A Pillar of Iron: A Novel of Ancient Rome

by Taylor Caldwell

  She looked at her son straightly. “The girl is afraid to love. She does not love Lucius—therefore, troth or not, she prefers him to you. Love would engross her, enchain her. She would marry one who merely attracts her pleasurably with his appearance. But, if she loves you, and if she married you in two or three years, it would make her miserable. She would live in terror of your death. It is not well to have such passion, and children inherit their parents’ passion. There is violence in your Livia, a recklessness which was her father’s. No, Marcus, she is not for my son.”

  Marcus was sick with wretchedness. His practical mother seemed to have become his enemy. “But I love her,” he said. “I shall die if she marries Lucius.”

  “What nonsense,” said Helvia, beginning to spin again. “Let us consult together, Marcus. You are going to Greece to study; it is your father’s wish. It was his own wish, too, and his father opposed it strenuously. Your father thought that he would spend years roaming the Acropolis at Athens, and wandering through the colonnades of the Parthenon, in eternal blue sunlight, among wise men, conversing. Even when your grandfather said he would give him no money he was not disturbed. Where he would sleep, where he would be sheltered, with what he would buy bread and books, did not occur to him. He would merely gaze, as he said, ‘upon the silver city on the silver sea.’ It took a long time to convince him that silver cities on silver seas require drachmas also, and the Greeks would not feed him for nothing, nor would they shelter him without money. What dreams men weave, beyond the boundaries of commonsense and finance! He still remembers his dreams; he wishes them fulfilled in you.

  “Moreover,” said Helvia, “you are not like your father. You are more like your grandfather, whom I respect for all he is a fractious old man. He is sensible. I, too, believe that you will not wander, dreaming, on the Acropolis. You will learn from the wise men. I have not underestimated you, though I worry about your health.

  “You have said you will die if you do not have your Livia; men do not die for love. That is but poetry, and life is not poetry. You will go to Greece; your Livia will live in your mind as something sublime and I will not quarrel with that. In the meantime, she will become a factual matron. To you, however, in Greece, she will remain forever young, forever inaccessible, forever lost, and that will bequeath you a beautiful memory. The gods grant that you never encounter her later, surrounded by children, and gossiping merrily with her friends!

  “You have work to do in the world. You are a Roman. It is the duty of a Roman not to forget his country for any girl. You must be intelligent and worthy. And you must remember that Livia is honorably bound to Lucius. Honor, above all, is the way of great men.”

  Each of her sensible and forthright words was a stone falling on Marcus’ wounded heart. “I shall never forget Livia,” he said.

  “Do not forget her, then. But do not forget your duty and your future, and your father’s dreams for you. And, for that matter, my dreams for you, and your grandfather’s. You owe that duty to your family. You owe it to Rome.”

  “I shall never forget Livia,” Marcus repeated.

  She looked at his locked, pale face, and for a moment she was afraid.

  “Do not forget her,” she urged. “But never try to see her again. Let her be for you forever the silvery Artemis, the unconquered, the adorable one. It will light the dull days of your future life, and there are many dull days in living. What is a life without a dream?”

  “What dreams do you have, my mother?” asked Marcus with resentment.

  She smiled at him with wry wonder. “My dreams are the dreams of Cornelia, who had her jewels in her sons. What more can a mother ask, that her sons will never dishonor her, but that she may move among her friends and hear their praises? For what else do I dream?”

  “You have left out love,” said Marcus, stubbornly.

  “Do I not love your father and his children?” said Helvia, with a rare anger. “What would your father be without me? I have given him sons; I attend to his household and make him comfortable. I let him go his ways with his books and his esoteric conversations with that Greek poet. I conserve his substance. His life is pleasanter for me, and easy. Because I love him.”

  She smiled. “I have never disturbed his dreams. I have never shattered his illusions. He should be grateful to me.”

  Then she became stern again. “There is more to a man’s life than the love of women. Go to, Marcus, and become a man.”

  Marcus, in his despair, thought of speaking to his father, and Helvia must have heard his thoughts. “Speak to Archias if you will, and he will write a poem for you which you may cherish all the days of your life.”

  She recalled her slave girls. “In the meantime, there are blankets to make and your clothing to be finished for the great festivities. Go and lay flowers before a statue of Venus and sacrifice a pair of doves to her, and tell her of your love for Livia. On second thought, no. Venus is a dangerous divinity and brings disaster to mankind. Did she not give Helen to Paris, and in that giving did she not give death to Troy? What fearful things has she not wrought among men! I think,” said Helvia with compassion not untouched by maternal malice, “that it would be better to sacrifice to your patroness, Pallas Athene, and implore her to send you the wisdom you need.”

  Marcus, dismissed, left the women’s quarters in anguish.

  “I shall never forget Livia,” he vowed to himself. “Nor shall I relinquish her so lightly. Do not Romans say, ‘He is able who thinks he is able?’ Yes. I have not seen the last of Livia, my love.”

  But Livia never came to the island again.

  In the meantime even the miserable youth could no longer escape the news from Rome, and he listened with great and starting fear for his country. The family returned to Rome. It was no longer safe for them in Arpinum.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Years before young Marcus Tullius Cicero had been born the desperate people of Italy had tried repeatedly to redress their wrongs under Rome. Flaccus, their champion, had attempted to secure the franchise for them, and had failed. They were governed by all the laws of Rome, but could not defend themselves against martial law; their officers, serving in the very armies of Rome, could be executed at the whim of any capricious Roman court-martial. They could not vote, yet they were taxed even more than any citizen of Rome, their goods confiscated undisputed by any venal tax-gatherer who believed he had not been bribed enough. And Roman magistrates, seated in Rome, could impose laws on communities they had never seen, and enforce oppressions. A Roman Consul held the power of life and death over Italian provinces, could seize and plunder and rape at will, or impose a sudden regulation, unbearable and unjust, on his fellow Italians, because they were not citizens of Rome. Citizenship alone conferred immunity from the caprices of the army and the magistrates and the Consuls; without that citizenship all men were dogs and soulless, at the disposal of their masters. At one time Roman citizenship was the privilege of all worthy Italians, as well as Romans, but the sturdy rise of the middle-class in the provinces and the communities aroused the fear and anger of those Romans who considered themselves (by virtue of long residence in the city) patricians and nobles and men of consequence, not to be compared with their fellow Italians in remote areas of the peninsula. The middle-class, by their honor, industry, and finally their money, found it easy, at first, to become Roman citizens upon application, and they brought their virtues, their love of freedom, to a city long grown arrogant, corrupt, and overbearing through conquest and gold. The Urbs resented those who believed that all good men deserved liberty and the rule of their own lives without interference from government.

  It was the hatred and fear of the virtues of the provincial middle-classes which eventually caused Rome to make citizenship difficult if not almost impossible to anyone who had no distinguished forebears, had not been born in Rome, and knew no powerful Senators, and despised bribes and resented oppressive taxes which were used to gain the votes of Roman mobs and confer advantages, circuse
s, free food, and housing on those mobs. One Roman patrician said contemptuously, “If the middle-class has any function at all it is to work to provide us with taxes, with which we can bribe the mobs of Rome and keep them contented and docile. It is true that the plebs of Rome are mere animals, but there are so many of them and we need their votes for our power! Let the middle-class be our servant to that end, for the new man is enamored of work and saving and industry and all the other vulgar pursuits.”*

  The middle-class in Rome, largely without the franchise, and the middle-class in the provinces who had no franchise at all, were in despair. They needed the votes. Possessed of the vote they could control taxation, force the “old” aristocrats to practice, or seem to practice, the ancient virtues of Rome, remove from them privileges which they had arrogated to themselves, control their licentiousness and ambitions and criminal subornation of the laws of Rome, and in all ways compel them to act as men and not as tigers. On the other hand, the vote in the power of the middle-class would mean that the howling Roman mobs, who lived without work or industry or pride or responsibility on the taxes wrung from their betters, would have to become industrious and responsible men again, rather than dependent beasts, slavering for free food from the hands of the rulers of the city, devourers of the flesh of those who stood upright in their souls and did not crawl on their bellies.

  “It is hard to say which is more evil,” said Marcus Livius Drusus, tribune,† “those who bribe the masses, or the masses who receive the bribe. It is true that the briber corrupts; it is also true that he who accepts the bribe is the greater criminal. (But then, when was not government a liar, an enslaver, a murderer and a thief and an oppressor, the enemy of all men, in its lust for power?) He who receives a bribe, so he must not work to cover and feed and house himself, is less than the amiable dog who at least gives loyalty and protects the household. The mob protects nothing but its belly, and he who caters to that belly for its grunted approval must stand before history as lower even than the basest slave, no matter the greatness of the name of his family or his standing among bankers.”

  The noble Drusus was himself an aristocrat, and held the name of one of the oldest and noblest families in Rome. Above all, he loved what Rome once was: proud, free, virtuous, clothed in honor, industrious, frugal, just, temperate, honest in thought and speech and act. His fellow aristocrats considered him a traitor to themselves. They sought to defame him, but the purity and nobility of his personal and public life were beyond their most frantic searching. “He believes,” said Lucius Philippus to the exigent Quintus Scaepio, “that all men are worthy because they are men, even the middle-class, and perhaps even the mobs of Rome!”

  But the noble Drusus believed that all men possessed souls and were therefore beloved of God, and that he who degrades a human soul or despises it would be eternally condemned.

  His friends, patricians and conservatives like himself, were such aristocrats as Marcus Scaurus, and Lucius Crassus the great and heroic orator and defender of the rights of man. They, too, were men of the most exemplary lives and the most earnest virtue; they were also lovers of liberty and of their country. It was agony for them to perceive the modern criminality of Rome, the powerful politicians, the craven Consuls, the venal and detestable Senate, “the tribunes of the people” who betrayed the people, the vice and the lasciviousness and cruelty of those who ruled, the luxury that corrupted and was corrupt, the death of all honor in public life, the enslavement of the masses who had begged to be enslaved in order that they need not work, the paternalism and the crushing of the human spirit which paternalism invoked, and the oppression of those who wished to live in peace and work for their families and be good citizens and uphold the gods and practice the virtues of old Rome. “It is by taxation that a cruel and monstrous government can allocate power to itself,” said Crassus, “for then it has a system of rewards and punishments: rewards for those who will permit tyranny and punishments for those who oppose it.”*

  “Nations have foundered and have passed away in dust for the same crimes now committed in Rome,” said Drusus. “But we still have time to save Rome, to draw back from the abyss.”

  He could not know that nations never draw back from the abyss, for he still had illusions, he still believed that a corrupt nation could become pious and virtuous again, “if the people willed.” Not until the moment of his assassination did he realize that corruption is not reversible, when that corruption was deep in the bowels of a nation.

  (On learning of the assassination of Drusus his brother said bitterly, “So is the end of all men who truly love their country and love truth! What other than death should be their punishment?”)

  Once the Senate had had the function of juries, but the Equestrian Order had taken most of the duties, “in order,” it said, “to relieve the Senate of the mere ritual of law.” The Equestrian Order, then, had begun to interpret the Twelve Tables of Law as it wished and imposed meanings on the law which had never existed before and were in violation of the Constitution. Drusus planned to restore the total function of jury to the Senate, and also proposed that the Senate be increased by three hundred more members in order to deal with new obligations and restore the Republic in full, and its law. He wished to set up a special tribunal also, to investigate all jurymen who took bribes or were swayed by political advantage. “The watch dog of the Republic,” he declared. He proposed currency reform, so that Rome could retain her gold, which was her power, and prevent it from being drained away by foreign dependencies and nations in the name of loans. His heart devoured by anger and pity, he also proposed that the oppressed middle-class, notable for its virtue, its conservation and its industry, be given underdeveloped land in Sicily and parts of Italy. But, above all, he demanded the franchise for all Italians beyond Rome.

  Nimbly, and with the wisdom of the noble, he combined all these ideas in one bill to be presented to the Senate. They could not approve one part without approving the whole. As tribune, and in furtherance of his reforms, he imprisoned Philippus. But the Senate released him, as it was wavering and uncertain and confused. It was one thing to deal with the Gracchi, who had appealed only to the plebs of Rome, and the honor they did not possess. It was quite another thing to deal with such as Drusus, who appealed to all men, and was therefore suspect. The Senate began to listen to tales that Drusus was a traitor to Rome, that he was inciting other Italians to revolt against the city, which was high treason. The Senate trembled; finally it disapproved the law which Drusus proposed on the mere ground of “informality.” They surrendered to the aristocrats. Drusus was murdered.

  The Social War broke out, between the city and the men of the provinces.

  The grandfather had known Lucius Crassus, the great and heroic orator, personally, and when Lucius Crassus died, too suddenly, in September, the grandfather was overwhelmed with grief. “So perishes another man of honor!” he exclaimed. “When great men die, then a nation is truly bereft.”

  The Cicero family, though Roman citizens only by virtue of the franchise originally granted to the people of Arpinum, was in danger of the terrible anger of their surrounding countrymen, who were not Roman citizens. “It does not matter that our sympathies lie with them,” said the grandfather. “It does not matter that our hearts burn with theirs for justice. How frightful it is that men of the same blood must challenge each other and destroy each other, for are we not all Italians? War between nations is evil enough, but war between brothers will never be forgiven by man or God.”

  Marcus thought of the story which Noë had told him, of Cain and Abel.

  The Italian peoples, outside of Rome, founded the Confederacy, which included the Marsians, Paelignians, and many others. The Marsians were the first to declare war on the central government in Rome, and in addition to the Paeligni the Marrucini, the Frentani and Vestini joined them. There was also the more southernly group, the Samnites, from Marcus’ beloved river, the Liris, to Apulia and Calabria. The central government in Rome,
however, had the support of the rich, including Umbria and Etruria which had eliminated their middle class entirely. It also had Nola, Nuceria, and Neapolis in Campania, the Latin colonies such as Aesernia and Alba. It had Rhegium, and neighboring states. Nevertheless, the middle class, believing that right was on its side, refused to give up hope; the farmers were with it. But, in Rome, there were the wealthy and the patricians who hated all but themselves, they the men of the cities.

  “What can prevail against money and corruption?” asked the old grandfather in grief.

  “A great man will arise who will restore justice,” said his son, Tullius.

  The grandfather looked at him with sparkling eyes. “You are the father of sons, one who is almost a man, yet you can speak as a child! When Rome was virtuous, she had her Cincinnatus. But, she is no longer virtuous. Therefore, there will be no great man to restore her. Rome is doomed. I am a Roman citizen, but I was born in Arpinum. I weep for my country.”

  Young Marcus’ heart burned with agreement. In Rome, he prayed for his fellow Italians who were attacking their own government. He heard that all Italy intended to secede from Rome; it intended not only to march on the capital but to crush it and formulate a new nation under justice and law. Corfinium received the new name of Italica, and would be the head of the aborning nation. The government of Italy centered there, a Senate building was raised, the middle-class and the farmers were called citizens of Italica. The ancient laws of the Republic were revived again, and oaths sworn to the ancient Constitution which Rome had been so busily destroying over the past years. Fortresses of the Romans, scattered over all Italy, were seized and new banners lifted. An air of joy and freedom blew over Italy. The meddling and corruption of Rome, men believed, was at an end. No longer would the states and provinces have to endure oppression and disdain and murderous taxation and cruelty and condescension.