3

Sulla arrived in Rome early in December, having no idea when the elections would be held; after the death of Asellio Rome had no urban praetor, and people were saying that the sole consul, Pompey Strabo, would come when he felt like coming, not a moment before. Under normal circumstances this would have driven Sulla to despair. But there could be no doubt in anyone’s mind who was going to be the next senior consul. Sulla had attained true fame overnight. Men he didn’t know greeted him like a brother, women smiled and issued invitations out of the corners of their eyes, the rabble cheered him—and he had been elected an augur in absentia to replace the dead Asellio. All of Rome firmly believed that he, Lucius Cornelius Sulla, had won the war against the Italians. Not Gaius Marius. Not Gnaeus Pompeius Strabo. Sulla. Sulla, Sulla!

The Senate had never got around to formally appointing him commander-in-chief of the southern theater after Cato the Consul died; everything he had done, he had done as the legate of a dead man. However, he would shortly be the new senior consul—and then the Senate would have to give him whatever command he asked for. The embarrassment of certain senatorial leaders like Lucius Marcius Philippus at this legatal oversight quite amused Sulla when he met them. Clearly they had considered him a lightweight, incapable of performing miracles. Now he was everybody’s hero.

One of the first visits he paid after returning to Rome was to Gaius Marius, whom he found so much improved he was astonished. With the old man was the eleven-year-old Gaius Julius Caesar Junior, now very nearly Sulla’s height, though not yet pronouncedly pubescent. Just as striking, just as intelligent, and more of everything else than the boy had been during those past visits Sulla had paid Aurelia. He had been looking after Marius for a year, and he had listened with the keen ears of a wild creature to every word the Master had said. Heard it all, forgotten nothing.

Sulla learned from Marius of the near-downfall of Young Marius, still on duty with Cinna and Comutus against the Marsi, a quieter and more responsible Young Marius than of yore. Sulla also learned of the near-fall of Young Caesar, who sat as the story was told smiling gently and looking into nothing. The presence of Lucius Decumius as a part of the episode had alerted Sulla immediately—and surprised him. Not like Gaius Marius! What was the world coming to when Gaius Marius stooped to hiring a professional assassin? So patently, blatantly accidental had the death of Publius Claudius Pulcher been that Sulla knew it was no accident. Only how had the deed been done? And how did Young Caesar fit into it? Was it really possible that this— this child had gambled his own life to push Publius Claudius Pulcher over a cliff? No! Not even a Sulla had so much confidence when it came to murder.

Bending his unsettling gaze on the boy while Marius prattled on (clearly he believed the intervention of Lucius Decumius had not been necessary), Sulla concentrated upon putting fear into Young Caesar. But the boy, feeling those sunless rays, simply looked up and across at Sulla, no trace of fear in his eyes. Not even faint apprehension. Nor was there a smile; Young Caesar stared at Sulla with an acute and sober interest. He knows me for what I am! said Sulla to himself—but, Young Caesar, I know you for what you are too! And may the Great God preserve Rome from both of us.

A generous man, Marius experienced nothing but joy at Sulla’s success. Even the winning of the Grass Crown— the only military decoration which had escaped Marius’s net—was applauded without resentment or envy.

“What have you to say now about generalship of the learned variety?” asked Sulla provocatively.

“I say, Lucius Cornelius, that I was wrong. Oh, not about learned generalship! No, I was wrong to think you don’t have it in your bones. You do, you do. To send Gaius Cosconius by water to Apulia was inspired, and your pincer action was handled in a way no man—however superbly tutored!—could have, were he not a born general from the inside of his very marrow.”

An answer which should have made Lucius Cornelius Sulla absolutely happy and completely vindicated. Yet it didn’t. For Sulla understood that Marius still considered himself the better general, was convinced he could have subdued southern Italy faster and better. What do I have to do to make this stubborn old donkey see that he’s met his match? cried Sulla within himself, betraying his thoughts in no external way. And felt his hackles stir, and looked at Young Caesar, and read in his eyes the knowledge of that unvoiced question.

“What do you think, Young Caesar?” asked Sulla.

“I am consumed with admiration, Lucius Cornelius.”

“A soft answer.”

“An honest one.”

“Come on, young man, I’ll take you home.”

They walked at first in silence, Sulla wearing his stark white candidate’s toga, the boy his purple-bordered child’s toga, with his bulla-amulet to ward off evil on a thong about his neck. And at first Sulla thought all the smiles and nods were for himself, so famous had he become, until it was borne upon him that a good many of them were actually aimed at the boy.

“How does everyone know you, Young Caesar?”

“Only reflected glory, Lucius Cornelius. I go everywhere with Gaius Marius, you see.”

“Not at all for yourself?”

“This close to the Forum I am simply Gaius Marius’s boy. Once we enter the Subura, I’m known for myself.”

“Is your father at home?”

“No, he’s still with Publius Sulpicius and Gaius Baebius before Asculum Picentum,” said the boy.

“Then he’ll be home very soon. That army’s marched.”

“I suppose he will.”

“Not looking forward to seeing your father?”

“Yes, of course I am,” said Young Caesar easily.

“Do you remember your cousin—my son?”

The boy’s face lit up; now the enthusiasm was genuine. “How could I ever forget him? He was so nice! When he died I wrote him a poem.”

“What did it say? Can you recite it to me?”

Young Caesar shook his head. “I wasn’t very good in those days, so I won’t recite it if you don’t mind. One day I’ll write him a better one and then I’ll give you a copy for yourself.’’

How stupid, to be led into reopening the wound because he was finding it awkward to make conversation with an eleven-year-old boy! Sulla fell silent, fighting tears.

As usual Aurelia was busy at her desk, but she came the moment Eutychus told her who had brought her son home. When they settled in the reception room Young Caesar remained with them, watching his mother closely. Now what gnat is flying round in his mind? wondered Sulla, irked because the boy’s presence prevented his quizzing Aurelia about the things he wanted to. Luckily she perceived his irritation and soon dismissed her son, who went with reluctance.

“What’s the matter with him?”

“I suspect Gaius Marius has said something or other to give Gaius Julius an erroneous idea about my friendship with you, Lucius Cornelius,” Aurelia said calmly.

“Ye gods!—the old villain! How dare he!”

The beautiful Aurelia laughed merrily. “Oh, I’ve grown past letting things like that worry me,” she said. “I know for a fact that when my uncle Publius Rutilius wrote to Gaius Marius in Asia Minor with the news that his niece had just been divorced by her husband after producing a red-haired son, Julia and Gaius Marius jumped to the conclusion that the niece was me—and the baby yours.”

Now it was Sulla’s turn to laugh. “Do they know so little about you? Your defenses are harder to break down than Nola’s.”

“True. Not that you haven’t tried.”

“I’m a man, built like any other.”

“I disagree. You should have hay tied to that horn!”

Listening from his secret hiding place above the study’s false ceiling, Young Caesar was conscious of an enormous relief—his mother was a virtuous woman after all. But then that emotion was chased out of his mind by another, much harder to deal with—why did she never show this side of herself to him! There she sat—laughing—relaxed—engaged in a kind of banter he was old enough to label as adultly worldly. Liking that repellent man! Saying things to him that indicated a very old and enduring friendship. Sulla’s lover she might not be, but there was an intimacy between them that Young Caesar knew she did not share with her husband. His father. Dashing his tears away impatiently, he settled stealthily to lie full length and disciplined his mind to the detachment he could summon these days when he tried very hard. Forget she is your mother, Gaius Julius Caesar Junior! Forget how much you detest her friend Sulla! Listen to them and learn.

“You will be consul very soon,” she was saying.

“At fifty-two. Older than Gaius Marius was.”

“And a grandfather! Have you seen the baby yet?”

“Oh, Aurelia, please! Sooner or later I suppose I’ll have to go around to Quintus Pompeius’s house with Aelia on my arm—and have dinner—and chuck the child under the chin. But why should I care enough about the birth of a daughter to a daughter to want to rush round and see the sprog at once?”

“Little Pompeia is absolutely beautiful.”

“Then may she wreak as much havoc as Helen of Troy!”

“Don’t say that! I’ve always thought poor Helen led a most unhappy life. A chattel. A bed-toy,” said Aurelia strongly.

“Women are chattels,” said Sulla, smiling.

“I am not! I have my own property and my own activities.”

Sulla’s tone changed. “The siege of Asculum Picentum is no more. Gaius Julius will be home any day. And then what happens to all this brave talk?”

“Don’t, Lucius Cornelius! Though I love him dearly, I dread his walking through the door. He will find fault with everything from the children to my role as landlady, and I will try desperately to please him until he issues some order I cannot countenance!”

“At which point, my poor Aurelia, you will tell him he’s wrong, and the unpleasantness will start,” said Sulla tenderly.

“Would you put up with me?” she demanded fiercely.

“Not if you were the last woman left alive, Aurelia.”

“Whereas Gaius Julius does put up with me.”

“Huh! What a world!”

“Oh, stop being flippant!” she snapped.

“Then I’ll change the subject,” said Sulla, and leaned back on both hands. “How is Scaurus’s widow?”

The purple eyes glistened. “Ecastor! Still interested?”

“Definitely.”

“I believe she’s under the guardianship of a relatively young man—Livius Drusus’s brother, Mamercus Aemilius Lepidus Livianus.”

“I know him. He assists Quintus Lutatius in Capua, but he fought with Titus Didius at Herculaneum and he went to Lucania with the Gabinii. A sturdy sort of fellow—the kind who is thought the salt of the earth by everybody.” He sat up, looking suddenly as alert as a cat sighting prey. “Is that how the wind lies? Is she going to marry Lepidus Livianus?”

Aurelia laughed. “I doubt it! He’s married to a rather nasty woman who keeps her foot on him all the time. The Claudia who is a sister of Appius Claudius Pulcher—you know, his wife made Lucius Julius clean out the temple of Juno Sospita in his toga. She died in childbirth two months later.”

“She’s my Dalmatica’s cousin—the dead Balearica, I mean,” said Sulla with a grin.

“Everyone’s her cousin,” said Aurelia.

Sulla looked brisk. “Do you think my Dalmatica would be interested in me these days?”

Aurelia shook her head. “I have no idea! That is an honest answer, Lucius Cornelius. I have no contact with my woman peers whatsoever beyond my immediate family.”

“Then perhaps you should cultivate her acquaintance when your husband comes home. You’ll definitely have more spare time,” said Sulla slyly.

“Enough, Lucius Cornelius! You can go home for that.”

They walked to the door together. As soon as their forms had disappeared from the scope of Young Caesar’s spyhole, he came down from the ceiling and was gone.

“Will you cultivate Dalmatica for me?” Sulla asked as his hostess held open the front door.

“No, I will not,” said Aurelia. “If you’re so interested, you cultivate her. Though I can tell you that a divorce from Aelia will make you a very unpopular man.”

“I’ve been unpopular before. Vale.”

*

The tribal elections were held without the presence of the consul after the Senate conferred the task of scrutineer upon Metellus Pius the Piglet, who was a praetor and had come to Rome with Sulla. That the tribunes of the plebs were going to be a conservative lot was obvious when none other than Publius Sulpicius Rufus came in first and Publius Antistius not far behind him. Sulpicius had secured his release from Pompey Strabo; having made an excellent reputation in the field as a commander against the Picentes, Sulpicius now wished to make a political reputation. Rhetorical and forensic reputations he already possessed, having had a brilliant Forum career as a youth. Known as far and away the most promising orator among the younger men, like the dead Crassus Orator he affected the Asianic style, and was as gracefully calculated in his gestures as he was golden of voice, language, and rhetorical devices. His most famous case had been his prosecution of Gaius Norbanus for illegally convicting Caepio the Consul of Gold of Tolosa fame; that he had lost had not harmed his reputation in the least. A great friend of Marcus Livius Drusus’s—though he did not support enfranchisement for the Italians—he had since Drusus’s death drawn close to Quintus Pompeius Rufus, Sulla’s running mate in the coming consular elections. That he was now the President of the College of Tribunes of the Plebs did not bode well for tribunician antics of demagogue kind. And, in fact, it looked as if not one of the ten who were elected was of the demagogue kind, nor was the election of the college followed by a spate of controversial new legislation. More promising was the installation of Quintus Caecilius Metellus Celer as a plebeian aedile; very rich, he was rumored to be planning wonderful games for the war-weary city.

With the Piglet presiding again, the Centuries met on the Campus Martius to hear the consular and the praetorian candidates declare themselves. When Sulla and his colleague Quintus Pompeius Rufus announced a joint candidacy, the cheers were deafening. But when Gaius Julius Caesar Strabo Vopiscus Sesquiculus announced his intention to contest the consular elections, there was a stunned silence.

“You can’t!” said Metellus Pius in a winded voice. “You haven’t been praetor yet!”

“It is my contention that there is nothing on the tablets to prevent a man’s seeking the consulship before he is praetor,” said Caesar Strabo, and produced a screed so long that the audience groaned. “I have here a dissertation which I shall read from beginning to end to prove my contention beyond all argument.”

“Roll it up and don’t bother, Gaius Julius Strabo!” called the new tribune of the plebs Sulpicius from the crowd below the candidates’ platform. “I interpose my veto! You may not run.”

“Oh, come, Publius Sulpicius! Let us try the law for once instead of using it to try people!” cried Caesar Strabo.

“I veto your candidacy, Gaius Julius Strabo. Come down from there and join your peers,” said Sulpicius firmly.

“Then I declare my candidacy for praetor!”.

“Not this year,” Sulpicius said. “I veto that too.”

Sometimes the younger brother of Quintus Lutatius Catulus Caesar and Lucius Julius Caesar the censor could be vicious and his temper lead him into difficulties, but today Caesar Strabo merely shrugged, grinned, and walked down quite happily to stand with Sulpicius.

“Fool! Why did you do that?” asked Sulpicius.

“It might have worked if you hadn’t been here.”

“I would have killed you first,” said a new voice.

Caesar Strabo turned, saw that the voice belonged to the young man Gaius Flavius Fimbria, and sneered. “Pull your head in! You couldn’t kill a fly, you money-hungry cretin!’’

“No, no!” said Sulpicius quickly, putting himself between them. “Go away, Gaius Flavius! Go on, go away! Shoo! Leave the governing of Rome to your seniors—and your betters.”

Caesar Strabo laughed, Fimbria slunk away.

“He’s a nasty piece of work, young and all though he may be,” said Sulpicius. “He’s never forgiven you for prosecuting Varius.”

“I’m not surprised,” said Caesar Strabo. “When Varius died, he lost his only visible means of support.”

There were to be no more surprises; once all the nominations for consul and praetor were in, everyone went home to wait with what patience he could muster for the appearance of the consul, Gnaeus Pompeius Strabo.

*

He did not return to Rome until almost the end of December, then insisted upon celebrating his triumph before he held any elections. That he had delayed his appearance in Rome was due to a brilliant idea he had conceived after the capture of Asculum Picentum. His triumphal parade (of course he was triumphing) would be a poor sort of affair; no spoils to display, no fascinatingly exotic floats depicting tableaux of sights and peoples alien to the inhabitants of Rome. At which point he had his brilliant idea. He would display thousands of male Italian children in his parade! His troops were put to scouring the countryside, and in time several thousand Italian boys aged between four and twelve were rounded up. So when he rode in his triumphal chariot along the prescribed route through the streets of Rome, he was preceded by a legion of little lads shuffling along; the sight was awesome, if only because it indicated how many Italian men had lost their lives through the agency of Gnaeus Pompeius Strabo.

The curule elections were held a scant three days before the New Year. Lucius Cornelius Sulla was returned as senior consul, with his friend Quintus Pompeius Rufus as his junior colleague. Two men with red hair from opposite ends of the Roman nobleman spectrum. Rome looked forward to having a team in office for a change, and hoped that some of the damage due to the war would be repaired.

It was to be a six-praetor year, which meant that most of the governors of overseas provinces were prorogued: Gaius Sentius and his legate Quintus Bruttius Sura in Macedonia; Publius Servilius Vatia and his legates Gaius Coelius and Quintus Sertorius in the Gauls; Gaius Cassius in Asia Province; Quintus Oppius in Cilicia; Gaius Valerius Flaccus in Spain; the new praetor Gaius Norbanus was sent to Sicily, and another new praetor, Publius Sextilius, was sent to Africa. The urban praetor was a very elderly man, Marcus Junius Brutus. He had a son just admitted to the Senate, but he had announced himself a candidate for praetor despite lifelong ill health because, he said, Rome needed decent men in office when so many decent men were in the field and unavailable. The praetor peregrinus was a plebeian Servilius of the Augur’s family.

*

New Year’s Day dawned bright and blue, and the omens of the night watch had been auspicious. It was perhaps not surprising that, after two years of dread and fear, all of Rome decided to turn out to watch the new consuls inaugurated. Everyone could see complete victory against the Italians looming, and there were many who hoped the new consuls would find the time now to deal with the city’s appalling financial troubles.

Returned to his house from the night watch, Lucius Cornelius Sulla had his purple-bordered toga draped around him, and with his own hands put on his Grass Crown. He sallied forth from his house to relish the novelty of walking behind no less than twelve togate lictors who carried on their shoulders the bundle of rods ritually bound with red leather thongs. Ahead of him went the knights who had chosen to escort him rather than his colleague, and behind him walked the senators, including his dear friend the Piglet.

This is my day, he told himself as the huge crowd sighed and then voiced its approval at sight of the Grass Crown. For the first time in my life I have no rivals and no peers. I am the senior consul, I have won the war against the Italians, I wear the Grass Crown. I am greater than a king.

The two processions originating at the houses of the new consuls joined up at the foot of the Clivus Palatinus where the old Porta Mugonia still stood, a relic of the days when Romulus had walled his Palatine city. From there, six thousand men wended their way in solemn order across the Velia and down the Clivus Sacer into the lower Forum, most of them knights with the narrow stripe—the angustus clavus—on their tunics, a thinned Senate following behind the consuls and their lictors. And everywhere spectators cheered; they were perched on the front walls of the Forum houses, the arcade and upper roofs of the basilicas, the roofs of those temples offering a view, every set of steps leading up onto the Palatine, all the temple vestibules and steps, the roofs of the Via Nova taverns and shops, the loggias of the great houses of Palatine and Capitol facing the Forum. People. People everywhere. Cheering the man wearing the Grass Crown, a wreath most of them had never seen.

Sulla walked with a regal dignity he had not owned before, acknowledging the admiration by inclining his head very slightly only, no smile touching his lips, no smugness or glee in his eyes. This was the dream made real; this was his day. One of the things he found fascinating was that he actually saw individual people in the vast crowds—a beautiful woman, an old man, a child perched on someone’s shoulders, some outlandish foreigner—and Metrobius. Almost he stopped, forced himself onward. Just a face in the crowd. Loyal and discreet as always. No sign of a special relationship showed on his darkly handsome face, save perhaps in his eyes, though no one except Sulla could have known it. Sad eyes. And then he was gone, he was behind. He was in the past.

As the knights reached the area bordering the well of the Comitia and turned left to walk between the temple of Saturn and the vaulted arcade opposite housing the Twelve Gods, they paused, stopped, swung their heads toward the Clivus Argentarius and began to cheer in an acclamation far louder than that they had accorded Sulla. He heard but couldn’t see, and was conscious of sweat crawling between his shoulder blades. Someone was stealing his crowd! For the crowd too had turned from every rooftop and tier of steps toward the same place, their cheers swelling amid a swaying sea of hands like water weeds.

No greater effort had Sulla ever had cause to make than the one he made now—no change in his expression, no diminution in the royal inclinations of his head, not even a flicker of feeling in his eyes. The procession started to move again; across the lower Forum he walked behind his lictors, never once craning his neck to verify what awaited him at the bottom of the Clivus Argentarius. What had stolen his crowd. Was stealing his day. His day!

And there he was. Gaius Marius. Accompanied by the boy. Clad in toga praetexta. Waiting to join the ranks of the curule senators who immediately followed Sulla and Pompeius Rufus. Back in action again. Going to attend the inauguration of the new consuls, attend the meeting of the Senate afterward in the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus atop the Capitol, attend the feast in the same temple. Gaius Marius. Gaius Marius the military genius. Gaius Marius the hero.

When Sulla drew opposite him, Gaius Marius bowed. Body filled with a howling rage he couldn’t permit one single person to see—even Gaius Marius—Sulla turned and bowed to him. Whereupon the adulation reached fever pitch, the people screamed and shrieked with joy, every . face was wet with tears. Then after Sulla turned to the left to walk beside the temple of Saturn and ascend the Capitol hill, Gaius Marius took his place among the men with purple-bordered togas, the boy at his side. So much had he improved that he hardly dragged his left foot, could display his left hand holding up all those heavy folds of toga and let the people see that it was no longer clumped and deformed; as for his face—he could afford to ignore the grimace his smile had become by not smiling.

I will ruin you for this, Gaius Marius, thought Sulla. You knew this was my day! Yet you couldn’t resist showing me that Rome still belongs to you. That I—a patrician Cornelius!—am less than the dust compared to you, an Italian hayseed with no Greek. That I do not have the love of the people. That I can never rise to your heights. Well, maybe all this is really so, Gaius Marius. But I will ruin you. You yielded to the temptation of showing me on my day. If you had chosen to return to public life tomorrow—or the day after—or any other day—the rest of your life would be very different from the agony I will make it. For I will ruin you. Not by poison. Not by knife. I will make it impossible for your descendants ever to exhibit your imago in a family funeral procession, I will mar your reputation for all time.

Somehow it got itself over and done with, that awful day. Looking pleased and proud, the new senior consul stood to one side in the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, the same hugely mindless grin on his face that the statue of the Great God wore, allowing the senators to pay homage to Gaius Marius just as if most of them didn’t loathe him. When the realization dawned upon Sulla that Marius had done what he had done in all innocence—that he hadn’t stopped to think he might be stealing Sulla’s day, only thought what a splendid day today would be to make his reappearance in the Senate—the realization had no power to mollify Sulla’s rage or soften his vow to ruin this terrible old man. Rather, the sheer thoughtlessness of it made Marius’s action more intolerable still; in Marius’s mind, Sulla mattered so little he never so much as loomed in the background of Marius’s mirror of self. And for that, Marius would pay bitterly.

“Huh-huh-how dared he!” whispered Metellus Pius to Sulla as the meeting concluded and the public slaves began to bring in the feast. “He duh-duh-did it deliberately!”

“Oh yes, he did it deliberately,” lied Sulla.

“Are you guh-guh-going to let him geh-geh-get away with it?” Metellus Pius demanded, almost weeping.

“Calm down, Piglet, you’re stuttering,” said Sulla, using that detested name, but in a manner the Piglet couldn’t find detestable. “I refuse to let any of these fools see how I feel. Let them—and him!—think I approve wholeheartedly. I’m the consul, Piglet. He isn’t. He’s just a sick old man trying to snatch back an ascendancy he can never know again.”

“Quintus Lutatius is livid about it,” said Metellus Pius, concentrating on his stammer. “See him over there? He just gave Marius a piece of his mind, and the old hypocrite tried to pretend he never meant it that way, would you believe it?”

“I missed that,” said Sulla, looking to where Catulus Caesar was talking with obviously furious hauteur to his brother the censor and to Quintus Mucius Scaevola, who looked unhappy. Sulla grinned. “He’s picked the wrong audience in Quintus Mucius if he’s saying insulting things about Gaius Marius.”

“Why?” asked the Piglet, curiosity getting the better of rage and indignation.

“There’s a marriage in the wind. Quintus Mucius is giving his daughter to Young Marius as soon as she’s of age.”

“Ye gods! He can do much better than that!”

Sulla lifted one brow. “Can he really, Piglet dear? Think of all that money!”

When Sulla went home he declined all company save Catulus Caesar and Metellus Pius, though when the three of them reached his house he entered it alone, with a wave of farewell for his escort. The house was quiet and his wife not in evidence, for which Sulla was enormously glad; he didn’t think he could have faced all that wretched niceness without murdering her. Hurrying to his study, he bolted its doors, pulled the shutters of the colonnade window closed. The toga fell to the floor in a milky puddle around his feet and was kicked aside indifferently; face now displaying what he felt, he crossed to the long console table upon which rested six miniature temples in perfect condition, paintwork fresh and bright, gilding rich. The five belonging to his ancestors he had paid to have refurbished just after he had entered the Senate; the sixth housed his own likeness, and had been delivered from the workshop of Magius of the Velabrum only the day before.

Its catch was cunningly concealed behind the entablature of the front row of columns; when it was released, the columns divided in the midline as two opening doors. Inside he saw himself, a life-sized face and jaw connected to the anterior half of a neck, the whole complete with Sulla’s ears; behind the ears were strings which held the mask in place while it was being worn, and which were hidden by the wig.

Made of beeswax, the imago was brilliantly done, its skin tinted as white as Sulla’s own, the brows and lashes — both real — of the exact brown he colored them upon occasions like meetings of the Senate or dinner parties within Rome. The beautifully shaped lips were slightly parted because Sulla always breathed through his mouth, and the eyes were uncanny replicas of his own; however, minute inspection revealed that the pupils were actually holes through which the actor donning the mask could see just about well enough to walk if he was guided. Only when it came to the wig had Magius of the Velabrum fallen down on exact verisimilitude, for nowhere could he find hair of the correct color. Rome was plentifully endowed with wigmakers and false hair, and various shades of blond or red were by far the most popular hues; the original owners of the hair were barbarians of Gallic or German blood forced to part with their locks by slave-dealers or masters in need of extra money. The best Magius had been able to do was definitely redder than Sulla’s thatch, but the luxuriance and the style were perfect.

For a long time Sulla stared at himself, not yet recovered from the amazement of discovering what he looked like to other people. The most flawless silver mirror gave no idea compared to this imago. I shall have Magius’s team of sculptors do some portrait busts and a full-length statue in armor, he decided, quite delighted with how he looked to other people. Finally his mind returned to Marius’s perfidy, and his gaze became abstracted; then he gave a little jump, hooked his forefingers around two horns on the front of the temple’s floor. The head of Lucius Cornelius Sulla glided forward and out of the interior on the movable floor and sat, ready for someone to lift off its wig and lever the mask away from a base which was a clay mould of Sulla’s face. Anchored to contours in its own image, shut away from the depredations of light and dust in its dark and airless temple home, the mask would last for generations after generations.

Sulla put his hands to the head atop his own shoulders and took off his Grass Crown, placed it upon the image’s wig. Even on the day the runners had been torn from the soil of Nola they had been browned and bedraggled, for they came from a field of battle and had been bruised, trodden, ground down. Nor had the fingers which had woven them into a twisted braid been skilled and dainty florist’s fingers; they had belonged to the primus pilus centurion Marcus Canuleius, and were more used to wrapping themselves about a gnarled vine clava. Now, seven months later, the Grass Crown had withered to spindling strings sprouting hairlike roots, and the few blades left were dry, shrunken. But you’re tough, my beautiful Grass Crown, thought Sulla, adjusting it upon the wig until it framed the face and hairline as it ought, back from the brow like a woman’s tiara. Yes, you’re tough. You were made of Italian grass and crafted by a Roman soldier. You will endure. Just as I will endure. And together we will make a ruin of Gaius Marius.

The Senate met again the day after its consuls were inducted into office, summoned by Sulla. A new Princeps Senatus existed at last, appointed during the New Year’s Day ceremonies. He was Lucius Valerius Flaccus, Marius’s “man of straw” junior consul during that momentous year when Marius had been consul a sixth time, had his first stroke, and had been helpless to prevent Saturninus’s running amok. It was not a particularly popular appointment, but there were so many restrictions and precedents and regulations that only Lucius Valerius Flaccus had qualified—he was a patrician, the leader of his group of senators, a consular, a censor, and an interrex more times than any other patrician senator. No one had any illusions that he would fill the shoes of Marcus Aemilius Scaurus gracefully or formidably. Including Flaccus himself.

Before the meeting was formally convened he had come to Sulla and begun to ramble on about problems in Asia Minor, but so muddled was his presentation and so incoherent his sentences that Sulla put him firmly aside and indicated that the auspices might be taken. Himself an augur now, he presided over the ceremonies in conjunction with Ahenobarbus Pontifex Maximus. And there’s another doesn’t look well, thought Sulla, sighing; the Senate was in a sorry state.

Not all of Sulla’s time since he had arrived in Rome at the beginning of December had been taken up in visits to friends, sittings for Magius of the Velabrum, idle chatter, a boring wife, and Gaius Marius. Knowing he would be consul, he had spent most of his time talking to those among the knights whom he respected or knew to be most able, in talking to senators who had remained in Rome throughout the war (like the new urban praetor Marcus Junius Brutus), and in talking to men like Lucius Decumius, member of the Fourth Class and caretaker of a crossroads college.

Now he rose to his feet and proceeded to demonstrate to the House that he, Lucius Cornelius Sulla, was a leader who would not brook defiance.

“Princeps Senatus, Conscript Fathers, I am not an orator,” he said, standing absolutely still in front of his curule chair, “so you will get no fine speeches from me. What you will get is a plain statement of the facts, followed by an outline of the measures I intend to take to remedy matters. You may debate the issues—if you feel you must—but I take leave to remind you that the war is not yet satisfactorily concluded. Therefore I do not want to spend any more time in Rome than I must. I also warn you that I will deal harshly with members of this august body who attempt to hinder me for vainglorious or self-interested motives. We are not in a position to suffer the kind of antics performed by Lucius Marcius Philippus during the days before the death of Marcus Livius Drusus—I hope you are listening, Lucius Marcius?”

“My ears are absolutely flappingly wide open, Lucius Cornelius,” drawled Philippus.

A different man might have chosen to flatten Philippus with a well-chosen phrase or two; Lucius Cornelius Sulla did it with his eyes. Even as the titters broke out, those eerie pale orbs were roaming the tiers searching for culprits. Expectation of a verbal exchange was stifled at birth, the laughter ceased abruptly, and everyone discovered valid reasons for leaning forward and looking intensely interested.

“None of us can be unaware how straitened the financial affairs of Rome are, both public and private. The urban quaestors have reported to me that the Treasury is empty, and the tribunes of the Treasury have given me a figure for the debt Rome owes to various institutions and individuals in Italian Gaul. The figure is in excess of three thousand silver talents and is increasing every day for two reasons: the first because Rome is still forced to buy from these institutions and individuals; the second because the principal outstanding remains unpaid, the interest remains unpaid, and we are not always able to pay the interest upon the unpaid interest. Businesses are foundering. Those who have lent money in the private sector cannot collect either debts or interest or interest upon unpaid interest. And those who have borrowed money are in worse condition still.”

His eyes rested reflectively upon Pompey Strabo, who sat in the right-hand front row near Gaius Marius, looking in apparent unconcern at his own nose; here, Sulla’s eyes seemed to be saying to the rest of the House, is a man who should have taken a little time off from his martial activities to do something about Rome’s spiraling financial crisis, especially after his urban praetor died.

“I therefore request that this House send a senatus consultum to the Assembly of the Whole People in their tribes, patrician and plebeian, asking for a lex Cornelia to the following effect: that all debtors, Roman citizens or no, be obliged to pay simple interest only — that is, interest upon the principal only — at the rate agreed to by both parties at the time the loan was made. The levying of compound interest is forbidden, and the levying of simple interest at a higher rate than originally agreed to is forbidden.”

There were murmurs now, particularly from those who had been lending money, but that invisible menace Sulla radiated kept the murmurs low. He was undeniably Roman all the way back to the very beginning. He had the will of a Gaius Marius. But he had the air of a Marcus Aemilius Scaurus. And somehow nobody, even Lucius Cassius, contemplated for one moment treating Lucius Cornelius Sulla in the way Aulus Sempronius Asellio had been treated. He just wasn’t the kind of person other men speculated about murdering.

“No one wins in a civil war,” said Sulla levelly. “The war we are currently concluding is a civil war. It is my personal view that no Italian can ever be a Roman. But I am Roman enough to respect those laws which have recently been enacted to make Romans out of Italians. There will be no booty, there will be no compensation paid to Rome of sufficient magnitude to put so much as one layer of silver sows upon the bare floor of the temple of Saturn.”

“Edepol! Does he think that’s oratory?” asked Philippus of anyone in hearing.

“Tace!” growled Marius.

“The Italian treasuries are as empty as ours,” Sulla went on, ignoring the little exchange below him. “The new citizens who will appear on our rolls are as debt-ridden and impoverished as genuine Romans. At such a time, a new start has to be made somewhere. To promulgate a general cancellation of debts is unthinkable. But nor can debtors be squeezed until they die from it. In other words, it is only fair and equitable that both sides of the lending equation be accommodated. And that is what my lex Cornelia will attempt.”

“What about Rome’s debt to Italian Gaul?” asked Marius. “Is the lex Cornelia to cover this as well?”

“Most definitely, Gaius Marius,” said Sulla pleasantly. “We all know Italian Gaul is very rich. The war in the peninsula didn’t touch it, and it has made a great deal of money out of the war in the peninsula. Therefore it and its businessmen can well afford to abandon measures like compound interest. Thanks to Gnaeus Pompeius Strabo, all of Italian Gaul south of the Padus is now fully Roman, and the major centers north of the river have been endowed with the Latin Rights. I think it only fair that Italian Gaul be treated like every other group of Romans and Latins.”

“They won’t be so happy to call themselves Pompey Strabo’s clients after they hear about this lex Cornelia in Italian Gaul,” whispered Sulpicius to Antistius with a grin.

But the House approved with an outburst of ayes.

“You are introducing a good law, Lucius Cornelius,” said Marcus Junius Brutus suddenly, “but it doesn’t go far enough. What about those cases where litigation is inevitable, yet one or both parties in litigation have not the money to lodge sponsio with the urban praetor? Though the bankruptcy courts are closed, there are many cases the urban praetor is empowered to decide without the encumbrances of a proper hearing. If, that is, the sum in question has been lodged in his keeping. But as the law stands at the moment, if the sum in question is not lodged, the urban praetor’s hands are tied, he cannot hear the case nor give a finding. Might I suggest a second lex Cornelia waiving lodgment of sponsio in cases of debt?”

Sulla laughed, clapped his hands together. “Now that is the sort of thing I want to hear, praetor urbanus! Sensible solutions to vexing questions! By all means let us promulgate a law waiving sponsio at the discretion of the urban praetor!”

“Well, if you’re going to go that far, why not just reopen the bankruptcy courts?” asked Philippus, very much afraid of any law to do with debt collection; he was perpetually in debt, and one of Rome’s worst payers.

“For two reasons, Lucius Marcius,” said Sulla, answering as if he thought Philippus’s remark had been serious rather than ironic. “The first is that we do not yet have sufficient magistrates to staff the courts and the Senate is so thin of members that special judges would be hard to find, given that they must have a praetor’s knowledge of the law. The second is that bankruptcy is a civil procedure, and the so-called bankruptcy courts are entirely staffed by special judges appointed at the discretion of the urban praetor. Which goes straight back to reason number one, does it not? If we cannot staff the criminal courts, how can we hope to staff the more flexible and discretionary hearings of civil offenses?”

“So succinctly put! Thank you, Lucius Cornelius,” said Philippus.

“Don’t mention it, Lucius Marcius—and I mean, don’t mention it. Again. Understood?”

There was further debate, of course; Sulla had not expected to see his recommendations adopted without argument. But even among the senatorial moneylenders opposition was halfhearted, as everyone could appreciate that collecting some money was better than collecting none, and Sulla had not attempted to abolish interest entirely.

“I will see a division,” said Sulla when he thought they had talked enough and he was tired of further time-wasting.

The division went his way by a very large majority; the House prepared a senatus consultum commending both Sulla’s new laws to the Assembly of the People, a body to which the consul could present his case himself, patrician though he was.

The praetor Lucius Licinius Murena, a man more famous for his breeding of freshwater eels for the banquet table than his political activity, then proposed that the House consider the recall of those sent into exile by the Varian Commission when it had been under the aegis of Quintus Varius.

“Here we are awarding the citizenship to half of Italy, while the men condemned for supporting this enfranchisement are still without their citizenships!” cried Murena passionately. “It’s time they came home, they’re exactly the Romans we need!”

Publius Sulpicius bounced off the tribunician bench and faced the consul’s chair. “May I speak, Lucius Cornelius?”

“Speak, Publius Sulpicius.”

“I was a very good friend of Marcus Livius Drusus’s, though I was never keen on the enfranchisement of Italy. However, I deplored the way Quintus Varius conducted his court, and all of us must ask ourselves how many of his victims were his victims for no other reason than that he disliked them personally. But the fact remains that his court was legally created and conducted its actual proceedings according to the law. At this present moment the same court is still functioning, albeit in the opposite manner. It is the only court open. Therefore we must conclude that it is a legally constituted body, and that its findings must stand. I hereby notify this House that if any attempt is made to recall any persons sentenced by the Varian Commission, I will interpose my veto,” said Sulpicius.

“As will I,” said Publius Antistius.

“Sit down, Lucius Licinius Murena,” said Sulla gently.

Murena sat down, crushed, and shortly afterward the House ended its first ordinary sitting with the consul Sulla in the chair.

As he was making his way out of the chamber, Sulla found himself detained by Pompey Strabo.

“A private word in your ear, Lucius Cornelius.”

“Certainly,” said Sulla heartily, resolving to prolong the conversation; he had seen Marius lurking in wait for him and wanted nothing to do with Marius, yet knew he couldn’t ignore him without good excuse.

“As soon as you’ve regulated Rome’s financial affairs to your satisfaction,” said Pompey Strabo in that toneless yet menacing voice of his, “I suppose you’ll get round to dealing with who gets what command in the war.”

“Yes, Gnaeus Pompeius, I do expect to get round to that,” said Sulla easily. “I suppose it ought by rights to have been discussed yesterday when the House ratified all the provincial governorships, but—as you’ve probably gathered from my speech today—I look on this conflict as a civil war, and would rather see the commands debated in a regular meeting.”

“Oh well, yes, I see your point,” said Pompey Strabo, not in the manner of one abashed by the crassness of his question, but rather in the manner of one who had no idea of protocol.

“In which case?” asked Sulla politely, noticing out of the corner of his eye that Marius had dragged himself off in the company of Young Caesar, who must have waited patiently outside the doors.

“If I include the troops Publius Sulpicius brought from Italian Gaul the year before last—as well as the troops Sextus Julius brought from Africa—I have ten full legions in the field,” said Pompey Strabo. “As I’m sure you’ll appreciate, Lucius Cornelius—since I imagine you’re in similar circumstances yourself—most of my legions haven’t been paid in a year.’’

Down went the corners of Sulla’s mouth in a rueful smile. “I do indeed know what you mean, Gnaeus Pompeius!”

“Now to some extent I’ve canceled that debt out, Lucius Cornelius. The soldiers got everything Asculum Picentum had to offer, from furniture to bronze coins. Clothes. Women’s trinkets. Paltry, down to the last Priapus lamp. But it made them happy, as did the other occasions when I was able to give them whatever was there to be had. Paltry stuff. But enough for common soldiers. So that’s one way I was able to cancel the debt.” He paused, then said, “But the other way affects me personally.”

“Indeed?”

“Four of those ten legions are mine. They were raised among the men of my own estates in northern Picenum and southern Umbria, and to the last soldier they’re my clients. So they don’t expect to be paid any more than they expect Rome to pay them. They’re content with whatever pickings they can glean.”

Sulla was looking alert. “Do go on!”

“Now,” said Pompey Strabo reflectively, rubbing his chin with his big right hand, “I’m quite happy with things the way they are. Though some things will change because I’m not consul anymore.”

“Things like, Gnaeus Pompeius?”

“I’ll need a proconsular imperium, for one thing. And my command in the north confirmed.’’ The hand which had caressed his jaw now swept in a wide circle. “You can have all the rest, Lucius Cornelius. I don’t want it. All I want is my own corner of our lovely Roman world. Picenum and Umbria.”

“In return for which, you won’t send the Treasury a wages bill for four of your ten legions, and will reduce the bill you send in on behalf of the other six?’’

“You’re wide awake on all counts, Lucius Cornelius.”

Out went Sulla’s hand. “You’ve got a deal, Gnaeus Pompeius! I’d give Picenum and Umbria to Saturninus if it meant Rome didn’t have to find the full wages for ten legions.”

“Oh, not to Saturninus, even if his family did originally come from Picenum! I’ll look after them better than he would.”

“I’m sure you will, Gnaeus Pompeius.”

Thus it was that when the question of apportioning out the various commands for the concluding operations of the war against the Italians came up in the House, Pompey Strabo got what he wanted without opposition from the consul with the Grass Crown. Or opposition from anyone else. Sulla had lobbied strenuously. Though Pompey Strabo was not a man of Sulla’s kind—he utterly lacked subtlety or sophistication—he was known to be as dangerous as a bear at bay and as ruthless as an oriental potentate, to both of which he bore a strong resemblance. The tale of his doings in Asculum Picentum had filtered back to Rome through a medium as novel as it was unexpected; an eighteen-year-old contubernalis named Marcus Tullius Cicero had written an account of them in a letter to one of his only two living preceptors, Quintus Mucius Scaevola, and Scaevola had not been silent, though his loquaciousness was more because of the literary merit in the letter than Pompey Strabo’s vile and monstrous behavior.

“Brilliant!” was Scaevola’s verdict on the letter, and, “What else can one expect from such a blood-and-guts butcher?” on the letter’s contents.

Though Sulla retained supreme command in the southern and the central theaters, actual command in the south went to Metellus Pius the Piglet; Gaius Cosconius had sustained a minor wound which turned septic, and had retired from active service. The Piglet’s second-in-command was Mamercus Aemilius Lepidus Livianus, who had relented and got himself elected a quaestor. As Publius Gabinius was dead and his younger brother, Aulus, was too young to be given a senior command, Lucania went to Gnaeus Papirius Carbo, generally felt to be an excellent choice.

In the midst of this debate—rendered more enjoyable by the knowledge that Rome had basically won the war already—Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus Pontifex Maximus died. This meant proceedings had to be suspended in House and Comitia and the money found for a State funeral for one who was, at the time of his death, far richer than Rome’s Treasury. Sulla conducted the election for his successor and for his priesthood in a mood of bitter resentment, for when he had assumed the consul’s curule chair he had also assumed the largest part of the responsibility for Rome’s fiscal problems, and it angered him to pay out good money for one in no need of it. Nor, before Ahenobarbus Pontifex Maximus, had there been any need to stand the expense of an election; he it was as a tribune of the plebs who carried the lex Domitia de sacerdotiis, the law changing the manner of appointing priests and augurs from an internal co-optation to an external election. Quintus Mucius Scaevola—already a priest—became the new Pontifex Maximus, which meant that Ahenobarbus’s priesthood went to a new member of the College of Pontifices, Quintus Caecilius Metellus Pius the Piglet. At least in that respect, thought Sulla, some justice was done. When Metellus Piggle-wiggle had died, his priesthood had been voted to the young Gaius Aurelius Cotta, a fine example of how election to office could destroy a family’s right to offices which had always been hereditary.

The obsequies over, business resumed in Senate and Comitia. Pompey Strabo asked for—and got—his legates Poplicola and Brutus Damasippus, though his other legate, Gnaeus Octavius Ruso, announced himself better able to serve Rome within Rome, a statement which everyone took to mean he would seek the consulship at the end of the year. Cinna and Cornutus were left to continue their operations in the lands of the Marsi, and Servius Sulpicius Galba remained in the field against the Marrucini, the Vestini, and the Paeligni.

“All in all, a good assortment,” said Sulla to his consular colleague, Quintus Pompeius Rufus.

The occasion was a family dinner at the Pompeius Rufus mansion to celebrate the fact that Cornelia Sulla was pregnant again. This news had not smitten Sulla with the joy it obviously did Aelia and all the Pompeii Rufi, but it did resign him to family duties like finally setting eyes on his granddaughter, who—according to her other grandfather, his fellow consul—was the most exquisitely perfect baby ever born.

Now five months old, Pompeia was certainly beautiful, Sulla had to admit to himself. She had masses of dark red curls, black brows and black lashes so long and thick they were like fans, and enormous swamp-green eyes. Her skin was creamy, her mouth a sweet red bow, and when she smiled she displayed a dimple in one rosy cheek. Though Sulla admitted that he was no expert on babies, to him Pompeia seemed a very sluggish and stupid sort of child who only became animated when something gold and glittery was dangled under her nose. An omen, thought Sulla, chuckling silently.

His daughter was happy, so much was evident; on a far distant plane this quite pleased Sulla, who didn’t love her, but was prone to like her when she didn’t do anything to annoy him. And sometimes in her face he would catch an echo of her dead brother, some swift expression or lifting of her eyes, and then he would remember that her brother had loved her very much. How unfair life was! Why did it have to be Cornelia Sulla, a useless girl, who grew up in the bloom of health, and Young Sulla die untimely? It ought to have been the other way around. In a properly ordered world, the paterfamilias would have been offered a choice.

He never dredged his two German sons sired when he had lived among the Germans out of the back of his mind, never longed to see them or thought of them in any way as replacements for that beloved dead son of Julilla’s. For they were not Roman, and their mother was a barbarian. Always it was Young Sulla, always an emptiness impossible to fill. And there she was under his nose, the daughter he would have given over to death in less than one beat of his heart, could he only have Young Sulla back.

“How delightful to see everything turn out so well,” said Aelia to him as they walked home, unattended by a servant escort.

Because Sulla’s thoughts were still revolving around life’s unfairness in taking his son from him and leaving him only a useless girl, poor Aelia could not have made an unwiser remark.

He struck back instantly, with total venom. “Consider yourself divorced as of this moment!” he hissed.

She stopped in her tracks. “Oh, Lucius Cornelius, I beg of you, think again!” she cried, stunned at this thunderbolt.

“Find another home. You don’t belong in mine.” And Sulla turned to walk off toward the Forum, leaving Aelia standing on the Clivus Victoriae completely alone.

When she recovered sufficiently from the blow to be able to think, she too turned around, but not to walk to the Forum. She went back to the house of Quintus Pompeius Rufus.

“Please, may I see my daughter?” she asked the slave on door duty, who looked at her in bewilderment. Scant moments before he had let out a lovely woman wrapped in a glow of content—now here she was again looking as if she was going to die, so grey and blighted was her face.

When he offered to take her to his master, she asked if she might go to Cornelia Sulla’s sitting room instead, see her daughter in private and without disturbing anyone else.

“What is it, Mama?” Cornelia Sulla asked lightly as she came through the door. And stopped at sight of that terrible face, and asked again, but in a very different tone, “What is it, Mama? Oh, what is it?”

“He’s divorced me,” said Aelia dully. “He told me I didn’t belong in his home, so I didn’t dare go home. He meant it.”

“Mama! Why? When? Where?”

“Just now, on the street.”

Cornelia Sulla sat down limply beside her stepmother, the only mother she had ever known beyond vague memories of a thin complaining wisp who was more attached to her wine cup than her children. Of course there had been nearly two years of Grandmother Marcia, but Grandmother Marcia hadn’t wanted to be a mother again and had reigned over the nursery harshly, without love. So when Aelia had come to live with them, both Young Sulla and Cornelia Sulla had thought her utterly wonderful and loved her as a mother.

Taking Aelia’s cold hand, Cornelia Sulla looked into the vortex of her father’s mind, those frightful and stunningly quick changes of mood, the violence which could come leaping out of him like lava out of a volcano, the coldness which gave no hope or light to human heart. “Oh, he is a monster!” said his daughter between her teeth.

“No,” said Aelia tiredly, “just a man who has never been happy. He doesn’t know who he is, and he doesn’t know what he wants. Or perhaps he does know, but dare not be it and want it. I’ve always known he’d end in divorcing me. Yet I did think he’d give me some warning— a change in his manner or—or something! You see, he was finished with me inside his mind before ever anything could begin. So when the years went by, I started to hope—it doesn’t matter. All considered, I’ve had a longer run than I expected to.”

“Cry, Mama! You’ll feel better.”

But what came out was a humorless laugh. “Oh no. I cried too much after our boy died. That was when he died too.”

“He’s not going to give you anything, Mama. I know him! He’s a miser. He won’t give you a thing.”

“Yes, I am aware of that.”

“But you do have a dowry.”

“I gave him that a long time ago.”

Cornelia Sulla drew herself up with great dignity. “You will live with me, Mama. I refuse to desert you. Quintus Pompeius will see the justice of it.”

“No, Cornelia. Two women in a single house is one too many, and you already have the second one in the person of your mother-in-law. A very nice woman. She loves you. But she won’t thank you for wishing a third woman on her.”

“But what can you do?” the young woman cried.

“I can stay here tonight in your sitting room, and think about my next step tomorrow,” said Aelia calmly. “Don’t tell your father-in-law yet, please. This will be a very awkward situation for him, you know. If you must, tell your husband. I must write Lucius Cornelius a note to say where I am. Could you have someone take it round straight away?”

“Of course, Mama.” The daughter of any other man might have added words to the effect that in the morning he was sure to change his mind, but not Sulla’s daughter; she knew her father better.

With the dawn came an answer from Sulla. Aelia broke its seal with steady hands.

“What does he say?” asked Cornelia Sulla tensely.

“ ‘I divorce you on the grounds of barrenness.’ “

“Oh, Mama, how unfair! He married you because you were barren!”

“You know, Cornelia, he’s very clever,” said Aelia with some admiration. “Since he has chosen to divorce me on those grounds, I have no redress at law. I can’t claim my dowry, I can’t ask for a pension. I’ve been married to him for twelve years. When I married him I was still of an age to bear children. But I had none with my first husband, and none with him. No court would uphold me.”

“Then you must live with me,” said Cornelia Sulla in determined tones. “Last night I told Quintus Pompeius what had happened. He thinks it would work out well if you were to live here. If you were not so nice, perhaps it wouldn’t. But it will work out. I know it!”

“Your poor husband!” said Aelia, smiling. “What else could he say? What else can his poor father say when he is told? They’re both good men, and generous ones. But I know what I’m going to do, Cornelia, and it’s by far the best thing.”

“Mama! Not—”

Aelia managed a laugh. “No, no, of course I wouldn’t do that, Cornelia! You’d be haunted by it for the rest of your life! I so much want you to have a wonderful life, dearest girl of mine.” She sat up straighter, looked purposeful. “I’m going to your grandmother Marcia, at Cumae.”

“Grandmother? Oh no, she’s such a stick!”

“Nonsense! I stayed with her for three months last summer, and I had a most pleasant time. She writes to me often these days, mostly because she’s lonely, Cornelia. At sixty-seven, she’s afraid of being completely abandoned. It is a terrible fate to have no one there but slaves when you die. Sextus Julius didn’t visit her often, yet when he died she felt it keenly. I don’t think Gaius Julius has seen her in four or five years, and she doesn’t get on with Aurelia or Claudia. Or her grandchildren.”

“That’s what I mean, Mama. She’s so crotchety and hard to please. I know! She looked after us until you came.”

“As a matter of fact, she and I get along together very well. We always did. And we were friends long before I married your father. It was she who recommended me to your father as a suitable wife. So she owes me a favor. If I go to live with her, I will be wanted, I will have a useful job to do, and I will be under no sort of obligation to her. Once I’m over the shock of this divorce, I think I’ll enjoy both the life and her company,” said Aelia firmly.

This perfect solution plucked out of what had seemed to be an empty bag was received with genuine gratitude by the consul Pompeius Rufus and his family. Though no member of his family would have denied Aelia a permanent home, they could now offer her a temporary one with honest pleasure.

“I don’t understand Lucius Cornelius!” said the consul Pompeius Rufus to Aelia a day later. “When I saw him I tried to bring the matter of this divorce up, if only to explain why it was that I am sheltering you. And he— he turned on me with such a look on his face! I dried up! I tell you, I dried up. Terrible! I thought I knew him. The trouble is, I must continue to like him for the sake of our joint office. We promised the electors we’d work together in close harmony, and I can’t go back on that promise.”

“Of course you can’t,” said Aelia warmly. “Quintus Pompeius, it has never been my intention to turn you against Lucius Cornelius, believe me! What happens between husband and wife is a very private thing, and to all outside eyes it must seem inexplicable when a marriage terminates for no apparent reason. There are always reasons, and usually they’re adequate. Who knows? Lucius Cornelius might genuinely wish for other children. His only son is dead, he has no heir. And he really doesn’t have much money, you know, so I understand the dowry. I will be all right. If you could arrange to have someone carry this letter to Cumae for me and wait for a reply from Marcia, we’ll know very soon what arrangements I can make.”

Quintus Pompeius looked at the ground, face redder than his hair. “Lucius Cornelius has sent round your clothes and belongings, Aelia. I am very sorry.”

“Well, that’s good news!” said Aelia, maintaining her calm. “I was beginning to think he’d thrown them away.”

“All of Rome is talking.”

She lifted her eyes to his. “About what?”

“This divorce. His cruelty to you. It isn’t being received well.” Quintus Pompeius Rufus cleared his throat. “You happen to be one of the most liked and respected women in Rome. The story is everywhere, including your penniless state. In the Forum this morning he was booed and hissed.”

“Oh, poor Lucius Cornelius!” she said sadly. “He would have hated that.”

“If he did, he didn’t show it. He just walked on as if nothing was happening.” Quintus Pompeius sighed. “Why, Aelia? Why?” He shook his head. “After so many years, it doesn’t make sense! If he wanted another son, why didn’t he divorce you after Young Sulla died? That’s three years ago now.”

*

The answer to Pompeius Rufus’s question came to Aelia’s ears before she received the letter from Marcia bidding her come to Cumae.

This time it was the younger Quintus Pompeius who brought the news home, so out of breath he could hardly speak.

“What is it?” asked Aelia when Cornelia Sulla would not.

“Lucius—Cornelius! He’s married—Scaurus’s widow!”

Cornelia Sulla did not look surprised. “Then he can afford to pay you back your dowry, Mama,” she said, tight-lipped. “She’s as rich as Croesus.”

Young Pompeius Rufus accepted a cup of water, drained it, and began to speak more coherently. “It happened late this morning. No one knew of it except Quintus Metellus Pius and Mamercus Lepidus Livianus. I suppose they had to know! Quintus Metellus Pius is her first cousin, and Mamercus Lepidus Livianus is the executor of Marcus Aemilius Scaurus’s will.”

“Her name! I can’t remember her name!” said Aelia in wonder.

“Caecilia Metella Dalmatica. But everyone just calls her Dalmatica, I was told. They’re saying that years ago—not long after Saturninus died—she was so much in love with Lucius Cornelius that she made a complete fool of herself—and of Marcus Aemilius Scaurus. They say Lucius Cornelius wouldn’t look at her. Then her husband shut her away completely, and no one seems to have seen anything of her since.”

“Oh yes, I remember the incident well,” said Aelia. “I just couldn’t remember her name. Not that Lucius Cornelius ever discussed it with me. But until Marcus Aemilius Scaurus did shut her away, I was not allowed to be out of our house if Lucius Cornelius was at home. He took enormous care that Marcus Aemilius Scaurus should know there was no impropriety on his part.” Aelia sighed. “Not that it made any difference. Marcus Aemilius Scaurus still made sure he lost in the praetorian elections.”

“She’ll have no joy from my father,” said Cornelia Sulla grimly. “No woman ever has had joy from him.”

“Don’t say such things, Cornelia!”

“Oh, Mama, I’m not a child anymore! I have a child of my own! And I know him better than you do because I don’t love him the way you do! I’m blood of his blood— and sometimes that thought makes me so afraid! My father is a monster. And women bring out the worst in him. My real mother committed suicide—and no one will ever convince me that it wasn’t over something my father did to her!”

“You’ll never know, Cornelia, so don’t think about it,” said young Quintus Pompeius sternly.

Aelia looked suddenly surprised. “How odd! If you had asked me whom he might have married, I would have said, Aurelia!”

Cornelia Sulla nodded. “So would I. They’ve always been as chummy as two harpies on a rock. Different feathers. Same birds.” She shrugged, said it. “Birds, nothing! Monsters, both of them.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever met Caecilia Metella Dalmatica,” said Aelia, anxious to draw Cornelia Sulla away from dangerous statements, “even when she was following my husband around.”

“Not your husband anymore, Mama! Her husband.”

“Hardly anyone knows her,” said young Pompeius Rufus, also anxious to pacify Cornelia Sulla. “Marcus Scaurus kept her in total isolation after that one indiscretion, innocent though it was. There are two children, a girl and a boy, but no one knows them. Or her. And since Marcus Scaurus died, she’s been more invisible, than ever. That’s why the whole city is buzzing.” He held out his cup for more water. “Today is the first day after her period of mourning. And that’s yet another reason why all of Rome is buzzing.”

“He must love her very much,” said Aelia.

“Rubbish!” said Cornelia Sulla. “He doesn’t love anyone.’’

*

After the white anger in which he had left Aelia standing on the Clivus Victoriae alone, Sulla underwent his usual plummet into black depression during the hours following. Partly to twist the knife in the colossal wound he knew he had inflicted upon the too-nice, too-boring Aelia, he went the next morning to the house of Metellus Pius. His interest in the Widow Scaurus was as old and cold as his mood; what he wanted was to make Aelia suffer. Divorce was not enough. He must find some better way to twist the knife. And what better way than to marry someone else immediately, make it look as if that was why he had divorced her? These women, he thought as he walked to the house of Metellus Pius, they have driven me mad since I was a very young man. Since I gave up selling myself to men because I was stupid enough to think women easier victims. But I have been the victim. Their victim. I killed Nicopolis and Clitumna. And, thank every god there is, Julilla killed herself. But it’s too dangerous to kill Aelia. And divorce isn’t enough. She’s been expecting that for years.

He found the Piglet deeply immersed in conversation with his new quaestor, Mamercus Aemilius Lepidus Livianus. A stroke of truly wonderful luck to find both of them together—but wasn’t he always Fortune’s favorite?

It was quite understandable that Mamercus and the Piglet should be closeted together, yet such was the aura around Sulla in one of his darker moods that the pair of them found themselves greeting him with the nervous agitation of a couple discovered in the act of making love to each other.

Good officers both, they sat down only after he was seated, then stared at him without finding a single thing to say.

“Had your tongues cut out?” asked Sulla.

Metellus Pius jumped, startled. “No, Lucius Cornelius! No! Forgive me, my thoughts were muh-muh-miles away.”

“Yours too, Mamercus?” asked Sulla.

But Mamercus, slow and steady and trusty, discovered a smile buried in his courage. “Actually, yes,” he said.

“Then I’ll give them another direction entirely—and that goes for both of you,” said Sulla with his most feral grin.

They said nothing, just waited.

“I want to marry Caecilia Metella Dalmatica.”

“Jupiter!” squeaked Metellus Pius.

“That’s not very original, Piglet,” said Sulla. He got up, moved to the door of Metellus Pius’s study and looked back, one brow raised. “I want to marry her tomorrow,” he said. “I ask both of you to think about it and let me have your answer by dinnertime. Since I want a son, I’ve divorced my wife for barrenness. But I do not want to replace her with a young and silly girl. I’m too old for adolescent antics. I want a mature woman who has proven her fertility by already having had two children, including a boy. I thought of Dalmatica because she seems—or seemed, years ago— to have a soft spot for me.”

With that he was gone, leaving Metellus Pius and Mamercus looking at each other, jaws hanging.

“Jupiter!” said Metellus Pius again, more feebly.

“It’s certainly a surprise,” said Mamercus, who was far less surprised than the Piglet because he didn’t know Sulla one hundredth as well as the Piglet did.

The Piglet now scratched his head, shook it. “Why her! Except in passing when Marcus Aemilius died, I haven’t thought of Dalmatica in years. She might be my first cousin, but after that business with Lucius Cornelius—how extraordinary!—she was locked up in her house under better security by far than the cells of the Lautumiae.” He stared at Mamercus. “As executor of the will, you must surely have seen her during the last few months.”

“To answer your first question first—why her?—I imagine her money won’t go astray,” said Mamercus. “As for your second question, I’ve seen her several times since Marcus Aemilius died, though not as often as I ought. I was already in the field at the time of his death, but I saw her then because I had to return to Rome to tidy up Marcus Aemilius’s affairs. And if you want an honest opinion, I’d say she wasn’t mourning the old man much at all. She seemed far more concerned with her children. Still, I found that absolutely reasonable. What was the age difference? Forty years?”

“All of that, I think. I remember when she married I felt sorry for her just a little. She was supposed to marry the son, but he suicided. My father gave her to Marcus Aemilius instead.”

“The thing which struck me was her timidity,” said Mamercus. “Or it could be that her confidence is gone. She’s afraid to go out of the house, even though I told her she might. She has no friends at all.”

“How could she have friends? I was quite serious when I said Marcus Aemilius locked her up,” said Metellus Pius.

“After he died,” said Mamercus reflectively, “she was of course alone in his house except for her children and a rather small group of slaves, considering the size of the establishment. But when I suggested this aunt or that cousin as a resident chaperone, she grew very upset. Wouldn’t hear of any of them. In the end I was obliged to hire a Roman couple of good stock and reputation to live with her. She said she understood the conventions had to be observed, especially considering that old indiscretion, but she preferred to live with strangers than relatives. It is pathetic, Quintus Caecilius! How old was she at the time of that indiscretion? Nineteen? And married to a man of sixty!”

The Piglet shrugged. “That’s marital luck, Mamercus. Look at me. Married to the younger daughter of Lucius Crassus Orator, whose older daughter has three sons already. Whereas my Licinia is still childless—and not for the want of trying, believe me! So we think we’ll ask for one of the nephews to adopt.”

Mamercus wrinkled his forehead, looked suddenly inspired. “I suggest you do what Lucius Cornelius wants to do! Divorce Licinia Minor for barrenness, and marry Dalmatica yourself.”

“No, Mamercus, I couldn’t. I’m very fond of my wife,” said the Piglet gruffly.

“Then ought we think seriously about Lucius Cornelius’s offer?”

“Oh, definitely. He’s not a wealthy man, but he has something better, you know. He’s a great man. My cousin Dalmatica has been married to a great man, so she’s accustomed to it. Lucius Cornelius is going to go far, Mamercus. I don’t know why I’m so utterly convinced of it, because I don’t see any way in which he can go much further. But he will! I know he will. He’s not a Marius. Nor is he a Scaurus. Yet I believe he will eclipse them both.”

Mamercus rose to his feet. “Then we’d better go round and see what Dalmatica has to say. There’s no possibility of a marriage tomorrow, however.”

“Why not? She can’t still be in mourning, surely!”

“No. Oddly enough, her mourning period finishes today. Which is why,” said Mamercus, “it would look suspicious if she was to marry tomorrow. In a few weeks, I think.”

“No, it must be tomorrow,” said Metellus Pius strongly. “You don’t know Lucius Cornelius the way I do. No man lives whom I esteem and respect more. But you do not gainsay him, Mamercus! If we agree they can marry, then it’s tomorrow.”

“I’ve just remembered something, Quintus Caecilius. The last time I saw Dalmatica—it would be two or three market intervals ago—she asked after Lucius Cornelius. But she’s never asked after any other person, even you, her closest relative.”

“Well, she was in love with him when she was nineteen. Maybe she’s still in love with him. Women are peculiar, they do things like that,” said the Piglet in tones of great experience.

When the two men arrived at Marcus Aemilius Scaurus’s house and confronted Caecilia Metella Dalmatica, Metellus Pius saw what Mamercus had meant when he described her as timid. A mouse, was his verdict. A very attractive mouse, however, and sweet-natured. It did not occur to him to wonder how he might have felt had he been given in marriage at the age of seventeen to a woman almost sixty; women did as they were told, and a male sexagenarian had more to offer in every way than any female over forty-five. He launched into speech, as it had been decided that he— her closest relative—was technically in the position of paterfamilias.

‘ ‘Dalmatica, today we have received an offer of marriage on your behalf. We strongly recommend that you accept, though we do feel you should have the right to decline should you wish,” said Metellus Pius very formally. “You are the widow of the Princeps Senatus and the mother of his children. However, we think no better offer of marriage is likely to come your way.”

“Who has offered for me, Quintus Caecilius?’’ Dalmatica asked, voice very small.

“The consul Lucius Cornelius Sulla.”

An expression of incredulous joy suffused her face, the grey of her eyes shone silver; two rather ungainly hands came out, almost met in a clap.

“I accept!” she gasped.

Both men blinked, having expected to do some persuasive talking before Dalmatica could be made to agree.

“He wants to marry you tomorrow,” said Mamercus.

“Today, if he wants!”

What could they say? What did one say?

Mamercus tried. “You are a very wealthy woman, Dalmatica. We have had no discussions with Lucius Cornelius regarding settlements and a dowry. In his mind, I think they are secondary considerations in that he knows you’re rich, and isn’t bothered beyond knowing you’re rich. He said he had divorced his wife for barrenness and didn’t want to marry a young girl, but rather a woman of sense still able to have children—and preferably a woman who already has children to establish her fertility.”

This ponderous explanation drove some of the light out of her face, but she nodded as if she understood, though she said nothing.

Mamercus plodded on into the mire of financial matters. “You will not be able to continue living here, of course. This house is now the property of your young son and must remain in my custody. I suggest you ask your chaperones if they would mind continuing to live here until your son is of an age to assume responsibility. Those slaves you do not wish to take with you to your new establishment can remain here with the caretakers. However, the house of Lucius Cornelius is a very small one compared to this house. I think you would find it claustra.”

“I find this one claustra,” said Dalmatica with a flicker of—irony? Truly?

“A new beginning should mean a new house,” said Metellus Pius, taking over when Mamercus bogged down. “If Lucius Cornelius agrees, the settlement could be a domus of this size in a location fitting for people of your status. Your dowry consists of the money left to you by your father, my uncle Dalmaticus. You also have a large sum left to you by Marcus Aemilius that cannot properly constitute a part of your dowry. However, for your own safety Mamercus and I will make sure that it is tied up in such a way that it remains yours. I do not think it wise to let Lucius Cornelius have access to your money.”

“Anything you like,” said Dalmatica.

“Then provided Lucius Cornelius agrees to these terms, the marriage can take place here tomorrow at the sixth hour of daylight. Until we can find a new house, you will live with Lucius Cornelius in his house,” said Mamercus.

Since Lucius Cornelius agreed expressionlessly to every condition, he and Caecilia Metella Dalmatica were married at the sixth hour of the following day, with Metellus Pius officiating and Mamercus acting as witness. The usual trappings had been dispensed with; after the brief ceremony— not confarreatio—was over, the bride and groom walked to Sulla’s house in the company of the bride’s two children, Metellus Pius, Mamercus, and three slaves the bride had requested she take with her.

When Sulla picked her up to carry her over his threshold she stiffened in shock, so easily and competently was it done. Mamercus and Metellus Pius came in to drink a cup of wine, but left so quickly that the new steward, Chrysogonus, was still absent showing the children and their tutor where their new quarters were, and the two other slaves were still standing looking utterly lost in a corner of the peristyle-garden.

The bride and groom were alone in the atrium. “Well, wife,” said Sulla flatly, “you’ve married another old man, and no doubt you’ll be widowed a second time.” That seemed such an outrageous statement to Dalmatica that she gaped at him, had to search for words. “You’re not old, Lucius Cornelius!”

“Fifty-two. That’s not young compared to almost thirty.’’

“Compared to Marcus Aemilius, you’re a youth!” Sulla threw back his head and laughed. “There’s only one place where that remark can be proven,” he said, and picked her up again. “No dinner for you today, wife! It’s bedtime.”

“But the children! A new home for them—!”

“I bought a new steward yesterday after I divorced Aelia, and he’s a very efficient sort of fellow. Name’s Chrysogonus. An oily Greek of the worst kind. They make the best stewards once they’re aware that the master is awake to every trick and quite capable of crucifying them.” Sulla lifted his lip. “Your children will be looked after magnificently. Chrysogonus needs to ingratiate himself.”

*

The kind of marriage Dalmatica had experienced with Scaurus became far more obvious when Sulla put his new wife down on his bed, for she scuttled off it, opened the chest sent on ahead to Sulla’s house, and from it plucked a primly neat linen nightgown. While Sulla watched, fascinated, she turned her back to him, loosened her pretty cream wool dress but held it under her arms firmly, and managed thus to get the nightgown over her head and modestly hanging before she abandoned her clothes; one moment she was clad for day, the next moment she was clad for night. And never a glimpse of flesh!

“Take that wretched thing off,” said Sulla from behind her.

She turned round quickly and felt the breath leave her body. Sulla was naked, skin whiter than snow, the curling hair of chest and groin reflecting the mop on his head, a man without a sag to his midriff, without the crepey folds of true old age, a man compact and muscular.

It had taken Scaurus what had seemed hours of fumbling beneath her robe, pinching at her nipples and feeling between her legs, before anything happened to his penis—the only male member she had known, though she had never actually seen it. Scaurus had been an old-fashioned Roman, kept his sexual activities as modest as he felt his wife should be. That when availing himself of a less modest female than his wife, his sexual activity was very different, his wife could not know.

Yet there was Sulla, as noble and aristocratic as her dead husband, shamelessly exhibiting himself to her, his penis seeming as huge and erect as the one Priapus displayed upon his bronze statue in Scaurus’s study. She was not unfamiliar with the sexual anatomy of male and female, for both were everywhere in every house; the genitalia upon the herms, the lamps, the pedestals of tables, even some of the paintings on the walls. None of which had ever seemed remotely related to married life. They were simply a part of the furniture. Married life had been a husband who had never shown himself to her—who, despite the production of two children, as far as she knew could have been quite differently constructed from Priapus or the furniture and decorations.

When she had first met Sulla at that dinner party so many years ago, he had dazzled her. She had never seen a man so beautiful, so hard and strong yet so—so— womanish? What she had felt for him then (and during the time when she had spied on him as he went about Rome canvassing for the praetorian elections) was not consciously of the flesh, for she was a married woman with experience of the flesh, and dismissed it as the most unimportant and least appealing aspect of love. Her passion for Sulla was literally a schoolgirl crush—something of air and wind, not fire and fluid. From behind pillars and awnings she had feasted on him with her eyes, dreamed of his kisses rather than his penis, yearned for him in the most lavishly romantic way. What she wanted was a conquest, his enslavement, her own sweet victory as he knelt at her feet and wept for love of her.

Her husband had confronted her in the end, and everything to do with her life changed. But not her love for Sulla.

“You have made yourself ridiculous, Caecilia Metella Dalmatica,” Scaurus had said to her evenly and coldly. “But—and this is far worse—you have made me ridiculous. The whole of the city is laughing at me, the First Man in Rome. And that must stop. You have mooned and sighed and gushed in the stupidest way over a man who has not noticed you or encouraged you, who does not want your attentions, and whom I have been obliged to punish in order to preserve my own reputation. Had you not embarrassed him and me, he would be a praetor— as he deserves to be. You have therefore spoiled the lives of two men—one your husband, the other impeccably blameless. That I do not call myself blameless is due to my weakness in allowing this mortifying business to continue so long. But I had hoped that you would see the error of your ways for yourself, and thus prove to Rome that you are, after all, a worthy wife for the Princeps Senatus. However, time has proven you a worthless idiot. And there is only one way to deal with a worthless idiot. You will never leave this house again for any purpose whatsoever. Not for funerals or for weddings, for lady-friends or shopping. Nor may you have lady-friends visit you here, as I cannot trust your prudence. I must tell you that you are a silly and empty vessel, an unsuitable wife for a man of my auctoritas and dignitas. Now go.”

Of course this monumental disapproval did not prevent Scaurus’s seeking his wife’s body, but he was old and growing older, and these occasions grew further and further apart. When she produced his son she regained some slight measure of his approval, but Scaurus refused to relax the terms of her imprisonment. And in her dreams, in her isolation when time hung like a lead sow around her neck, still she thought of Sulla, still she loved him. Immaturely, from out of an adolescent heart.

Looking on the naked Sulla now provoked no sexual desire in her, just a winded amazement at his beauty and virility and a winded realization that the difference between Sulla and Scaurus was minimal after all. Beauty. Virility. They were the real differences. Sulla wasn’t going to kneel at her feet and weep for love of her! She had not conquered him! He was going to conquer her. With his ram battering down her gates.

“Take that thing off, Dalmatica,” he said.

She took her nightgown off with the alacrity of a child caught out in some sin, while he smiled and nodded.

“You’re lovely,” he said, a purr in his voice, stepped up to her, slid his erection between her legs, and gathered her close. Then he kissed her, and Dalmatica found herself in the midst of more sensations than she had ever known existed—the feel of his skin, his lips, his penis, his hands— the smell of him clean and sweet, like her children after their baths.

And so, waking up, growing up, she discovered dimensions which had nothing to do with dreams or fantasies and everything to do with living, conjoined bodies. And from love she fell into adoration, physical enslavement.

To Sulla she manifested the bewitchment he had first known with Julilla, yet magically mixed with echoes of Metrobius; he soared into an ecstatic delirium he hadn’t experienced in almost twenty years. I am starved too, he thought in wonder, and I didn’t even know it! This is so important, so vital to me! And I had lost all sight of it.

Little wonder then that nothing from that first incredible day of marriage to Dalmatica had the power to wound him deeply—not the boos and hisses he still experienced from those in the Forum who deplored his treatment of Aelia, not the malicious innuendo of men like Philippus who only saw Dalmatica’s money, not the crippled form of Gaius Marius leaning on his boy, not the nudges and winks of Lucius Decumius nor the sniggers of those who deemed Sulla a satyr and Scaurus’s widow an innocent, not even the bitter little note of congratulations Metrobius sent round with a bouquet of pansies.

Less than two weeks after the marriage they moved into a huge mansion on the Palatine overlooking the Circus Maximus and not far from the temple of Magna Mater. It had frescoes better than those in the house of Marcus Livius Drusus, pillars of solid marble, the best mosaic floors in Rome, and furniture of an opulence more suited to an eastern king than a Roman senator. Sulla and Dalmatica even boasted a citrus-wood table, its priceless peacock-grained surface supported by a gold-inlaid ivory pedestal in the form of interlocked dolphins; a wedding gift from Metellus Pius the Piglet.

Leaving the house in which he had lived for twenty-five years was another much-needed emancipation. Gone the memories of awful old Clitumna and her even more awful nephew, Stichus; gone the memories of Nicopolis, Julilla, Marcia, Aelia. And if the memories of his son were not gone, he had at least removed himself from the pain of seeing and feeling things his son had seen and felt, could no longer look in through the vacant nursery door and have an image of a laughing, naked little boy leap at him from nowhere. With Dalmatica he would start anew.

It was Rome’s good fortune that Sulla lingered in the city far longer than he would have did Dalmatica not exist; he was there to supervise his program of debt relief and think of ways to put money in the Treasury. Shifting mightily and snatching income at every conceivable opportunity, he managed to pay the legions (Pompey Strabo kept his word and sent in a very light wages bill) and even a little of the debt to Italian Gaul, and saw with satisfaction that business in the city seemed on the verge of a slight recovery.

In March, however, he had seriously to think of tearing himself away from his wife’s body. Metellus Pius was already in the south with Mamercus; Cinna and Cornutus were scouring the lands of the Marsi; and Pompey Strabo—complete with son but without the letter-writing prodigy Cicero—skulked somewhere in Umbria.

But there was one thing left to do. Sulla did it on the day before his departure, as it did not require the passage of a law. It lay in the province of the censors. This pair had been dilatory in the matter of the census, even though Piso Frugi’s law had confined the new citizens to eight of the rural tribes and two new tribes, a distribution which could not destroy the tribal electoral status quo. They had provided themselves with a technical illegality in case the temperature of censorial waters grew too hot for their thin skins to bear and discretion dictated that they should resign their office; when directed by the augurs to conduct a very small and obscure ceremony, they had deliberately neglected to do so.

“Princeps Senatus, Conscript Fathers, the Senate is facing its own crisis,” said Sulla, remaining without moving beside his own chair, as was his habit. He held out his right hand, in which reposed a scroll of paper. “I have here a list of those senators who will never attend this House again. They are dead. Just a little over one hundred of them. Now the largest part of the one hundred names on this list belongs to the pedarii, backbenchers who craved no special distinction in this House, did not speak, knew no more law than any senator must. However, there are other names— names of men we already miss acutely, for they were the stuff of court presidents, special judges and adjudicators and arbitrators, legal draftsmen, legislators, magistrates. And they have not been replaced! Nor do I see a move to replace them!

“I mention: the censor-and Princeps Senatus, Marcus Aemilius Scaurus; the censor and Pontifex Maximus, Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus; the consular Sextus Julius Caesar; the consular Titus Didius; the consul Lucius Porcius Cato Licinianus; the consul Publius Rutilius Lupus; the consular Aulus Postumius Albinus; the praetor Quintus Servilius Caepio; the praetor Lucius Postumius; the praetor Gaius Cosconius; the praetor Quintus Servilius; the praetor Publius Gabinius; the praetor Marcus Porcius Cato Salonianus; the praetor Aulus Sempronius Asellio; the aedile Marcus Claudius Marcellus; the tribune of the plebs Marcus Livius Drusus; the tribune of the plebs Marcus Fonteius; the tribune of the plebs Quintus Varius Severus Hybrida Sucronensis; the legate Publius Licinius Crassus Junior; the legate Marcus Valerius Messala.”

Sulla paused, satisfied; every face was shocked.

“Yes, I know,” he said gently. “Not until the list is read out can we fully appreciate how many of the great or the promising are gone. Seven consuls and seven praetors. Fourteen men eminently qualified to sit in judgment, comment upon laws and customs, guard the mos maiorum. Not to mention the six other names of men who would have led in time or joined the ranks of the leaders very soon. There are other names besides—names I have not read out, but which include tribunes of the plebs who made lesser reputations during their terms, yet were nonetheless experienced men.”

“Oh, Lucius Cornelius, it is a tragedy!” said Flaccus Princeps Senatus, a catch in his voice.

“Yes, Lucius Valerius, it is that,” Sulla agreed. “There are many names not on this list because they are not dead, but who are absent from this House for various reasons— on duty overseas, on duty elsewhere in Italy than Rome. Even in the winter hiatus of this war I have not managed to count more than one hundred men assembled in this body politic, though no senators resident in Rome are absent in this time of need. There is also a considerable list of senators at present in exile due to the activities of the Varian Commission or the Plautian Commission. And men like Publius Rutilius Rufus.

“Therefore, honored censors Publius Licinius and Lucius Julius, I ask you most earnestly to do everything in your power to fill our seats. Give the opportunity to men of substance and ambition in the city to join the disastrously thinned ranks of the Senate of Rome. And also appoint from among the pedarii those men who should be advanced to give their opinions and urged to take on more senior office. All too often there are not enough men present to make a quorum. How can the Senate of Rome purport to be the senior body in government if it cannot make a quorum?”

And that, concluded Sulla, was that. He had done what he could to keep Rome going, and given an inert pair of censors a public kick up the backside to do their duty. Now it was time to finish the war against the Italians.