. What does one do when one finally realizes one has sired a son not worthy to bear one's name? But the scandal died a quick death, for two reasons. The first, that everyone respects Scaurus (this is going to be a long letter, so you will forgive the use of the cognomen) enormously, whether they like him or not, and whether they agree with his politics or not. The second reason is far more sensational. The crafty old culibonia (how's that for a pun?) provided everyone with a new talking point. He's married his son's betrothed, Caecilia Metella Dalmatica, now in the ward of Metellus Numidicus Piggle-wiggle. Aged seventeen, if you please! If it wasn't so funny, I'd weep. Though I've not met her, I hear she's a dear little thing, very gentle and thoroughly nice a trifle hard to believe coming out of that stable, but I believe, I do believe! You ought to see Scaurus how you'd chuckle! He's positively prancing. I am seriously thinking of taking a prowl through Rome's better-type schoolrooms in search of a nubile maiden to be the new Mrs. Rutilius Rufus! We face a serious grain shortage this winter, O senior consul, just to remind you of the duties attached to your office the Germans have rendered it impossible for you to deal with. However, I hear that Catulus Caesar will be leaving Sulla in command at Placentia shortly, and will return to Rome for the winter. No news as far as you're concerned, I'm sure. The business at Tridentum has strengthened your own candidacy in absentia for yet another consulship, but Catulus Caesar won't be holding any elections until after you meet your Germans! It must be very difficult for him, hoping for Rome's sake that you have a great victory, yet hoping for his own sake that you fall flat on your peasant podex. If you win, Gaius Marius, you will certainly be consul next year. It was a clever move, by the way, to free Manius Aquillius to stand for consul. The electorate was terrifically impressed when he came, declared his candidacy, and then said very firmly that he was going back to you to face the Germans, even if that meant he wouldn't be in Rome for the elections, and so missed out on standing after all. If you defeat the Germans, Gaius Marius and you send Manius Aquillius back immediately afterward you will have a junior colleague you can actually work with for a change. Gaius Servilius Glaucia, boon companion of your quasi-client Saturninus unkind comment, I know! has announced that he will run for tribune of the plebs. What a great big furry grey cat among the pigeons he'll be! Talking of Serviliuses and getting back to the grain shortage, Servilius the Augur continues to do abysmally in Sicily. As I told you in an earlier missive, he really did expect that Lucullus would meekly hand over everything he'd worked so hard to establish. Now the House gets a letter once every market day, as regular as a prune eater's bowel movements, in which Servilius the Augur bemoans his lot and reiterates that he'll be prosecuting Lucullus the minute he gets back to Rome. The slave-king is dead Salvius or Tryphon, he called himself and another has been elected, the Asian Greek named Athenion. He's cleverer than Salvius/Tryphon. If Manius Aquillius gets in as your junior consul, it might be an idea to send him off to Sicily and end that business once and for all. At the moment King Athenion is ruling Sicily, not Servilius the Augur. However, my real complaint about the Sicilian mess is purely semantic. Do you know what that despicable old culibonia had the gall to say in the House the other day? Scaurus, I am referring to, may his pro-creative apparatus drop off from overuse in overjuice! "Sicily," he roared, "is become a very Iliad of woes!" And everyone rushed up to him after the meeting and poured syrupy praise all over him for coining such a neat epigram! Well, as you know from my earlier missive, that's my neat epigram! He must have heard me say it, rot his entire back and front everythings. Now I leap lightly back to the subject of tribunes of the plebs. They have been a most dismal and uninspiring lot this year one reason why, though I shudder as I say it, I'm rather glad Glaucia is standing for next year. Rome is a very boring place without a decent brawl or two going on in the Comitia. But we have just had one of the oddest of all tribunician incidents, and the rumors are absolutely whizzing around. About a month ago some twelve or thirteen fellows arrived in town, clad in remarkable raiment coats of brilliant colors interwoven with pure gold flowing about their feet jewels dripping from their beards and curls and earlobes heads trailing gorgeous embroidered scarves. I felt as if I was in the midst of a pageant! They presented themselves as an embassage, and asked to see the Senate in a special sitting. But after our revered rejuvenated phrase-pinching Scaurus Princeps Senatus friskily examined their credentials, he denied them an audience on the grounds that they had no official status. They purported to have come from the sanctuary of the Great Goddess at Pessinus in Anatolian Phrygia, and to have been sent to Rome by the Great Goddess herself to wish Rome well in her struggle against the Germans! Now why, I can hear you asking, should the Anatolian Great Goddess give tuppence about the Germans? It has us all scratching our heads, and I'm sure that's why Scaurus refused to have anything to do with these gaudy fellows. Yet no one can work out what they're after. Orientals are such confidence tricksters that any Roman worth his salt sews his purse shut and straps it into his left armpit the moment he encounters them. However, not this lot! They're going around Rome distributing largesse as if their own purses were bottomless. Their leader is a splendidly showy specimen called Battaces. The eye positively glazes in beholding him, for he's clad from head to foot in genuine cloth of gold, and wears a huge solid-gold crown on his head. I'd heard of cloth of gold, but I never thought I'd live to see it unless I took a trip to see King Ptolemy or the King of the Parthians. The women of this silly city of ours went wild over Battaces and his entourage, dazzled at the sight of so much gold and holding their greedy little hands out for any stray pearls or carbuncles which might happen to fall off a beard or a say no more, Publius Rutilius! I merely add with exquisite delicacy that they are not repeat, not! eunuchs. Anyway, whether because his own wife was one of the bedazzled Roman ladies or for more altruistic motives, the tribune of the plebs Aulus Pompeius got up on the rostra and accused Battaces and his fellow priests of being charlatans and imposters, and called for their forcible ejection from our fair city preferably riding backward on asses and bedaubed with pitch and feathers. Battaces took great exception to Aulus Pompeius's diatribe, and marched off to complain to the Senate. A few wives within that worthy body must have been infected or i
njected with enthusiasm for the ambassadors, for the House promptly ordered Aulus Pompeius to cease and desist his badgering of these Important Personages. The purists among us Conscript Fathers sided with Aulus Pompeius because it is not the province of the Senate to discipline a tribune of the plebs for his conduct within the Comitia. There was then a row about whether Battaces and his gang were an embassage or not an embassage, despite Scaurus's previous ruling. Since no one could find Scaurus I presume he was either looking up my old speeches for more epigrams, or looking up his wife's skirts for more epidermis the point remained unresolved. So Aulus Pompeius went on roaring like a lion from the rostra, and accusing Rome's ladies of cupidity as well as unchastity. The next thing, Battaces himself comes striding down to the rostra trailing gorgeous priests and gorgeous Roman ladies behind him like a fishmonger stray cats. Luckily I was there well, you know what Rome's like! I was tipped off, of course, as was half the rest of the city and witnessed a terrific farce, much better than anything Sulla could hope for in a theater. Aulus Pompeius and Battaces went at it alas, verbally only faster than Plautus, our noble tribune of the plebs insisting his opponent was a mountebank, and Battaces insisting Aulus Pompeius was dicing with danger because the Great Goddess didn't like hearing her priests insulted. The scene ended with Battaces pronouncing a blood-curdling curse of death upon Aulus Pompeius in Greek, which meant everyone understood it. I would have thought she liked being hailed in Phrygian. Here comes the best bit, Gaius Marius! The moment the curse was pronounced, Aulus Pompeius began to choke and cough. He tottered off the rostra and had to be helped home, where he took to his bed for the next three days, growing sicker and sicker. And at the end of three days he died! Turned up his toes and breathed no more. Well, you can imagine the effect it's had upon everyone from the Senate to the ladies of Rome. Battaces can go where he likes, do what he likes. People hop out of his path as if he suffered from a kind of golden leprosy. He gets free dinners, the House changed its mind and received his embassage formally (still no sign of Scaurus!), the women hang all over him, and he smiles and waves his hands about in blessing and generally acts like Zeus. I am amazed, disgusted, sickened, and about a thousand other equally unpalatable things. The big question is, how did Battaces do it? Was it divine intervention, or some unknown poison? I am betting on the last, but then, I am of the Skeptic persuasion if not an out-and-out Cynic.