Roma

by Steven Saylor

  Lucius scanned the faces quickly. He thanked the gods there was no one he recognized.

  Looming above and beyond the Rostra, high on a tall pedestal, was the Forum’s newest ornament, a statue of a general on horseback. The gilded statue gleamed with red fire in the light of the dying sun, so brilliantly that it hurt Lucius’s eyes to look at it. The sculptor had captured to perfection the confident posture and bold features of the dictator, Lucius Cornelius Sulla. The statue appeared to be gazing out over the severed heads with a placid, self-satisfied smile.

  Above and beyond the statue of Sulla loomed another reminder of the desperate pass to which Roma had come: the craggy summit of the Capitoline Hill, upon which the ancient temples stood in charred ruins. Two years ago, a great fire had swept across the Capitoline, destroying everything in its path, including the ancient Temple of Jupiter. The fire had been an ill omen, portending the unspeakable terrors of civil war and the victor’s gruesome vengeance.

  Lucius turned away from the Rostra. He hurried on until he came to the posting wall. A group of men had gathered to read the latest lists. Proscription lists, they were called, because they contained the names of those who had been officially denounced as enemies of the dictator Sulla. A proscribed man could be killed with impunity, by anyone, even in his own home. His head was worth a bounty. His property was summarily confiscated and auctioned by the state.

  Reading the new lists, some of the men sighed with relief. A few stifled cries of despair. Most kept their faces hidden. Lucius did likewise, pulling the hood low across his brow as he made his way to the front of the crowd to scan the lists.

  The name Lucius dreaded to see, that of his wife’s younger brother, was not there. Lucius touched the fascinum and whispered a prayer of relief.

  “What’s this?” A man behind him leaned forward and squinted at the list over Lucius’s shoulder. He spoke in an unnaturally loud voice. “Can it be? I see they’re posted the name of a certain…Lucius Pinarius!”

  Lucius spun about, his heart pounding. He recognized the speaker, but only barely—the man was a friend of a friend whose name escaped him. Seeing the look on Lucius’s face, the man let out a ghastly laugh.

  “I’m only joking!” he said.

  “It’s not funny—not funny at all!” snapped Lucius, his voice breaking. “To say such a thing, even in jest—I might have been killed, you fool! Murdered where I stand, before I could say a word!”

  It was true. Such atrocities occurred every day. A man came to the posting board to read the latest list, discovered to his horror that his name was on it, gave himself away with a cry of dismay, and then, within moments, was murdered by assassins who lurked nearby, waiting for the opportunity to kill one of the dictator’s enemies and claim the bounty.

  Lucius elbowed his way out of the crowd and hurried across the Forum, walking as fast as he dared; walking too fast might attract attention. The straight, steep path behind the Temple of Castor took him quickly to the crest of the Palatine. From there it was only a short walk to his house.

  Lucius turned down a narrow street. He gave a start. One of his neighbors was being dragged out of his house by a gang of rough-looking men. The man clutched the doorframe, clinging to it desperately with his fingernails until they pulled him clear and threw him down in the street. From within the house came the screams of his family.

  The few bystanders in the street turned and fled at once, except for Lucius, who was too startled to move. He watched in horror as the assassins proceeded to stab the man to death. The sound of metal tearing flesh was nauseating. The man’s wife and children ran outside just in time to see the killers hack off his head.

  The leader of the group held up the severed head. Lucius recognized the killer, a notorious henchman of Sulla’s named Cornelius Phagites.

  “Can you believe it?” said Phagites to his companions. “This one’s been on the list for more than a month. Kept out of sight ever since, until today, when he dared to come home. Thought he could slip past Phagites, the stupid bastard! There’s a special premium for men who’ve been on the list that long. This head will be worth a small fortune when we deliver it to Sulla!”

  Phagites grinned, showing crooked teeth with a gap in the middle. He saw Lucius watching and curled his upper lip, giving him a look of such malice that Lucius thought he might loose control of his bladder.

  “What are you looking at, citizen?”

  Lucius said nothing and hurried on.

  He arrived home badly shaken. The slave who admitted him quickly barred the door behind him. His wife stood in the atrium beyond the vestibule, holding their newborn son to her breast. A nursemaid stood nearby, waiting to put the child to bed. Seeing Lucius, and the terrible look on his face, Julia pulled the baby from her breast. She kissed the child’s forehead, then handed him to the slave. She waited until the girl had disappeared before speaking.

  “It’s bad news, isn’t it? Please, Lucius, tell me at once!”

  “It’s not what you think.” He rushed to embrace her, as much to comfort himself as to reassure her. “I saw something…terrible…on the way home. Terrible! But the new list—”

  “Was Gaius on the list, or not?” Julia pulled away from his embrace. Her fingers dug painfully into his arms.

  “No, Julia, no! Calm yourself. His name wasn’t there.”

  “Not yet,” said a rasping voice from the shadows. “But they will post my name any day now. So my informers tell me.”

  Julia released her grip on Lucius and hurried to the hunched figure in the shadows. “Little brother, what are you doing out of bed? You’re much too ill to be up.”

  Gaius Julius Caesar was only eighteen, but his face was haggard and he moved like an old man, stiff and bent.

  He was unshaven, and his matted, unkempt hair made a mockery of his name; generations ago, his branch of the Julius family had taken the cognomen Caesar, meaning “possessor of a fine head of hair.”

  “I’m feeling much better, sister. Really, I am. The fever’s broken. The chills are gone.”

  “They’ll be back. That’s how the quartan ague runs its course. It comes and goes until it’s entirely spent.”

  “Are you my physician now, as well as my sister?”

  Julia kissed his forehead. “You are cooler than you were before. Do you think you could swallow some broth? You must keep up your strength.”

  In the dining room, Lucius held up a small silver dish with both hands. He bowed his head, and intoned a prayer.

  “Asylaeus, we offer the best morsels of the meal to you—you, who were especially worshipped by Father Romulus; you, patron of vagabonds, fugitives, and exiles; you, whose ancient altar on the Capitoline offered a place of sanctuary to those who could find it nowhere else. Keep safe this cherished visitor in my home, my brother by marriage, young Gaius. Grant him asylum here in the shelter of my house. To you, Asylaeus, I make this prayer.”

  “Asylaeus, protect my brother!” said Julia.

  “Protect us all,” whispered Gaius.

  Lucius reclined on the couch next to Julia. He picked at bits of roasted pork on a silver dish. His stomach was empty, but after the horrors he had seen that day, the sight of charred flesh revolted him. Julia likewise had no appetite, but Gaius quickly finished one cup of broth and started on another.

  Gaius saw that Lucius was staring at him. He managed a weak smile. “You did a brave thing today, brother-in-law, going down to the Forum to read the new list. I thank you for it.”

  Lucius shrugged. “I did it for my own peace of mind. As long as you’re not officially on the list, Julia and I can’t be punished for keeping a wanted man under our roof.”

  “I shall move on tomorrow, I promise.”

  “Nonsense!” said Julia. “You can stay here for as long as you like.”

  Lucius groaned inwardly, but Gaius spared him the awkwardness of objecting.

  “Thank you, sister, but for my own safety I need to keep moving. As soon as I’m
able, I must leave the city and get as far away from Italy as I can. If it weren’t for this damned ague, I’d be gone already. Sulla wants me dead.”

  Lucius shook his head. “How did it come to this? In our grandfathers’ time, Gaius Gracchus was beheaded and his killer collected a bounty, and the bodies of the Gracchi were thrown in the Tiber, without proper burial, but decent Romans were outraged. Now scores of heads are added every day to the display on the Rostra, and men do nothing. The headless bodies of citizens are dumped in the river like refuse from the fish market, without a thought. Did you hear the latest outrage? Sulla disinterred and then deliberately desecrated the body of your uncle, Marius, the one man who might have stopped his madness. He cut the corpse into pieces and smeared it with feces, gouged the eyes from their sockets, and cut out the tongue. What an age we live in! Strong men no longer fear the gods. Wickedness has no limits.”

  Gaius turned pale. “Is it true, about Marius? Would even Sulla commit such an abomination?”

  “Everyone is whispering about it. Why shouldn’t it be true? Sulla will stop at nothing to punish his enemies. He tortures them while they live. Now he desecrates their corpses after they die.”

  Gaius stared into his cup of broth. His expression was a blank, but Lucius knew that his brother-in-law was deep in thought. By nature, young Gaius was analytical and dispassionate. Brought low by sickness and finding himself in precarious circumstances, he nonetheless held his emotions in check. Lucius envied his self-control.

  “You ask how it came to this, Lucius. You hint at the answer when you mention the Gracchi. In the days of our grandfathers, the destiny of Roma lay upon one of two paths—the way of the Gracchi, or the way of their enemies. Their enemies won. The wrong path was taken. Nothing has gone right since.

  “Gaius Gracchus attempted to expand the rights of common citizens, and to extend those rights to our allies. His selfish, short-sighted enemies thwarted his legislation, but the problems arising from injustice and inequity didn’t go away. Instead, a long, bloody war erupted between us and our Italian allies. What the Gracchi might have accomplished peacefully was instead settled by bloodshed and brute force. What a waste!

  “Because the Gracchi saw a better future, they were destroyed. Their enemies got away with murder, and ever since, men in power have never hesitated to use violence. When the Gracchi were killed, people were shocked to see Romans kill Romans. Now we’ve suffered a full-scale civil war, and a catastrophe that would have been unthinkable to our ancestors—a Roman army laid siege to Roma herself!”

  In retrospect, the civil war of which Gaius spoke had perhaps been inevitable. Roma’s expanding foreign wars led to the mustering of ever-larger armies, and the acquisition of ever-greater wealth by her military commanders. An era of conquest had given rise to a generation of warlords whose power grew to exceed that of the Senate. Driven more by personal ambition and mutual suspicion than by politics, the warlords turned on one another. In the brief but ferocious civil war that resulted, it was Sulla, surviving his rivals Marius and Cinna, who emerged as the last man standing. Sulla had marched on Roma, laid siege to the city, and then forced the Senate to declare him dictator.

  “Now the winner holds the city in his grip,” said Gaius. “He piously vows to restore the Republic and the lawful rule of the Senate, but not before he purges the state of all his enemies and potential enemies, and divides their property among his henchmen.”

  Gaius lowered his eyes and gazed into the cup of broth. Because Marius had been his uncle, and because Gaius had recently married Cornelia, whose father Cinna had been another of Sulla’s rivals, he was certain to be counted among Sulla’s enemies.

  “That such a monster should rule over us is proof of our decadence,” declared Julia. “The gods are angered. They punish us. In olden times, ‘dictator’ was a title of great honor and respect. Our ancestors were blessed to have a dictator like Cincinnatus, a man who rose up to save the state and then retired. After Sulla, ‘dictator’ shall forever be a dirty word.”

  “A monster, as you say,” muttered Lucius, nervously gnawing at his thumbnail. “A madman! Do you remember when the first proscription list was posted? Men gathered at the posting wall to read the names. How shocked we were to see eighty names on the list—eighty! Eighty citizens stripped of all protection, eighty good Romans reduced to animals fit to be hunted down and slaughtered. We were outraged at Sulla’s impunity, appalled at such a number. And then, the next day, there was an addendum to the list—two hundred more names. And the next day, two hundred more! On the fourth day, Sulla made a speech about restoring law and order. Someone dared to ask him just how many men he intended to proscribe. His tone was almost apologetic, like a magistrate who’d fallen behind in his duties. ‘So far, I’ve proscribed as many enemies as I’ve been able to remember, but undoubtedly a few have escaped my recollection. I promise you, as soon as I can remember them, I’ll proscribe those men, as well.’”

  “He was making a joke,” said Gaius ruefully. “You must admit, Sulla has a wicked wit.”

  “He’s as mad as Cassandra!” said Lucius. “The killing never stops. Every day there’s a new list. And anyone who gives shelter to a proscribed man is automatically proscribed as well, even a man’s parents. The sons and grandsons of the proscribed are stripped of their citizenship and robbed of their property. It’s happening not just in Roma, but in cities all over Italy. Men are being murdered every minute of every day, and every killer is given a reward, even a slave who kills his master, even a son who kills his father. It’s madness—an insult to our ancestors, a crime against the gods.”

  “It’s a way for Sulla and his friends to accumulate a vast amount of wealth,” said Gaius. “The first men on the list were genuine enemies, men who’d fought against him in the civil war. Then we began to see other names—Equestrians who’d never taken an interest in politics, or wealthy farmers who never even came to the city. Why were they proscribed? So that Sulla could seize their property. The state sells the goods at public auctions, but the dictator’s friends are the only men who dare to bid.”

  “It’s as simple as that,” said Lucius. “Men are being murdered for their property.”

  “Men are being murdered by their properties,” said Gaius. “I was down in Alba the other day. I rode by a beautiful country house with gardens and vineyards, and the fellow with me said, ‘That’s the estate that killed Quintus Aurelius.’”

  Julia groaned. “Gaius, that isn’t funny!”

  “Then I don’t suppose you’ll laugh when I tell you that men who’ve committed murder are arranging to have their victims inserted retroactively in the lists. They say Lucius Sergius Catilina pulled that off, after he murdered his brother-in-law. The killing was not only made legal, but Catilina received a bounty for it!”

  The grim conversation lapsed for a while. Gaius drank more broth. Lucius pondered the untouched food before him. Julia finally spoke.

  “Do you think we can take Sulla at his word, when he promises to lay down his dictatorship and retire to private life? He’ll do so in a year, he says, or at most two years.”

  “We can only pray that he’s telling the truth,” said Lucius glumly.

  “And what if he is?” said Gaius. “What will have changed, if Sulla steps down? Elections will resume, and the Senate will be in charge again—with all Marius’s men dead and Sulla’s men taking their places. But the state will still be crippled. The things that were broken before the civil war will still be broken, merely patched together with makeshift remedies. Gaius Gracchus, if he’d had the chance, might have sorted things out and breathed new life into the Republic; a petty, vindictive tyrant like Sulla is not the man to accomplish that. It will take someone else to save Roma, someone who can combine the political vision of the Gracchi, the military genius of Scipio Africanus, and a measure of Sulla’s ruthlessness, as well.”

  There was a faraway look in Gaius’s eyes, almost as if he were speaking of his own ambitions f
or the future. That was absurd, thought Lucius. The fever was giving his brother-in-law delusions of grandeur. Gaius should worry about keeping his own head, not daydream about saving the Republic.

  “Perhaps,” suggested Lucius, “the man you’re thinking of is Pompeius Magnus.” He referred to one of Sulla’s protégés, a military prodigy only six years older than Gaius. Sulla, who liked pet names—he had dubbed himself Felix, “Lucky”—had taken to addressing young Gnaeus Pompeius, half in jest, half in earnest, as Magnus, “the Great.” The name had stuck.

  “Pompeius!” Gaius scoffed. “I hardly think so. He doesn’t have the strength of character to be a true leader.”

  “Well…” Lucius raised an eyebrow. He had no affection for Pompeius, but it seemed to him that Gaius was hardly worldly enough to make such a scathing assessment. Gaius read his expression.

  “Must I justify the comment? Very well, I need cite only one example to show the fundamental weakness in Pompeius’s character. Other than cutting off heads, what’s Sulla’s most despotic behavior? Arranging marriages for those around him. And not just innocent matchmaking. Against their will, he’s forced women to marry his favorites; that action turns marriage into rape, an offense to the gods. He’s even dissolved existing marriages, forcing spouses to divorce each other and remarry new partners of his choosing.”

  “Another symptom of Sulla’s madness,” said Lucius.

  “Perhaps. But if Pompeius thinks so, the so-called Great wasn’t great enough to stand up to his master. Sulla told Pompeius to divorce Antistia—a devoted wife, by all accounts—and marry Sulla’s stepdaughter Aemilia, even though Aemilia was already pregnant by her husband! And Pompeius, like the sycophant of some Asian monarch, obeyed without a whimper. This is the man to lead Roma out of the wilderness? I hardly think so!” Gaius shook his head. “I would never submit to such dishonorable, disgraceful behavior to curry favor with another man, no matter what the consequences. Never!”