When news of Lucius Caesar’s defeat of Mutilus at Acerrae had reached Rome, senatorial spirits had temporarily lifted. A proclamation was issued to the effect that it was no longer necessary for Roman citizens to wear the sagum. Then when news came of Lucius Caesar’s defeat in the Melfa Gorge for the second time, together with casualty figures almost exactly equaling enemy losses at Acerrae, no one in the Senate had moved to order the proclamation reversed; that would have pointed up the new defeat.
“Futile,” Marcus Aemilius Princeps Senatus had said to the few senators who turned up to debate the issue. His lip trembled, was resolutely quelled. “What we have to face is a far more serious fact—that we are losing this war.”
Philippus wasn’t present to argue. Nor was Quintus Varius, still busy prosecuting minor lights for treason; now that he had abandoned quarry like Antonius Orator and Scaurus Princeps Senatus, the victims of his special court were mounting.
Thus, deprived of the stimulus of opposition, Scaurus found himself without the will to go on, and sat down heavily upon his stool. I am too old, he thought—how can Marius cope with a whole theater of war when he’s the same age I am?
That question was answered at the end of Sextilis, when a courier came to inform the Senate that Gaius Marius and his troops had beaten Herius Asinius with the loss of seven thousand Marrucine lives, including Herius Asinius’s. But such was the depth of the depression within the city that no one thought it wise to celebrate; instead, the city waited for the next few days to bring news of an equivalent defeat. Sure enough, some days later another courier arrived and presented himself to the Senate, whose members sat, stony-faced and stiff-backed, to hear the bad tidings. Only Scaurus had come among the consulars.
Gaius Marius takes great pleasure in informing the Senate and People of Rome that, on this day, he and his armies did inflict a crushing defeat upon Quintus Poppaedius Silo and the men of the Marsi. Fifteen thousand Marsians lie dead, and five thousand more are taken prisoner.
Gaius Marius wishes to commend the invaluable contribution of Lucius Cornelius Sulla to this victory, and begs to be excused a full account of events until such time as he can inform the Senate and People of Rome that Alba Fucentia has been relieved. Long live Rome!
At first reading, no one believed it. A stir passed along the thinned white ranks, too sparse upon the tiers to look impressive. Scaurus read the letter out again, voice shaking. And finally the cheers started. Within an hour, all of Rome was cheering. Gaius Marius had done it! Gaius Marius had reversed Rome’s fortunes! Gaius Marius, Gaius Marius, Gaius Marius!
“He’s everybody’s hero yet again,” said Scaurus to the flamen Dialis, Lucius Cornelius Merula, who hadn’t missed one meeting of the Senate since the war had begun, despite the huge number of taboos which hedged the flamen Dialis round. Alone among his peers, the flamen Dialis could never don a toga; instead, he was enveloped by a double-layered heavy woolen cape, the laena, which was cut on a full circle, and on his head he wore a close-fitting ivory helm adorned with the symbols of Jupiter and topped with a hard disc of wool pierced by an ivory spike. Alone among his peers he was hirsute, for this flamen Dialis had elected to leave his hair hanging down his back and his beard straggling down his chest rather than endure the torture of being barbered by bone or bronze. The flamen Dialis could not come into bodily contact with iron of any kind—which meant he could have no contact with war. Thwarted in doing his military duty to his country, Lucius Cornelius Merula had taken to attending the Senate assiduously.
Merula sighed. “Well, Marcus Aemilius, patricians though we may be, I think it’s high time we admitted to ourselves that our bloodlines are so attenuated we can no longer produce a popular hero.”
“Nonsense!” snapped Scaurus. “Gaius Marius is a freak!”
“Without him, where would we be?”
“In Rome, and true Romans!”
“You don’t approve of his victory?”
“Of course I approve! I just wish the name at the bottom of the letter had been Lucius Cornelius Sulla’s!”
“He was a good praetor urbanus, I know, but I never heard he was a Marius upon the battlefield,” said Merula.
“Until Gaius Marius quits the battlefield, how can we know? Lucius Cornelius Sulla has been with Gaius Marius since—oh, the war against Jugurtha. And has always made a large contribution to Gaius Marius’s victories. Marius takes the credit.”
“Be fair, Marcus Aemilius! Gaius Marius’s letter made specific mention of Lucius Sulla! I for one thought the praise ungrudging. Nor can I hear a word of disparagement about the man who has finally answered my prayers,” said Merula.
“A man answers your prayers, flamen Dialis? That’s an odd way of putting it, surely.”
“Our gods do not answer us directly, Princeps Senatus. If they are displeased they present us with some sort of phenomenon, and when they act they do so through the agency of men.”
“I am as aware of that as you are!” cried Scaurus, goaded. “I love Gaius Marius as much as I hate him. But I could still wish that the name on the bottom of the letter had been another’s!”
One of the Senate clerks entered the chamber, deserted now save for Scaurus and Merula, who had fallen behind.
“Princeps Senatus, an urgent communication has just come from Lucius Cornelius Sulla.”
Merula giggled. “There you are, an answer to your prayers! A letter with Lucius Sulla’s name on its bottom!”
A scathing look was Merula’s answer; Scaurus took the tiny roll and spread it between his hands. It contained, he saw in utter astonishment, two scant lines, carefully printed in big characters, and having dots between the words. Sulla wanted no misinterpretation.
GAIUS · MARIUS · FELLED · BY · STROKE · ARMY · MOVED · TO · REATE · AM · RETURNING · TO · ROME · AT · ONCE · BEARING · MARIUS · SULLA
Bereft of speech, Scaurus Princeps Senatus gave the sheet to Merula and stumbled to a seat on the bare bottom tier. “Edepol!” Merula too sat down. “Oh, is nothing ever going to go right in this war? Is Gaius Marius dead, do you think? Is that what Lucius Sulla means?”
“I think he lives but is incapable of command, and that his troops know it,” said Scaurus. He drew a breath, bellowed, “Clerk!”
Hovering in the doorway, the scribe returned immediately to stand before Scaurus; he was bursting with curiosity.
“Call out the heralds. Have them proclaim the news that Gaius Marius has had a stroke, and is being returned to Rome by his legate Lucius Cornelius Sulla.”
The scribe gasped, blanched, hurried off.
“Was that wise, Marcus Aemilius?” asked Merula.
“Only the Great God knows, flamen Dialis. I do not. All I know is that if I called the Senate to discuss this first, they’d vote to suppress the news. And that I cannot condone,” said Scaurus strongly. He got up. “Walk with me. I have to tell Julia before the heralds start braying from the rostra.”
*
Thus it was that when the five cohorts of troops escorting Gaius Marius’s litter came through the Colline Gate, their spears wreathed in cypress, their swords and daggers reversed, they entered a marketplace festooned with garlands of flowers and thronged with silent people—a feast and a funeral at one, it seemed. And so it was all the way to the Forum Romanum, where again flowers hung everywhere, but the crowds were still and voiceless. The flowers had been put out to celebrate Gaius Marius’s great victory; his defeat by illness had caused the silence.
When the closely curtained litter appeared behind the soldiers, a great whisper spread:
“He must be alive! He must be alive!”
Sulla and his cohorts halted in the lower Forum alongside the rostra, while Gaius Marius was carried up the Clivus Argentarius to his house. Marcus Aemilius Scaurus Princeps Senatus climbed alone to the top of the rostra.
“The Third Founder of Rome lives, Quirites!” Scaurus thundered. “As always, he has turned the course of war in Rome’s favor, and Rome cannot be grateful enough. Make offerings for his well-being, though it may be that it is time for Gaius Marius to leave us. His condition is grave. But thanks to him, Quirites, our condition has improved immeasurably.”
No one cheered. No one wept either. Weeping would be saved for his funeral, for a moment without hope. Then Scaurus came down off the rostra and the people began to disperse.
“He won’t die,” said Sulla, looking very tired.
Scaurus snorted. “I never thought he would. He hasn’t been consul seven times yet, so he can’t let himself die.”
“That is exactly how he put it.”
“What, he’s still able to speak?”
“A little. There’s no lack of words, just clumsiness getting them out. Our army surgeon says it’s because his left side bore the blow, not his right—though why that should be, I don’t know. Nor does the army surgeon. He simply insists that’s the usual pattern field surgeons see when heads are damaged. If the paralysis of the body is on the right, speech is obliterated. If the paralysis is on the left, speech is retained.”
“How extraordinary! Why doesn’t one hear this from our city physicians?” asked Scaurus.
“I suppose they don’t see enough broken heads.”
“True.” Scaurus took Sulla by the arm warmly. “Come home with me, Lucius Cornelius. Take a little wine and tell me absolutely everything that’s happened. I had thought you still with Lucius Julius in Campania.”
Not with every ounce of will could Sulla suppress his complete withdrawal. “I’d rather we went to my house, Marcus Aemilius. I am still in armor, and it’s hot.”
Scaurus sighed. “It is time we both forgot what happened so many years ago,” he said sincerely. “My wife is older, more settled, and much occupied with her children.”
“Then—your house it shall be.”
She was waiting in the atrium to receive them, as anxious to know the condition of Gaius Marius as everyone else in Rome. Now twenty-eight years of age, she knew the felicitude of an increasing rather than a fading beauty; a brown beauty as rich as a fur pelt, though the eyes she lifted to rest on Sulla’s face were the grey of the sea on a cloudy day.
It did not escape Sulla that, though Scaurus beamed upon her with genuine and obviously unquestioning affection, she was afraid of her husband, and did not see how he felt.
“Welcome, Lucius Cornelius,” she said colorlessly.
“I thank you, Caecilia Dalmatica.”
“There are refreshments laid out in your study, husband,” she said to Scaurus colorlessly. “Is Gaius Marius going to die?”
Sulla answered her, smiling easily now the first moment was gone; this was very different from seeing her in Marius’s house at a dinner party. “No, Caecilia Dalmatica. We haven’t seen the last of Gaius Marius yet, so much I can promise you.”
She sighed in simple relief. “Then I will leave you.”
The two men stood in the atrium until she disappeared, after which Scaurus conducted Sulla to his tablinum.
“Do you want command of the Marsic theater?” Scaurus asked, handing Sulla wine.
“I doubt the Senate would give it to me, Princeps Senatus.”
“Frankly, so do I. But do you want it?”
“No, I don’t. My career throughout the year of this war has been based in Campania aside from this special exercise with Gaius Marius, and I’d prefer to stay in the theater I know. Lucius Julius is expecting me back,” Sulla said, well aware what he intended to do when the new consuls were in office, but having no wish to make Scaurus a party to his plans.
“Are they your troops in Marius’s escort?”
“Yes. The other fifteen cohorts I sent directly to Campania. I’ll take the rest myself tomorrow.”
“Oh, I wish you were standing for consul!” said Scaurus. “It is the most miserable field in half a generation!”
“I’m standing with Quintus Pompeius Rufus at the end of next year,” said Sulla firmly.
“So I had heard. A pity.”
“I couldn’t win an election this year, Marcus Aemilius.”
“You could—if I threw my weight behind you.”
Sulla grinned sourly. “The offer comes too late. I’ll be too busy in Campania to don the toga Candida. Besides, I’d have to take pot luck with my colleague, whereas Quintus Pompeius and I will run as a team. My daughter is to marry his son.”
“Then I withdraw my offer. You are right. Rome will just have to muddle through this coming year. It will be a great pleasure to have relatives as consuls the following year. Harmony in the chair is a wonderful thing. And you’ll dominate Quintus Pompeius as easily as he’ll accept your domination.”
“So I think, Princeps Senatus. Election time is really the only time Lucius Julius can spare me, as he intends to wind hostilities down in order to return to Rome himself. I think I’ll marry my daughter to Quintus Pompeius’s son this December, even though she won’t be eighteen. She’s looking forward to it very much,” lied Sulla blandly, knowing perfectly well that he still had a most unwilling child on his hands, but trusting to Fortune.
His understanding of Cornelia Sulla’s attitude was reinforced when he came home some two hours later. Aelia greeted him with the news that Cornelia Sulla had tried to run away from home.
‘‘ Luckily her girl was too frightened not to report to me,’’ Aelia ended mournfully, for she loved her stepdaughter dearly, and for her stepdaughter’s sake wished she could have the marriage of her heart—a match with Young Marius.
“Just what did she think she was going to do, wandering around the war-torn countryside?” asked Sulla.
“I have no idea, Lucius Cornelius. I don’t think she had either. It was an impulse, is my guess.”
“Then the sooner she’s married to young Quintus Pompeius, the better,” said Sulla grimly. “I’ll see her now.”
“Here? In your study?”
“Here, Aelia. In my study.”
Knowing he didn’t appreciate her—nor appreciate her sympathy for Cornelia Sulla—Aelia gazed at her husband in mingled fear and pity. “Please, Lucius Cornelius, try not to be too hard on her!”
A petition Sulla ignored by turning his back.
Cornelia Sulla was brought to him looking much like a prisoner, placed as she was between two male household slaves.
“You can go,” he said curtly to her guardians, and let his cold gaze rest upon his daughter’s mutinous face, so exquisite with its mixture of his coloring and her mother’s beauty, save that her eyes were all her own, very large and vividly blue.
“And what have you got to say for yourself, girl?”
“I’m ready this time, Father. You can hit me until you kill me— I don’t care! Because I am not marrying Quintus Pompeius, and you can’t make me!”
“If I have to tie you and drug you, my girl, you will marry Quintus Pompeius,” said Sulla in those soft tones which preceded maximum violence.
But, for all her tears and tantrums, she was far more Sulla’s child than she was Julilla’s. Visibly she settled on her feet as if to ward off some frightful blow, and put sapphire glitters in her eyes. “I will not marry Quintus Pompeius!”
“By all the gods, Cornelia, you will!”
“I will not!”
Normally so much defiance would have produced an uncontrollable rage in Sulla; but now, perhaps because he saw something belonging to his dead son in her face, he found himself unable to be truly angry. He blew through his nose ominously. “Daughter, do you know who Pietas is?” he asked.
“Of course I know,” said Cornelia Sulla warily. “She’s Duty.”
“Enlarge on that definition, Cornelia.”
“She’s the goddess of Duty.”
“What kind of duty?”
“All kinds.”
“Including the duty children owe their parents, is that not so?” asked Sulla sweetly.
“Yes,” said Cornelia Sulla.
“To defy the paterfamilias is a frightful thing, Cornelia. Not only does it offend Pietas, but under the law you must obey the head of your family. I am the paterfamilias,’’ said Sulla sternly.
“My first duty is to myself,” she said heroically.
Sulla’s lips began to quiver. “It is not, daughter. Your first duty is to me. You are in my hand.”
“Hand or no hand, Father, I will not betray myself!”
The lips stopped trembling, opened; Sulla burst into a huge roar of laughter. “Oh, go away!” he said when he could, and yelled after her, still laughing, “You’ll do your duty or I’ll sell you into slavery! I can, there’s nothing to stop me!”
“I’m already a slave!” she called back.
What a soldier she would have made! When his amusement allowed it, Sulla sat down to write to that Greek citizen of Smyrna, Publius Rutilius Rufus.
And that is exactly what happened, Publius Rutilius. The impudent little rubbish rolled me up! And has left me with no alternative than to carry out threats which cannot advance my intention to have myself elected consul in alliance with Quintus Pompeius. The girl is no use to me dead or a slave—and no use to young Quintus Pompeius if I have to tie her up and drug her in order to bring her before the marriage celebrant! So what do I do? I am asking you very seriously, and very desperately—what do I do? I remember the legend that it was you solved Marcus Aurelius Cotta’s dilemma when he had to choose a husband for Aurelia. So here’s another marital dilemma for you to solve, O admired and esteemed counselor.
I admit that things here are in such a state that, were it not for my inability to marry my daughter off where I need to marry her off, I would not have stopped to write to you. But now I’ve begun and—provided, that is, that you have a solution for my dilemma!—I may as well tell you what’s happening.
Our Princeps Senatus I left beginning a letter of his own to you, so I don’t need to apprise you of Gaius Marius’s awful catastrophe. I shall confine myself to airing my hopes and fears for the future, and can at least look forward to being able to wear my toga praetexta and sit on my ivory curule chair when I’m consul, as the Senate has instructed its curule magistrates to don their full regalia following Gaius Marius’s—and my!—victory over Silo’s Marsians. Hopefully this means we’ve seen the last of these silly, empty gestures of mourning and alarm.
It seems highly likely at the moment that next year’s consuls will be Lucius Porcius Cato Licinianus and— what a horrible thought!—Gnaeus Pompeius Strabo. What a terrible pair! A puckered-up cat’s anus and an arrogant barbarian who can only look at the bridge of his own nose. I confess myself utterly at a loss to understand how or why some men come to the consulship. Clearly it is not enough to have been a good urban or foreign praetor. Or have a war record as long and illustrious as King Ptolemy’s pedigree. I am fast coming to the conclusion that the only really important factor is getting on side with the Ordo Equester. If the knights don’t like you, Publius Rutilius, you could be Romulus himself and not stand a chance in the consular elections. The knights put Gaius Marius in the consul’s chair six times, three of them in absentia. And they still like him! He’s good for business. Oh, they like a man to have ancestors too—but not enough to vote for him unless he’s either opened his moneybags very wide, or he’s offered them all sorts of added inducements like an easier loan market or inside news on everything the Senate contemplates doing.
I should have been consul years ago. If I had been a praetor years ago. And, yes, it was the Princeps Senatus who foiled me. But he did it by enlisting the knights, whole flocks of whom follow him, bleating like little lambs. So, you might say, I am coming to dislike the Ordo Equester more and more. Wouldn’t it be wonderful, I ask myself, to be in a position to do with them what I willed? Oh, I’d make them suffer, Publius Rutilius! On your behalf too.
Speaking of Pompey Strabo, he’s been very busy telling everyone in Rome how he’s covered himself in glory in Picenum. The real author of his relatively minor success, in my opinion, is Publius Sulpicius, who brought him an army from Italian Gaul and inflicted a nasty defeat upon a combined force of Picentes and Paeligni before ever he made contact with Pompey Strabo. Our cross-eyed friend, rot him, summered extremely comfortably locked up in Firmum Picenum. Anyway, now he’s out of his summer residence, Pompey Strabo is claiming all the credit for the victory over Titus Lafrenius, who died along with his men. Of Publius Sulpicius (who was there, and did most of the work), not a mention. And as if that were not enough, Pompey Strabo’s agents in Rome are making his battle sound a lot more significant than Gaius Marius’s actions against Marrucini and Marsi.
The war is on the turn. I know it in my bones.
I am sure I don’t have to detail the new enfranchisement law Lucius Julius Caesar intends to promulgate in December. Scaurus’s letter is full of it, I imagine. I gave the Princeps Senatus the news of this law scant hours ago, thinking he’d begin to roar in outrage. Instead, he was quite pleased. He thinks the idea of dangling the citizenship has a lot of merit, provided it isn’t extended to those in arms against us. Etruria and Umbria prey upon him; he feels the trouble in both areas would die down the moment all Etrurians and Umbrians were given the vote. Try though I did, I couldn’t persuade him that Lucius Julius’s law would only be the beginning—that before too long every Italian would be a Roman citizen, no matter how much and how fresh the Roman blood on his sword. I ask you, Publius Rutilius—what have we been fighting for?
Write back at once, tell me how to deal with girls.
Sulla included his letter to Rutilius Rufus in the packet the Princeps Senatus sent to Smyrna by special courier. That meant Rutilius Rufus would probably receive the packet within a month, and his answer would be carried back by the same courier over a similar period of time.
In fact, Sulla had his answer by the end of November. He was still in Campania, shoring up the convalescent Lucius Caesar, who had been awarded a triumph by the sycophantic Senate for his victory over Mutilus at Acerrae; that the two armies had returned to Acerrae and at the time of the decree were actively engaged in fresh hostilities was something the Senate preferred to ignore. The reason for the awarding of this triumph and no other, said the Senate, was that Lucius Caesar’s troops had hailed him imperator on the field. When Pompey Strabo heard about it his agents created such a fuss that the Senate then had to decree a triumph for Pompey Strabo as well. How low are we descended? asked Sulla of himself. To triumph over Italians is no triumph.
This signal honor had no power to excite Lucius Caesar. When Sulla asked him how he wished his triumph organized, he simply looked surprised, then said,
“Since there are no spoils, it will require no organization. I shall lead my army through Rome, that’s all.”
The winter hiatus had opened, and Acerrae it seemed was not much inconvenienced by the presence of two large armies outside its gates. While Lucius Caesar wrestled with the early drafts of his enfranchisement law, Sulla went to Capua to help Catulus Caesar and Metellus Pius the Piglet reorder the legions more than decimated by the second action in the Melfa Gorge; it was there in Capua that Rutilius Rufus’s letter found him.
My dear Lucius Cornelius, why is it that fathers can never seem to find the right way to handle their daughters? I despair! Not, mind you, that I had any trouble with my girl. When I married her to Lucius Calpurnius Piso, she was in raptures. This was undoubtedly because she was such a plain little thing, and not well dowered; her chief worry was that her tata wouldn’t manage to find her a husband at all. If I had brought her home that repellent son of Sextus Perquitienus’s, she would have swooned. As it was, when I conjured Lucius Piso up, she deemed him a gift straight from the gods, and has not stopped thanking me since. And so happy has the union been, in fact, that it seems the next generation plans to do the same—my son’s daughter is to marry my daughter’s son when they are old enough. Yes, yes, I know what old Caesar Grandfather used to say, but these will be the first lot of first cousins to marry on either side. They will litter excellent pups.
The answer to your dilemma, Lucius Cornelius, is really ridiculously simple. All it requires is the connivance of Aelia, for you yourself must appear to have no part in it. Let Aelia commence by dropping the girl some heavy hints that you are changing your mind about the marriage, that you are thinking of looking elsewhere. Aelia must drop a few names too—names of absolutely repulsive fellows, like the son of Sextus Perquitienus. The girl will find all this most unwelcome.
Gaius Marius’s moribund condition is—pardon the pun, do!—a stroke of good luck, for Young Marius can enter into no marriage while the paterfamilias is incapacitated. You see, it is essential that Cornelia Sulla be given the chance to meet privately with Young Marius. After she learns that her husband may be worse by far than young Quintus Pompeius. Have Aelia take the girl with her to visit Julia at a time when Young Marius is home, and let no impediment prevent their meeting—you had better make sure Julia understands what is afoot!
Now Young Marius is a very spoiled and self-centered sort of fellow. Believe me, Lucius Cornelius, he will do or say nothing to endear himself to your lovesick child. Aside from his father’s illness, the chief thing on his mind at the moment is who is going to have the honor of enduring him as a staff cadet. He is quite intelligent enough to know that whoever it is won’t let him get away with a tenth as much as his father did—but some commanders are more lenient than others. I gather from Scaurus’s letter that no one wants him, no one is willing to ask for him personally, and that his fate rests entirely upon the whim of the contubernalis committee. My little network of informants tells me Young Marius is dabbling heavily in Women and Wine, not necessarily in that order. Yet one more reason why Young Marius won’t fall into an ecstatic transport at seeing Cornelia Sulla, relic of his childhood—for whom, when he was fifteen or sixteen, he cherished tender thoughts—and probably used her good nature then in ways she never noticed. He is not much different now than he was then. The difference is that he thinks he is, and she thinks he’s not. Believe me, Lucius Cornelius, he will commit every possible blunder, and she will irritate him into the bargain.
Once the girl has had her interview with Young Marius, tell Aelia to harp a little harder on the fact that she thinks you’re veering away from the Pompeius Rufus alliance—that you need the backing of a very rich knight.
And now I shall tell you an invaluable secret about women, Lucius Cornelius. A woman may have decided adamantly that she doesn’t want some suitor—yet if that suitor should suddenly withdraw for reasons other than her spurning of his suit, a woman inevitably decides to take a closer look at the catch which is busy swimming away. After all, your girl has never even seen her fish! Aelia must produce some impressive reason why Cornelia Sulla must attend a dinner at the house of Quintus Pompeius Rufus—the father is in Rome on furlough, or the mother is sick, or anything. Could dear Cornelia Sulla possibly see her way to swallowing her dislike just enough to eat one meal in the presence of her despised fish? I guarantee you, Lucius Cornelius, that she will agree. And—since I have seen her fish—I am absolutely confident your girl will change her mind. He is exactly the sort to appeal to her. She’ll always be cleverer than he, and have no trouble establishing herself as the head of the household. Irresistible! She is so like you. In some ways.
Sulla put the letter down, head spinning. Simple? How could Publius Rutilius concoct such a tortuous scheme as this, yet have the gall to term it simple? Military maneuvers were less complex! However, it was worth a try. Anything was worth a try. So he resumed his reading in a slightly happier frame of mind, anxious to see what else Rutilius Rufus had to say.
Matters in my small corner of our vast world are not good. I suppose no one in Rome these days has the time or the interest to follow events in Asia Minor. But somewhere, no doubt, there is a report lying in the Senate offices which by now our Princeps Senatus will have seen. He will also see the letter I have sent to him by the same courier as this one.
There is a Pontic puppet on the throne of Bithynia. Yes, the moment he was sure Rome’s back was turned, King Mithridates invaded Bithynia! Ostensibly the leader of the invasion was Socrates, the younger brother of King Nicomedes the Third—which accounts for the fact that Bithynia is still calling itself a free country, having exchanged King Nicomedes for King Socrates. It seems a contradiction in terms to call a king Socrates, doesn’t it? Can you imagine Socrates of Athens permitting himself to be crowned a king? However, no one in Asia Province is under any delusion that Bithynia is “free.” In all save name, Bithynia is now the fief of Mithridates of Pontus—who must, incidentally, be fuming at the dilatory conduct of King Socrates! For King Socrates let King Nicomedes get away. Despite his accumulation of years, Nicomedes skipped across the Hellespont as nimbly as a goat; rumor here in Smyrna has it that he is en route for Rome, there to complain about the loss of the throne the Senate and People of Rome graciously let him sit on. You’ll see him in Rome before the end of the year, burdened down with a large part of the contents of the Bithynian treasury.
And—as if one wasn’t bad enough!—there is now a Pontic puppet upon the throne of Cappadocia. Mithridates and Tigranes rode in tandem to Eusebeia Mazaca and installed yet another son of Mithridates on the throne. This one is another Ariarathes, but probably not the Ariarathes whom Gaius Marius interviewed. However, King Ariobarzanes was just as nimble as King Nicomedes of Bithynia. He skipped off too, well ahead of his pursuers. And he will reach Rome with a petition in his hands not long after Nicomedes. Alas, he is much poorer!
Lucius Cornelius, there is sore trouble brewing for our Asia Province, I am convinced of it. And there are many in Asia Province who have not forgotten the heyday of the publicani. Many who loathe the word Rome. Thus is King Mithridates being actively wooed in some quarters here. I very much fear that if—or more likely when—he makes a move to steal our Asia Province, he will be welcomed with open arms.
All this is not your problem, I know. It will fall to Scaurus. Who is not very well, he tells me.
By now you will be hard at your war games in Campania. I agree with you, the course is turning. The poor, poor Italians! Citizenship or not, they will remain unforgiven for many generations to come.
Do let me know how things turn out for your girl. I predict that Love will take its course.
Rather than try to explain Publius Rutilius Rufus’s ploy to his wife, Sulla simply sent that section of the letter to Aelia in Rome with an accompanying note advising her to do exactly as Rutilius Rufus directed—provided she could make head from tail of it.
Apparently Aelia had no trouble understanding her orders. When Sulla arrived in Rome with Lucius Caesar, he found his house redolent with domestic harmony, a beaming and affectionate daughter, and wedding plans.
“It all turned out exactly as Publius Rutilius said it would,” said Aelia happily. “Young Marius was a brute to her when she saw him. Poor little thing! She went with me to Gaius Marius’s house consumed with love and pity and sure Young Marius would fall onto her breast to cry upon her shoulder. Instead, she found him furious because he had been ordered by the cadet committee of the Senate to remain on the staff of his old command. Presumably the general replacing Gaius Marius will be one of the new consuls, and Young Marius hates both of them. I believe he tried to get himself posted to you, but got a very cold refusal from the committee.”
“Not as cold as his welcome would have been had he come to me,” said Sulla grimly.
“I think what was making him angriest was the fact that no one wanted him. Of course he’s blaming his father’s unpopularity for that, but in his heart I rather think he suspects it’s due to his own shortcomings.” Aelia jigged in a small triumph. “He didn’t want Cornelia’s sympathy and he didn’t want adolescent adoration. So he was—if I am to believe Cornelia—utterly vile to her.”
“So she decided to marry young Quintus Pompeius.”
“Not at once, Lucius Cornelius! I let her weep for two days first. Then I said that, since it seemed there would be no pressure from you about marriage to young Quintus Pompeius, she might like to go to dinner at his house. Just to see what he was like. Just to satisfy her curiosity.”
Sulla was grinning. “What happened?”
“They looked at each other and liked what they saw. At dinner they were opposite each other, and talked away like old friends.” So delighted was she that Aelia took her husband’s hand, squeezed it. “You were wise not to let Quintus Pompeius know our daughter was an unwilling bride. The whole family was delighted with her.’’
Sulla snatched his hand away. “The wedding’s set?”
Face clouding, Aelia nodded. “As soon as the elections are over.” She gazed up at Sulla with big sad eyes. “Dear Lucius Cornelius, why don’t you like me? I try so hard!”
His expression darkened, he moved away. “Frankly, Aelia, for no other reason than you bore me.”
And he was gone. She stood quite still, conscious only of a troubled joy; he hadn’t said he wanted to divorce her. Stale bread was definitely preferable to no bread.
*
The news that Aesernia had finally surrendered to the Samnites came not long after Lucius Caesar and Sulla arrived in Rome. The city had literally starved, reduced to eating every dog, cat, mule, donkey, horse, sheep and goat it owned before capitulating. Marcus Claudius Marcellus had handed Aesernia over personally, then disappeared, no one knew where. Except the Samnites.
“He’s dead,” said Lucius Caesar.
“You’re probably right,” said Sulla.
Lucius Caesar, of course, would not be returning to the field. His term as consul was drawing to an end and he was hoping to stand for censor in the spring, so had no ambition to continue as a legate to the new commander-in-chief of the southern theater.
The incoming tribunes of the plebs were somewhat stronger than of recent years, perhaps because all Rome was now talking about the enfranchisement law Lucius Caesar was rumored to be going to introduce; they were, however, on the progressive side, and mostly in favor of lenient treatment for the Italians. The President of the College was a Lucius Calpurnius Piso who had a second cognomen, Frugi, to distinguish his part of the Calpurnius Piso clan from the Calpurnii Pisones who had allied themselves in marriage with Publius Rutilius Rufus, and bore the second cognomen Caesoninus. A forceful man of pronounced conservative leanings, Piso Frugi had already announced that he would on principle oppose the two most radical tribunes of the plebs, Gaius Papirius Carbo and Marcus Plautius Silvanus, if they tried to ignore the limitations of Lucius Caesar’s bill and give the citizenship to Italians actively engaged in war as well; that he had agreed not to oppose Lucius Caesar’s bill was thanks to the persuasive talking of Scaurus and others he respected. Thus interest in Forum doings, almost nonexistent since the beginning of the war, started to revive; the coming year promised to contain interesting political contention.
More depressing by far were the Centuriate elections, at least at the consular level. The two leading contenders had been accepted for two months as the winners, and now came in the winners; that Gnaeus Pompeius Strabo was senior consul and Lucius Porcius Cato Licinianus his junior everyone attributed to the fact that Pompey Strabo celebrated a triumph scant days before the elections.
“These triumphs are pathetic,” said Scaurus Princeps Senatus to Lucius Cornelius Sulla. “First Lucius Julius, now Gnaeus Pompeius, if you please! I feel very old.”
He also looked very old, thought Sulla, and experienced a frisson of alarm; if the lack of Gaius Marius promised torpid and unimaginative activity on the battlefield, what would the lack of Marcus Aemilius Scaurus do to that other battlefield, the Forum Romanum? Who for instance would look after those minuscule yet ultimately very important foreign matters Rome always found herself embroiled in? Who would put conceited fools like Philippus and arrogant upstarts like Quintus Varius in their places? Who would face up to whatever came so fearlessly, so sure of his own ability and superiority? The truth was that ever since Gaius Marius’s stroke Scaurus had visibly diminished; scrap and snarl though they had for over forty years, they needed each other.
“Marcus Aemilius, look after yourself!” said Sulla with sudden urgency, visited by a premonition.
The green eyes twinkled. “We all have to go some time!”
“True. But in your case, not yet. Rome needs you. Otherwise we’ll be left to the tender mercies of Lucius Julius Caesar and Lucius Marcius Philippus—what a fate!”
Scaurus started to laugh. “Is that the worst fate can befall Rome?’’ he asked, and put his head to one side like a skinny, ancient, plucked fowl. “In some ways I approve of you tremendously, Lucius Cornelius. Yet in other ways I have a feeling Rome might fare worse at your hands than at Philippus’s.” He wiggled the fingers of one hand. “You may not be a natural Military Man, but most of your years in the Senate have been spent in the army. And I have noticed that many years of military service make autocrats out of senators. Like Gaius Marius. When they attain high political office, they become impatient of the normal political restraints.” ‘
They were standing outside the Sosius bookshop on the Argiletum, where one of Rome’s best food stalls had been sitting for decades. So as they talked they were eating tarts filled with raisins and honeyed custard; a bright-eyed urchin watched them closely, ready to be ready with an offer of a basin of warm water and a cloth—the tarts were juicy and sticky.
“When my time comes, Marcus Aemilius, how Rome fares at my hands depends upon what sort of Rome she is. One thing I can promise you—I will not see Rome disgrace our ancestors. Nor will I see Rome dominated by the likes of a Saturninus,” said Sulla harshly.
Scaurus finished his food, demonstrating to the urchin that he was aware of his presence by snapping sticky fingers before the urchin could rush forward unsolicited. Paying strict attention to the process, he washed and dried his hands, and gave the boy a whole sestertius. Then, while Sulla followed suit (and gave the boy a much smaller coin), he resumed talking.
“Once I had a son,” he said without a tremor, “but that son was unsatisfactory. A weakling and a coward, for all he was in nature a nice young man. Now I have another son, too young to know what stuff he’s made of. Yet my first experience taught me one thing, Lucius Cornelius. No matter how illustrious our ancestors might have been, in the end we still come to depend upon our progeny.”
Sulla’s face twisted. “My son is dead too, but I have no other,” he said.
“In which case, it was meant.”
“Do you not think it is all random, Princeps Senatus?”
“No, I do not. I have been here to contain Gaius Marius. Rome needed me to do that—and here I was, Rome’s to command. These days I see you more as a Marius than as a Scaurus, somehow. And there is no one I can see on the horizon to contain you. Which might prove more dangerous to the mos maiorum than a thousand like Saturninus,” said Scaurus.
“I promise you, Marcus Aemilius, that Rome stands in no danger from me.” Sulla thought about that statement, and qualified it. “Your Rome, I mean. Not Saturninus’s.”
“I sincerely hope so, Lucius Cornelius.”
They moved off in the direction of the Senate.
“I gather Cato Licinianus has elected to run things in Campania,” said Scaurus. “He’s a more difficult man to deal with than Lucius Julius Caesar—just as insecure, but more overbearing.”
“He won’t trouble me,” said Sulla tranquilly. “Gaius Marius called him a pea, and his campaign in Etruria pea-sized. I know how to deal with a pea.”
“How?”
“Squash it.”
“They won’t give you the command, you know. I did try.”
“It doesn’t matter in the least,” said Sulla, smiling. “I’ll take the command when I squash the pea.”
From another man it might have sounded vainglorious; Scaurus would have whooped with laughter. From Sulla it sounded ominously prescient; Scaurus shuddered instead.