3

It was Publius Rutilius Rufus who apprised Gaius Marius of events in Rome immediately after Caesar delivered the victory letter.

There’s a very nasty feeling in the air, arising chiefly out of the fact that you’ve succeeded in what you set out to do, namely eliminate the Germans, and the People are so grateful that if you stand for the consulship, you’ll get in yet again. The word on every highborn lip is “dictator” and the First Class at least is starting to sit up and echo it. Yes, I know you have many important knight clients and friends in the First Class, but you must understand that the whole of Rome’s political and traditional structure is designed to depress the pretensions of men who stand above their peers. The only permissible “first” is the first among equals, but after five consulships, three of them in absentia, it is getting extremely difficult to disguise the fact that you tower over your so-called equals. Scaurus is disgusted, but him you could deal with if you had to. No, the real turd in the bottom of the punch bowl is your friend and mine, Piggle-wiggle, ably assisted by his stammering son, the Piglet.

From the moment you moved east of the Alps to join Catulus Caesar in Italian Gaul, Piggle-wiggle and the Piglet have made it their business to blow Catulus Caesar’s contributions to the campaign against the Cimbri out of all proportion to the fact. So when the news of the victory at Vercellae came, and the House met in the temple of Bellona to debate things like triumphs and votes of thanksgiving, there were a lot of ears ready to listen when Piggle-wiggle got up to speak.

Briefly, he moved that only two triumphs be held—one by you, for Aquae Sextiae, and one by Catulus Caesar, for Vercellae! Completely ignoring the fact that you were the commander on the field of Vercellae, not Catulus Caesar! His argument is purely legalistic—two armies were involved, one commanded by the consul, you, and the other by the proconsul, Catulus Caesar. The amount of spoils involved, said Piggle-wiggle, was disappointingly small, and would look ridiculously inadequate were three triumphs to be celebrated. Therefore, since you hadn’t yet celebrated the triumph voted you for Aquae Sextiae, why, you could have that, and Catulus Caesar could have the triumph he was entitled to for Vercellae. A second Vercellae triumph celebrated by you would be a superfluity.

Lucius Appuleius Saturninus got up at once to object, and was howled down. Since he is a privatus this year, he holds no office that might have compelled the Conscript Fathers to pay him more attention. The House voted two triumphs, yours to be solely for Aquae Sextiae–last year’s battle, therefore less significant— and Vercellae—this year’s battle, therefore the big one in everybody’s eyes—solely the prerogative of Catulus Caesar. In effect, as the Vercellae triumph wends its way through the city, it will be telling the people that you had absolutely nothing to do with the defeat of the Cimbri in Italian Gaul, that Catulus Caesar was the hero. Your own idiocy in handing him most of the spoils and all the German standards captured on the field has clinched the matter. When your mood is expansive and your natural generosity is allowed to come to the fore, you commit your worst blunders, and that is the truth.

I don’t know what you can do about it—the whole thing is cut and dried, officially voted upon, and recorded in the archives. I am very angry about it, but the Policy Makers (as Saturninus calls them) or the boni (as Scaurus calls them) have won the engagement resoundingly, and you will never quite have as much prestige for the defeat of the Germans as you ought. It amused us all those years ago at Numantia to perpetuate the mud bath Metellus took among his porky friends by tagging him with a porky nickname that also happens to be nursery slang for a little girl’s genitalia, but it is my considered opinion now that the man is no piggle-wiggle—he’s a full-grown cunnus. As for the Piglet, he’s not going to be a little girl all his life, either. Another full-grown cunnus.

Enough, enough, I’ll give myself that apoplexy yet! I shall conclude this missive by telling you that Sicily is looking good. Manius Aquillius is doing a superb job, which only makes Servilius the Augur look smaller. However, he did what he promised: he indicted Lucullus in the new treason court. Lucullus insisted upon conducting his own defense, and did his cause no good with all those farting blow-my-nose-between-my-fingers knights, for he stood there with all that freezing hauteur of his showing, and the entire jury thought he was directing it at them. He was, he was! Another stubborn idiot, Lucullus. Naturally they condemned him—DAMNO written upon every tile, I believe. And the savagery of the sentence was unbelievable! His place of exile can be no closer to Rome than a thousand miles, which leaves him only two places of any size at all—Antioch or Alexandria. He has chosen to honor King Ptolemy Alexander over King Antiochus Grypus. And the court took everything he owned off him—houses, lands, investments, city property.

He didn’t wait for them to hound him to leave. In fact, he didn’t even wait to see how much his possessions fetched, but commended his trollop of a wife to the care of her brother, Piggle-wiggle–that’ll punish him a little!—and left his elder son, now sixteen and a man in the eyes of the State, to his own devices. Interesting, that he didn’t commend this very gifted boy to Piggle-wiggle’s care, isn’t it? The younger— now fourteen—is adopted. Marcus Terentius Varro Lucullus.

Scaurus was telling me that both boys have vowed to prosecute Servilius the Augur as soon as Varro Lucullus is old enough to don the toga of manhood; the parting with their father was heartrending, as you might imagine. Scaurus says Lucullus will get himself to Alexandria, and then choose to die. And that both boys think that’s what their tata will do too. What hurts the Licinii Luculli most is the fact that all this pain and poverty has been inflicted upon them by a jumped-up nobody New Man like Servilius the Augur. You New Men have not made yourselves any friends when it comes to Lucullus’s sons.

Anyway, when the Lucullus boys are old enough to prosecute Servilius the Augur in tandem, it will be in the new extortion court as set up by yet another Servilius of relatively obscure origins, Gaius Servilius Glaucia. By Pollux, Gaius Marius, he can draft laws, that fellow! The setup is ironclad and novel, but it works. Back in the hands of the knights and so no consolation to governors, but workmanlike. Recovery of peculated property is now extended to the ultimate recipients as well as the original thieves—anyone convicted in the court cannot address any public meeting anywhere—men of the Latin Rights who successfully prosecute a malefactor will be rewarded with the full Roman citizenship—and there is now a recess inserted into the middle of the trial proceedings. The old procedure is a thing of the past, and the testimony of witnesses, as the few cases heard in it have proven, is now far less important than the addresses of the advocates themselves. A great boon to the great advocates.

And—last but not least—that peculiar fellow Saturninus has been in trouble again. Truly, Gaius Marius, I fear for his sanity. Logic is missing. As indeed I believe it is from his friend Glaucia. Both so brilliant, and yet—so unstable, so downright crazy. Or perhaps it is that they don’t honestly know what they want out of public life. Even the worst demagogue has a pattern, a logic directed toward the praetorship and the consulship. But I don’t see it in either of that pair. They hate the old style of government, they hate the Senate—but they have nothing to put in its place. Perhaps they’re what the Greeks call exponents of anarchy? I’m not sure.

Anyway, the scales have recently tipped against King Nicomedes of Bithynia in the matter of the embassage from King Mithridates of Pontus. Our young friend from the remotenesses at the eastern end of the Euxine sent ambassadors acute enough to discover the secret weakness of all us Romans—money! Having got nowhere with their petition for a treaty of friendship and alliance, they began to buy senators. And they paid well, and Nicomedes had cause to worry, I can tell you.

Then Saturninus got up on the rostra and condemned all those in the Senate who were prepared to abandon Nicomedes and Bithynia in favor of Mithridates and Pontus. We had had a treaty with Bithynia for years, he said, and Pontus was Bithynia’s traditional enemy. Money had changed hands, he said, and Rome for the sake of a few fatter senatorial purses was going to abandon her friend and ally of fifty years.

It is alleged—I wasn’t there myself to hear him— that he said something like “We all know how expensive it can be for doddering old senators to marry frisky little fillies not out of the schoolroom, don’t we? I mean, pearl necklaces and gold bracelets are a lot more expensive than a bottle of that tonic Ticinus sells in his Cuppedenis stall—and who’s to say that a frisky young filly isn’t a more effective tonic than Ticinus’s?” Oh, oh, oh! He sneered at Piggle-wiggle as well, and asked the crowd, “What about our boys in Italian Gaul?”

The result was that several of the Pontic ambassadors were beaten up, and went to the Senaculum to complain. Whereupon Scaurus and Piggle-wiggle had Saturninus arraigned in his own treason court on a charge of sowing discord between Rome and an accredited embassage from a foreign monarch. On the day of the trial, our tribune of the plebs Glaucia called a meeting of the Plebeian Assembly, and accused Piggle-wiggle of having another try at getting rid of Saturninus, whom he hadn’t been able to get rid of when he functioned as censor. And those hired gladiators Saturninus seems to be able to put his hands on when necessary turned up at the trial, ringed the jurors round, and looked so grim that the jury dismissed the case. The Pontic ambassadors promptly went home without their treaty. I agree with Saturninus—it would be a wretchedly paltry thing to do, to abandon our friend and ally of fifty years in favor of his traditional enemy just because his enemy is now far richer and more powerful.

No more, no more, Gaius Marius! I really only wanted to let you know about the triumphs ahead of the official dispatches, which the Senate won’t rush to you in a hurry. I wish there was something you could do, but I doubt it.

“Oh yes, there is!” said Marius grimly when he had deciphered the letter. He drew a sheet of paper toward him and spent considerable time drafting a short letter of his own. Then he sent for Quintus Lutatius Catulus Caesar.

Catulus Caesar arrived bubbling with enthusiasm, for the hired courier who had carried Rutilius Rufus’s Marius missive had also brought a letter from Metellus Numidicus to Catulus Caesar, and another from Scaurus to Catulus Caesar.

It was a disappointment to find Marius already aware of the two-triumph vote; Catulus Caesar had been dwelling rather voluptuously upon seeing Marius’s face when he heard. However, that was a minor consideration. The triumph was the triumph.

“So I’d like to return to Rome in October, if you don’t mind,” Catulus Caesar drawled. “I’ll celebrate my triumph first, since you as consul can’t leave quite so early.”

“Permission to go is refused,” said Marius with cheerful civility. “We’ll return to Rome together at the end of November, just as we planned. In fact, I’ve just sent a letter to the Senate on behalf of both of us. Like to hear it? I won’t bore you with my writing—I’ll read it out to you.”

He took a small paper from his cluttered table, unfurled it, and read it to Catulus Caesar.

Gaius Marius, consul for the fifth time, thanks the Senate and People of Rome for their concern and consideration in respect of the matter of triumphs for himself and his second-in-command, the proconsul Quintus Lutatius Catulus. I commend the Conscript Fathers for their admirable thrift in decreeing only one triumph each for Rome’s generals. However, I am even more concerned than the Conscript Fathers about the punitive cost of this long war. As is Quintus Lutatius. In respect of which, Gaius Marius and Quintus Lutatius Catulus will share one single triumph between them. Let all of Rome witness the accord and amity of the generals as they parade the streets together. Wherefore it is my pleasure to notify you that Gaius Marius and Quintus Lutatius Catulus shall triumph on the Kalends of December. Together. Long live Rome.

Catulus Caesar had gone white. “You’re joking!” he said.

“I? Joke?” Marius blinked beneath his brows. “Never, Quintus Lutatius!”

“I—I—I refuse to consent!”

“You don’t have any choice,” said Marius sweetly. “They thought they had me beaten, didn’t they? Dear old Metellus Numidicus Piggle-wiggle and his friends—and your friends! Well, you’ll never beat me, any of you.”

“The Senate has decreed two triumphs, and two triumphs it will be!” said Catulus Caesar, shaking.

“Oh, you could insist, Quintus Lutatius. But it won’t look good, will it? Take your choice. Either you and I triumph together in the same parade, or you are going to look like one enormous fool. That’s it.”

And that was it. The letter from Marius went to the Senate, and the single triumph was announced for the first day of the month of December.

Catulus Caesar was not slow to take his revenge. He wrote to the Senate complaining that the consul Gaius Marius had usurped the prerogatives of the Senate and People of Rome by awarding the full citizenship to a thousand auxiliary soldiers from Camerinum in Picenum right there on the fieldof Vercellae. He had also exceeded his consular authority, said Catulus Caesar, by announcing that he was founding a colony of Roman veteran legionaries at the small town of Eporedia in Italian Gaul. The letter went on:

Gaius Marius has established this unconstitutional colony in order to lay his hands upon the alluvial gold which is mined from the bed of the Duria Major at Eporedia. The proconsul Quintus Lutatius Catulus also wishes to point out that he won the battle of Vercellae, not Gaius Marius. As proof positive, he tenders thirty-five captured German standards in his keeping, as against a mere two in the keeping of Gaius Marius. As the victor of Vercellae, I claim all the captives taken to be sold into slavery. Gaius Marius is insisting upon taking one third of them.

In answer, Marius circulated Catulus Caesar’s letter among the troops of his own army and Catulus Caesar’s; it had a laconic appendix from Marius himself attached, to the effect that the proceeds from the sale of Cimbric captives taken after Vercellae to the limit of the one third he had claimed for himself were to be donated to the army of Quintus Lutatius Catulus. His own army, he pointed out, had already been given the proceeds from the sale of the Teutonic slaves after Aquae Sextiae, and he didn’t wish Catulus Caesar’s army to feel entirely neglected, for he understood that Quintus Lutatius would—as was his right— be keeping the proceeds from the sale of his two thirds of the Cimbric slaves for himself.

Glaucia read out both letters in the Forum in Rome, and the People laughed themselves sick. There could be no doubt in anyone’s mind who was the real victor, and who cared more for his troops than for himself.

“You’ll have to stop this campaign to vilify Gaius Marius,” said Scaurus Princeps Senatus to Metellus Numidicus, “or you’re going to be slapped about again the next time you go into the Forum. And you’d better write to Quintus Lutatius and tell him the same. Whether we like it or not, Gaius Marius is the First Man in Rome. He won the war against the Germans, and the whole of Rome knows it. He’s the popular hero, the popular demigod. Try to bring him down, and the city will unite to bring you down, Quintus Caecilius.”

“Piss on the People!” said Metellus Numidicus, who was feeling the strain of having to house his sister, Metella Calva, and whichever lowborn lover she fancied.

“Look, there are other things we can do,” urged Scaurus. “For one thing, you can run for consul again. It’s ten years since you were consul, believe it or not! Gaius Marius will be running again, nothing surer. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to saddle his sixth consulship with an inimical colleague like yourself?”

“Oh, when are we going to rid ourselves of this incurable disease called Gaius Marius?” cried Numidicus in despair.

“Hopefully it won’t be long,” said Scaurus, obviously not despairing. “A year. I doubt it will be more.”

“Never, more like.”

“No, no, Quintus Caecilius, you give up too easily! Like Quintus Lutatius, you let your hatred for Gaius Marius rule your head. Think! How much time during all his five eternal consulships has Gaius Marius actually spent in Rome herself?”

“A matter of days. What’s that to the point?”

“It is the whole point, Quintus Caecilius! Gaius Marius is not a great politician, though I do admit he’s got a wonderfully sharp brain between his ears. Where Gaius Marius shines is as a soldier and an organizer. I assure you, he’s not going to thrive in the Comitia and the Curia when his world shrinks down to nothing else. We won’t let him thrive! We’ll bait him like a bull, we’ll fasten our teeth in his carcass and we won’t let go. And we’ll bring him down. You wait and see.” Scaurus sounded supremely sure.

Staring at these welcome vistas Scaurus was opening up, Metellus Numidicus smiled. “Yes, I understand, Marcus Aemilius. Very well, I’ll stand for consul.”

“Good! You’ll get in—you can’t not get in after we bring every ounce of influence we have to bear on the First and Second Classes, no matter how much they love Gaius Marius.”

“Oh, I can’t wait to be his colleague!” Metellus Numidicus drew out his muscles in a secretive stretch. “I’ll block him every way I can! His life will be a misery.”

“I suspect we’ll have help from an unexpected quarter too,” said Scaurus, looking like a cat.

“What quarter?”

“Lucius Appuleius Saturninus is going to run for another term as a tribune of the plebs.”

“That’s ghastly news! How can it help us?” Numidicus asked.

“No, it’s excellent news, Quintus Caecilius, believe me. For when you sink your consular teeth into Gaius Marius’s rump, and so do I, and Quintus Lutatius, and half a hundred more, Gaius Marius won’t resist enlisting Saturninus to help him. I know Gaius Marius. He can be tried too far, and when that happens, he’ll lash out wildly in every direction. Just like a baited bull. He won’t be able to resist using Saturninus. And I think Saturninus is probably the worst tool a Gaius Marius could put his hands on. You wait and see!” Scaurus said. “It’s his allies will bring our bull Gaius Marius down.”

*

The tool was on his way to Italian Gaul to see Gaius Marius, more anxious to form an alliance with Marius than Marius was with him at that stage; for Saturninus was living in the Roman political arena, whereas Marius was still living in a military commander’s Elysium.

They met in the little resort town of Comum on the shores of Lake Larius, where Gaius Marius had hired a villa belonging to the late Lucius Calpurnius Piso, the same who had died with Lucius Cassius at Burdigala. For Marius was more tired than he would ever have admitted to Catulus Caesar, nearly ten years his junior; he packed Catulus Caesar off to the far end of the province to hear the assizes, and packed himself off very quietly to enjoy a vacation, leaving Sulla in command.

Naturally when Saturninus turned up, Marius invited him to stay; the two men settled down in welcome leisure to have their talks against the background of a lake far lovelier than any in Italy proper.

Not that Marius had grown more convoluted; when the time came to broach the subject, he attacked it straight on. “I don’t want Metellus Numidicus for my consular colleague next year,” he said abruptly. “I’ve got Lucius Valerius Flaccus in mind. He’s a malleable man.”

“He’d suit you well,” said Saturninus, “but you won’t pull it off, I’m afraid. The Policy Makers are already canvassing support for Metellus Numidicus.” He looked at Marius curiously. “Anyway, why are you running for a sixth term? Surely with the Germans defeated, you can rest on your laurels.”

“I only wish I could, Lucius Appuleius. But the job is not finished just because the Germans are defeated. I have two Head Count armies to discharge—or rather, I have one of six overstrength legions, and Quintus Lutatius has one of six very understrength legions. But I regard both armies as my responsibility, because Quintus Lutatius thinks he can just issue them with their discharge papers and forget about them.”

“You’re still determined to give them land, aren’t you?” asked Saturninus.

“I am. If I don’t, Lucius Appuleius, Rome will be the poorer in many ways. First off, because over fifty thousand veteran legionaries are going to descend upon Rome and Italy with a bit of money jingling in their purses. They’ll spend the lot in a few days, and then turn into a perpetual source of trouble wherever they live. If there’s a war, they’ll re-enlist. But if there’s no war on, they’re going to be a real nuisance,” said Marius.

Saturninus inclined his head. “I can see that.”

“I got the idea when I was in Africa, and that’s why I had the African islands reserved for veterans to settle in. Tiberius Gracchus wanted to resettle Rome’s poor on the land in Campania to make the city more comfortable and safer, and to put some new blood onto the land. But Italy was a mistake, Lucius Appuleius,” Marius said dreamily. “We need Romans of humble sort in our provinces. Especially veteran soldiers.”

The view was so beautiful, but Saturninus didn’t see it. “Well, we all heard the speech about bringing Rome’s way of life to the provinces,” he said. “And we all heard Dalmaticus’s reply. But that’s not your real object, is it, Gaius Marius?’’

The eyes flashed beneath the eyebrows. “How very acute of you! Of course it’s not!” He leaned forward in his chair. “It costs Rome a great deal of money to send armies to the provinces to put down rebellions and police the laws. Look at Macedonia. Two legions on permanent duty there—-not Roman legions, admittedly, but they still cost the State money it could put to better use elsewhere. Now what if twenty or thirty thousand Roman veterans were settled in three or four colonies across Macedonia? Greece and Macedonia are very empty places these days, have been for a century or more—the people all left. Ghost towns everywhere! And Roman absentee landlords owning enormous properties, producing little, putting nothing back into the country, parsimonious about employing local men and women. And whenever the Scordisci come down across the border, there’s war, and the absentee landlords bleat to the Senate, and the governor runs in different directions dealing with marauding Celts on the one hand, and irate letters from Rome on the other. Well, I’d put the land held by Roman absentee landlords to better use. I’d fill it up with veteran soldier colonies. More populous by far—and a ready-made garrison force in case of serious war.”

“And you got this idea in Africa,” said Saturninus.

“While I was doling out vast tracts to Roman men who will rarely if ever visit Africa. They’ll put in overseers and gangs of grain slaves, ignore local conditions and the local people, keep Africa from going ahead, and lay it wide open to another Jugurtha. I don’t want Roman ownership of provincial land to stop—I just want some parcels of provincial land to contain large numbers of well-trained professional Romans we can call on in times of need.” He forced himself to lie back again, not to betray the urgency of his desire. “There’s already been one small example of how veteran colonies in foreign lands can help in times of emergency. My first little lot I settled personally on the island of Meninx heard about the Sicilian slave uprising, organized themselves into units, hired some ships, and reached Lilybaeum just in time to prevent the city’s falling to Athenion the slave.”

“I do see what you’re trying to achieve, Gaius Marius,” Saturninus said. “It’s an excellent scheme.”

“But they’ll fight me, if for no other reason than it’s me,” said Marius with a sigh.

A tiny shiver ran up Saturninus’s spine; quickly he turned head and eyes away, pretended to admire the reflection of trees and mountains and sky and clouds in the perfect mirror of the lake. Marius was tired! Marius was slowing down! Marius was not looking forward to his sixth consulship one little bit!

“I daresay you witnessed all the squealing and shouting in Rome about my giving the citizenship to those wonderful soldiers from Camerinum?” Marius asked.

“I did. All Italy heard the racket,” said Saturninus, “and all Italy liked what you did. Where Rome of the Policy Makers definitely did not.”

“Well, and why shouldn’t they be Roman citizens?” Marius demanded angrily. “They fought better than any other men on the field, Lucius Appuleius, and that’s a fact. If I had my way, I’d confer the citizenship on every man in the whole of Italy.” He drew a breath. “When I say I want land for the Head Count veterans, I mean just that. Land for the lot of them—Romans, Latins—and Italians.”

Saturninus whistled. “That’s asking for trouble! The Policy Makers will never lie down for it.”

“I know. What I don’t know is if you’ve got the courage to stand up for it.”

“I’ve never really taken a good long look at courage,” said Saturninus thoughtfully, “so I’m not sure how much of it I own. But yes, Gaius Marius, I think I have the courage to stand up for it.”

“I don’t need to bribe to secure my own election—I can’t lose,” Marius said. “However, there’s no reason why I can’t hire a few fellows to distribute bribes for the post of junior consul. And for you, if you need help, Lucius Appuleius. And for Gaius Servilius Glaucia too. I understand he’s going to be running for election as a praetor?”

“He is indeed. And yes, Gaius Marius, we’d both be happy to accept help in getting elected. In return, we’ll do whatever is necessary to assist you in getting your land.”

Marius drew a roll of paper out of his sleeve. “I’ve done a little work already—just sketched out the sort of bill I think is necessary. Unfortunately I’m not one of Rome’s greatest legal draftsmen. Where you are. But—and I hope you’ll not take exception to my saying it—Glaucia is a lawmaking genius. Can the pair of you formulate great laws from my ill-educated scribbles?”

“You help us into office, Gaius Marius, and I assure you we’ll give you your laws,” said Saturninus.

There could be no mistaking the relief which coursed through Marius’s big fit body; he sagged. “Only let me pull this off, Lucius Appuleius, and I swear I don’t care if I’m never consul a seventh time,” he said.

“A seventh time?”

“It was prophesied that I would be consul seven times.”

Saturninus laughed. “Why not? No one would ever have thought it possible that one man would be consul six times. But you will be.”

The elections for the new College of the Tribunes of the Plebs were held as Gaius Marius and Catulus Caesar led their armies south toward Rome and their single joint triumph, and they were hotly contested. There were over thirty candidates for the ten posts, and more than half of that number were creatures in the employ of the Policy Makers, so the campaign was bitter and violent.

Glaucia, president of the current ten tribunes of the plebs, was deputed to hold the elections for the incoming college; had the Centuriate elections for consuls and praetors already been held, he would not have been able to officiate, for his status as praetor-elect would have disqualified him. As it was, nothing prevented his conducting the tribunate elections.

The proceedings took place in the well of the Comitia, with Glaucia presiding from the rostra, and his nine fellow tribunes of the plebs drawing the lots to see which of the thirty-five tribes would vote first through to last, then marshaling each tribe when its turn came to vote.

A lot of money had changed hands, some of it on behalf of Saturninus, but a great deal more on behalf of the anonymous candidates fielded by the Policy Makers. Every rich man on the conservative front benches had dug deep into his cashbox, and votes were bought for men like Quintus Nonius from Picenum, a political nobody of stoutly conservative heart. Though Sulla had had nothing to do with his entering the Senate, nor his standing for the tribunate of the plebs, he was the brother of Sulla’s brother-in-law; when Sulla’s sister, Cornelia Sulla, had married into the wealthy squirarchical family of Nonius from Picenum, the luster of her name inspired the men of the family of Nonius to try their luck on the cursus honorum. Her son was being groomed for the most earnest attempt, but the boy’s uncle decided to see what he could do first.

It was an election full of shocks. Quintus Nonius from Picenum got in easily, for example. Whereas Lucius Appuleius Saturninus didn’t get in at all. There were ten places for tribunes of the plebs, and Saturninus came in eleventh.

“I—don’t—believe it!” Saturninus gasped to Glaucia. “I just don’t believe it! What happened?”

Glaucia was frowning; suddenly his own chances to become a praetor seemed dim. Then he shrugged, clapped Saturninus on the back with rough comfort, and stepped down from the rostra. “Don’t worry,” he said, “something might change things yet.”

“What can possibly change an election result?” Saturninus demanded. “No, Gaius Servilius, I’m out!”

“I’ll see you shortly—here. Just stay here, don’t go home yet,” said Glaucia, and hurried off into the crowd.

The moment he heard his name called as one of the ten new tribunes of the plebs, Quintus Nonius from Picenum wanted to go home to his expensive new house on the Carinae. There his wife waited with his sister-in-law Cornelia Sulla and her boy, anxious to know the results, provincial enough to doubt Quintus Nonius’s chances.

However, it was more difficult to leave the Forum area than Quintus Nonius had counted on, for every few feet he was stopped and warmly congratulated; a natural courtesy could not allow him to fob off his well-wishers, so he lingered in a forced detention, beaming and bowing, shaking a hundred hands.

One by one Quintus Nonius’s companions dropped away, until he entered the first of the alleyways on his route home attended only by three close friends who also lived on the Carinae. When they were set upon by a dozen men armed with clubs, one of the friends managed to break away and run back toward the Forum, crying for help, only to find it virtually deserted. Luckily Saturninus and Glaucia were standing talking to some others near the rostra, Glaucia looking red-faced and a little disheveled; when the cry for help came, they all followed at a run. But it was too late. Quintus Nonius and his two friends were dead.

“Edepol!” said Glaucia, getting to his feet after verifying that Quintus Nonius was indeed dead. “Quintus Nonius has just been elected a tribune of the plebs, and I’m the officer in charge of proceedings.” He frowned. “Lucius Appuleius, will you see Quintus Nonius is carried home? I’d better go back to the Forum and deal with the electoral dilemma.”

The shock of finding Quintus Nonius and his friends lying extinguished in lakes of their own blood deprived those who had come to the rescue of their normal faculties, including Saturninus; no one noticed how artificial Glaucia sounded, including Saturninus. And standing on an empty rostra shouting to a deserted Forum Romanum, Gaius Servilius Glaucia announced the death of the newly elected tribune of the plebs Quintus Nonius. He then announced that the candidate who came in eleventh would replace Quintus Nonius in the new college—Lucius Appuleius Saturninus.

“It’s all set” said Glaucia complacently later, at Saturninus’s house. “You are now a legally elected tribune of the plebs, co-opted to fill Quintus Nonius’s shoes.”

He was not over-endowed with scruples since those awful events which had seen him dismissed from his post as quaestor at Ostia, but Saturninus was nonetheless so shocked he stared at Glaucia, aghast.

“You didn’t!” he cried.

Glaucia put the tip of his index finger against the side of his nose and smiled at Saturninus from beneath his brows, a smile owning much fierceness. “Ask me no questions, Lucius Appuleius, and I’ll tell you no lies,” he said.

“The shame of it is that he was a nice fellow.”

“Yes, he was. But that’s his luck, to wind up dead. He was the only one who lived on the Carinae, so he was elected—in more ways than one. It’s too hard to set something up on the Palatine—there aren’t enough people on the streets.”

Saturninus sighed, shrugged off his depression. “You’re right. And I’m in. I thank you for your help, Gaius Servilius.”

“Think nothing of it,” said Glaucia.

The scandal was difficult to live down, but it was quite impossible for anyone to prove that Saturninus was implicated in a murder when even the dead man’s surviving friend could testify that both Saturninus and Glaucia. had been standing in the lower Forum at the time the deed was done. People talked, but talk was cheap, as Glaucia said with a sneer. And when Ahenobarbus Pontifex Maximus demanded that the tribunician elections be held all over again, he got nowhere; Glaucia had created a precedent to deal with a particular crisis which had never occurred before.

“Talk is cheap!” Glaucia said again, this time in the Senate. “The allegations that Lucius Appuleius and I were involved in the death of Quintus Nonius have no foundation in fact. As for my replacing a dead tribune of the plebs with a live one, I did what any true presiding officer of an election ought to do—I acted! No one can dispute that Lucius Appuleius polled in eleventh place, nor that the election was properly conducted. To appoint Lucius Appuleius the successor of Quintus Nonius as quickly and smoothly as possible was as logical as it was expedient. The contio of the Plebeian Assembly which I called yesterday gave my actions full-throated approval, as everyone here can verify. This debate, Conscript Fathers, is as useless as it is causeless. The matter is closed.” Thus Gaius Servilius Glaucia.

*

Gaius Marius and Quintus Lutatius Catulus Caesar triumphed together on the first day of December. The joint parade was a stroke of genius, for there could be no doubt that Catulus Caesar, his chariot trailing behind the incumbent consul’s, was very much the second lead in the production. The name on everybody’s lips was Gaius Marius. There was even a very clever float put together by Lucius Cornelius Sulla—who as usual got the job of organizing the parade—showing Marius allowing Catulus Caesar’s men to pick up the thirty-five Cimbric standards, because he had already captured so many in Gaul.

At the meeting which followed in the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, Marius spoke with passion of his actions in awarding the citizenship to the soldiers of Camerinum and plugging up the Vale of the Salassi by planting a soldier colony at little Eporedia. His announcement that he would seek a sixth consulship was greeted with groans, gibes, cries of bitter protest—and cheers. The cheers were far louder. When the tumult died down he announced that all his personal share of the spoils would go to build a new temple to the military cult of Honor and Virtue; in it his trophies and the trophies of his army would be housed, and it would be sited on the Capitol. He would also build a temple to the Roman military Honor and Virtue at Olympia in Greece.

Catulus Caesar listened with a sinking heart, understanding that if he was to preserve his own reputation he would have to donate his own share of the spoils to a similar kind of public religious monument, rather than investing it to augment his private fortune—which was large enough, but not nearly as large as Marius’s.

It surprised no one when the Centuriate Assembly elected Gaius Marius consul for the sixth time, and in senior place. Not only was he now the undisputed First Man in Rome, many were beginning to call him the Third Founder of Rome as well. The First Founder was none other than Romulus himself. The Second Founder was Marcus Furius Camillus, who had been-responsible for the ejection of the Gauls from Italy three hundred years before. Therefore it seemed appropriate to call Gaius Marius the Third Founder of Rome, since he too had repulsed a tide of barbarians.

The consular elections were not without their surprises; Quintus Caecilius Metellus Numidicus Piggle-wiggle failed to carry the junior consul’s poll. This was Marius’s high point, and he won, even in the matter of his junior colleague; he had declared his firm support for Lucius Valerius Flaccus, and Lucius Valerius Flaccus was duly elected. Flaccus held an important lifelong priesthood, the position of flamen Martialis—the special priest of Mars—and his office had made him a quiet man, biddable and subordinate. An ideal companion for the masterful Gaius Marius.

But it was no surprise to anyone when Gaius Servilius Glaucia was elected a praetor, for he was Marius’s man, and Marius had bribed the voters lavishly. What was a surprise was the fact that he came in at the head of the poll, and so was appointed praetor urbanus, the most senior of the six praetors elected.

Shortly after the elections Quintus Lutatius Catulus Caesar announced publicly that he would donate his personal share of the German spoils to two religious causes; the first was to purchase the old site of Marcus Fulvius Flaccus’s house on the Palatine—it lay next door to his own house—and build thereon a magnificent porticus to house the thirty-five Cimbric standards he had captured on the field of Vercellae; the second was to build a temple on the Campus Martius to the goddess Fortuna in her guise of the Fortune of the Present Day.

*

When the new tribunes of the plebs entered office on the tenth day of December, the fun began. Tribune of the plebs for the second time, Lucius Appuleius Saturninus dominated the college completely, and exploited the fear the death of Quintus Nonius had provoked to further his own legislative ends. Though he kept denying strenuously any implication in the murder, he kept dropping little remarks in private to his fellow tribunes of the plebs which gave them cause to wonder if they might not end up as Quintus Nonius did, should they attempt to thwart him. The result was that they permitted Saturninus to do precisely what he pleased; neither Metellus Numidicus nor Catulus Caesar could persuade a single tribune of the plebs to interpose a single veto.

Within eight days of entering office, Saturninus brought forward the first of two bills to award public lands to the veterans of both German armies; the lands were all abroad, in Sicily, Greece, Macedonia, and mainland Africa. The bill also carried a novel proviso, that Gaius Marius himself was to have the authority to personally grant the Roman citizenship to three Italian soldier settlers in each colony.

The Senate erupted into furious opposition.

“This man,” said Metellus Numidicus, “is not even going to favor his Roman soldiers! He wants land for all comers on an equal footing—Roman, Latin, Italian. No difference! No distinguished attention for Rome’s own men! I ask you, fellow senators, what do you think of such a man? Does Rome matter to him? Of course it doesn’t! Why should it? He’s not a Roman! He’s an Italian! And he favors his own breed. A thousand of them enfranchised on the battlefield, while Roman soldiers stood by and watched, unthanked. But what else can we expect of such a man as Gaius Marius?”

When Marius rose to reply, he couldn’t even make himself heard; so he walked out of the Curia Hostilia and stood on the rostra, and addressed the Forum frequenters instead. Some were indignant; but he was their darling, and they listened.

“There’s land enough for all!” he shouted. “No one can accuse me of preferential treatment for Italians! One hundred iugera per soldier! Ah, why so much, I hear you ask? Because, People of Rome, these colonists are going to harder places by far than our own beloved Italy. They will plant and harvest in unkind soils and unkind climates, where to make a decent living a man must have more land than he does in our beloved land of Italy.”

“There he goes!” cried Catulus Caesar from the steps of the Senate, his voice carrying shrilly. “There he goes! Listen to what he’s saying! Not Rome! Italy! Italy, Italy, always it’s Italy! He’s not a Roman, and he doesn’t care about Rome!”

“Italy is Rome!” thundered Marius. “They are one and the same! Without one, the other does not and cannot exist! Don’t Romans and Italians alike lay down their lives in Rome’s armies for Rome? And if that is so—and who can deny it is so?—why should one kind of soldier be any different from the other?”

“Italy!” cried Catulus Caesar. “Always it’s Italy!”

“Rubbish!” shouted Marius. “The first allocations of land go to Roman soldiers, not to Italian! Is that evidence of an Italian bias? And isn’t it better that out of the thousands of veteran legionaries who will go to these colonies, three of the Italians among them will become full Roman citizens? I said three, People of Rome! Not three thousand Italians, People of Rome! Not three hundred Italians, People of Rome! Not three dozen Italians, People of Rome! Three! A drop in an ocean of men! A drop of a drop in an ocean of men!”

“A drop of poison in an ocean of men!” screamed Catulus Caesar from the steps of the Senate.

“The bill may say that the Roman soldiers will get their land first, but where does it say that the first land given away will be the best land?” shouted Metellus Numidicus.

But the first land bill, which dealt with various tracts Rome had possessed in her public domain for a number of years and leased to absentee landlords, was passed by the Plebeian Assembly in spite of the opposition.

Quintus Poppaedius Silo, now the leading man of his Marsic people in spite of his relative youth, had come to Rome to hear the debates on the land bills; Marcus Livius Drusus had invited him, and he was staying in Drusus’s house.

“They make a great deal of noise out of Rome versus Italy, don’t they?” Silo asked Drusus, never having heard Rome debate this subject before.

“They do indeed,” said Drusus grimly. “It’s an attitude only time will change. I live in hope, Quintus Poppaedius.”

“And yet you don’t like Gaius Marius.”

“I detest the man. But I voted for him,” said Drusus.

“It’s only four years since we fought at Arausio,” said Silo reflectively. “Yes, I daresay you’re right, and it will change. Before Arausio, I very much doubt Gaius Marius would have had any chance to include Italian troops among his colonists.”

“It was thanks to Arausio the Italian debt slaves were freed,” said Drusus.

“I’m glad to think we didn’t die for nothing. And yet— look at Sicily. The Italian slaves there weren’t freed. They died instead.”

“I writhe in shame over Sicily,” said Drusus, flushing. “Two corrupt, self-seeking senior Roman magistrates did that. Two miserable mentulae! Like them you may not, Quintus Poppaedius, but grant that a Metellus Numidicus or an Aemilius Scaurus would not soil the hem of his toga on a grain swindle.”

“Yes, I’ll grant you that,” said Silo. “However, Marcus Livius, they still believe that to be a Roman is to belong to the most exclusive club on earth—and that no Italian deserves to belong by adoption.”

“Adoption?”

“Well, isn’t that really what the bestowal of the Roman citizenship is? An adoption into the family of Rome?”

Drusus sighed. “You’re quite right. All that changes is the name. Granting him the citizenship can’t make a Roman out of an Italian—or a Greek. And as time goes on, the Senate at least sets its heart more and more adamantly against creating artificial Romans.”

“Then perhaps,” said Silo, “it will be up to us Italians to make ourselves artificial Romans—with or without the approval of the Senate.”

A second land bill followed the first, this one to deal with all the new public lands Rome had acquired during the course of the German wars. It was by far the more important of the two, for these were virtually virgin lands, unexploited by large-scale farmers and graziers, and potentially rich in other things than beasts and crops—minerals, gems, stone. They were all tracts in western Gaul-across-the-Alps, around Narbo, Tolosa, Carcasso, and in central Gaul-across-the-Alps, plus an area in Nearer Spain which had rebelled while the Cimbri were making things difficult at the foot of the Pyrenees.

There were many Roman knights and Roman companies anxious to expand into Gaul-across-the-Alps, and they had looked to the defeat of the Germans for an opportunity— and looked to their various patrons in the Senate to secure them access to the new ager publicus Galliae. Now to find that most of it was to go to Head Count soldiers roused them to heights of fury hitherto seen only during the worst days of the Gracchi.

And as the Senate hardened, so too did the First Class knights, once Marius’s greatest advocates—now, feeling cheated of the chance to be absentee landlords in Further Gaul, his obdurate enemies. The agents of Metellus Numidicus and Catulus Caesar circulated everywhere, whispering, whispering...

“He gives away what belongs to the State as if he owned both the land and the State” was one whisper, soon a cry.

“He plots to own the State—why else would he be consul now that the war with the Germans is over?”

“Rome has never subsidized her soldiers with land!”

“The Italians are receiving more than they deserve!”

“Land taken from enemies of Rome belongs exclusively to Romans, not to Latins and Italians as well!”

“He’s starting on the ager publicus abroad, but before we know it he’ll be giving away the ager publicus of Italy— and he’ll give it to Italians!”

“He’s calling himself the Third Founder of Rome, but what he wants to call himself is King of Rome!”

And on, and on, and on. The more Marius roared from the rostra and in the Senate that Rome needed to seed her provinces with colonies of ordinary Romans, that veteran soldiers would form useful garrisons, that Roman lands abroad were better held by many little men than a handful of big men, the bitterer the opposition became. It stockpiled rather than dwindled from too much use, grew daily stronger, more strenuous. Until slowly, subtly, almost without volition, the public attitude toward the second agrarian law of Saturninus began to change. Many of the policy makers among the People—and there were policy makers among the habitual Forum frequenters, as well as among the most influential knights—began to doubt that Marius was right. For never had they seen such opposition.

“There can’t be so much smoke without at least some fire,” they began to say, between themselves and to those who listened to them because they were policy makers.

“This isn’t just another silly Senate squabble—it’s too implacable.”

“When a man like Quintus Caecilius Metellus Numidicus—who has been censor as well as consul, and don’t we all remember how brave he was while he was censor?— keeps increasing the number of his supporters, he must have some right on his side.”

“I heard yesterday that a knight whose support Gaius Marius desperately needs has spurned him publicly! The land at Tolosa he was personally promised by Gaius Marius is now going to be given to the Head Count veterans.”

“Someone was telling me that he personally overheard Gaius Marius saying he intends to give the citizenship to every single Italian man.”

“This is Gaius Marius’s sixth consulship—and his fifth in a row. He was heard to say at dinner the other day that he would never not be consul! He’s going to run every single year until he dies.”

“He really wants to be King of Rome!”

Thus did the whispering campaign of Metellus Numidicus and Catulus Caesar begin to pay dividends. And suddenly even Glaucia and Saturninus started to fear that the second land bill was doomed to fail.

*

“I’ve got to have that land!” cried Marius in despair to his wife, who had been waiting patiently for days in the hope that he would eventually discuss matters with her. Not because she had either fresh ideas to offer or positive things to say, but because she knew herself to be the only real friend he had near him. Sulla had been sent back to Italian Gaul after the triumph, and Sertorius had journeyed to Nearer Spain to see his German wife and child.

“Gaius Marius, is it really so essential?” Julia asked. “Will it honestly matter if your soldiers don’t receive their land? Roman soldiers never have received land—there’s no precedent for it. They can’t say you haven’t tried.”

“You don’t understand,” he said impatiently. “It isn’t to do with the soldiers anymore, it has to do with my dignitas, my position in public life. If the bill doesn’t pass, I’m no longer the First Man in Rome.”

“Can’t Lucius Appuleius help?”

“He’s trying, the gods know he’s trying! But instead of gaining ground, we’re losing it. I feel like Achilles in the river, unable to get out of the flood because the bank keeps giving way. I claw myself upward a little, then go down twice as far. The rumors are incredible, Julia! And there’s no combating them, because they’re never overt. If I were guilty of one tenth of the things they’re saying about me, I’d have been pushing a boulder uphill in Tartarus long ago.”

“Yes, well, slander campaigns are impossible to deal with,” Julia said comfortably. “Sooner or later the rumors become so bizarre that everyone wakes up with a start. That’s what’s going to happen in this case too. They’ve killed you, but they’re going to keep on stabbing until the whole of Rome is sick to death of it all. People are horribly naive and gullible, but even the most naive and gullible have a saturation point somewhere. The bill will go through, Gaius Marius—I am sure of it. Just don’t hurry it too much, wait for opinion to swing back your way.”

“Oh, yes, it may well go through, just as you say, Julia. But what’s to stop the House’s overturning it the moment Lucius Appuleius is out of office, and I don’t have an equally capable tribune of the plebs to fight the House?” Marius groaned.

“I see.”

“Do you?”

“Certainly. I’m a Julian of the Caesars, husband, which means I grew up surrounded by political discussions, even if my sex precluded a public career.” She chewed her lip. “It is a problem, isn’t it? Agrarian laws can’t be implemented overnight—they take forever. Years and years. Finding the land, surveying it, parceling it up, finding the men whose names have been drawn to settle it, commissions and commissioners, adequate staff—it’s interminable.”

Marius grinned. “You’ve been talking to Gaius Julius!”

“I have indeed. In fact, I’m quite an expert.” She patted the vacant end of her couch. “Come, my love, sit down!”

“I can’t, Julia.”

“Is there no way to protect this legislation?”

Marius stopped his pacing, turned and looked at her from beneath his brows. “Actually there is....”

“Tell me,” she prompted gently.

“Gaius Servilius Glaucia thought of it, but Lucius Appuleius is mad for it, so I have the two of them clambering up my back trying to bend me over, and I’m not sure....”

“Is it so novel?” she asked, aware of Glaucia’s reputation.

“Novel enough.”

“Please, Gaius Marius, tell me!”

It would be a relief to tell someone who didn’t have any axe to grind save Marius’s, he thought tiredly. “I’m a Military Man, Julia, and I like a Military Man’s solutions,” he said. “In the army everyone knows that when I issue an order, it’s the best order possible under the circumstances. So everyone jumps to obey without questioning it, because they know me, and they trust me. Well, this lot in Rome know me too, and they ought to trust me! But do they? No! They’re so set on seeing their own ideas implemented that they don’t even listen to anyone else’s ideas, even if they’re better ideas. I go to the Senate knowing before ever I reach the awful place that I’m going to have to do my work in an atmosphere of hatred and heckling which exhausts me before I start! I’m too old and too set in my ways to be bothered with them, Julia! They’re all idiots, and they’re going to kill the Republic if they go on trying to pretend things haven’t changed since Scipio Africanus was a boy! My soldier settlements make such good sense!”

“They do,” Julia said, hiding her consternation. He was looking worn these days, older than his years instead of younger, and he was putting on weight for the first time in his life—all that sitting around in meetings rather than striding around in the open air—and his hair was suddenly greying and thinning. Warmaking was clearly more beneficial to a man’s body than lawmaking. “Gaius Marius, make an end to it and tell me!” she insisted.

“This second bill contains an additional clause Glaucia invented specially for it,” said Marius, beginning to pace again, his words tumbling out. “An oath to uphold the law in perpetuity is demanded from every senator within five days of the bill’s passing into law.”

She couldn’t help herself; Julia gasped, lifted her hands to her cheeks; looked at Marius in dismay, and said the strongest word her vocabulary contained, “Ecastor!”

“Shocking, isn’t it?”

“Gaius Marius, Gaius Marius, they’ll never forgive you if you include it in the bill!”

“Do you think I don’t know that?” he cried, hands reaching like claws for the ceiling. “But what else can I do? I’ve got to have this land!”

She licked her lips. “You’ll be in the House for many years to come,” she said. “Can’t you just go on fighting to see the law upheld?”

“Go on fighting? When do I ever stop?” he asked. “I’m tired of fighting, Julia!”

She blew a bubble of derision aimed at jollying him. “Oh, pooh! Gaius Marius tired of fighting? You’ve been fighting all your life!”

“But not the same kind of fighting as now,” he tried to explain. “This is dirty. There are no rules. And you don’t even know who—let alone where!—your enemies are. Give me a battlefield for an arena anytime! At least what happens on it is quick and clean—and the best man usually wins. But the Senate of Rome is a brothel stuffed with the lowest forms of life and the lowest forms of conduct. I spend my days crawling in its slime! Well, Julia, let me tell you, I’d rather bathe in battlefield blood! And if anyone is naive enough to think that political intrigue doesn’t ruin more lives than any war, then he deserves everything politics will dish out to him!”

Julia got up and went to him, forced him to stop the pacing, and took both his hands. “I hate to say it, my dear love, but the political forum isn’t the right arena for a man as direct as you.”

“If I didn’t know it until now, I certainly do know that now,” he said gloomily. “I suppose it will have to be Glaucia’s wretched special-oath clause. But as Publius Rutilius keeps asking me, where are all these new-style laws going to lead us? Are we really replacing bad with good? Or are we merely replacing bad with worse?”

“Only time will tell,” she said calmly. “Whatever else happens, Gaius Marius, never forget that there are always huge crises in government, that people are always going around proclaiming in tones of horror that this or that new law will mean the end of the Republic, that Rome isn’t Rome any more—I know from my reading that Scipio Africanus was saying it of Cato the Censor! And probably some early Julius Caesar was saying it of Brutus when he killed his sons in the beginning of things. The Republic is indestructible, and they all know it, even as they’re yelling it’s doomed. So don’t you lose sight of that fact.”

Her good sense was placating him at last; Julia noted in satisfaction that the red tinge was dying out of his eyes, and his skin was losing its mottled choler. Time to change the subject a little, she decided.

“By the way, my brother Gaius Julius would like to see you tomorrow, so I’ve taken the opportunity to invite him and Aurelia to dinner, if that’s acceptable.”

Marius groaned. “Of course! That’s right! I’d forgotten! He’s off to Cercina to settle my first colony of veterans there, isn’t he?” Down went his head into his hands, snatched from Julia’s clasp. “Isn’t he? Ye gods, my memory! What’s happening to me, Julia?”

“Nothing,” she soothed. “You need a respite, preferably a few weeks away from Rome. But since that’s clearly not possible, why don’t we go together to find Young Marius?”

That extremely handsome little man, not quite nine years old, was a very satisfactory son: tall, sturdily built, blond, and Roman-nosed enough to please his father. If the lad’s leanings were more toward the physical than the intellectual, that too pleased Marius. The fact that he was still an only child grieved his mother more than it did his father, for Julia had not succeeded in either of the two pregnancies which had followed the death of his younger brother, and she was now beginning to fear that she was incapable of carrying another child to its full term. However, Marius was content with his one son, and refused to believe that there should be another basket in which to pile some of his eggs.

*

The dinner party was a great success, its guest list limited to Gaius Julius Caesar; his wife, Aurelia; and Aurelia’s uncle, Publius Rutilius Rufus.

Caesar was leaving for African Cercina at the end of the eight-day market interval; the commission had delighted him, only one disadvantage marring his pleasure.

“I won’t be in Rome for the birth of my first son,” he said with a smile.

“Aurelia, no! Again?” asked Rutilius Rufus, groaning. “It’ll be another girl, you wait and see—and where will the pair of you find another dowry?”

“Pooh, Uncle Publius!” said the unrepentant Aurelia, popping a morsel of chicken into her mouth. “First of all, we shan’t need dowries for our girls. Gaius Julius’s father made us promise that we wouldn’t be stiff-necked Caesars and keep our girls free of the taint of plutocracy. So we fully intend to marry them to terribly rich rural nobodies.” More chicken morsels suffered the same fate as the first. “And we’ve had our two girls. Now we’re going to have boys.”

“All at once?” asked Rutilius Rufus, eyes twinkling.

“Oh, I say, twins would be nice! Do they run in the Julii?” asked the intrepid mother of her sister-in-law.

“I think they do,” said Julia, frowning. “Certainly our Uncle Sextus had twins, though one died—Caesar Strabo is a twin, isn’t he?”

“Correct, he is,” said Rutilius Rufus with a grin. “Our poor young cross-eyed friend positively drips extra names, and ‘Vopiscus’ is one of them, which means he’s the survivor of twins. But he’s got a new nickname, I hear.”

The wicked note of gloat in his voice alerted everyone; Marius voiced the query. “What?”

“He’s developed a fistula in the nether regions, so some wit said he had an arsehole and a half, and started calling him Sesquiculus,” said Rutilius Rufus.

The entire dinner party collapsed into laughter, including the women, permitted to share this mild obscenity.

“Twins might run in Lucius Cornelius’s family too,” said Marius, wiping his eyes.

“What makes you say that?” asked Rutilius Rufus, sensing another snippet of gossip.

“Well, as you all know—though Rome doesn’t—he lived among the Cimbri for a year. Had a wife—a Cherusci woman named Hermana. And she threw twin boys.”

Julia’s mirth faded. “Captured? Dead?” she asked.

“Edepol, no! He took her back to her own people in Germania before he rejoined me.”

“Funny sort of chap, Lucius Cornelius,” said Rutilius Rufus reflectively. “Not quite right in the head.”

“There you’re wrong for once, Publius Rutilius,” said Marius. “No man’s head was ever better attached to his shoulders than Lucius Cornelius’s. In fact, I’d say he was the man of the future as far as Rome’s concerned.”

Julia giggled. “He positively bolted back to Italian Gaul after the triumph,” she said. “He and Mother fight more and more as time goes on.”

“Well,” said Marius bravely, “that’s understandable! Your mother is the one person on this patch of earth who can frighten the life out of me.”

“Lovely woman, Marcia,” said Rutilius Rufus reminiscently, then added hastily when all eyes turned on him, “At least to look at. In the old days.”

“She’s certainly made herself very busy finding Lucius Cornelius a new wife,” said Caesar.

Rutilius Rufus nearly choked on a prune pip. “Well, I happened to be at Marcus Aemilius Scaurus’s for dinner a few days ago,” he said in a wickedly pleasurable voice, “and if she wasn’t already another man’s wife, I’d have been willing to bet Lucius Cornelius would have found a wife all by himself.”

“No!” said Aurelia, leaning forward on her chair. “Oh, Uncle Publius, do tell!”

“Little Caecilia Metella Dalmatica, if you please,” said Rutilius Rufus.

“The wife of the Princeps Senatus himself?” squeaked Aurelia.

“The same. Lucius Cornelius took one look at her when she was introduced, blushed redder than his hair, and sat like a booby all through the meal just staring at her.”

“The imagination boggles,” said Marius.

“As well it might!” said Rutilius Rufus. “Even Marcus Aemilius noticed—well, he does tend to be like an old hen with one chick about his darling little Dalmatica. So she got sent off to bed at the end of the main course. Looking very disappointed. And shooting a look of shy admiration at Lucius Cornelius as she went. He spilled his wine.”

“As long as he doesn’t spill his wine in her lap,” said Marius grimly.

“Oh no, not another scandal!” cried Julia. “Lucius Cornelius just can’t afford another scandal. Gaius Marius, can you drop him a hint?”

Marius produced that look of discomfort husbands do when their wives demand some utterly unmasculine and uncharacteristic task of them. “Certainly not!”

“Why?” asked Julia, to whom her request was sensible.

“Because a man’s private life is his own lookout—and a lot he’d thank me for sticking my nose in!”

Julia and Aurelia both looked disappointed.

The peacemaker as always, Caesar cleared his throat. “Well, since Marcus Aemilius Scaurus looks as if he’ll have to be killed with an axe in about a thousand years’ time, I don’t think we need to worry very much about Lucius Cornelius and Dalmatica. I believe Mother has made her choice—and I hear Lucius Cornelius approves, so we’ll all be getting wedding invitations as soon as he comes back from Italian Gaul.”

“Who?” asked Rutilius Rufus. “I haven’t heard a whisper!”

“Aelia, the only daughter of Quintus Aelius Tubero.”

“A bit long in the tooth, isn’t she?” asked Marius.

“Late thirties, the same age as Lucius Cornelius,” said Caesar comfortably. “He doesn’t want more children, it seems, so Mother felt a widow without children was ideal. She’s a handsome enough lady.”

“From a fine old family,” said Rutilius Rufus. “Rich!”

“Then good for Lucius Cornelius!” said Aurelia warmly. “I can’t help it, I like him!”

“So do we all,” said Marius, winking at her. “Gaius Julius, this professed admiration doesn’t make you jealous?”

“Oh, I have more serious rivals for Aurelia’s affections than mere patrician legates,” said Caesar, grinning.

Julia looked up. “Really? Who?”

“His name is Lucius Decumius, and he’s a grubby little man of about forty with skinny legs, greasy hair, and an all-over reek of garlic,” said Caesar, picking at the dish of dried fruits in search of the plumpest raisin. “My house is perpetually filled with magnificent vases of flowers—in season, out of season, makes no difference to Lucius Decumius, who sends a new lot round every four or five days. And visits my wife, if you please, smarming up to her in the most nauseating way. In fact, he’s so pleased about our coming child that I sometimes have deep misgivings.”

“Stop it, Gaius Julius!” said Aurelia, laughing.

“Who is he?” asked Rutilius Rufus.

“The caretaker or whatever he’s called of the crossroads college Aurelia is obliged to house rent-free,” said Caesar.

“Lucius Decumius and I have an understanding,” Aurelia said, filching the raisin Caesar was holding halfway to his mouth.

“What understanding?” asked Rutilius Rufus.

“Whereabouts he plies his trade, namely anywhere but in my vicinity.”

“What trade?”

“He’s an assassin,” said Aurelia.

*

When Saturninus introduced his second agrarian law, the clause stipulating an oath burst upon the Forum like a clap of thunder; not a bolt of Jovian lightning, rather the cataclysmic rumble of the old gods, the real gods, the faceless gods, the numina. Not only was an oath required of every senator, but instead of the customary swearing in the temple of Saturn, Saturninus’s law required that the oath be taken under the open sky in the roofless temple of Semo Sancus Dius Fidius on the lower Quirinal, where the faceless god without a mythology had only a statue of Gaia Caecilia— wife of King Tarquinius Priscus of old Rome—to humanize his dwelling. And the deities in whose name the oath was taken were not the grand deities of the Capitol, but the little faceless numina who were truly Roman—the Di Penates Publici, guardians of the public purse and larder—the Lares Praestites, guardians of the State—and Vesta, guardian of the hearth. No one knew what they looked like, or where they came from, or even what sex if any they actually possessed; they just—were. And they mattered. They were Roman. They were the public images of the most private gods, the deities who ruled the family, that most sacred of all Roman traditions. No Roman could swear by these deities and contemplate breaking his oath, for to do so would be to bring down ruin and disaster and disintegration upon his family, his home, his purse.

But the legalistic mind of Glaucia hadn’t merely trusted to nameless fear of nameless numina; to drive the point of the oath home, Saturninus’s law even dealt with any senator who might refuse to take the oath; he would be forbidden fire and water within Italy, and fined the sum of twenty silver talents, and stripped of his citizenship.

“The trouble is, we haven’t gone far enough fast enough yet,” said Metellus Numidicus to Catulus Caesar, Ahenobarbus Pontifex Maximus, Metellus Piglet, Scaurus, Lucius Cotta, and his uncle Marcus Cotta. ‘ ‘The People aren’t ready to reject Gaius Marius—they’ll pass this into law. And we will be required to swear.” He shivered. “And if I swear, I must uphold my oath.”

“Then it cannot be passed into law,” said Ahenobarbus.

“There’s not one tribune of the plebs with the courage to veto it,” said Marcus Cotta.

“Then we must fight it with religion,” said Scaurus, looking at Ahenobarbus meaningfully. “The other side has brought religion into things, so there’s no reason why we can’t too.”

“I think I know what you want,” said Ahenobarbus.

“Well, I don’t,” said Lucius Cotta.

“When the day for voting the bill into law comes and the augurs inspect the omens to ensure the meeting is not in contravention of divine law, we’ll make sure the omens are inauspicious,” said Ahenobarbus. “And we’ll go on finding the omens inauspicious, until one of our tribunes of the plebs finds the courage to interpose his veto on religious grounds. That will kill the law, because the People get tired of things very quickly.”

The plan was put into practice; the omens were declared inauspicious by the augurs. Unfortunately Lucius Appuleius Saturninus himself was also an augur—a small reward given him at the instigation of Scaurus at the time when Scaurus restored his reputation—and differed in his interpretation of the omens.

“It’s a trick!” he shouted to the Plebs standing in the well of the Comitia. “Look at them, all minions of the Senate Policy Makers! There’s nothing wrong with the omens— this is a way to break the power of the People! We all know Scaurus Princeps Senatus and Metellus Numidicus and Catulus will go to any lengths to deprive our soldiers of their just reward—and this proves they have gone to any lengths! They’ve deliberately tampered with the will of the gods!”

The People believed Saturninus, who had taken the precaution of inserting his gladiators into the crowd. When one of the other tribunes of the plebs attempted to interpose his veto on the grounds that the omens were inauspicious, that he had heard thunder besides, and that any law passed that day would be nefas, sacrilegious, Saturninus’s gladiators acted. While Saturninus declared in ringing tones that he would not allow the veto, his bully-boys plucked the hapless tribune from the rostra and ran him up the Clivus Argentarius to the cells of the Lautumiae and kept him there until the meeting broke up. The second land bill was put to the vote, and the People in their tribes passed it into law, for its oath clause made it novel enough to intrigue the habitual attenders in the Plebeian Assembly; what would happen if it became law, who would resist, how would the Senate react? Too good to miss! The mood of the People was one of let’s find out.

The day after the bill became law, Metellus Numidicus rose to his feet in the Senate, and announced with great dignity that he would not take the oath.

“My conscience, my principles, my very life itself depend upon this decision!” he roared. “I will pay the fine and I will go into exile on Rhodes. For I will not swear. Do you hear me, Conscript Fathers? I—will—not—swear! I cannot swear to uphold anything to which the very core of my being is adamantly opposed. When is forsworn forsworn? Which is the more grievous crime—to swear to uphold a law I set myself against, or not to swear? You may all of you answer that for yourselves. My answer is that the greater crime is to swear. So I say to you, Lucius Appuleius Saturninus, and I say to you, Gaius Marius— I—will—not—swear! I choose to pay the fine and I choose to go into exile.”

His stand made a profound impression, for everyone present knew he meant what he said. Marius’s eyebrows grew still, meeting across his nose, and Saturninus pulled his lips back from his teeth. The murmurings began; the doubts and discontents niggled, gnawed, amplified.

“They’re going to be difficult,” whispered Glaucia from his curule chair, close to Marius’s.

“Unless I close this meeting, they’ll all refuse to swear,” muttered Marius, rose to his feet, and dismissed the House. “I urge you to go home and think for three days about the serious consequences should you decide not to take the oath. It is easy for Quintus Caecilius—he has the money to pay his fine, and plenty to ensure a comfortable exile. But how many of you can say that? Go home, Conscript Fathers, and think for three days. This House will reconvene four days from now, and then you must make up your minds, for we must not forget there is a time limit built into the lex Appuleia agraria secunda.”

But you can’t talk to them like that, said Marius to himself as he walked the floor of his huge and beautiful house below the temple of Juno Moneta, while his wife watched helplessly and his normally saucy son hid himself in his playroom.

You just can’t talk to them like that, Gaius Marius! They are not soldiers. They are not even subordinate officers, despite the fact that I am consul and they are mostly backbenchers who will never know the feel of an ivory curule chair beneath their fat arses. To the last one, they really do think themselves my peers—I, Gaius Marius, six times consul of this city, this country, this empire! I have to beat them, I cannot leave myself open to the ignominy of defeat. My dignitas is enormously greater than theirs, say what they will to the contrary. And I cannot see it suffer. I am the First Man in Rome. I am the Third Founder of Rome. And after I die, they are going to have to admit that I, Gaius Marius, the Italian hayseed with no Greek, was the greatest man in the history of our Republic, the Senate and People of Rome.

Further than that his thoughts never got during the three days’ grace he had given the senators; round and round and round went his dread of the loss of his dignitas were he to go down in defeat. And at dawn on the fourth day he left for the Curia Hostilia determined he was going to win— and not having thought at all about what kind of tactics the Policy Makers might use to beat him. He had taken particular care with his appearance, unwilling to let the world see that he had walked the floor for three days, and he strode down the Hill of the Bankers with his twelve lictors preceding him as if indeed he truly did own Rome.

The House assembled with unusual quietness; too few stools scraped, too few men coughed, too few attendants scuffled and muttered. The sacrifice was made flawlessly and the omens were declared auspicious for the meeting.

A big man in perfect control, Marius rose to his feet in awesome majesty. Though he had given no thought to what possible tack the Policy Makers might take, he had worked out his own tack down to the finest detail, and the confidence he felt was written plainly upon him.

“I too have spent the last three days in thought, Conscript Fathers,” he began, his eyes fixed upon some space between the listening senators rather than upon any one face, friendly or inimical. Not that anyone could tell where Marius’s eyes were, for his eyebrows hid them from all but the closest scrutiny. He tucked his left hand around the front edge of his toga where it fell in many beautifully ordered folds from left shoulder to ankles, and stepped down from the curule dais to the floor. “One fact is patent.” He paced a few feet, and stopped. “If this law is valid, it binds all of us to swear to uphold it.” He paced a few feet more. “If this law is valid, we must all take the oath.” He paced to the doors, turned to face both sides of the House. “But is it valid?” he asked loudly.

The question dropped into a fathomless silence.

“That’s it!” whispered Scaurus Princeps Senatus to Metellus Numidicus. “He’s done for! He’s just killed himself!”

But Marius, up against the doors, didn’t hear. So he didn’t pause to think again; he just went on. “There are those among you who insist that no law passed in the circumstances attending the passage of the lex Appuleia agraria secunda can be valid. I have heard the law’s validity challenged on two separate grounds—one, that it was passed in defiance of the omens, and the other, that it was passed even though violence was done to the sacrosanct person of a legally elected tribune of the plebs.”

He began to walk down the floor, then stopped. “Clearly the future of the law is in doubt. The Assembly of the Plebeian People will have to re-examine it in the light of both objections to its validity.” He took one small pace, stopped. “But that, Conscript Fathers, is not the issue we face here today. The validity of the law per se is not our first concern. Our concern is more immediate.” One more little pace. “We have been instructed by the law in question to swear to uphold the law in question. And that is what we are here today to debate. Today is the last day upon which we can take our oaths to uphold it, so the matter of swearing is urgent. And today the law in question is a valid law. So we must swear to uphold it.”

He walked forward hastily, almost reached the dais, then turned and paced slowly to the doors again, where he turned to face both sides of the House again. “Today, Conscript Fathers, we will all take that oath. We are bound to do so by the specific instruction of the People of Rome. They are the lawmakers! We of the Senate are simply their servants. So—we will swear. For it can make no difference to us, Conscript Fathers! If at some time in the future the Assembly of the Plebeian People re-examines the law and finds it invalid, then our oaths are also invalid.” Triumph filled his voice. “That is what we must understand! Any oath we take to uphold a law remains an oath only as long as the law remains a law. If the Plebeian People decide to nullify the law, then they also nullify our oaths.”

Scaurus Princeps Senatus was nodding sapiently, rhythmically; to Marius it looked as if he was agreeing with every word spoken. But Scaurus was nodding sapiently, rhythmically, for quite a different reason. The movements of his head accompanied the words he was speaking low-voiced to Metellus Numidicus. “We’ve got him, Quintus Caecilius! We’ve got him at last! He backed down. He didn’t last the distance. We’ve forced him to admit to the whole House that there is a doubt about the validity of Saturninus’s law. We’ve outmaneuvered the Arpinate fox!”

Filled with elation because he was sure he had the House on his side, Marius walked back to the dais in real earnest, mounted it, and stood in front of his carved ivory curule chair to make his peroration. “I myself will take the oath first among us,” he said, voice distilled reason. “And if I, Gaius Marius, your senior consul for the past four years and more, am prepared to swear, what can it possibly cost anyone else here? I have conferred with the priests of the College of the Two Teeth, and the temple of Semo Sancus Dius Fidius has been made ready for us. It’s not such a very long walk! Come, who will join me?”

There was a sigh, a faint murmur, the hiss of shoes moving as men broke their immobility. The backbenchers began slowly to get up from their stools.

“A question, Gaius Marius,” said Scaurus.

The House stilled again. Marius nodded.

“I would like your personal opinion, Gaius Marius. Not your official opinion. Just your personal opinion.”

“If you value my personal opinion, Marcus Aemilius, then naturally you shall have it,” said Marius. “On what?”

“What do you think personally?” Scaurus asked, his voice projected to every corner of the Curia. “Is the lex Appuleia agraria secunda valid in the light of what happened when it was passed?”

Silence. Complete silence. No one breathed. Even Gaius Marius, who was too busy racing across the awful wastes of the regions where his over-confidence had put him to think of drawing a breath.

“Would you like me to repeat the question, Gaius Marius?” asked Scaurus sweetly.

Marius’s tongue flickered out, wet his hideously dry lips. Where to go, what to do? You’ve slipped at last, Gaius Marius. Fallen into a pit you cannot climb out of. Why didn’t I see that this question was bound to be asked, and asked by the only truly great brain among them? Am I suddenly blinded by my own cleverness? It was bound to be asked! And I never once thought of it. Never once in all those three long days.

Well, I have no choice. Scaurus has my scrotum in his hands, and I must dance to his tug on my balls. He’s brought me down. Because I have no choice. I now have to stand here and tell this House that I personally think the law is invalid. Otherwise no one will swear to uphold it. I led them to believe there was a doubt, I led them to believe that the doubt made the taking of the oath permissible. If I retract, I’ve lost them. But if I say I personally think the law is invalid, I’ve lost my own self.

He looked toward the tribunes’ bench, saw Lucius Appuleius Saturninus sitting forward, hands clenched, face set, lips curled back from his teeth.

I will lose this man who is so important to me if I say I think the law is invalid. And I’ll lose the greatest legal draftsman Rome has ever seen, Glaucia.... Together, we might have straightened the whole of Italy out in spite of the worst the Policy Makers could do. But if I say I think their law is invalid, I’ll lose them forever. And yet—and yet—I must say it. Because if I do not, these cunni won’t swear the oath and my soldiers won’t get their land. That’s all I can salvage out of the mess. Land for my men. I am lost. For I have lost.

When the leg of Glaucia’s ivory chair scraped across a marble tile, half the members of the Senate jumped; Glaucia looked down at his nails, lips pursed, face expressionless. But the silence continued, moment after moment.

“I think I had better repeat my question, Gaius Marius,” Scaurus said. “What is your personal opinion? Is this law a valid one, or is it not?”

“I think—” Marius stopped, frowning fiercely. “Personally I think the law improbably invalid,” he said.

Down came Scaurus’s hands on his thighs with a crack. “Thank you, Gaius Marius!” He rose and turned round to beam at those on the tiers behind him, then turned back to beam at those on the tiers opposite him. “Well, Conscript Fathers, if no less a man than our very own conquering hero Gaius Marius deems the lex Appuleia invalid, I for one am happy to swear the oath!” And he bowed to Saturninus, to Glaucia. “Come, fellow senators, as your Princeps Senatus I suggest that we all hurry to the temple of Semo Sancus immediately!”

“Stop!”

Everyone stopped. Metellus Numidicus clapped his hands. Down from the very back of the top tier came his servant, a bag burdening each hand so that he bent double and had to drag them across each of the six-foot-wide steps and down to the next with a crash and a chink. When the two bags rested near Metellus Numidicus’s feet, the servant went back to the top and carried another two down. Several of the backbencher senators looked at what was piled against the wall, and signed their servants to help. The work went on more swiftly then, until forty bags were piled all around Metellus Numidicus’s stool. He himself stood up.

“I will not take the oath,” he said. “Not for a thousand thousand assurances from the senior consul that the lex Appuleia is invalid will I swear! I hereby tender twenty talents of silver in payment of my fine, and declare that tomorrow at dawn I will proceed into exile on Rhodes.”

Pandemonium broke out.

“Order! Order! Order!” shouted Scaurus, shouted Marius.

When order did prevail, Metellus Numidicus looked behind him, and spoke over his shoulder to someone on the back tier. “Treasury quaestor, please come forward,” he said.

Down he came, a presentable-looking young man with brown hair and brown eyes, his white toga gleaming, every fold perfect; he was Quintus Caecilius Metellus the Piglet, son of Metellus Numidicus Piggle-wiggle.

“Treasury quaestor, I give these twenty talents of silver into your keeping as payment of the fine levied upon me for refusing to swear to uphold the lex Appuleia agraria secunda,” said Metellus Numidicus. “However, while the House is still in assembly, I demand that it be counted so that the Conscript Fathers can be sure the amount is not so much as one denarius short of the proper sum.”

“We are all willing to take your word for it, Quintus Caecilius,” said Marius, smiling without a vestige of amusement.

“Oh, but I insist!” said Metellus Numidicus. “No one is going to move from this place until every last coin is counted.” He coughed. “The total, I believe, should be one hundred and thirty-five thousand denarii.”

Everyone sat down with a sigh. Two clerks of the House fetched a table and set it up at Metellus Numidicus’s place; Metellus Numidicus himself stood with his left hand clasping his toga and his right hand extended to rest, fingertips lightly down, upon the table. The clerks opened one of the bags and lifted it up between them, then let its contents cascade in glittering clinking heaps near Metellus Numidicus’s hand. Young Metellus signed to the clerks to hold the empty bag openmouthed to his right side, and began counting the coins, pushing them quickly into his right hand, cupped beneath the edge of the table; when the hand was full, he dropped its contents into the bag.

“Wait!” said Metellus Numidicus.

Metellus Piglet stopped.

“Count them out loud, Treasury quaestor!”

There was a gasp, a sigh, a ghastly collective groan.

Metellus Piglet put all the coins back on the table, and began again. “Wuh-wuh-wuh-one... tuh-tuh-tuh-two... thruh-thruh-thruh-three... fuh-fuh-fuuh-four...”

At sundown Gaius Marius rose from his curule chair. “The day is over, Conscript Fathers. Our business is not over, but in this House no one sits in formal session after the sun has set. Therefore I suggest we go now to the temple of Semo Sancus and swear our oaths. It must be done before midnight, or we are in violation of a direct order from the People.” He looked across to where Metellus Numidicus still stood and his son still toiled at the counting—far from over, though his stammer had improved markedly when his nervousness evaporated.

“Marcus Aemilius Scaurus Princeps Senatus, it is your duty to remain here and supervise the rest of this long task. I expect you to do so. And I hereby grant you leave to take your own oath tomorrow. Or the day after, if the counting is still in progress tomorrow. “A glimmer of a smile was playing about the corners of Marius’s mouth.

But Scaurus did not smile. He threw his head back and went into peal after peal of joyous, full-throated laughter.

*

Late in the spring Sulla came back from Italian Gaul, and called to see Gaius Marius immediately after a bath and a change of clothing. Marius, he discovered, looked anything but well, a finding which did not surprise him. Even in the very north of the country the events surrounding the passing of the lex Appuleia had not suffered in the telling. Nor was it necessary for Marius to retell the story; they simply looked at each other wordlessly, and everything which needed to pass between them on a basic level did so wordlessly.

However, once the emotional rush abated a little and the first cup of good wine was finished, Sulla did broach the more unpalatable externals of the subject.

“Your credibility’s suffered shockingly,” he said.

“I know, Lucius Cornelius.”

“It’s Saturninus, I hear.”

Marius sighed. “Well, and can you blame him for hating me? He’s given half a hundred speeches from the rostra, and by no means all to properly convoked assemblies. Every one accusing me of betraying him. In fact, since he’s a brilliant speaker, the tale of my treachery hasn’t lost in his style of translation to the crowds. And he draws the crowds too. Not merely regular Forum frequenters, but men of the Third and Fourth and Fifth Classes who seem fascinated by him to the extent that whenever they have a day off, they turn up in the Forum to listen to him.”

“Does he speak that often?” asked Sulla.

“He speaks every single day!”

Sulla whistled. “That’s something new in the annals of the Forum! Every day? Rain or shine? Formal meetings or no formal meetings?”

“Every single day. When the urban praetor—his own boon companion Glaucia—obeyed his orders from the Pontifex Maximus to instruct Saturninus that he couldn’t speak on market days or holidays or non-comitial days, he simply ignored it. And because he’s a tribune of the plebs, no one has seriously tried to haul him down.” Marius frowned, worried. “In consequence, his fame keeps spreading, and we now see a whole new breed of Forum frequenter—those who come solely to hear Saturninus harangue. He has—I don’t quite know what you’d call it—I suppose the Greeks have the word for it, as usual—they’d say kharisma. They feel his passion, I think, because of course not being regular Forum frequenters they’re not connoisseurs of rhetoric, and don’t give tuppence how he wiggles his littlest finger or varies the style of his walk. No, they just stand there gaping up at him, becoming more and more excited at what he says, and end in cheering him wildly.”

“We’ll have to keep an eye on him, won’t we?” Sulla asked. He looked at Marius very seriously. “Why did you do it?”

There was no pretence at ignorance; Marius answered at once. “I didn’t have any choice, Lucius Cornelius. The truth is that I’m not—I don’t know—devious enough to see around all the corners I should if I’m to keep a pace to two ahead of men like Scaurus. He caught me as neatly as anyone could have wanted. I acknowledge the fact freely.”

“But in one way you’ve salvaged the scheme,” said Sulla, trying to comfort him. “The second land bill is still on the tablets, and I don’t think the Plebeian Assembly—-or the Assembly of the People, for that matter—is going to invalidate it. Or at least, I’m told that’s how things stand.”

“True,” said Marius, not looking comforted. He hunched his head into his shoulders, sighed. “Saturninus is the victor, Lucius Cornelius, not I. It’s his sense of outrage keeping the Plebs firm. I’ve lost them.” He writhed, threw out his hands. “How am I ever going to get through the rest of this year? It’s an ordeal to have to walk through the volley of boos and hisses from the region around the rostra whenever Saturninus is speaking, but as for walking into the Curia— I loathe it! I loathe the sleek smile on Scaurus’s seamy face, I loathe the insufferable smirk on that camel Catulus’s face—I’m not made for the political arena, and that’s a truth I’ve just begun to find out.”

“But you climbed the cursus honorum, Gaius Marius!” Sulla said. ‘ ‘You were one of the great tribunes of the plebs! You knew the political arena, and you loved it, otherwise you could never have been a great tribune of the plebs.”

Marius shrugged. “Oh, I was young then, Lucius Cornelius. And I had a good brain. But a political animal I am not.’’

“So you’re going to yield the center of the stage to a posturing wolfshead like Saturninus? That doesn’t sound like the Gaius Marius I know,” said Sulla.

“I’m not the Gaius Marius you know,” said Marius with a faint smile. “The new Gaius Marius is very, very tired. A stranger to me as much as to you, believe me!”

“Then go away for the summer, please!”

“I intend to,” said Marius, “as soon as you tie the knot with Aelia.”

Sulla started, then laughed. “Ye gods, I’d forgotten all about it!” He got to his feet gracefully, a beautifully made man in the prime of life. “I’d better go home and seek an audience with our mutual mother-in-law, hadn’t I? No doubt she’s breaking her neck”—he shivered—”to leave me.”

The shiver meant nothing to Marius, who seized upon the comment instead. “Yes, she’s anxious. I’ve bought her a nice little villa not far from ours at Cumae.”

“Then home I go, as fleet as Mercury chasing a contract to repave the Via Appia!” He held out his hand. “Look after yourself, Gaius Marius. If Aelia’s still willing, I’ll tie the knot at once.” A thought occurred to him, he laughed. “You’re absolutely right! Catulus Caesar looks like a camel! Monumental hauteur!”

Julia was waiting outside the study to waylay Sulla as he left. “What do you think?” she asked anxiously.

“He’ll be all right, little sister. They beat him, and he suffers. Take him down to Campania, make him bathe in the sea and wallow in the roses.”

“I will, as soon as you’re married.”

“I’m marrying, I’m marrying!” he cried, holding up his hands in surrender.

Julia sighed. “There’s one thing we cannot get away from, Lucius Cornelius, and that is that less than half a year in the Forum has worn Gaius Marius down more than ten years in the field with his armies.”

*

It seemed everyone needed a rest, for when Marius left for Cumae, public life in Rome simmered down to a tepid inertia. One by one the notables quit the city, unbearable during the height of summer, when every kind of enteric fever raged amid Subura and Esquiline, and even Palatine and Aventine were only debatably healthy.

Not that life in the Subura worried Aurelia unduly; she dwelled in the midst of a cool cavern, the greenery of the courtyard and the immensely thick walls of her insula keeping the heat at bay. Gaius Matius and his wife, Priscilla, were in like condition to herself and Caesar, for Priscilla too was heavily pregnant, her baby due at the same time as Aurelia’s.

The two women were very well looked after. Gaius Matius hovered helpfully, and Lucius Decumius popped in every day to make sure all was right. The flowers still came regularly, supplemented since her pregnancy with little gifts of sweetmeats, rare spices, anything Lucius Decumius thought might keep his darling Aurelia’s appetite keen.

“As if I’d lost it!” she laughed to Publius Rutilius Rufus, another regular caller.

Her son, Gaius Julius Caesar, was born on the thirteenth day of Quinctilis, which meant that his birth was entered in the register at the temple of Juno Lucina as occurring two days before the Ides of Quinctilis, his status as patrician, his rank as senatorial. He was very long and consequently weighed somewhat more than he looked to weigh; he was very strong; he was solemn and quiet, not prone to wailing; his hair was so fair it was practically invisible, though on close examination he actually had quite a lot of it; and his eyes from birth were a pale greenish-blue, ringed around with a band of blue so dark it was almost black.

“He’s someone, this son of yours,” said Lucius Decumius, staring into the baby’s face intently. “Will you look at them eyes! Give your grandmother a fright, they would!”

“Don’t say such things, you horrible little wart!” growled Cardixa, who was enslaved by this first boy-child.

“Gimme a look at downstairs,” Lucius Decumius demanded, snatching with grubby fingers at the baby’s diapers. “Oho ho ho ho ho!” he crowed. “Just as I thought! Big nose, big feet, and big dick!”

“Lucius Decumius!’’ said Aurelia, scandalized.

“That does it! Out you go!” roared Cardixa as she picked him up by the scruff of his neck, and dropped him outside the front door as smaller women might have dumped a kitten.

Sulla called to see Aurelia almost a month after the baby’s birth, explaining that she was the only familiar face left in Rome, and apologizing if he was imposing.

“Of course not!” she said, delighted to see him. “I’m hoping you can stay for dinner—or if you can’t today, perhaps you can come tomorrow? I’m so starved for company!”

“I can stay,” he said without ceremony. “I only really came back to Rome to see an old friend of mine—he’s come down with a fever.”

“Who’s that? Anyone I know?” she asked, more out of courtesy than curiosity.

But for a short moment he looked as if she had asked an unwelcome question, or perhaps a painful one; the expression on his face interested her far more than the identity of his sick friend, for it was dark, unhappy, angry. Then it was gone, and he was smiling with consummate ease.

“I doubt you know him,” he said. “Metrobius.”

“The actor?”

“The same. I used to know a lot of people in the theater. In the old days. Before I married Julilla and entered the Senate. A different world.’’ His strange light eyes wandered around the reception room. “More like this world, only seamier. Funny! It seems now like a dream.”

“You sound rather sorry,” said Aurelia gently.

“No, not really.”

“And will he get well, your friend Metrobius?”

“Oh, yes! It’s just a fever.”

A silence fell, not uncomfortable, which he broke without words by getting up and walking across to the big open space which served as a window onto the courtyard.

“It’s lovely out there.”

“I think so.”

“And your new son? How is he?”

She smiled. “You shall see for yourself shortly.”

“Good.” He remained staring at the courtyard.

“Lucius Cornelius, is everything all right?” she asked.

He turned then, smiling; she thought what an attractive man he was, in a most unusual way. And how disconcerting those eyes were—so light—so ringed with darkness. Like her son’s eyes. And for some reason that thought made her shiver.

“Yes, Aurelia, everything’s all right,” Sulla said.

“I wish I thought you were telling me the truth.”

He opened his mouth to reply, but at that moment Cardixa came in bearing the infant heir to the Caesar name.

“We’re off upstairs to the fourth floor,” she said.

“Show Lucius Cornelius first, Cardixa.”

But the only children Sulla was really interested in were his own two, so he peered dutifully into the baby’s face, then glanced at Aurelia to see if this satisfied her.

“Off you go, Cardixa,” she said, putting Sulla out of his misery. “Who is it this morning?”

“Sarah.”

She turned to Sulla with a pleasant, unselfconscious smile. “I have no milk, alas! So my son goes everywhere for his food. One of the great advantages of living in a big community like an insula. There are always at least half a dozen women nursing, and everyone is nice enough to offer to feed my babies.”

“He’ll grow up to love the whole world,” said Sulla. “I imagine you have the whole world as tenants.”

“I do. It makes life interesting.”

Back he went to gaze at the courtyard.

“Lucius Cornelius, you’re only half here,” she accused softly. “Something is the matter! Can’t you share it with me? Or is it one of those men-only difficulties?”

He came to sit down on the couch opposite hers. “I just never have any luck with women,” he said abruptly.

Aurelia blinked. “In what way?”

“The women I—love. The women I marry.”

Interesting; he found it easier to speak of marriage than of love. “Which is it now?” she asked.

“A bit of both. In love with one, married to another.”

“Oh, Lucius Cornelius!” She looked at him with genuine liking but not an ounce of desire. “I shan’t ask you any names, because I don’t really want to know. You ask me the questions, I’ll try to come up with the answers.”

He shrugged. “There’s nothing much to say! I married Aelia, found for me by our mother-in-law. After Julilla, I wanted a perfect Roman matron—someone like Julia, or you if you were a little older. When Marcia introduced me to Aelia, I thought she was ideal—calm, quiet, good-humored, attractive, a nice person. And I thought, terrific! I’ll have me my Roman matron at last. I can’t love anyone, I thought, so I may as well be married to someone I can like.”

“You liked your German wife, I believe,” Aurelia said.

“Yes, very much. I still miss her in peculiar ways. But she’s not a Roman, so she’s no use to the senator in Rome, is she? Anyway, I decided Aelia would turn out much the same as Hermana.” He laughed, a hard sound. “But I was wrong! Aelia turns out to be dull, pedestrian, and boring. A very nice person indeed, but oh, five moments in her company, and I’m yawning!”

“Is she good to your children?”

“Very good. No complaints there!” He laughed again. “I ought to have hired her as a nurserymaid—she’d have been ideal. She adores the children, and they adore her.”

He was talking now almost as if she didn’t exist, or as if she didn’t matter as an auditor, only as a presence who gave him an excuse to say aloud what he had long been thinking.

“Just after I came back from Italian Gaul, I was invited to attend a dinner party at Scaurus’s,” he went on. “A bit flattered. A bit apprehensive. Wondered if they were all going to be there—Metellus Piggle-wiggle and the rest— and try to wean me away from Gaius Marius. She was there, poor little thing. Scaurus’s wife. By all the gods in the world, why did it have to be her married to Scaurus? He could be her great-grandfather! Dalmatica. That’s what they call her. One way of keeping them all straight, the thousands of Caecilia Metellas. I took one look at her and I loved her. At least I think it’s love. There’s pity in it too, but I never seem to stop thinking of her, so that means it’s got to be love, doesn’t it? She’s pregnant. Isn’t that disgusting? No one asked her what she wanted, of course. Metellus Piggle-wiggle just gave her to Scaurus like a honeycomb to a child. Here, your son’s dead, take this consolation prize! Have another son! Disgusting. And yet—if they knew the half of me, they’d be the ones disgusted. I can’t see it, Aurelia. They’re more immoral than I am! But you’d never get them to see it that way.”

Aurelia had learned a great deal since she moved to the Subura; everyone from Lucius Decumius to the freedmen thronging the top two floors talked to her. And things happened—things the landlady was involved in whether she liked it or not—things which would have shocked her husband to his core did he only know. Abortion. Witchcraft. Murder. Robbery with violence. Rape. Delirium tremens and worse addictions. Madness. Despair. Depression. Suicide. It all went on in every insula, and concluded itself the same way; no taking these cases to the tribunal of the praetor urbanus! They were solved by the inhabitants, and a rough justice was dealt out in the most summary fashion. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a life for a life.

So as she listened Aurelia pieced together a composite picture of Lucius Cornelius Sulla that was not so very far from the truth. Alone among the aristocrats of Rome who knew him, she understood from whence he had come, and understood too the terrible difficulties his nature and his upbringing had thrust upon him. He had claimed his birthright, but he was permanently branded with the stews of Rome too.

And as Sulla talked about one thing, his mind wandered among other things he didn’t dare say to his listener: how desperately he had wanted her, Scaurus’s little pregnant child-wife, and not entirely for the flesh or the mind. She was ideal for his purposes. But she was married confarreatio to Scaurus, and he was committed to splendid boring Aelia. Not confarreatio this time! It was too hideous a business to divorce; Dalmatica simply pointed up a lesson he had already learned in that respect. Women. He was never going to have the luck with women, he knew it in his bones. Was it because of the other side to himself? That wonderful beautiful glorious relationship with Metrobius! And yet he didn’t want to live with Metrobius any more than he had wanted to live with Julilla. Perhaps that was it—he did not want to share himself. Too dangerous by far. Oh, but he had hungered for Caecilia Metella Dalmatica, wife of Marcus Aemilius Scaurus Princeps Senatus! Disgusting. Not that he normally objected to old men and child-brides. This was personal. He was in love with her, therefore she was special.

“Did she—Dalmatica—like you, Lucius Cornelius?” Aurelia asked, breaking into his thoughts.

Sulla didn’t hesitate. “Oh, yes! No doubt of it.”

“What are you going to do, then?”

He writhed. “I’ve come too far, I’ve paid too much! I can’t stop now, Aurelia! Even for Dalmatica—if I had an affair with her, the boni would make it their business to ruin me. I don’t have much money yet, either. Just enough to get by in the Senate. I made a bit out of the Germans, but no more than my proper share. And I’m not going to climb the rest of the way easily. They feel about me the way they feel about Gaius Marius, even though for different reasons. Neither of us conforms to their wretched ideals. Yet they can’t work out why we have the ability and they don’t. They feel used, abused. I’m definitely luckier than Gaius Marius. At least I have the blood. But it’s tainted with the Subura. Actors. Low life. I’m not really one of the Good Men.” He drew a breath. “Yet—I’m going to go right past them, Aurelia! Because I’m the best horse in the race.”

“And what happens when the prize isn’t worth it?”

He opened his eyes wide, astonished at her denseness. “It’s never worth the effort! Never! That’s not why we do it, any of us. When they harness us up to do our seven laps of the course, we race against ourselves. What other challenge could there be for a Gaius Marius? He’s the best horse in the field. So he races against himself. So do I. I can do it. I’m going to do it! But it only really matters to me.”

And she blushed at her denseness. “Of course.” Rising to her feet, she held out her hand. “Come, Lucius Cornelius! It’s a lovely day in spite of the heat. The Subura will be entirely left to itself—all those who can afford to leave Rome for the summer are gone. Only the poor and the crazed are left! And I. Let’s go for a walk, and when we come back, we’ll have dinner. I’ll send a message to Uncle Publius to join us—I think he’s still in town.” She pulled a face. “I have to be careful, you understand, Lucius Cornelius. My husband trusts me as much as he loves me, which is a great deal. But he wouldn’t like me to cause gossip, and I try to be an old-fashioned kind of wife. He would be horrified to think I didn’t invite you to eat dinner with me— and yet if Uncle Publius can come, Gaius Julius will commend me.”

Sulla eyed her affectionately. “What nonsense men cherish about their wives! You’re not even remotely like the creature Gaius Julius moons about over military dinners in camp.”

“I know,” she said. “But he doesn’t.”

The heat of the Vicus Patricii settled down on their heads like a stifling blanket; Aurelia gasped and ducked back inside. “Well, that settles that! I didn’t think it was hot! Eutychus can run to the Carinae for Uncle Publius, he can do with the exercise. And we’ll sit in the garden.” She led the way, still talking. “Cheer up, Lucius Cornelius, do! It will all turn out in the end, I’m sure. Go back to Circei and that nice, boring wife. In time you’ll like her more, I promise. And it will be better for you if you don’t see Dalmatica at all. How old are you now?”

The trapped feeling was beginning to lift; Sulla’s face lightened, his smile more natural. “A milestone this year, Aurelia. I turned forty last New Year’s Day.”

“Not an old man yet!”

“In some ways I am. I haven’t even been praetor yet, and I’m already a year past the usual age.”

“Now, now, you’re looking gloomy again, and there really is no need. Look at our old war-horse Gaius Marius! His first consulship at fifty, eight years over the age. Now if you saw him poled up for the Mars race, would you pick him as the best horse in it? Would you bet that he’d be the October Horse? Yet all his greatest deeds he did after he turned fifty.”

“That’s very true,” said Sulla, and did feel more cheerful, in spite of himself. “What lucky god prompted me to come and see you today? You’re a good friend, Aurelia. A help.”

“Well, perhaps one day I’ll turn to you for help.”

“All you have to do is ask.” His head went up, he took in the naked balconies of the upper floors. “You are courageous! No screens? And they don’t abuse the privilege?”

“Never.”

He laughed, a throaty chuckle of genuine amusement. “I do believe you have the Subura hard cases all wrapped up in the palm of your little hand!”

Nodding, smiling, she rocked gently back and forth on her garden seat. “I like my life, Lucius Cornelius. To be honest, I don’t care if Gaius Julius never gets the money together to buy that house on the Palatine. Here in the Subura I’m busy, fruitful, surrounded by all sorts of interesting people. I’m running a race of my own, you see.”

“With only one egg in the cup and only one dolphin down,” Sulla said, “you’ve got a very long way to go yet.”

“So have you,” said Aurelia.

*

Julia knew of course that Marius would never spend the whole summer at Cumae, though he had talked as if he would not return to Rome until the beginning of September; the moment his equilibrium began to right itself, he would be itching to get back to the fray. So she counted her blessings a day at a time, glad that the moment Marius returned to a rural setting, he shed both political toga praetexta and military cuirass, and became for a little while a country squire like all his ancestors. They swam in the sea off the little beach below their magnificent villa, and gorged themselves on fresh oysters, crabs, shrimp, tunnyfish; they walked the sparsely populated hills amid welters of roses cloying the air with perfume; they did little entertaining, and pretended to be out whenever people called. Marius built a boat of sorts for Young Marius, and got almost as much fun out of its instant imitation of a bottom fish as Young Marius did. Never, thought Julia, had she been quite so happy as during that halcyon summer at Cumae. Counting her blessings one day at a time.

But Marius did not return to Rome. Painless and subtle, the little stroke happened during the first night of the Dog Star month of Sextilis; all Marius noticed when he woke in the morning was that his pillow was wet where apparently he had drooled in his sleep. When he came to break his fast and found Julia on the open terrace looking out to sea, he gazed at her in bewilderment as she gazed at him with an expression he had never before seen on her face.

“What’s the matter?” he mumbled, his tongue feeling thick and clumsy, a most peculiar non-sensation.

“Your face—” she said, her own whitening.

His hands went up to touch it, his left fingers as awkward as his tongue felt. “What is it?” he asked.

“Your face—it’s dropped on the left side,” she said, and choked on her breath as understanding dawned. “Oh, Gaius Marius! You’ve had a stroke!”

But because he felt no pain and no direct consciousness of any alteration, he refused to believe her until she brought him a big polished silver mirror and he could look at himself for himself. The right side of his face was firm, uplifted, not very lined for a man of his age, where the left side looked as if it were a wax mask melting in the heat of some nearby torch, running, drooping, slipping away.

“I don’t feel any different!” he said, stunned. “Not inside my mind, where one is supposed to feel an illness. My tongue won’t move around my words properly, but my head knows how to say them, and you’re understanding what I say and I’m understanding what you say, so I haven’t lost my faculty of speech! My left hand fumbles, yet I can move it. And there is no pain, no pain of any kind!”

When he refused with trembling anger to have a physician sent for, Julia gave in for fear that opposition would make his condition worse; all that day she watched him herself, and was able to tell him as she persuaded him to go to bed shortly after nightfall that the paralysis appeared to be about the same as it had been at dawn.

“That’s a good sign, I’m sure,” she said. “You’ll get better in time. You’ll just have to rest, stay here longer.”

“I can’t! They’ll think I’m not game to face them!”

“If they care to visit you—which I’m sure they will!— they’ll be able to see for themselves what’s wrong, Gaius Marius. Whether you like it or not, here you stay until you get better,” said Julia with a note of authority quite new to her voice. “No, don’t argue with me! I’m right, and you know I am! What do you think you can accomplish if you go back to Rome in this condition, beyond having another stroke?”

“Nothing,” he muttered, and fell back on the bed in despair. “Julia, Julia, how can I recover from something that makes me feel more ugly than ill? I must recover! I can’t let them beat me, not now I have so much at stake!”

“They won’t beat you, Gaius Marius,” she said strongly. “The only thing that will ever beat you is death, and you’re not going to die from this little stroke. The paralysis will improve. And if you rest, you exercise sensibly, you eat in moderation, you don’t drink any wine, and you don’t worry about what’s happening in Rome, it will happen much faster.”