Quintus said, “I will go with you to Greece. Have you not always longed for that country?” Marcus smiled at him, thinking that Quintus might desire a little respite from Pomponia. “We shall see Pomponia’s brother, who is also my publisher,” he said. Atticus had discreetly fled from Rome before the trial of old Servius and had amassed a fortune in Greece by various methods. But his publishing business was still very prosperous in Rome, and he still employed one hundred scribes.
With seriousness, now, Marcus began to plan to go to Greece.
“You shall walk where Socrates and Plato and Aristotle walked!” Tullius exclaimed. “As you trace their footsteps, who knows but what their shades shall whisper to you? Never have I forgotten what Socrates said concerning the Unknown God: ‘There shall be born to men the Divine One, the perfect Man, who will bind our wounds, who will lift our souls, who will set our feet on the illuminated path to God and wisdom, who will cherish our ills and share them with us, who will weep with man and know man in his flesh, who will return us to that which we have lost and who will lift our eyelids that we may gaze again on the Vision.’”
Marcus was now so weak, in these last hot days of summer in his bed, that he could not control his emotions. He remembered his youthful dream of seeing the Divine One face to face in the flesh, and he was sorrowful that He had not yet appeared among men. Why did He delay, in this enormous world of confusion and pain and evil and strife, of endless distrust and betrayal and the clashing of arms?
Noë came to see his old friend and to read him his latest play. Roscius, the rascal, was in Jerusalem. “No doubt seeking forgiveness for his many crimes, especially those against me,” said Noë. “He has a copy of my play. He demands an extortionate price for appearing in it. He is also growing a beard, as he writes me. I prefer to believe he is growing a horse’s tail and hoofs, like a centaur.”
Noë was proud and pleased that crowds of former clients and devotees came daily to the house of the Carinae to inquire about Marcus’ health, and filled the street before it and even intruded on the gardens in the rear. Noë said, “We are famous, it seems. When are you going to buy a more impressive house, dear friend, and leave this decaying area?”
“When I return from Greece,” said Marcus.
Friends of Scaevola visited him, honoring both Scaevola and his favorite pupil. Looking on their elderly faces with the new charity of illness, Marcus began to wonder if they had not, over the years, smoothed his way for him, for many inexplicable things had happened.
One day a slave came running into his cubiculum with the news that Julius Caesar and Pompey had arrived. Marcus felt the old thrill of fond pleasure and amusement at the name of his young friend, and sat up in bed the better to receive him. He wondered, however, at the presence of Pompey, the strong and taciturn. Julius came in, flowing gracefully as usual in a long rich robe of the finest red silk, and with silver shoes and girdle and silver armlets studded with turquoises. He exhaled his customary air of exuberance and good-will and delight in living. He was also fragrant.
“Dear friend!” he cried, leaning over the bed to embrace Marcus. “What is this that I hear of you?”
“I thought you were still killing pirates,” said Marcus. “I thought there was a price on your head—again—in Rome.”
“I am a very valuable man,” said Julius, sitting down on the foot of Marcus’ bed and regarding the older man with deep affection. “I survive.”
“That is a great talent,” Marcus admitted. He looked at Pompey, in his military garb, standing at the end of the bed, his broad thumbs thrust into his leather girdle. Pompey was regarding him with kindness, and this startled Marcus. Then he noticed the serpentine ring on Pompey’s hand. He averted his eyes. Julius was chattering gaily, a habit he had when he wished to conceal his thoughts. “You smell like a rose,” said Marcus, a little sourly.
Julius laughed, and slapped Marcus’ bare foot. “I am the rose of Rome,” he said.
“Rome smells of the Cloaca,” said Marcus, and Julius was overcome with mirth. Pompey grinned, and his large white teeth flashed. Julius said, “One would not believe it, but our Marcus is a man of great wit, of subtle wit. He is also an augur.”
“So?” said Pompey, with gravity, and Marcus saw that he believed Julius. Marcus said, “Did you come to me for an omen, Julius?”
“I heard you were sick!” cried Julius, reprovingly. “I returned but yesterday to my wife and my little daughter, Julia, but when I heard of your illness but an hour ago I hastened to you. This is your gratitude.”
But Marcus said, “Has not Lepidus attempted to assassinate you as yet?”
“I am no threat to Lepidus,” Julius said. “I am a man of many parts, and priceless in them all. Besides, Lepidus and I belong to the populares party. I have given up politics. I am but a simple soldier.”
Marcus laughed. The two young men laughed with him.
“I respect the Consul of the people,” said Julius. “So does Pompey. Did not Pompey help Lepidus to be elected Consul? And Pompey is my friend.”
“I discern a winding connection,” said Marcus.
“As I have told you, Marcus, I have given up politics.”
Marcus watched him as he said, “Lepidus is attempting to overthrow Sulla’s Constitution. The Senate is angry. There are rumors that the Senate will exile him to his province, Transalpine Gaul. He is ambitious.”
Julius sighed. He helped himself to a bunch of grapes from Marcus’ table. A slave came in to pour wine. Julius eyed it mistrustfully before he drank it, then he shook his head, regretfully. “You are a rich man, it is rumored, yet your taste in wines is still deplorable. What is that you have said of Lepidus? That he is ambitious? Ah, to what excesses does not ambition lead! But when were men not ambitious? Except for myself.” Pompey was silent, holding a goblet of wine in his hand.
“You did not admire Sulla,” Julius went on when Marcus did not speak. “You ought to prefer Lepidus who at least is an amiable man regarded with affection by the people.”
“He also is a dictator, and a tyrant,” said Marcus. “Sulla forced the mobs to work at honest labor or go hungry. Lepidus has retired many of them, again, on the substance of the people, thus raising taxes on the industrious. Must position always be bought, and power, over the bellies of the despicable, the haters of work, the mendicants? Our treasury is empty again, thanks to Lepidus and his adoring mobs of rascals and graffiti and former slaves. It is no marvel that I am discouraged. Nevertheless, I must still uphold law in the very howling face of chaos, trusting that law will eventually prevail, and justice also.”
The two young men were regarding him in serious silence and intentness. He drank a large goblet of wine, for he was suddenly thirsty. Julius refilled the goblet for him, and he drank again. He leaned back on his pillows and wearily closed his eyes.
He said, “I am tired of mankind, and its natural degradation. Do we not all exalt ourselves when speaking of Socrates and Aristotle and Plato and Homer, and the other immortals? That is presumption. They are not of us. They are bright stars of another and unseen world, fallen into our darkness. They walked in our flesh. Still, they are not of us. They were glorious, but their glory is not ours.”
He opened his eyes and Julius gave him more wine. The narrow and vivid face of Julius was very still. Marcus’ weariness returned to him with powerful force, and again he closed his eyes. A whirling chaos was before him, shot with sparks of fire and strange half-seen forms and faces. He forgot where he was, and who was with him. Then the chaos began to take clearer form and he gazed fiercely at what he saw. Without opening his eyes he murmured, “There is not one of us in this cubiculum today who will die peacefully in his bed. We shall be betrayed, and perish in our own blood.” He began to shiver. The wine dulled his awareness of his body and his bodily senses.
“Who will betray me, Marcus?” Julius asked in a soft voice, leaning over Marcus whose face resembled that of the dead.
Marcus whispered,
“Your son.”
Julius looked at Pompey, who, very pale, only shrugged. “I have no son,” said Julius.
Marcus did not speak. “And I?” said Pompey, speaking at last. “Who will kill me?”
“Your best friend,” said the lawyer in that faint and wandering voice.
The eyes of Julius and Pompey locked in hard ferocity. Then Julius said, “He has many best friends.”
The sick and dreaming man did not answer. Julius took his cold and flaccid hand and looked at it meditatively. “Who would kill you, Marcus?” he asked.
Marcus whispered, “I do not see their faces.”
“You are dreaming,” said Julius, still holding the other’s hand. “You are sick, and you have the visions of sickness. Do you see Catilina?”
“Fire, and blood,” said Marcus. “Livia is avenged at last.”
He fell into a deep sleep. The two young men stared at his pale and haggard face, at the dark shadows under the closed eyes, at the white exhaustion of his mouth. The curtain parted and Helvia stood on the threshold. Julius and Pompey kissed her hand, but her anxious gaze was on her son. “He falls, like this, into sudden slumbers,” she said. “It is because he is so tired. You must not be offended.” Now she looked at the visitors and was surprised at their disturbed expressions. “He is much better,” she said, thinking them sorrowful. “Soon he will be able to travel to Greece with his brother. He has not spared himself all these years. He will rest, in Greece.”
“He spoke very mysteriously to us,” said Julius. “And of us.”
“Marcus is superstitious,” said Helvia, with the indulgence of a mother. She reached under Marcus’ pillows and brought forth a small silver object of much antiquity, for it was worn and shining dimly with ancient scratchings. The young men regarded it with horrified repugnance, for it was the cross of infamy, the top curved into a loop to hold a chain.
“It was given to him by an Egyptian merchant who was his client two years ago,” said Helvia, replacing the cross under the pillow. “It came, the merchant said, from some old violated tomb of a Pharaoh, centuries ago. The merchant told my son that it was the sign of the Redeemer of mankind, prophesied eons ago in the mists of the youth of our world. It is, as we know, only the sign of the infamous death of criminals and malefactors and traitors and thieves and rebellious slaves. Yet, my son honors it and tells me, in moments of abstraction, that it is the sign of the redemption of man. He awaits, he declares, hourly for the birth of the son of the gods.”
Julius was smiling broadly. “Are the gods coming down from Olympus again for fresh rompings?” he said.
But Pompey, newly fearful, looked back over his shoulder as he and Julius left the sickroom. When they were in Julius’ litter, Julius saw, for the first time, the ring on his friend’s hand. “How imprudent of you!” he exclaimed with annoyance. “Marcus recognized that ring! In revenge, he deliberately disturbed us and filled us with dismay.” Then he smiled and shook his head admiringly. “Marcus is more subtle than even I knew. He wished us, in his gentle malice, to suffer in our minds.”
Marcus, unaware that his friends had left him, unaware that he had spoken to them in his half-dream, was dreaming again. He was wandering in a field that was lit by no sun he could discern. There was no limit to the horizon. His feet sank into soft green grass, and there was a murmurous sound of bees and birds in the gentle air. At each step flowers sprang up before him and filled the atmosphere with wonderful fragrance. Suddenly he saw a great city in the distance, bright and shining as if built of gold and alabaster. He hurried toward it, eagerly, but always it retreated, its columns and its glistening domes falling back from him. The breeze rustled as if with a multitude of unseen wings. Just beyond the limits of his hearing he heard singing voices, full of joy and merriment, but when he turned his head he saw nothing but flowers and grass and great stands of trees which were unfamiliar to him. Each tree bore masses of blossoms that exhaled a scent of intense perfume. And the distant city stood in radiance, as if emanating a light of its own and it was this light that lit up the world.
He felt his hand taken gently, and he started and turned his head. Young Livia was beside him, laughing, clad in garments that glowed and with a wreath of flowers on her autumn hair. Her eyes were bluer than he had remembered, and her hand was soft and warm in his. She held him tightly, and he looked at her with ecstasy. “You are not dead, beloved,” he cried.
“No, I am not dead. I was never dead, my dear one,” she answered in a voice he had never forgotten. She stood on the tips of her toes and kissed his lips, and the touch was like delicious fire. “Remember me, always,” she said, and laid her head on his shoulder.
Then a darkening fell over everything and all became wan and far. Marcus, in terror, seized Livia in his arms again. “Tell me!” he cried. “Did you ever love me, Livia? Did you ever know me, and my love for you?”
Her face was becoming the face of a shade, transparent and white, but her eyes lay on him with blue passion. “Yes, but it was not to be. It was the will of God that we did not possess each other in those days, for there is much for you to do and I should have hindered you.”
Her words were very mysterious to him and he could not understand them. He tried to grasp her but it was like grasping mist. “Remember me,” she said as if she spoke in echoes. “Above all, remember God, and we shall see each other again, and we shall never part thereafter.”
The darkness and the wanness fell faster, and now he was alone in a vast darkness, crying, “Livia, Livia!” Only silence answered him. He opened his eyes and saw the anxious face of his mother bent over him.
“I have seen Livia,” he said in a weak voice.
Helvia nodded indulgently. “Do we not all dream, my son?” She gave him the elixir the physician had left. “What is life, without a dream?”
*From letters to Cicero.
*Concluding speech of Cicero at the trial of Sextus Roscius.
†Letter to Caesar.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
“It is easy enough for you to counsel patience, Julius,” said Lucius Sergius Catilina, “for you have more time. But I am thirty-one years old and I am impatient.”
The two young men sat in the hot and fragrant garden of the house on the Palatine which the money of Aurelia had purchased. Peacocks strutted and spread their fans in the dark-blue shade, which contrasted with the blinding light that lay on red gravel paths and flowerbeds and glittering fountains and on the tops of dusky cypresses and myrtle trees. A flock of birds as scarlet as blood fluttered in and through the fading leaves of an oak tree, chattering with vehemence as they discussed the coming migration. The first scent of evening jasmine rose on the warm air.
Julius and Lucius were sitting on a cool marble bench in the shade of a myrtle, drinking honey-sweet wine the color of pale roses, and eating figs and grapes and citrons.
“Observe that mountebank,” said Julius, chuckling and nodding toward a young peacock who, with an eye to an older one’s ire, was tentatively lifting his brilliant, argus-eyed tail. “He wishes to woo the damsels of the flock. But the old peacock looks sternly and warningly at him. His time has not yet come.”
“I judge that remark to mean that my time has not yet come, either. Nor yours,” said Catilina. “You are still but twenty-five. I am thirty-one. I do not look with equanimity on the fact that my time may arrive when I am a graybeard. We were certain of it under Sulla. But again it has evaded us. Now we have Lepidus. He is like water which runs through the hands before one can drink. Do you know what I have heard? The Senate is weary of him. He restricts their power in behalf of those whom he calls ‘the people.’ So, the Senate will banish him soon to his province Transalpine Gaul. They love the power Sulla gave them. What, then, of us?”
Julius drank reflectively, then paused to smile again on the young peacock. “Lepidus needs some advice. He is positive the people of Rome are with him. If he should be banished, what if he decides to raise up an army against Rome
and march against her?”
Lucius studied him with a faint dark smile. “I assume he has been given this advice.”
“Has Lepidus asked my advice? No.”
“But you have friends.”
“I have friends.”
Catilina refilled his crystal goblet, then held it in his hands and looked down into the heart of the glimmering wine. “Well,” said Catilina after a moment. “What after that?”
Julius shrugged. “One must observe and consider. One throws the dice. It is in the hands of the gods which way they will fall.”
Catilina laughed. “But your dice are always loaded, Julius.”
“It is well to assist the gods occasionally.”
“You are ambiguous, Caesar. There are times when I do not trust you.”
“I am the most loyal of men,” said Julius.
“To yourself.”
Julius looked offended. “My stars have indicated that those who are born under them are suffused with the deepest devotion toward friends. What friends have I lost through betrayal?”
Catilina considered him. “You have told me that your dear friend, Cicero, has repeated to you that you will die betrayed, in your own blood. If he hints so of your murder, then he is plotting against you.”
Julius laughed out loud. “Cicero? Dear friend, you are mad. He may be subtle, as you have seen, but never vicious. He is, above all, amiable and kind and irenic. Jupiter has endowed me with the ability to look into the hearts of men.”
Catilina turned his beautiful and depraved face upon him with contempt. “He prophesied my murder, also. Did he not also speak so of Pompey? What is good about a man so openly vindictive?”
“Oracles are moved by no passion nor personalities, Lucius. They speak of the future they see.”
A Pillar of Iron: A Novel of Ancient Rome Page 49