The Triumph Of Caesar rsr-12

by Steven Saylor

  "But surely that's a good thing," I said. "Whatever you may think of Caesar's other accomplishments, if he can repair the Roman calendar, we shall all benefit."

  "That is true. And if he can truly pull it off, it's only fitting that a Roman should be the man to give the world an accurate accounting of the movement of the heavens. I only regret that the man should be Caesar!"

  This was as candid as I could wish. Throughout our conversation, not once had Cicero appeared to speak disingenuously. His guard seemed to be entirely down; he spoke to me as to a confidant. I was finding it hard to believe he could in any way be responsible for Hieronymus's death.

  "All these notations and scribblings," I said, indicating the documents. "What do they mean, and why did Hieronymus possess them?"

  Cicero pursed his lips thoughtfully. "Do you know what I think? I think Hieronymus made these calculations as a kind of mental exercise, a challenge to himself. He must have heard about Caesar's plan for a new calendar. Wouldn't it have been just like him to think, if Caesar can do it, then so can I? Or perhaps he somehow got hold of the proposed calendar and was attempting to find flaws. He was a very competitive sort of fellow. He had a high estimation of his talents and considerable cheek. Once, he told me that he thought he could quite easily become a finer orator than I. Can you believe that!"

  I nodded. "I can believe it, indeed." It was easy enough to imagine Hieronymus obtaining information about the calendar from Calpurnia, or someone in her household, or perhaps from the household of Cleopatra, whom he had visited and whose scholars were working with Caesar on the project. But if Hieronymus had hoped to show up Caesar's calendar with one of his own, that dream, like all his others, had come to an abrupt end.

  Cicero looked past me. The slave who had admitted me stood in the doorway.

  "Speak," said Cicero.

  "You have another visitor, Master."

  "Who is it?"

  "Marcus Junius Brutus."

  Cicero smiled broadly and clapped his hands. "Ah, Brutus! He must have just arrived in the city. Show him in at once! And bring more wine and a basin of water and some food. Brutus will be hungry after his journey."

  The slave hurried to obey.

  "Thank you for the hospitality," I said, "and for your thoughts about Hieronymus." I began to rise from my chair, but Cicero gestured for me to sit.

  "Please, Gordianus, stay for a while. I've shared your sadness for the loss of one friend; now you can share my joy at being reunited with another. By Hercules, not only is Brutus still breathing-a miracle! — but Caesar appointed him governor of Cisalpine Gaul. You do know Brutus, don't you?"

  "Only by name," I said. "I don't think our paths have ever crossed."

  Cicero nodded thoughtfully. "I always assume you know everyone, but that's not true, is it? You never did have any ties to Cato and his circle, did you? You were always too busy fetching and finding for Pompey or for Caesar. Well, then, you must stay, so that I can introduce you."

  Brutus stepped into the room. His tunic and his shoes were still dusty from traveling. He and Cicero greeted each other and embraced. Rupa and I rose while Cicero introduced us, then we all sat. Brutus washed his face and hands in a basin of water held by a slave, then enthusiastically accepted a cup of wine.

  He was a handsome man with a long face and keen eyes, not quite forty years old. Throughout his adult life, Brutus's family connections and political affiliations had repeatedly put him at odds with Caesar. Brutus had been the protege of his uncle Cato, who was the champion of the most hidebound conservative clique and one of Caesar's most relentless enemies. When the civil war erupted, Brutus did not hesitate to side with Pompey. But on the eve of the battle of Pharsalus, Caesar explicitly ordered his officers to spare Brutus and take him alive. After the battle, he not only pardoned Brutus but took him into his entourage as an honored companion.

  Why did Caesar show such special favor to Brutus? For a number of years, Brutus's widowed mother, Servilia, had carried on a torrid love affair with Caesar (despite the consternation of her brother, Cato). Brutus was only a boy when the affair began, and came of age with Caesar coming and going in his house. The bond that formed between Caesar and Brutus survived the eventual cooling of Caesar's passion for Servilia and also survived their political differences.

  When Caesar sailed off to Africa to deal with the last defiant survivors of Pharsalus-including Cato-he sent Brutus in the opposite direction. The appointment to govern Cisalpine Gaul not only rewarded Brutus but also got him out of Rome and away from the battlefront. Caesar could hardly expect Brutus to be in at the kill of his beloved uncle.

  Caesar had no son, unless he intended to acknowledge Cleopatra's child. Perhaps he thought of Brutus as a surrogate son. Perhaps, as some people speculated, he even intended to make Brutus his heir.

  "How was the journey?" asked Cicero.

  "Long, hot, and dusty! Thanks for asking and thanks for the wine. Awfully good of you." Even in casual conversation, Brutus spoke with a clipped, cultured accent. His family claimed to be descended from the famous Brutus who led the revolt against King Tarquin the Proud and helped to found the republic. I found myself comparing him to Antony, who was every bit as aristocratic but seemed far less pretentious.

  "So, how are things in the hinterland?" said Cicero.

  Brutus snorted. "Cisalpine Gaul is practically Italy, you know. The Rubicon isn't the Styx. We do have the rudiments of civilization-books, brothels, and garum. On a fast horse, Rome is only a few days away."

  "You made it just in time for the triumphs."

  "Yes, for better or worse. Caesar didn't exactly demand my attendance, but he made his desire clear enough in his last letter. I suppose I shan't mind watching him parade the spoils of Egypt and Asia and further Gaul, but if he uses the African Triumph to crow about his victory over Uncle Cato, I'm not sure I can stomach that. Oh, dear, have I just made the most awful pun?"

  Brutus flashed a lopsided smile. In Africa, after a crushing defeat, Cato first tried to commit suicide by cutting open his belly.

  "It's my understanding," said Cicero, "that the African Triumph will chiefly celebrate the victory of Roman arms over King Juba of Numidia."

  "Who went down fighting the good fight along with Uncle Cato." Brutus sighed. "Well, whatever else we may say of Caesar, the old boy won the war fair and square, didn't he? And saw fit to let you and me keep our heads, eh, Cicero? What about you, Gordianus? Not a military man, are you?"

  "Gordianus has a son who's been serving under Caesar for quite some time," said Cicero. "You may have heard of him: Meto Gordianus."

  "Numa's balls, not the fellow who wrote those memoirs for Caesar?"

  "My son took Caesar's dictation, yes," I said.

  Brutus snorted. "Dictation, eh? Caesar probably wasn't even in the tent while your boy was scribbling away. Give credit where it's due, old man. Everybody knows those memoirs were written by a shadow. And, by Hades, they certainly did their job! From the way those memoirs tell it, the poor Gauls didn't stand a chance. Quite a tale, all blood and thunder and beat my Roman chest. Pumped up Caesar's prestige with the common folk, eh? Made him look invincible. Scared the piss out of Cato, I can tell you. 'Wouldn't want to go up against that bloodthirsty madman,' quoth my doomed uncle. Well, bugger me! The father of great Caesar's ghost, sitting right here. This is quite the literary gathering, isn't it? Cicero's written his latest book especially for me, did you know? Been sending me chapters. A History of Famous Orators, dedicated to yours truly. Celebrating a dead art, I suppose. Who needs orators when the courts are closed and the Senate's a shadow? Nonetheless, my name shall enjoy immortality on the dedication page of Cicero's great opus."

  Cicero smiled. "I have no doubt that you shall achieve immortality by your own actions, Brutus."

  "Really? I don't see how. A hundred years from now, I doubt that anyone's likely to remember who was governor of Cisalpine Gaul in the year of Caesar's quadruple triumphs."

 
"You're still a young man, Brutus. And Caesar-" Cicero glanced at me, then looked back to Brutus. "Caesar won't live forever."

  "Ah, yes, and what will come after Caesar?" said Brutus. "People are already speculating about that. What does that tell you? We've begun to think just the way people think when they live under a king. We're not worrying about the next election or who's liable to get himself exiled for corruption or how to keep a foot in a game. We're wondering, 'How long will the old fellow live, and who will be his heir?' For shame!" Brutus tossed back his wine and held out his cup for the slave to refill it.

  Wine, soothing the weariness of the journey, had loosened his tongue. He turned to Rupa and smiled. "It was my ancestor, also named Brutus, who founded this little thing we call a republic. Did you know that, big fellow?" He paused, as if expecting Rupa to answer, though he had been told when introduced that Rupa was mute. "Republic-comes from two fine old words, res and publica: the people's state. You're a fellow citizen, I suppose, being Gordianus's son by adoption?"

  "That's correct," I said.

  "Where were you born, big fellow? Somewhere quite exotic, I'll wager."

  "Rupa is Sarmatian."

  "Indeed, you come from the very ends of the earth, from the mountains where the sun rises! What's that line from Ennius? You know, Cicero, his epitaph for Scipio?"

  Cicero raised his voice to a ringing orator's pitch. " 'The sun that rises above the eastern-most marshes of Lake Maeotis illumines no man my equal in deeds!' " Far from being chagrined by his friend's loose tongue, he seemed to be as intoxicated as Brutus. This was not the Cicero I knew.

  "That's right," said Brutus. "And you, you big Sarmatian fellow, you must have actually seen Lake Maeotis, though I'll wager you haven't a clue who Scipio was. No matter! That's the point, really. What a remarkable thing is this republic, eh? It grows and grows, spreading across the whole world, from the Pillars of Hercules to Lake Maeotis, laying down roads and building cities, establishing courts of law, securing the sea lanes, and rewarding its best and brightest with the greatest prize on earth, Roman citizenship."

  "And enslaving a vast multitude in the process," I commented. Rupa had been enslaved, before he gained his freedom.

  "I shall not debate the natural necessity of slavery, at least not here and now," said Brutus. "That's a book for Cicero to write; one of many, now that he's retired. The law court's loss will be the reader's gain! My point, if I may return to it, is the end of our republic, and everything it stands for. As I said, it was my ancestor who founded this thing." This was an exaggeration-the Brutus of ancient times hardly drove the Tarquins out of Rome single-handedly-but I let it go. "Over four hundred and fifty years ago! The republic has served us for many, many generations. The republic has made us masters of ourselves and masters of the world. As Brutus knew it would. How he loved the republic! No effort was too Herculean, no sacrifice too great to ensure its survival. Do you know what he did, Sarmatian, in the very first year of the republic, when he got wind of a conspiracy to bring back the king?"

  Rupa shook his head.

  "Brutus declared that any man involved in such a plot must die. Then a slave brought him proof that his own two sons were involved in the plot. Did he make an exception for them? Did he spirit them out of the city or destroy the evidence or pardon them? No, he did not. He had every royalist conspirator arrested. The guilty were lined up and forced to kneel, and the lictors chopped their heads off, one by one. Chop, chop, chop! Brutus watched the beheading of his own two sons, and the historians tell us he never flinched. And afterward, he rewarded the slave who had informed on them by granting the man citizenship-making him the first slave ever to become a Roman citizen. A precedent that has worked to your advantage, my Sarmatian friend!"

  Brutus sat back, held out his cup for another refill, and drank it down. Talking had made him thirsty. "And that, fellow citizens, is a tale of true republican virtue. What man today could claim to be as brave, as resolute, as decisive as my forefather?"

  "Perhaps his descendant," suggested Cicero, in a voice that was barely more than a whisper.

  Brutus the founder had killed his own sons for the sake of the republic. Might another Brutus dare to kill his surrogate father for sake of the same res publica? And might Cicero, Rome's greatest advocate and orator, be just the man to persuade Brutus to do it?

  "But what's this?" Brutus tossed his empty cup to a slave and picked up the astronomical documents Cicero had laid aside upon his arrival. He perused the notations, a bit bleary-eyed. "Symbols for Capricorn and Cancer, Virgo and Libra… those are clear enough. But what are these extraordinary nonsense words? Egyptian months? Mesore, Phamenoth, Pharmouthi, Thoth, Phaopi, Tybi, Hathyr, Mecheir, Epiphi, Choiak, Pachon, Payni. Quite a mouthful! And all these columns of numbers…" He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment and laid the documents aside. "What are you up to, Cicero, helping our dictator with calculations for his new calendar? I do hope he's not intending to saddle us with Egyptian months, along with an Egyptian queen. Really, that would be the last straw! 'Shall we dine on the Ides of Tybi?' 'Meet me in the Forum two days before the Kalends of Thoth.' "

  He threw back his head and laughed.

  "Actually, Gordianus brought these," said Cicero. "They appear to be the pet project of a mutual friend. A friend who no longer has need of a calendar, alas."

  The time seemed right to depart. I rolled up the documents and handed them to Rupa. I asked Cicero to convey my farewell to his napping bride. I wished Brutus a good stay in Rome, and I took my leave.

  VIII

  "Tomorrow!" said Bethesda, standing in the front doorway with her arms crossed. Her tone was adamant, her posture imperious. Hand her a flail and a crook, I thought, and put a nemes crown with a rearing cobra on her head, and she could pass for Egyptian royalty.

  "You're right," I said. Even standing outside the house, I caught a whiff of the odor of putrefaction that was beginning to emanate from the body in my vestibule. "I shall organize a procession for tomorrow. We'll have him cremated outside the Esquiline Gate."

  Bethesda nodded, satisfied that her point had been taken, and stepped aside to allow me to enter.

  The odor was stronger in the vestibule, but not overpowering. Nonetheless, I could see how my wife, being at home all day, had reached her limit.

  "Did anyone come to pay their respects while I was out?"

  "No visitors."

  "Ah, well, I'm not surprised. With all these preparations for Caesar's triumphs beginning tomorrow, I suppose everyone's too busy. Only Fulvia came, then, and she didn't even know Hieronymus; her condolences were merely a pretext to question me. Ah, Hieronymus." I gazed down at his face. "You amused them, seduced them with your charm, spied upon them… and now, it seems, they've forgotten about you."

  "No visitors," Bethesda repeated, "but some messengers did come. They brought these." She bent down to fetch a few pieces of parchment that had been tossed haphazardly in the corner near the door, as if they were bits of refuse. Bethesda had little respect for the written word. There was also a wax writing tablet among the messages.

  "Bethesda, these are notes of condolence. They were brought for Hieronymus. You should have laid them upon his bier."

  She raised a skeptical eyebrow and shrugged.

  "I suppose I'm lucky you didn't burn them."

  "Won't they be burned tomorrow, along with Hieronymus?"

  "Yes, but only after I've read them."

  "Who are they from, then?"

  "This one's from Cicero. He told me he'd sent a message. 'The laughter and erudition of our learned friend from Massilia will be sorely missed in these trying times,' and so on."

  "And the others?"

  "Here's one from Antony. Cytheris added a note. She says she wants to provide the singers and mimes for the funeral procession; friends of hers, I imagine. And these others…"

  I scanned the names of the senders. They were all persons whose names appeared in Hieronymus's reports. These we
re the people he had visited, whose trust he had sought to cultivate with an eye toward uncovering any threat they might pose to Caesar. Did the fact that these people had sent condolences make them any more or less suspicious? Surely the person responsible for Hieronymus's death would have sent condolences along with everyone else.

  Here was a note from Caesar's young grandnephew, Octavius, who was about to turn seventeen; he included an epigram in Greek, probably from a play, though I didn't recognize it. Here was a note from the sculptor Arcesilaus, with whom many years ago I had shared cherries from the garden of Lucullus; it was his statue of Venus that was to adorn the new temple built by Caesar. Here was a note from a new playwright in town, Publilius Syrus, who paraphrased the last lines of Ennius's epitaph for Scipio, from which Cicero had recited earlier: "If any mortal may ascend to the heaven of immortals, for you let the gods' gate stand open."

  And here, upon a very heavy piece of parchment rimmed with an embossed border of a repeating lotus leaf pattern, was a note from the queen of Egypt:

  To Gordianus, with fond remembrance of our meeting in Alexandria. I have discovered that the late Hieronymus of Massilia was a member of your household, and it is to you I should send a message of condolence. Now you are here in Rome, and so am I. We live in a very small world. But the realm of the afterlife, where I shall reign as Isis in splendor, is vast and eternal. May our mutual friend be guided there swiftly to enjoy his reward.

  I laid the notes amid the flowers piled upon the bier. Still in my hand was the wax writing tablet.

  I untied the strings of the wooden cover panel. The reusable wax surface contained not a message of condolence, but two questions, below each of which space had been left to scratch a reply. I felt a bit like a pupil being handed a test by his tutor. The name of the sender was not included, but the tablet obviously came from Calpurnia. The first question read: