4

Metellus Pius had marched for the Adriatic coast with his own two legions (under the command of his legate Varro Lucullus), six legions which had belonged to Scipio, the three legions which belonged to Pompey, and those five thousand horse troopers Sulla had given to Pompey.

Of course Varro the Sabine traveled with Pompey, a ready and sympathetic ear (not to mention a ready and sympathetic pen!) tuned to receive Pompey’s thoughts.

“I must put myself on better terms with Crassus,” said Pompey to him as they moved through Picenum. “Metellus Pius and Varro Lucullus are easy—and anyway, I quite like them. But Crassus is a surly brute. More formidable by far. I need him on my side.”

Astride a pony, Varro looked a long way up to Pompey on his big white Public Horse. “I do believe you’ve learned something during the course of a winter spent with Sulla!” he said, genuinely amazed. “I never thought to hear you speak of conciliating any man—with the exception of Sulla, naturally.”

“Yes, I have learned,” admitted Pompey magnanimously. His beautiful white teeth flashed in a smile of pure affection. “Come now, Varro! I know I’m well on my way to becoming Sulla’s most valued helper, but I am capable of understanding that Sulla needs other men than me! Though you may be right,” he went on thoughtfully. “This is the first time in my life that I’ve dealt with any other commander-in-chief than my father. I think my father was a very great soldier. But he cared for nothing aside from his lands. Sulla is different.”

“In what way?” asked Varro curiously.

“He cares nothing for most things—including all of us he calls his legates, or colleagues, or whatever name he considers judicious at the time. I don’t know that he even cares for Rome. Whatever he does care for, it isn’t material. Money, lands—even the size of his auctoritas or the quality of his public reputation. No, they don’t matter to Sulla.”

“Then what does?’’ Varro asked, fascinated with the phenomenon of a Pompey who could see further than himself.

“Perhaps his dignitas alone,” Pompey answered.

Varro turned this over carefully. Could Pompey be right?

Dignitas! The most intangible of all a Roman nobleman’s possessions, that was dignitas. His auctoritas was his clout, his measure of public influence, his ability to sway public opinion and public bodies from Senate to priests to the Treasury.

Dignitas was different. It was intensely personal and very private, yet it extended into all parameters of a man’s public life. So hard to define! That, of course, was why there was a word for it. Dignitas was … a man’s personal degree of impressiveness … of glory? Dignitas summed up what a man was, as a man and as a leader of his society. It was the total of his pride, his integrity, his word, his intelligence, his deeds, his ability, his knowledge, his standing, his worth as a man.... Dignitas survived a man’s death, it was the only way he could triumph over death. Yes, that was the best definition. Dignitas was a man’s triumph over the extinction of his physical being. And seen in that light, Varro thought Pompey absolutely correct. If anything mattered to Sulla, it was his dignitas. He had said he would beat Mithridates. He had said he would come back to Italy and secure his vindication. He had said that he would restore the Republic in its old, traditional form. And having said these things, he would do them. Did he not, his dignitas would be diminished; in outlawry and official odium there could be no dignitas. So from out of himself he would find the strength to make his word good. When he had made his word good, he would be satisfied. Until he had, Sulla could not rest. Would not rest.

“In saying that,” Varro said, “you have awarded Sulla the ultimate accolade.”

The bright blue eyes went blank. “Huh?”

“I mean,” said Varro patiently, “that you have demonstrated to me that Sulla cannot lose. He’s fighting for something Carbo doesn’t even understand.”

“Oh, yes! Yes, definitely!” said Pompey cheerfully.

They were almost to the river Aesis, in the heart of Pompey’s own fief again. The brash youth of last year had not vanished, but sat now amid a branching superstructure of fresh, stimulating experiences; in other words, Pompey had grown. In fact, he grew a little more each day. Sulla’s gift of cavalry command had interested Pompey in a type of military activity he had never before seriously considered. That of course was Roman. Romans believed in the foot soldier, and to some extent had come to believe the horse soldier was more decorative than useful, more a nuisance than an asset. Varro was convinced that the only reason Romans employed cavalry was because the enemy did.

Once upon a time, in the days of the Kings of Rome and in the very early years of the Republic, the horse soldier had formed the military elite, was the spearhead of a Roman army. Out of this had grown the class of knights—the Ordo Equester, as Gaius Gracchus had called it. Horses had been hugely expensive—too expensive for many men to buy privately. Out of that had grown the custom of the Public Horse, the knight’s mount bought and paid for by the State.

Now, a long way down the road from those days, the Roman horse soldier had ceased to exist except in social and economic terms. The knight—businessman or landowner that he was, member of the First Class of the Centuries—was the horse soldier’s Roman relic. And still to this day, the State bought the eighteen hundred most senior knights their horses.

Addicted to exploring the winding lanes of thought, Varro saw that he was losing the point of his original reflection, and drew himself resolutely back onto thought’s main road. Pompey and his interest in the cavalry. Not Roman in manpower anymore. These were Sulla’s troopers he had brought from Greece with him, and therefore contained no Gauls; had they been recruited in Italy, they would have been almost entirely Gallic, drawn from the rolling pastures on the far side of the Padus in Italian Gaul, or from the great valley of the Rhodanus in Gaul-across-the-Alps. As it was, Sulla’s men were mostly Thracians, admixed with a few hundred Galatians. Good fighters, and as loyal as could be expected of men who were not themselves Roman. In the Roman army they had auxiliary status, and some of them might be rewarded at the end of a hard—won campaign with the full Roman citizenship, or a piece of land.

All the way from Teanum Sidicinum, Pompey had busied himself going among these men in their leather trousers and leather jerkins, with their little round shields and their long lances; their long swords were more suitable for slashing from the height of a horse’s back than the short sword of the infantryman. At least Pompey had the capacity to think, Varro told himself as they rode steadily toward the Aesis. He was discovering the qualities of horsemen—soldiers and turning over the possibilities. Planning. Seeing if there was any way their performance or equipage might be improved. They were formed into regiments of five hundred men, each regiment consisting of ten squadrons of fifty men, and they were led by their own officers; the only Roman who commanded them was the overall general of cavalry. In this case, Pompey. Very much involved, very fascinated—and very determined to lead them with a flair and competence not usually present in a Roman. If Varro privately thought that a part of Pompey’s interest stemmed from his large dollop of Gallic blood, he was wise enough never to indicate to Pompey that such was his theory.

How extraordinary! Here they were, the Aesis in sight, and Pompey’s old camp before them. Back where they had begun, as if all the miles between had been nothing. A journey to see an old man with no teeth and no hair, distinguished only by a couple of minor battles and a lot of marching.

“I wonder,” said Varro, musing, “if the men ever ask themselves what it’s all about?”

Pompey blinked, turned his head sideways. “What a strange question! Why should they ask themselves anything? It’s all done for them. I do it all for them! All they have to do is as they’re told.” And he grimaced at the revolutionary thought that so many as one of Pompey Strabo’s veterans might think.

But Varro was not to be put off. “Come now, Magnus! They are men—like us in that respect, if in no other. And being men, they are endowed with thought. Even if a lot of them can’t read or write. It’s one thing never to question orders, quite another not to ask what it’s all about.”

“I don’t see that,” said Pompey, who genuinely didn’t.

“Magnus, I call the phenomenon human curiosity! It is in a man’s nature to ask himself the reason why! Even if he is a Picentine ranker who has never been to Rome and doesn’t understand the difference between Rome and Italy. We have just been to Teanum and back. There’s our old camp down there. Don’t you think that some of them at least must be asking themselves what we went to Teanum for, and why we’ve come back in less than a year?”

“Oh, they know that!” said Pompey impatiently. “Besides, they’re veterans. If they had a thousand sesterces for every mile they’ve marched during the past ten years, they’d be able to live on the Palatine and breed pretty fish. Even if they did piss in the fountain and shit in the cook’s herb garden! Varro, you are such an original! You never cease to amaze me—the things that chew at you!” Pompey kicked his Public Horse in the ribs and began to gallop down the last slope. Suddenly he laughed uproariously, waved his hands in the air; his words floated back quite clearly. “Last one in’s a rotten egg!”

Oh, you child! said Varro to himself. What am I doing here? What use can I possibly be? It’s all a game, a grand and magnificent adventure.

*

Perhaps it was, but late that night Metellus Pius called a meeting with his three legates, and Varro as always accompanied Pompey. The atmosphere was excited: there had been news.

“Carbo isn’t far away,” said the Piglet. He paused to consider what he had said, and modified it. “At least, Carrinas is, and Censorinus is rapidly catching him up. Apparently Carbo thought eight legions would be enough to halt our progress, then he discovered the size of our army, and sent Censorinus with another four legions. They’ll reach the Aesis ahead of us, and it’s there we’ll have to meet them.”

“Where’s Carbo himself?” asked Marcus Crassus.

“Still in Ariminum. I imagine he’s waiting to see what Sulla intends to do.”

“And how Young Marius will fare,” said Pompey.

“True,” agreed the Piglet, raising his brows. “However, it isn’t our job to worry about that. Our job is to make Carbo hop. Pompeius, this is your purlieu. Should we bring Carrinas across the river, or keep him on the far side?”

“It doesn’t really matter,” said Pompey coolly. “The banks are much the same. Plenty of room to deploy, some tree cover, good level ground for an all—out contest if we can bring it on.” He looked angelic, and said sweetly, “The decision belongs to you, Pius. I’m only your legate.”

“Well, since we’re trying to get to Ariminum, it makes more sense to get our men to the far side,” said Metellus Pius, quite unruffled. “If we do force Carrinas to retreat, we don’t want to have to cross the Aesis in pursuit. The report indicates that we have a huge advantage in cavalry. Provided that you think the terrain and the river will allow it, Pompeius, I would like you to spearhead the crossing and keep your horse—troopers between the enemy and our infantry. Then I’ll wheel our infantry on the far bank, you peel your cavalry back out of the way, and we’ll attack. There’s not much we can do in terms of subterfuge. It will be a straight battle. However, if you can swing your cavalry around behind the enemy after I’ve engaged him from the front, we’ll roll Carrinas and Censorinus up.”

No one objected to this strategy, which was sufficiently loose to indicate that Metellus Pius had some talent as a general. When it was suggested that Varro Lucullus should command Pompey’s three legions of veterans, thereby allowing Pompey full license with his cavalry, Pompey agreed without a qualm.

“I’ll lead the center,” said Metellus Pius in conclusion, “with Crassus leading the right, and Varro Lucullus the left.”

Since the day was fine and the ground was not too wet, things went very much as Metellus Pius had planned. Pompey held the crossing easily, and the infantry engagement which followed demonstrated the great advantage veteran troops bestowed upon a general in battle. Though Scipio’s legions were raw enough, Varro Lucullus and Crassus led the five veteran legions superbly, and their confidence spilled over onto Scipio’s men. Carrinas and Censorinus had no veteran troops, and went down without extending Metellus Pius too severely. The end result would have been a rout had Pompey managed to fall upon the enemy rear, but as he skirted the field to do so, he encountered a new factor. Carbo had arrived with six more legions—and three thousand horse to contest Pompey’s progress.

Carrinas and Censorinus managed to draw off without losing more than three or four thousand men, then camped next to Carbo a scant mile beyond the battlefield. The advance of Metellus Pius and his legates ground to a halt.

“We will go back to your original camp south of the river,” said Metellus Pius with crisp decision. “I would rather they think us too cautious to proceed, and I also think it behooves us to keep a fair distance between us and them.”

Despite the disappointing outcome of the day’s conflict, spirits were high among the men, and quite high in the command tent when Pompey, Crassus and Varro Lucullus met their general at dusk. The table was covered with maps, a slight disorder indicating that the Piglet had been poring over them closely.

“All right,” he said, standing behind the table, “I want you to look at this, and see how best we can outflank Carbo.”

They clustered around, Varro Lucullus holding a five-flamed lamp above the carefully inked sheepskin. The map displayed the Adriatic coastline between Ancona and Ravenna, together with inland territory extending beyond the crest of the Apennines.

“We’re here,” said the Piglet, finger on a spot below the Aesis. “The next big river onward is the Metaurus, a treacherous crossing. All this land is Ager Gallicus—here—and here—Ariminum at the northward end of it—some rivers, but none according to this difficult to ford. Until we come to this one—between Ariminum and Ravenna, see? The Rubico, our natural border with Italian Gaul.” All these features were lightly touched; the Piglet was methodical. “It’s fairly obvious why Carbo has put himself in Ariminum. He can move up the Via Aemilia into Italian Gaul proper—he can go down the Sapis road to the Via Cassia at Arretium and threaten Rome from the upper Tiber valley—he can reach the Via Flaminia and Rome that way—he can march down the Adriatic into Picenum, and if necessary into Campania through Apulia and Samnium.”

“Then we have to dislodge him,” said Crassus, stating the obvious. “It’s possible.”

“But there is a hitch,” said Metellus Pius, frowning. “It seems Carbo is not entirely confined to Ariminum anymore. He’s done something very shrewd by sending eight legions under Gaius Norbanus up the Via Aemilia to Forum Cornelii—see? Not far beyond Faventia. Now that is not a great distance from Ariminum—perhaps forty miles.”

“Which means he could get those eight legions back to Ariminum in one hard day’s march if he had to,” said Pompey.

“Yes. Or get them to Arretium or Placentia in two or three days,” said Varro Lucullus, who never lost sight of the overall concept. “We have Carbo himself sitting on the other side of the Aesis with Carrinas and Censorinus—and eighteen legions plus three thousand cavalry. There are eight more legions in Forum Cornelii with Norbanus, and another four garrisoning Ariminum in company with several thousand more cavalry.”

“I need a grand strategy before I go one more inch,” said Metellus Pius, looking at his legates.

“The grand strategy is easy,” said Crassus, the abacus clicking away inside his mind. “We have to prevent Carbo’s recombining with Norbanus, separate Carbo from Carrinas and Censorinus, and Carrinas from Censorinus. Prevent every one of them from recombining. Just as Sulla said. Fragmentation.”

“One of us—probably me—will have to get five legions to the far side of Ariminum, then cut Norbanus off and make a bid to take Italian Gaul,” said Metellus Pius, frowning. “Not an easy thing to do.”

“It is easy,” said Pompey eagerly. “Look—here’s Ancona, the second—best harbor on the Adriatic. At this time of year it’s full of ships waiting on the westerlies to sail for the east and a summer’s trading. If you took your five legions to Ancona, Pius, you could embark them on those ships and sail to Ravenna. It’s a sweet voyage, you’d never need to be out of sight of land, and there won’t be any storms. It’s no more than a hundred miles—you’ll do it in eight or nine days, even if you have to row. If you get a following wind—not unlikely at this time of year—you’ll do it in four days.” His hand stabbed at the map. “A quick march from Ravenna to Faventia, and you’ll cut Norbanus off from Ariminum permanently.”

“It will have to be done in secret,” said the Piglet, eyes shining. “Oh, yes, Pompeius, it will work! They won’t dream of our moving troops between here and Ancona—their scouts will all be to the north of the Aesis. Pompeius, Crassus, you’ll have to sit right where we are at the moment pretending to be five legions stronger until Varro Lucullus and I have sailed from Ancona. Then you move. Try to catch up to Carrinas, and make it look serious. If possible, tie him down—and Censorinus as well. Carbo will be with them at first, but when he hears I’ve landed at Ravenna, he’ll march to relieve Norbanus. Of course, he may elect to stay in this neighborhood himself, send Carrinas or Censorinus to relieve Norbanus. But I don’t think so. Carbo needs to be centrally located.”

“Oh, this is going to be tremendous fun!” cried Pompey.

And such was the contentment in the command tent that no one found this statement too flippant; even Marcus Terentius Varro, sitting quietly in a corner taking notes.

*

The strategy worked. While Metellus Pius hustled himself, Varro Lucullus and five legions to Ancona, the other six plus the cavalry pretended to be eleven. Then Pompey and Crassus moved out of the camp and crossed the Aesis without opposition; Carbo had decided, it seemed, to lure them toward Ariminum, no doubt planning a decisive battle on ground more familiar to him.

Pompey led the way with his cavalry, hard on the heels of Carbo’s rear guard, cavalry commanded by Censorinus, and nipped those heels with satisfying regularity. These tactics irritated Censorinus, never a patient man; near the town of Sena Gallica he turned and fought, cavalry against cavalry. Pompey won; he was developing a talent for commanding horse. Into Sena Gallica the smarting Censorinus retreated with infantry and cavalry both—but not for long. Pompey stormed its modest fortifications.

Censorinus then did the sensible thing. He sacrificed his horse, made off through the back gate of Sena Gallica with eight legions of infantry, and headed for the Via Flaminia.

By this time Carbo had learned of the unwelcome presence of the Piglet and his army in Faventia; Norbanus was now cut off from Ariminum. So Carbo marched for Faventia, leaving Carrinas to follow him with eight more legions; Censorinus, he decided, would have to fend for himself.

But then came Brutus Damasippus to find Carbo as he marched, and gave him the news that Sulla had annihilated the army of Young Marius at Sacriportus. Sulla was now heading up the Via Cassia toward the border of Italian Gaul at Arretium, though all the troops he had were three legions. In that instant, Carbo changed his plans. Only one thing could be done. Norbanus would have to hold Italian Gaul unaided against Metellus Pius; Carbo and his legates must halt Sulla at Arretium, not a difficult thing to do when Sulla had but three legions.

*

Pompey and Crassus got the news of Sulla’s victory over Young Marius at just about the same time as Carbo did, and hailed it with great jubilation. They turned westward to follow Carrinas and Censorinus, each now bringing eight legions to Carbo at Arretium on the Via Cassia. The pace was furious, the pursuit determined. And this, decided Pompey as he headed with Crassus for the Via Flaminia, was no campaign for cavalry; they were heading into the mountains. Back to the Aesis he sent his horse—troopers, and resumed command of his father’s veterans. Crassus, he had discovered, seemed content to follow his lead as long as what Pompey suggested added up to the right answers inside that hard round Crassus head.

Again it was the presence of so many veterans made the real difference; Pompey and Crassus caught up to Censorinus on a diverticulum of the Via Flaminia between Fulginum and Spoletium, and didn’t even need to fight a battle. Exhausted, hungry, and very afraid, the troops of Censorinus disintegrated. All Censorinus managed to retain were three of his eight legions, and these precious soldiers he determined must be saved. He marched them off the road and cut across country to Arretium and Carbo. The men of his other five legions had scattered so completely that none of them afterward were ever successfully amalgamated into new units.

Three days later Pompey and Crassus apprehended Carrinas outside the big and well-fortified town of Spoletium. This time a battle did take place, but Carrinas fared so poorly that he was forced to shut himself up inside Spoletium with three of his eight legions; three more of his legions fled to Tuder and went to earth there; and the last two disappeared, never to be found.

“Oh, wonderful!” whooped Pompey to Varro. “I see how I can say bye—bye to stolid old Crassus!”

This he did by hinting to Crassus that he should take his three legions to Tuder and besiege it, leaving Pompey to bring his own men to bear on Spoletium. Off went Crassus to Tuder, very happy at the thought of conducting his own campaign. And Pompey sat down before Spoletium in high fettle, aware that whoever sat down before Spoletium would collect most of the glory because this was where General Carrinas himself had taken refuge. Alas, things didn’t work out as Pompey had envisaged! Astute and daring, Carrinas sneaked out of Spoletium during a nocturnal thunderstorm and stole away to join Carbo with all three of his legions intact.

Pompey took Carrinas’s defection very personally; fascinated, Varro learned what a Pompeian temper tantrum looked like, complete with tears, gnawed knuckles, plucked tufts of hair, drumming of heels and fists on the floor, broken cups and plates, mangled furniture. But then, like the nocturnal thunderstorm so beneficial to Carrinas, Pompey’s thwarted rage rolled away.

“We’re off to Sulla at Clusium,” he announced. “Up with you, Varro! Don’t dawdle so!”

Shaking his head, Varro tried not to dawdle.

*

It was early in June when Pompey and his veterans marched into Sulla’s camp on the Clanis River, there to find the commander-in-chief a trifle sore and battered of spirit. Things had not gone very well for him when Carbo had come down from Arretium toward Clusium, for Carbo had nearly won the battle which developed out of a chance encounter, and therefore could not be planned. Only Sulla’s presence of mind in breaking off hostilities and retiring into a very strong camp had saved the day.

“Not that it matters,” said Sulla, looking greatly cheered. “You’re here now, Pompeius, and Crassus isn’t far away. Having both of you will make all the difference. Carbo is finished.”

“How did Metellus Pius get on?” Pompey asked, not pleased to hear Sulla mention Crassus in the same breath.

“He’s secured Italian Gaul. Brought Norbanus to battle outside Faventia, while Varro Lucullus—he’d had to go all the way to Placentia to find asylum—took on Lucius Quinctius and Publius Albinovanus near Fidentia. All went splendidly. The enemy is scattered or dead.”

“What about Norbanus himself?”

Sulla shrugged; he never cared very much what happened to his military foes once they were beaten, and Norbanus had not been a personal enemy. “I imagine he went to Ariminum,” he said, and turned away to issue instructions about Pompey’s camp.

Sure enough, Crassus arrived the following day from Tuder at the head of three rather surly and disgruntled legions; rumor was rife among their ranks that after Tuder fell, Crassus had found a fortune in gold and kept the lot.

“Is it true?” demanded Sulla, the deep folds of his face grown deeper, his mouth set so hard its lips had disappeared.

But nothing could dent that bovine composure. Crassus’s mild grey eyes widened, he looked puzzled but unconcerned. “No.”

“You’re sure?”

“There was nothing to be had in Tuder beyond a few old women, and I didn’t fancy a one.”

Sulla shot him a suspicious glance, wondering if Crassus was being intentionally insolent; but if so, he couldn’t tell. “You are as deep as you are devious, Marcus Crassus,” he said at last. “I will accord you the dispensations of your family and your standing, and elect to believe you. But take fair warning! If ever I discover that you have profited at the expense of the State out of my aims and endeavors, I will never see you again.”

“Fair enough,” said Crassus, nodding, and ambled off.

Publius Servilius Vatia had listened to this exchange, and smiled now at Sulla. “One cannot like him,” he said.

“There are few men this one does like,” said Sulla, throwing his arm around Vatia’s shoulders. “Aren’t you lucky, Vatia?”

“Why?”

“I happen to like you. You’re a good fellow—never exceed your authority and never give me an argument. Whatever I ask you to do, you do.” He yawned until his eyes watered. “I’m dry. A cup of wine, that’s what I need!”

A slender and attractive man of medium coloring, Vatia was not one of the patrician Servilii; his family, however, was more than ancient enough to pass the most rigorous of social examinations, and his mother was one of the most august Caecilii Metelli, the daughter of Metellus Macedonicus—which meant he was related to everybody who mattered. Including, by marriage, Sulla. So he felt comfortable with that heavy arm across his back, and turned within Sulla’s embrace to walk beside him to the command tent; Sulla had been imbibing freely that day, needed a little steadying.

“What will we do with these people when Rome is mine?’’ asked Sulla as Vatia helped him to a full goblet of his special wine; Vatia took his own wine from a different flagon, and made sure it was well watered.

“Which people? Crassus, you mean?”

“Yes, Crassus. And Pompeius Magnus.” Sulla’s lip curled up to show his gum. “I ask you, Vatia! Magnus! At his age!”

Vatia smiled, sat on a folding chair. “Well, if he’s too young, I’m too old. I should have been consul six years ago. Now, I suppose I never will be.”

“If I win, you’ll be consul. Never doubt it. I am a bad enemy, Vatia, but a stout friend.”

“I know, Lucius Cornelius,” said Vatia tenderly.

“What do I do with them?” Sulla asked again.

“With Pompeius, I can see your difficulty. I cannot imagine him settling back into inertia once the fighting is over, and how do you keep him from aspiring to offices ahead of his time?”

Sulla laughed. “He’s not after office! He’s after military glory. And I think I will try to give it to him. He might come in quite handy.” The empty cup was extended to be refilled. “And Crassus? What do I do with Crassus?”

“Oh, he’ll look after himself,” said Vatia, pouring. “He will make money. I can understand that. When his father and his brother Lucius died, he should have inherited more than just a rich widow. The Licinius Crassus fortune was worth three hundred talents. But of course it was confiscated. Trust Cinna! He grabbed everything. And poor Crassus didn’t have anything like Catulus’s clout.”

Sulla snorted. “Poor Crassus, indeed! He stole that gold from Tuder, I know he did.”

“Probably,” said Vatia, unruffled. “However, you can’t pursue it at the moment. You need the man! And he knows you do. This is a desperate venture.”

*

The arrival of Pompey and Crassus to swell Sulla’s army was made known to Carbo immediately. To his legates he turned a calm face, and made no mention of relocating himself or his forces. He still outnumbered Sulla heavily, which meant Sulla showed no sign of breaking out of his camp to invite another battle. And while Carbo waited for events to shape themselves, tell him what he must do, news came first from Italian Gaul that Norbanus and his legates Quinctius and Albinovanus were beaten, that Metellus Pius and Varro Lucullus held Italian Gaul for Sulla. The second lot of news from Italian Gaul was more depressing, if not as important. The Lucanian legate Publius Albinovanus had lured Norbanus and the rest of his high command to a conference in Ariminum, then murdered all save Norbanus himself before surrendering Ariminum to Metellus Pius in exchange for a pardon. Having expressed a wish to live in exile somewhere in the east, Norbanus had been allowed to board a ship. The only legate who escaped was Lucius Quinctius, who was in Varro Lucullus’s custody when the murders happened.

A tangible gloom descended upon Carbo’s camp; restless men like Censorinus began to pace and fume. But still Sulla would not offer battle. In desperation, Carbo gave Censorinus something to do; he was to take eight legions to Praeneste and relieve the siege of Young Marius. Ten days after departing, Censorinus was back. It was impossible to relieve Young Marius, he said—the fortifications Ofella had built were impregnable. Carbo sent a second expedition to Praeneste, but only succeeded in losing two thousand good men when Sulla ambushed them. A third force set off under Brutus Damasippus to find a road over the mountains and break into Praeneste along the snake—paths behind it. That too failed; Brutus Damasippus looked, abandoned all hope, and returned to Clusium and Carbo.

Even the news that the paralyzed Samnite leader Gaius Papius Mutilus had assembled forty thousand men in Aesernia and was going to send them to relieve Praeneste had no power now to lift Carbo’s spirits; his depression deepened every day. Nor did his attitude of mind improve when Mutilus sent him a letter saying his force would be seventy thousand, not forty thousand, as Lucania and Marcus Lamponius were sending him twenty thousand men, and Capua and Tiberius Gutta another ten thousand.

There was only one man Carbo really trusted, old Marcus Junius Brutus, his proquaestor. And so to Old Brutus he went as June turned into Quinctilis, and still no decision had come to him capable of easing his mind.

“If Albinovanus would stoop to murdering men he’d laughed and eaten with for months, how can I possibly be sure of any of my own legates?’’ he asked.

They were strolling down the three—mile length of the Via Principalis, one of the two main avenues within the camp, and wide enough to ensure their conversation was private.

Blinking slowly in the sunlight, the old man with the blued lips made no quick, reassuring answer; instead, he turned the question over in his mind, and when he did reply, said very soberly, “I do not think you can be sure, Gnaeus Papirius.”

Carbo’s breath hissed between his teeth; he trembled. “Ye gods, Marcus, what am I to do?”

“For the moment, nothing. But I think you must abandon this sad business before murder becomes a desirable alternative to one or more of your legates.”

“Abandon ?’’

“Yes, abandon,” said Old Brutus steadily.

“They wouldn’t let me leave!” Carbo cried, shaking now.

“Probably not. But they don’t need to know. I’ll start making our preparations, while you look as if the only thing worrying you is the fate of the Samnite army.” Old Brutus put his hand on Carbo’s arm, patted it. “Don’t despair. All will be well in the end.”

By the middle of Quinctilis, Old Brutus had finished his preparations. Very quietly in the middle of the night he and Carbo stole away without baggage or attendants save for a mule loaded down with gold ingots innocently sheathed in a layer of lead, and a large purse of denarii for traveling expenses. Looking like a tired pair of merchants, they made their way to the Etrurian coast at Telamon, and there took ship for Africa. No one molested them, no one was the slightest bit interested in the laboring mule or in what it had in its panniers. Fortune, thought Carbo as the ship slipped anchor, was favoring him!

*

Because he was paralyzed from the waist down, Gaius Papius Mutilus could not lead the Samnite/Lucanian/Capuan host himself, though he did travel with the Samnite segment of it from its training ground at Aesernia as far as Teanum Sidicinum, where the whole host occupied Sulla’s and Scipio’s old camps, and Mutilus went to stay in his own house.

His fortunes had prospered since the Italian War; now he owned villas in half a dozen places throughout Samnium and Campania, and was wealthier than he had ever been: an ironic compensation, he sometimes thought, for the loss of all power and feeling below the waist.

Aesernia and Bovianum were his two favorite towns, but his wife, Bastia, preferred to live in Teanum—she was from the district. That Mutilus had not objected to this almost constant separation was due to his injury; as a husband he was of little use, and if understandably his wife needed to avail herself of physical solace, better she did so where he was not. However, no scandalous tidbits about her behavior had percolated back to him in Aesernia, which meant either she was voluntarily as continent as his injury obliged him to be, or her discretion was exemplary. So when Mutilus arrived at his house in Teanum, he found himself quite looking forward to Bastia’s company.

“I didn’t expect to see you,” she said with perfect ease.

“There’s no reason why you should have expected me, since I didn’t write,” he said in an agreeable way. “You look well.”

“I feel well.”

“Given my limitations, I’m in pretty good health myself,” he went on, finding the reunion more awkward than he had hoped; she was distant, too courteous.

“What brings you to Teanum?” she asked.

“I’ve an army outside town. We’re going to war against Sulla. Or at least, my army is. I shall stay here with you.”

“For how long?” she enquired politely.

“Until the business is over one way or the other.”

“I see.” She leaned back in her chair, a magnificent woman of some thirty summers, and looked at him without an atom of the blazing desire he used to see in her eyes when they were first married—and he had been all a man. “How may I see to your comfort, husband? Is there any special thing you’ll need?”

“I have my body servant. He knows what to do.”

Disposing the clouds of expensive gauze about her splendid body more artistically, she continued to gaze at him out of those orbs large and dark enough to have earned her an Homeric compliment: Lady Ox-eyes. “Just you to dinner?” she asked.

“No, three others. My legates. Is that a problem?”

“Certainly not. The menu will do you honor, Gaius Papius.”

The menu did. Bastia was an excellent housekeeper. She knew two of the three men who came to eat with their stricken commander, Pontius Telesinus and Marcus Lamponius. Telesinus was a Samnite of very old family who had been a little too young to be numbered among the Samnite greats of the Italian War. Now thirty-two, he was a fine-looking man, and bold enough to eye his hostess with an appreciation only she divined. That she ignored it was good sense; Telesinus was a Samnite, and that meant he hated Romans more than he could possibly admire women.

Marcus Lamponius was the paramount chieftain from Lucania, and had been a formidable enemy to Rome during the Italian War. Now into his fifties, he was still warlike, still thirsted to let Roman blood flow. They never change, these non—Roman Italians, she thought; destroying Rome means more to them than life or prosperity or peace. More even than children.

The one among the three Bastia had never met before was a Campanian like herself, the chief citizen of Capua. His name was Tiberius Gutta, and he was fat, brutish, egotistical, as fanatically dedicated to shedding Roman blood as the others.

She absented herself from the triclinium as soon as her husband gave her permission to retire, burning with an anger she had most carefully concealed. It wasn’t fair! Things were just beginning to run so smoothly that the Italian War might not have happened, when here it was, starting all over again. She had wanted to cry out that nothing would change, that Rome would grind their faces and their fortunes into the dust yet again; but self-control had kept her tongue still. Even if they had been brought to believe her, patriotism and pride would dictate that they go ahead anyway.

The anger ate at her, refused to die away. Up and down the marble floor of her sitting room she paced, wanting to strike out at them, those stupid, pigheaded men. Especially her own husband, leader of his nation, the one to whom all other Samnites looked for guidance. And what .sort of guidance was he giving them? War against Rome. Ruination. Did he care that when he fell, everyone attached to him would also fall? Of course he did not! He was all a man, with all a man’s idiocies of nationalism and revenge. All a man, yet only half a man. And the half of him left was no use to her, no use for procreating or recreating.

She stopped, feeling the heat at the core of her all this anger had caused to boil up. Her lips were bitten, she could taste a little bead of blood. On fire. On fire.

There was a slave…. One of those Greeks from Samothrace with hair so black it shone blue in the light, brows which met across the bridge of his nose in unashamed luxuriance, and eyes the color of a mountain lake … Skin so fine it begged to be kissed … Bastia clapped her hands.

When the steward came, she looked at him with her chin up and her bitten lips as plump and red as strawberries. “Are the gentlemen in the dining room content?”

“Yes, domina.”

“Good. Continue to look after them, please. And send Hippolytus to me here. I’ve thought of something he can do for me,” she said.

The steward’s face remained expressionless; as his master Mutilus did not care to live in Teanum Sidicinum, whereas his mistress Bastia did, his mistress Bastia mattered more to him. She must be kept happy. He bowed. “I will send Hippolytus to you at once, domina,” he said, and did many obeisances as he extricated himself carefully from her room.

In the triclinium Bastia had been forgotten the moment she departed for her own quarters.

“Carbo assures me that he has Sulla tied down at Clusium,” Mutilus said to his legates.

“Do you believe that?” asked Lamponius.

Mutilus frowned. “I have no reason to think otherwise, but I can’t be absolutely sure, of course. Do you have any reason to think otherwise?”

“No, except that Carbo’s a Roman.”

“Hear, hear!” cried Pontius Telesinus.

“Fortunes change,” said Tiberius Gutta of Capua, face shining from the grease of a capon roasted with chestnut stuffing and a skin—crisping glaze of oil. “For the moment, we fight on Carbo’s side. After Sulla is defeated, we can turn on Carbo and every other Roman and rend them.”

“Absolutely,” agreed Mutilus, smiling.

“We should move on Praeneste at once,” said Lamponius.

“Tomorrow, in fact,” said Telesinus quickly.

But Mutilus shook his head emphatically. “No. We rest the men here for five more days. They’ve had a hard march, and they still have to cover the length of the Via Latina. When they get to Ofella’s siegeworks, they must be fresh.”

These things decided—and given the prospect of relative leisure for the next five days—the dinner party broke up far earlier than Mutilus’s steward had anticipated. Busy among the kitchen servants, he saw nothing, heard nothing. And was not there when the master of the house ordered his massive German attendant to carry him to the mistress’s room.

She was kneeling naked upon the pillows of her couch, legs spread wide apart, and between her glistening thighs a blue—black head of hair was buried; the compact and muscular body which belonged to the head was stretched across the couch in an abandonment so complete it looked as if it belonged to a sleeping cat. In no other place than where the head was buried did the two bodies touch; Bastia’s arms were extended behind her, their hands kneading the pillows, and his arms lolled alongside the rest of him.

The door had opened quietly; the German slave stood with his master in his hold like a bride being carried across the threshold of her new home, and waited for his next instructions with all the dumb endurance of such fellows, far from home, almost devoid of Latin or Greek, permanently transfixed with the pain of loss, unable to express that pain.

The eyes of husband and wife met. In hers there flashed a shout of triumph, of jubilation; in his an amazement without the dulling anodyne of shock. Of its own volition his gaze fell to rest upon her glorious breasts, the sleekness of her belly, and was blurred by a sudden rush of tears.

The young Greek’s utter absorption in what he was doing now caught a change, a tension in the woman having nothing to do with him; he began to lift his head. Like two striking snakes her hands locked in the blue—black hair, pressed the head down and held it there.

“Don’t stop!’’ she cried.

Unable to look away, Mutilus watched the blood—gorged tissue in her nipples begin to swell them to bursting; her hips were moving, the head riding upon them. And then, beneath her husband’s eyes, Bastia screeched and moaned the power of her massive orgasm. It seemed to Mutilus to last an eternity.

Done, she released the head and slapped the young Greek, who rolled over and lay faceup; his terror was so profound that he seemed not to breathe.

“You can’t do anything with that,” said Bastia, pointing to the slave’s diminishing erection, “but there’s nothing wrong with your tongue, Mutilus.”

“You’re right, there isn’t,” he said, every last tear dried. “It can still taste and feel. But it isn’t interested in carrion.”

The German got him out of the room, carried him to his own sleeping cubicle, and deposited him with care upon his bed. Then after he had completed his various duties he left Gaius Papius Mutilus alone. No comment, no sympathy, no acknowledgment. And that, reflected Mutilus as he turned his face into his pillow, was a greater mercy than all else. Still in his mind’s eye the image of his wife’s body burned, the breasts with their nipples popping out, and that head—that head! That head … Below his waist nothing stirred, could never stir again. But the rest of him knew torments and dreams, and longed for every aspect of love. Every aspect!

“I am not dead,” he said into the pillow, and felt the tears come. “I am not dead! But oh, by all the gods, I wish I were!”

*

At the end of June, Sulla left Clusium. With him he took his own five legions and three of Scipio’s; he left Pompey in command, a decision which hadn’t impressed his other legates at all. But, since Sulla was Sulla and no one actively argued with him, Pompey it was.

“Clean this lot up,” he said to Pompey. “They outnumber you, but they’re demoralized. However, when they discover that I’m gone for good, they’ll offer battle. Watch Damasippus, he is the most competent among them. Crassus will cope with Marcus Censorinus, and Torquatus ought to manage against Carrinas.”

“What about Carbo?’’ asked Pompey.

“Carbo is a cipher. He lets his legates do his generaling. But don’t fiddle, Pompeius! I have other work for you.”

No surprise then that Sulla took the more senior of his legates with him; neither Vatia nor the elder Dolabella could have stomached the humiliation of having to ask a twenty-three-year-old for orders. His departure came on the heels of news about the Samnites, and made Sulla’s need to reach the general area around Praeneste urgent; dispositions would have to be finished before the Samnite host drew too near.

Having scouted the whole region on that side of Rome with extreme thoroughness, Sulla knew exactly what he intended to do. The Via Praenestina and the Via Labicana were now unnegotiable thanks to Ofella’s wall and ditch, but the Via Latina and the Via Appia were still open, still connected Rome and the north with Campania and the south. If the war was to be won, it was vital that all military access between Rome and the south belong to Sulla; Etruria was exhausted, but Samnium and Lucania had scarcely been tapped of manpower or food resources.

The countryside between Rome and Campania was not easy. On the coast it deteriorated into the Pomptine Marshes, through which from Campania the Via Appia traveled a mosquito—ridden straight line until near Rome it ran up against the flank of the Alban Hills. These were not hills at all, but quite formidable mountains based upon the outpourings of an old volcano which had cut up and elevated the original alluvial Latin plain. The Alban Mount itself, center of that ancient subterranean disturbance, reared between the Via Appia and the other, more inland road, the Via Latina. South of the Alban Hills another high ridge continued to separate the Via Appia from the Via Latina, thus preventing interconnection between these two major arteries all the way from Campania to a point very near Rome. For military travel the more inland Via Latina was always preferred over the Via Appia; men got sick when they marched the Via Appia.

It was therefore preferable that Sulla station himself on the Via Latina—but at a place where he could, if necessary, transfer his forces rapidly across to the Via Appia. Both roads traversed the outer flanks of the Alban Hills, but the Via Latina did so through a defile which chopped a gap in the eastern escarpment of the ridge and allowed the road to travel onward to Rome in the flatter space between this high ground and the Alban Mount itself. At the point where the defile opened out toward the Alban Mount, a small road curved westward round this central peak, and joined the Via Appia quite close to the sacred lake of Nemi and its temple precinct.

Here in the defile Sulla sat himself down and proceeded to build immense fortified walls of tufa blocks at each end of the gorge, enclosing the side road which led to Lake Nemi and the Via Appia within his battlements. He now occupied the only place on the Via Latina at which all progress could be stopped from both directions. And, his fortifications completed within a very short time, he posted a series of watches on the Via Appia to make sure no enemy tried to outflank him by this route, from Rome as well as from Campania. All his provisions were brought along the side road from the Via Appia.

*

By the time the Samnite/Lucanian/Capuan host reached the site of Sacriportus, everyone was calling this army “the Samnites” despite its composite nature (enhanced because remnants’ of the legions scattered by Pompey and Crassus had tacked themselves on to such a strong, well-led force). At Sacriportus the host chose the Via Labicana, only to discover that Ofella had by now contained himself within a second line of fortifications, and could not be dislodged. Shining from its heights with a myriad colors, Praeneste might as well have been as far away as the Garden of the Hesperides. After riding along every inch of Ofella’s walls, Pontius Telesinus, Marcus Lamponius and Tiberius Gutta could discern no weakness, and a cross—country march by seventy thousand men with nowhere positive to go was impossible. A war council resulted in a change of strategy; the only way to draw Ofella off was to attack Rome herself. So to Rome on the Via Latina the Samnite army would go.

Back they marched to Sacriportus, and turned onto the Via Latina in the direction of Rome. Only to find Sulla sitting behind his enormous ramparts in complete control of the road. To storm his position seemed far easier than storming Ofella’s walls, so the Samnite host attacked. When they failed, they tried again. And again. Only to hear Sulla laughing at them as loudly as had Ofella.

Then came news at once cheering and depressing; those left at Clusium had sallied out and engaged Pompey. That they had gone down in utter defeat was depressing, yet seemed not to matter when compared to the message that the survivors, some twenty thousand strong, were marching south under Censorinus, Carrinas and Brutus Damasippus. Carbo himself had vanished, but the fight, swore Brutus Damasippus in his letter to Pontius Telesinus, would go on. If Sulla’s position were stormed from both sides at once at the exact same moment, he would crumble. Had to crumble!

“Rubbish, of course,” said Sulla to Pompey, whom he had summoned to his defile for a conference as soon as he had been notified of Pompey’s victory at Clusium. “They can pile Pelion on top of Ossa if they so choose, but they won’t dislodge me. This place was made for defense! Impregnable and unassailable.”

“If you’re so confident, what need can you have for me?” the young man asked, his pride at being summoned evaporating.

The campaign at Clusium had been short, grim, decisive; many of the enemy had died, many were taken prisoner, and those who got away were chiefly distinguished for the quality of the men who led their retreat; there had been no senior legates in the ranks of those who surrendered, a great disappointment. The defection of Carbo himself had not been known to Pompey until after the battle was over, when the story of his nocturnal flight was told with tears and bitterness to Pompey’s men by tribunes, centurions and soldiers alike. A great betrayal.

Hard on the heels of this had come Sulla’s summons, which Pompey had received with huge delight. His instructions were to bring six legions and two thousand horse with him; that Varro would tag along, he took for granted, whereas Crassus and Torquatus were to remain at Clusium. But what need had Sulla for more troops in a camp already bursting at the seams? Indeed, Pompey’s army had been directed into a camp on the shores of Lake Nemi and therefore adjacent to the Via Appia!

“Oh, I don’t need you here,” said Sulla, leaning his arms on the parapet of an observation tower atop his walls and peering vainly in the direction of Rome; his vision had deteriorated badly since that illness in Greece, though he disliked owning up to it. “I’m getting closer, Pompeius! Closer and closer.”

Not normally bashful, Pompey found himself unable to ask the question he burned to ask: what did Sulla intend when the war was over? How could he retain his authority, how could he possibly protect himself from future reprisals? He couldn’t keep his army with him forever, but the moment he disbanded it he would be at the mercy of anyone with the strength and the clout to call him to account. And that might be someone who at the present moment called himself a loyal follower, Sulla’s man to the death. Who knew what men like Vatia and the elder Dolabella really thought? Both of them were of consular age, even if circumstances had conspired to prevent their becoming consul. How could Sulla insulate himself? A great man’s enemies were like the Hydra—no matter how many heads he succeeded in cutting off, there were always more busily growing, and always sporting bigger and better teeth.

“If you don’t need me here, Sulla, where do you need me?” Pompey asked, bewildered.

“It is the beginning of Sextilis,” said Sulla, and turned to lead the way down the many stairs.

Nothing more was said until they emerged at the bottom into the controlled chaos beneath the walls, where men busied themselves in carrying loads of rocks, oil for burning and throwing down upon the hapless heads of those trying to scale ladders, missiles for the onagers and catapults already bristling atop the walls, stocks of spears and arrows and shields.

“It is the beginning of Sextilis?’’ Pompey prompted once they were out of the activity and had begun to stroll down the side road toward Lake Nemi.

“So it is!” said Sulla in tones of surprise, and fell about laughing at the look on Pompey’s face.

Obviously he was expected to laugh too; Pompey laughed too. “Yes, it is,” he said, and added, “the beginning of Sextilis.”

Controlling himself with an effort, Sulla decided he had had his fun. Best put the young would—be Alexander out of his misery by telling him.

“I have a special command for you, Pompeius,” he said curtly. “The rest will have to know about it—but not yet. I want you well away before the storm of protest breaks—for break, it will! You see, what I want you to do is something I ought not to ask of any man who has not been at the very least a praetor.”

Excitement growing, Pompey stopped walking, put his hand on Sulla’s arm and turned him so that his face was fully visible; bright blue eyes stared into white—blue eyes. They were now standing in a rather pretty dell to one side of the unsealed road, and the noise of so much industry to front and back was muted by great flowering banks of summer brambles, roses and blackberries.

“Then why have you chosen me, Lucius Cornelius?” Pompey asked, tones wondering. “You have many legates who fit that description—Vatia, Appius Claudius, Dolabella—even men like Mamercus and Crassus would seem more appropriate! So why me?”

“Don’t die from curiosity, Pompeius, I will tell you! But first, I must tell you exactly what it is I want you to do.”

“I am listening,” said Pompey with a great show of calm.

“I told you to bring six legions and two thousand cavalry. That’s a respectable army. You are going to take it at once to Sicily, and secure the coming harvest for me. It’s Sextilis, the harvest will begin very soon. And sitting for the most part in Puteoli harbor is the grain fleet. Hundreds upon hundreds of empty vessels. Ready—made transports, Pompeius! Tomorrow you will take the Via Appia and march for Puteoli before the grain fleet can sail. You will bear my mandate and have sufficient money to pay for the hiring of the ships, and you will have a propraetorian imperium. Post your cavalry to Ostia, there’s a smaller fleet there. I’ve already sent out messengers to ports like Tarracina and Antium, and told all the little shipowners to gather in Puteoli if they want to be paid for what would under normal circumstances be an empty voyage out. You’ll have more than enough ships, I guarantee you.”

Had he once dreamed of a meeting between himself and an equally godlike man called Lucius Cornelius Sulla? And been crushed to abject misery because he had found a satyr, not a god? But what did the look of a man matter, when he held in both hands such a store of dreams? The scarred and drunken old man whose eyes were not even good enough to see Rome in the distance was offering him the whole conduct of a war! A war far away from interference, against an enemy he would have all to himself… Pompey gasped, held out his freckled hand with its short and slightly crooked fingers, and clasped Sulla’s beautiful hand.

“Lucius Cornelius, that’s wonderful! Wonderful! Oh, you can count on me! I’ll drive Perperna Veiento out of Sicily and give you more wheat than ten armies could eat!”

“I’m going to need more wheat than ten armies could eat,” said Sulla, releasing his hand; despite his youth and undeniable attractions, Pompey was not a type who appealed to Sulla physically, and he never liked to touch men or women who didn’t appeal to him physically. “By the end of this year, Rome will be mine. And if I want Rome to lie down for me, then I’ll have to make sure she’s not hungry. That means the Sicilian grain harvest, the Sardinian grain harvest—and, if possible, the African grain harvest too. So when you’ve secured Sicily, you’ll have to move on to Africa Province and do what you can there. You won’t be in time to catch the loaded fleets from Utica and Hadrumetum—I imagine you’ll be many months in Sicily before you can hope to deal with Africa. But Africa must be subdued before you can come home to Italy. I hear that Fabius Hadrianus was burned to death in the governor’s palace during an uprising in Utica, but that Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus—having escaped from Sacriportus!—has taken over and is holding Africa for the enemy. If you’re in western Sicily, it’s a short distance from Lilybaeum to Utica by sea. You ought to be able to wrap up Africa. Somehow you don’t have the look of a failure about you.”

Pompey was literally shivering in excitement; he smiled, gasped. “I won’t fail you, Lucius Cornelius! I promise I will never fail you!”

“I believe you, Pompeius.” Sulla sat down on a log, licked his lips. “What are we doing here? I need wine!”

“Here is a good place, there’s no one to see us or listen to us,” said Pompey soothingly. “Wait, Lucius Cornelius. I’ll fetch you wine. Just sit there and wait.”

As it was a shady spot, Sulla did as he was told, smiling at some secret joke. Oh, what a lovely day it was!

Back came Pompey at a run, yet breathing as if he hadn’t run at all. Sulla grabbed at the wineskin, squirted liquid into his mouth with great expertise, actually managing to swallow and take in air at the same time. Some moments elapsed before he ceased to squeeze, put the skin down.

“Oh, that’s better! Where was I?”

“You may fool some people, Lucius Cornelius, but not me. You know precisely where you were,” said Pompey coolly, and sat himself on the grass directly in front of Sulla’s log.

“Very good! Pompeius, you’re as rare as an ocean pearl the size of a pigeon’s egg! And I can truly say that I am very glad I’ll be dead long before you become a Roman headache.” He picked up the wineskin again, drank again.

“I’ll never be a Roman headache,” said Pompey innocently. “I will just be the First Man in Rome—and not by mouthing a lot of pretentious rubbish in the Forum or the Senate, either.”

“How then, boy, if not through stirring speeches?”

“By doing what you’re sending me off to do. By beating Rome’s enemies in battle.”

“Not a novel approach,” said Sulla. “That’s the way I’ve done it. That’s the way Gaius Marius did it too.”

“Yes, but I’m not going to need to snatch my commissions,” said Pompey. “Rome is going to give me every last one on her very knees!”

Sulla might have interpreted that statement as a reproach, or even as an outright criticism; but he knew his Pompey by this, and understood that most of what the young man said arose out of egotism, that Pompey as yet had no idea how difficult it might be to make that statement come true. So all Sulla did was to sigh and say, “Strictly speaking, I can’t give you any sort of imperium. I’m not consul, and I don’t have the Senate or the People behind me to pass my laws. You’ll just have to accept that I will make it possible for you to come back and be confirmed with a praetor’s imperium.”

“I don’t doubt that.”

“Do you doubt anything?”

“Not if it concerns me directly. I can influence events.”

“May you never change!” Sulla leaned forward, clasped his hands between his knees. “All right, Pompeius, the compliments are over. Listen to me very carefully. There are two more things I have to tell you. The first concerns Carbo.”

“I’m listening,” said Pompey.

“He sailed from Telamon with Old Brutus. Now it’s possible that he headed for Spain, or even for Massilia. But at this time of year, his destination was more likely Sicily or Africa. While ever he’s at large, he is the consul. The elected consul. That means he can override the imperium of a governor, commandeer the governor’s soldiers or militia, call up auxiliaries, and generally make a thorough nuisance of himself until his term as consul runs out. Which is some months off. I am not going to tell you exactly what I plan to do after Rome is mine, but I will tell you this—it is vital to my plans that Carbo be dead well before the end of his year in office. And it is vital that I know Carbo is dead! Your job is to track Carbo down and kill him. Very quietly and inconspicuously—I would like his death to seem an accident. Will you undertake to do this?”

“Yes,” said Pompey without hesitation.

“Good! Good!” Sulla turned his hands over and inspected them as if they belonged to someone else. “Now I come to my last point, which concerns the reason why I am entrusting this overseas campaign to you rather than to one of my senior legates.” He peered at the young man intently. “Can you see why for yourself, Pompeius?’’

Pompey thought, shrugged. “I have some ideas, perhaps, but without knowing what you plan to do after Rome is yours, I am mostly likely wrong. Tell me why.”

“Pompeius, you are the only one I can entrust with this commission! If I give six legions and two thousand horse to a man as senior as Vatia or Dolabella and send that man off to Sicily and Africa, what’s to stop his coming back with the intention of supplanting me? All he has to do is to remain away long enough for me to be obliged to disband my own army, then return and supplant me. Sicily and Africa are not campaigns likely to be finished in six months, so it’s very likely that I will have had to disband my own army before whoever I send comes home. I cannot keep a permanent standing army in Italy. There’s neither the money nor the room for it. And the Senate and People of Rome would never consent. Therefore I must keep every man senior enough to be my rival under my eye. Therefore it is you I am sending off to secure the harvest and make it possible for me to feed ungrateful Rome.”

Pompey drew a breath, linked his arms around his knees and looked at Sulla very directly. “And what’s to stop me doing all of that, Lucius Cornelius? If I’m capable of running a campaign, am I not capable of thinking I can supplant you?”

A question which plainly didn’t send a single shiver down Sulla’s spine; he laughed heartily. “Oh, you can think it all you like, Pompeius! But Rome would never wear you! Not for a single moment. She’d wear Vatia or Dolabella. They have the years, the relations, the ancestors, the clout, the clients. But a twenty-three-year-old from Picenum that Rome doesn’t know? Not a chance!”

And so they left the matter, walked off in opposite directions. When Pompey encountered Varro he said very little, just told that indefatigable observer of life and nature that he was to go to Sicily to secure the harvest. Of imperium, older men, the death of Carbo and much else, he said nothing at all. Of Sulla he asked only one favor—that he might be allowed to take his brother-in-law, Gaius Memmius, as his chief legate. Memmius, several years older than Pompey but not yet a quaestor, had been serving in the legions of Sulla.

“You’re absolutely right, Pompeius,” said Sulla with a smile. “An excellent choice! Keep your venture in the family.”

*

The simultaneous attack on Sulla’s fortifications from north and south came to pass two days after Pompey had departed with his army for Puteoli and the grain fleet. A wave of men broke on either wall, but the waves ebbed and died away harmlessly. Sulla still owned the Via Latina, and those attacking from the north could find no way to join up with those attacking on the south. At dawn on the second morning after the attack, the watchers in the towers on either wall could see no enemy; they had packed up and stolen off in the night. Reports came in all through that day that the twenty thousand men belonging to Censorinus, Carrinas and Brutus Damasippus were marching down the Via Appia toward Campania, and that the Samnite host was marching down the Via Latina in the same direction.

“Let them go,” said Sulla indifferently. “Eventually I suppose they’ll come back—united. And when they do come back it will be on the Via Appia. Where I will be waiting for them.”

By the end of Sextilis, the Samnites and the remnants of Carbo’s army had joined forces at Fregellae, and there moved off the Via Latina eastward through the Melfa Gorge.

“They’re going to Aesernia to think again,” said Sulla, and did not instruct that they be followed further. “It’s enough to post lookouts on the Via Latina at Ferentinum, and the Via Appia at Tres Tabernae. I don’t need more warning than that, and I’m not going to waste my scouts sending them to sneak around Samnites in Samnite territory like Aesernia.”

*

The action shifted abruptly to Praeneste, where Young Marius, restless and growing steadily more unpopular within the town, emerged from the gates and ventured out into No Man’s Land. At the westernmost point of the ridge, where the watershed divided Tolerus streams from Anio streams, he began to build a massive siege tower, having judged that at this point Ofella’s wall was weakest. No tree had been left standing to furnish materials for this work anywhere within reach of those defending Praeneste; it was houses and temples yielded up the timber, precious nails and bolts, blocks and panels and tiles.

The most dangerous work was to make a smooth roadway for the tower to be moved upon between the spot where it was being built and the edge of Ofella’s ditch, for these laborers were at the mercy of marksmen atop Ofella’s walls; Young Marius chose the youngest and swiftest among his helpers to do this, and gave them a makeshift roof under which to shelter. Out of harm’s reach another team toiled with pieces of timber too small to use in constructing the tower, and made a bridge of laminated planking to throw across the ditch when it came time to push the tower right up against Ofella’s wall. Once work upon the tower had progressed enough to create a shelter inside it for those who labored upon building it, the thing seemed to grow from within, up and up and up, out and out and out.

In a month it was ready, and so were the causeway and the bridge along which a thousand pairs of hands would propel it. But Ofella too was ready, having had plenty of time to prepare his defenses. The bridge was put across the ditch in the darkest hours of night, the tower rolled heaving and groaning upon a slipway of sheep’s fat mixed with oil; dawn saw the tower, twenty feet higher than the top of Ofella’s wall, in position. Deep in its bowels there hung upon ropes toughened with pitch a mighty battering ram made from the single beam which had spanned the Goddess’s cella in the temple of Fortuna Primigenia, who was the firstborn daughter of Jupiter, and talisman of Italian luck.

But it was many a year before tufa stone hardened to real brittleness, so the ram when brought to bear on Ofella’s wall roared and boomed and pounded in vain; the elastic tufa blocks shook, even trembled and vibrated, but they held until Ofella’s catapults firing blazing missiles had set the tower on fire, and driven the attackers hurling spears and arrows fleeing with hair in flames. By nightfall the tower was a twisted ruin collapsed in the ditch, and those who had tried to break out were either dead or back within Praeneste.

Several times during October, Young Marius tried to use the bridged ditch filled with the wreckage of his tower as a base; he roofed a section between Ofella’s wall and the ditch to keep his men safe and tried to mine his way beneath the wall, then tried to cut his way through the wall, and finally tried to scale the wall. But nothing worked. Winter was close at hand, seemed to promise the same kind of bitter cold as the last one; Praeneste knew itself short of food, and rued the day it had opened its gates to the son of Gaius Marius.

*

The Samnite host had not gone to Aesernia at all. Ninety thousand strong, it sat itself down in the awesome mountains to the south of the Fucine Lake and whiled away almost two months in drills, foraging parties, more drills. Pontius Telesinus and Brutus Damasippus had journeyed to see Mutilus in Teanum, come away armed with a plan to take Rome by surprise—and without Sulla’s knowledge. For, said Mutilus, Young Marius would have to be left to his fate. The only chance left for all right—thinking men was to capture Rome and draw both Sulla and Ofella into a siege which would be prolonged and filled with a terrible doubt—would those inside Rome elect to join the Samnite cause?

There was a way across the mountains between the Melfa Gorge and the Via Valeria. This stock route—for so it was better termed than road—traversed the ranges between Atina at the back of the Melfa Gorge—a wilderness—went to Sora on the elbow of the Liris River, then to Treba, then to Sublaquaeum, and finally emerged on the Via Valeria a scant mile east of Varia, at a little hamlet called Mandela. It was neither paved nor even surveyed, but it had been there for centuries, and was the route whereby the many shepherds of the mountains moved their flocks each summer season between pastures at the same altitude. It was also the route the flocks took to the sale yards and slaughterhouses of the Campus Lanatarius and the Vallis Camenarum adjoining the Aventine parts of Rome.

Had Sulla stopped to remember the time when he had marched from Fregellae to the Fucine Lake to assist Gaius Marius to defeat Silo and the Marsi, he might have remembered this stock route, for he had actually followed a part of it from Sora to Treba, and had not found it impossible going. But at Treba he had left it, and had not thought to ascertain whereabouts it went north of Treba. So the one chance Sulla might have had to circumvent Mutilus’s strategy was overlooked. Thinking that the only route open to the Samnites if they planned to attack Rome was the Via Appia, Sulla remained in his defile on the Via Latina and kept watch, sure he could not be taken by surprise.

And while he sat in his defile, the Samnites and their allies toiled along the stock route, secure in the knowledge that they were passing through country whose inhabitants had no love of Rome, and well beyond the outermost tentacles of Sulla’s intelligence network. Sora, Treba, Sublaquaeum, and finally onto the Via Valeria at Mandela. They were now a scant day’s march from Rome, a mere thirty miles of superbly kept road as the Via Valeria came down through Tibur and the Anio valley, and terminated on the Campus Esquilinus beneath the double rampart of Rome’s Agger.

But this was not the best place from which to launch an attack on Rome, so when the great host drew close to the city, Pontius Telesinus and Brutus Damasippus took a diverticulum which brought them out on the Via Nomentana at the Colline Gate. And there outside the Colline Gate—waiting for them,as it were—was the stout camp Pompey Strabo had built for himself during Cinna’s and Gaius Marius’s siege of Rome. By nightfall of the last day of October, Pontius Telesinus, Brutus Damasippus, Marcus Lamponius, Tiberius Gutta, Censorinus and Carrinas were comfortably ensconced within that camp; on the morrow they would attack.

*

The news that ninety thousand men were occupying Pompey Strabo’s old camp outside the Colline Gate was brought to Sulla after night had fallen on the last day of October. It found him a little the worse for wine, but not yet asleep. Within moments bugles were blaring, drums were rolling, men were tumbling from their pallets and torches were kindling everywhere. Icily sober, Sulla called his legates together and told them.

“They’ve stolen a march on us,” he said, lips compressed. “How they got there I don’t know, but the Samnites are outside the Colline Gate and ready to attack Rome. By dawn, we march. We have twenty miles to cover and some of it’s hilly, but we have to get to the Colline Gate in time to fight tomorrow.” He turned to his cavalry commander, Octavius Balbus. “How many horses have you got around Lake Nemi, Balbus?”

“Seven hundred,” said Balbus.

“Then off you go right now. Take the Via Appia, and ride like the wind. You’ll reach the Colline Gate some hours before I can hope to get the infantry there, so you’ve got to hold them off. I don’t care what you have to do, or how you do it! Just get there and keep them occupied until I arrive.”

Octavius Balbus wasted no time speaking; he was out of Sulla’s door and roaring for a horse before Sulla could turn back to his other legates.

There were four of them—Crassus, Vatia, Dolabella and Torquatus. Shocked, but not bereft of their wits.

“We have eight legions here, and they will have to do,” said Sulla. “That means we’ll be outnumbered two to one. I’ll make my dispositions now because there may not be the time for conferences after we reach the Colline Gate.”

He fell silent, studying them. Who would fare best? Who would have the steel to lead in what was going to be a desperate encounter? By rights it ought to be Vatia and Dolabella, but were they the best men? His eyes dwelt upon Marcus Licinius Crassus, huge and rock—solid, never anything save calm—eaten up with avarice, a thief and a swindler—not principled, not ethical, perhaps moral. And yet of the four of them he had the most to lose if this war was lost. Vatia and Dolabella would survive, they had the clout. Torquatus was a good man, but not a true leader.

Sulla made up his mind. “I will move in two divisions of four legions each,” he said, slapping his hands on his thighs. “I will retain the high command myself, but I will not command either division. For want of a better way to distinguish them, I’ll call them the left and the right, and unless I change my orders after we arrive, that is how they’ll fight. Left and right of the field. No center. I haven’t enough men. Vatia, you will command the left, with Dolabella as your second-in-command. Crassus, you’ll command the right, with Torquatus as your second-in-command.”

As he spoke, Sulla’s eyes rested upon Dolabella, saw the anger and outrage; no need to look at Marcus Crassus, he would not betray his feelings.

“That is what I want,” he said harshly, spitting out the words because they shaped themselves poorly without teeth. “I don’t have time for argument. You’ve all thrown in your lots with me, you’ve given me the ultimate decisions. Now you’ll do as you’re told. All I expect of you is the will to fight in the way I command you to fight.”

Dolabella stood back at the door and allowed the other three to precede him; then he turned back. “A word with you alone, Lucius Cornelius,” he said.

“If it’s quick.”

A Cornelius and a remote relation of Sulla’s, Dolabella was not from a branch of that great family which had managed to acquire the luster of the Scipiones—or even of the Sullae; if he had anything in common with most of the Cornelii, it was his homeliness—plump cheeks, a frowning face, eyes a little too close together. Ambitious and with a reputation for depravity, he and his first cousin, the younger Dolabella, were determined to win greater prominence for their branch of the family.

“I could break you, Sulla,” Dolabella said. “All I have to do is make it impossible for you to win tomorrow’s fight. And I imagine you understand that I’ll change sides so fast the opposition will end in believing I was always with them.”

“Do go on!” said Sulla in the most friendly fashion when Dolabella paused to see how this speech had been received.

“However, I am willing to lie down under your decision to promote Marcus Crassus over my head. On one condition.”

“Which is?”

“That next year, I am consul.”

“Done!” cried Sulla with the greatest goodwill.

Dolabella blinked. “You’re not put out?” he asked.

“Nothing puts me out anymore, my dear Dolabella,” said Sulla, escorting his legate to the door. “At the moment it makes little odds to me who is consul next year. What matters at the moment is who commands on the field tomorrow. And I see that I was right to prefer Marcus Crassus. Good night!”

*

The seven hundred horsemen under the command of Octavius Balbus arrived outside Pompey Strabo’s camp about the middle of the morning on the first day of November. There was absolutely nothing Balbus could have done had he been put to it; his horses were so blown that they stood with heads hanging, sides heaving and white with sweat, mouths dripping foam, while their riders stood alongside them and tried to comfort them by loosening girths and speaking soft endearments. For this reason Balbus had not halted too close to the enemy—let them think his force was ready for action! So he arranged it in what appeared to be a charge formation, had his troopers brandish their lances and pretend to shout messages back to an unseen army of infantry in their rear.

It was evident that the attack upon Rome had not yet begun. The Colline Gate stood in majestic isolation, its portcullis down and its two mighty oak doors closed; the battlements of the two towers which flanked it were alive with heads, and the walls which ran away on either side were heavily manned. Balbus’s arrival had provoked sudden activity within the enemy camp, where soldiers were pouring out of the southeastern gate and lining up to hold off a cavalry onslaught; of enemy cavalry there was no sign, and Balbus could only hope that none was concealed.

Each trooper on the march carried a leather bucket tied to his left rear saddle horn to water his horse; while the front rank carried on with the farce of a coming charge and an invisible army of foot soldiers behind, other troopers ran with the buckets to various fountains in the vicinity and filled them. As soon as the horses could safely be watered, Octavius Balbus intended that the business should be finished in short order.

So successful was this mock show of aggression that nothing further had happened when Sulla and his infantry arrived some four hours later, in the early afternoon. His men were in much the same condition as Balbus’s horses had been; exhausted, blown, legs trembling with the effort of marching at the double across twenty miles of sometimes steep terrain.

“Well, we can’t possibly attack today,” said Vatia after he and Sulla had ridden with the other legates to inspect the ground and see what sort of battle was going to develop.

“Why not?” asked Sulla.

Vatia looked blank. “They’re too tired to fight!”

“Tired they may be, but fight they will,” said Sulla.

“You can’t, Lucius Cornelius! You’d lose!”

“I can, and I won’t,” said Sulla grimly. “Look, Vatia, we have to fight today! This war has got to end, and here and now is where and when it must end. The Samnites know how hard we’ve marched, the Samnites know the odds are in their favor today more than on any other day. If we don’t offer battle today, the day they believe they have their best chance of winning, who knows what might happen tomorrow? What’s to stop the Samnites packing up in the night and vanishing to choose another venue? Disappearing perhaps for months? Until the spring, or even next summer? Next autumn? No, Vatia, we fight today. Because today the Samnites are in the mood to see us dead on the field of the Colline Gate.”

While his soldiers rested, ate and drank, Sulla went among them on foot to tell them in a more personal way than the usual speech from a rostra that somehow they had to find the strength and the endurance to fight. That if they waited to recover, the war might go on and on. Most of them had been with him for years and could be said in truth to love him, but even the legions which had belonged to Scipio Asiagenus had felt his hand for long enough to know themselves his men. He didn’t look like the wonderful, godlike being to whom they had offered a Grass Crown outside Nola all those campaigns ago, but he was theirs—and hadn’t they grizzled and wrinkled and grown a bit creaky in the joints too? So when he went among them and asked them to fight, they lifted laconic hands and told him not to worry, they’d fix the Samnites.

A bare two hours before darkness, battle was joined. The three legions which had belonged to Scipio Asiagenus comprised the major part of Sulla’s left division, so while he did not assume command of the left, Sulla elected to remain in its area of operation. Rather than bestride his customary mule, he chose to mount a white horse, and had told his men that he would do so. That way they would know him, see him if he came to their part of the fight. Choosing a knoll which gave him a fair perspective of the field, he sat upon the white animal watching the conflict develop. Those inside Rome, he noted, had opened the doors of the Colline Gate and raised the portcullis, though no one issued out to participate in the battle.

The enemy division facing his left was the more formidable, for it was composed entirely of Samnites and commanded by Pontius Telesinus, but at forty thousand it was less numerous—some kind of compensation, thought Sulla, touching his groom with a foot, the signal for the fellow to lead his horse onward. No rider, he didn’t trust this white force of nature, and had preferred that it be led. Yes, his left was falling back, he would have to go there. On lower ground, Vatia probably couldn’t see that one of his worst problems was the open gate into the city; as the Samnites pushed forward stabbing and slashing upward with their short infantry swords, some of Vatia’s men were slipping through the gate rather than standing and holding.

Just before he entered the melee, he heard the sharp smack of his groom’s hand on the horse’s shoulder, had the presence of mind to lean forward and grab its mane in both hands as it took off at a gallop. One glance behind showed him why; two Samnite spearmen had launched their weapons simultaneously at him, and he ought to have fallen. That he had not was thanks to the groom, who had made the horse bolt. Then the groom caught up and hung on to the creature’s plumy tail; Sulla came to a halt unscathed and still in the saddle.

A smile of thanks for his groom, and Sulla waded into the thick of the battle with his sword in his hand and a small cavalry shield to protect his left side. He found some men he knew and ordered them to drop the portcullis—which, he noted in some amusement, they did with scant regard for those beneath it at the time it fell. The measure worked; having nowhere now to retreat, Scipio’s legions stood and held while the single legion of veterans began the slow and steady job of pushing the enemy back.

How Crassus and the right were faring, Sulla had no idea; even from his knoll they had been too far away for him to supervise, and he had known his left was his weakness from the beginning. If anybody could cope, it was Crassus and the four veteran legions under his command.

Night fell but the fight went on, aided by thousands of torches held on high by those atop Rome’s walls. And, gaining its second wind, Sulla’s left took heart. He himself was still among it, cheering Scipio’s frightened men on, doing his share of hand—to—hand combat because his groom, splendid fellow, never allowed the horse to become an encumbrance.

Perhaps two hours later, the Samnite host opposing Sulla’s left broke and retreated inside Pompey Strabo’s camp, where they proved too exhausted to keep Sulla out. Hoarse from shouting, Sulla and Vatia and Dolabella urged a finish, and their men cut the Samnites to pieces within the camp. Pontius Telesinus fell with his face split in two, and the heart went out of his men.

“No prisoners,” said Sulla. “Kill the lot, with arrows if they clump together and try to surrender.”

At that stage in a battle so bitterly fought, it would have been more difficult to persuade the soldiers to spare their foes, so the Samnites perished.

It was only after the rout was complete that Sulla, now back on his trusty mule, found time to wonder about the fate of Crassus. Of the right division there was no sign; but nor was there sign of an enemy. Crassus and his opponents had vanished.

About the middle of the night a messenger came. Sulla was prowling through Pompey Strabo’s old camp making sure the still bodies lying everywhere were well and truly dead, but paused to see the man, hoping for news.

“Are you sent from Marcus Crassus?” he asked the man.

“I am,” said the man, who did not look downcast.

“Where is Marcus Crassus?”

“At Antemnae.”

“Antemnae?”

“The enemy broke and fled there before nightfall, and Marcus Crassus followed. Another battle took place in Antemnae. We won! Marcus Crassus has sent me to ask for food and wine for his men.”

Grinning widely, Sulla shouted orders that the requested provisions be found, and then, riding upon his mule, accompanied the train of pack animals up the Via Salaria to Antemnae, just a few miles away. There he and Vatia found the reeling town trying to regain its breath, having played involuntary host to a battle which had made a wreck of it. Houses were burning fiercely, bucket brigades toiled to prevent the fires from spreading, and everywhere the bodies sprawled in death, trampled underfoot by panicked townsfolk striving to save their own lives and belongings.

Crassus was waiting on the far side of Antemnae, where in a field he had gathered the enemy survivors.

“About six thousand of them,” he said to Sulla. “Vatia had the Samnites—I inherited the Lucanians, the Capuans, and Carbo’s remnants. Tiberius Gutta fell on the field, Marcus Lamponius I think escaped, and I have Brutus Damasippus, Carrinas and Censorinus among the prisoners.”

“Good work!” said Sulla, showing his gums in the broadest of smiles. “It didn’t please Dolabella and I had to promise him a consulship next year to get him to go along, but I knew I’d picked the right man in you, Marcus Crassus!”

Vatia swung his head to stare at Sulla, aghast. “What? Dolabella demanded that? Cunnus! Mentula! Verpa! Fellator!”

“Never mind, Vatia, you’ll get your consulship too,” soothed Sulla, still smiling. “Dolabella will do no good by it. He’ll go too far when he goes to govern his province and he’ll spend the rest of his days in exile in Massilia with all the other intemperate fools.” He waved a hand at the pack animals. “Now where do you want your little snack, Marcus Crassus?’’

“If I can find somewhere else to put my prisoners, here, I think,” said the stolid Crassus, who didn’t look in the least as if he had just won a great victory.

“I brought Balbus’s cavalry with me to escort the prisoners to the Villa Publica at once,” said Sulla. “By the time they’re moving, it will be dawn.”

While Octavius Balbus rounded up the exhausted enemy who had survived Antemnae, Sulla summoned Censorinus, Carrinas and Brutus Damasippus before him. Defeated though they were, none of them looked beaten.

“Aha! Think you’re going to fight again another day, eh?” Sulla asked, smiling again, but mirthlessly. “Well, my Roman friends, you are not. Pontius Telesinus is dead, and I had the Samnite survivors shot with arrows. Since you allied yourselves with Samnites and Lucanians, I hold you no Romans. Therefore you will not be tried for treason. You will be executed: Now.”

Thus it was that the three most implacable foes of the whole war were beheaded in a field outside Antemnae, without trial or notice. The bodies were thrown into the huge common grave being dug for all the enemy dead, but Sulla had the heads put in a sack.

“Catilina, my friend,” he said to Lucius Sergius Catilina, who had ridden with him and Vatia, “take these, find the head of Tiberius Gutta, add the head of Pontius Telesinus when you get back to the Colline Gate, and then ride with them for Ofella. Tell him to load them one by one into his most powerful piece of artillery, and fire them one by one over the walls of Praeneste.”

Catilina’s darkly handsome face brightened, looked alert. “Gladly, Lucius Cornelius. May I ask a favor?”

“Ask. But I don’t promise.”

“Let me go into Rome and find Marcus Marius Gratidianus! I want his head. If Young Marius looks on his head too, he’ll know that Rome is yours and his own career is at an end.”

Slowly Sulla shook his head—but not in refusal. “Oh, Catilina, you are one of my most precious possessions! How I do love you! Gratidianus is your brother-in-law.”

“Was my brother-in-law,” said Catilina gently, and added, “My wife died not long before I joined you.” What he did not say was that he had been suspected by Gratidianus of murdering her in order to pursue another liaison more comfortably.

“Well, Gratidianus would have to go sooner or later anyway,” said Sulla, and turned away with a shrug. “Add his head to your collection if you think it will impress Young Marius.”

Matters thus tidily disposed of, Sulla and Vatia and the legates who had accompanied them settled down with Crassus and Torquatus and the men of the right division to a jolly feast while Antemnae burned and Lucius Sergius Catilina went happily about his grisly business.

Seeming not to need sleep, Sulla rode thereafter back to Rome, but did not enter the city. His messenger sent on ahead summoned the Senate to a meeting in the temple of Bellona on the Campus Martius. En route to Bellona, he paused to make sure the six thousand prisoners were assembled in the grounds of the Villa Publica (which was close to the temple of Bellona), and issued certain orders; after that he completed his journey, and dismounted from his mule in the rather desolate and unkempt open space in front of the temple always called “Enemy Territory.”

No one of course had dared not to answer Sulla’s summons, so about a hundred men waited inside. They all stood; it did not seem the right thing to do to wait for Sulla seated on their folding stools. A few men looked serenely comfortable—Catulus, Hortensius, Lepidus—and some looked terrified—a Flaccus or two, a Fimbria, a minor Carbo—but most bore the look of sheep, vacuous yet skittish.

Clad in armor but bareheaded, Sulla passed through their ranks as if they did not exist and mounted the podium of Bellona’s statue, which had been added to her temple after it became very fashionable to anthropomorphize even the old Roman gods; as she too was clad for war, she matched Sulla very well, even to the fierce look on her too—Greek face. She, however, owned a kind of beauty, whereas Sulla had none. To most of the men present, his appearance came as an absolute shock, though no one dared to stir. The wig of orange curls was slightly askew, the scarlet tunic filthy, the red patches on his face standing out amid remnants of near—albino skin like lakes of blood on snow. Many among them grieved, but for differing reasons: some because they had known him well and liked him, others because they had at least expected the new Master of Rome to look a fitting master. This man looked more a ruined travesty.

When he spoke his lips flapped, and some of his words were hard to distinguish. Until, that is, he got under way, when self-preservation stimulated his audience to total comprehension.

“I can see I’m back not a moment too soon!” he said. “The Enemy Territory is full of weeds—everything needs a fresh coat of paint and a good wash—the stones of the road bases are poking through what’s left of the surface—laundresses are using the Villa Publica to hang out their washing—a wonderful job you’ve been doing of caring for Rome! Fools! Knaves! Jackasses!”

His address probably continued in the same vein—biting, sarcastic, bitter. But after he yelled “Jackasses!” his words were drowned by a hideous cacophony of noises from the direction of the Villa Publica—screams, howls, shrieks. Bloodcurdling! At first everyone pretended they could still hear him, but then the sounds became just too alarming, too horrifying; the senators began to move, mutter, exchange terrified glances.

As suddenly as it had begun, the din died away.

“What, little sheep, are you frightened?” jeered Sulla. “But there’s no need to be frightened! What you hear is only my men admonishing a few criminals.”

Whereupon he scrambled down from his perch between Bellona’s feet and walked out without seeming to see a single member of the Senate of Rome.

“Oh dear, he’s really not in a good mood!” said Catulus to his brother-in-law Hortensius.

“Looking like that, I’m not surprised,” said Hortensius.

“He only dragged us here to listen to that,” said Lepidus. “Who was he admonishing, do you imagine?”

“His prisoners,” said Catulus.

As proved to be the case; while Sulla had been speaking to the Senate, his men had executed the six thousand prisoners at the Villa Publica with sword and arrow.

“I am going to be extremely well behaved on all occasions,” said Catulus to Hortensius.

“Why, in particular?” asked Hortensius, who was a far more arrogant and positive man.

“Because Lepidus was right. Sulla only summoned us here to listen to the noise of the men who opposed him dying. What he says doesn’t matter one iota. But what he does matters enormously to any of us who want to live. We will have to behave ourselves and try not to annoy him.”

Hortensius shrugged. “I think you’re overreacting, my dear Quintus Lutatius. In a few weeks he’ll be gone. He’ll get the Senate and the Assemblies to legalize his deeds and give him back his imperium, then he’ll return to the ranks of the consulars in the front row, and Rome will be able to get on with her normal business.”

“Do you really think so?” Catulus shivered. “How he’ll do it I have no idea, but I believe we’re going to have Sulla’s unnerving eyes on us from a position of superior power for a long time to come.”

*

Sulla arrived at Praeneste the following day, the third one of the month of November.

Ofella greeted him cheerfully, and gestured toward two sad men who stood under guard nearby. “Know them?” he asked.

“Possibly, but I can’t find their names.”

“Two junior tribunes attached to Scipio’s legions. They came galloping like a pair of Greek jockeys the morning after you fought outside the Colline Gate and tried to tell me that the battle was lost and you were dead.”

“What, Ofella? Didn’t you believe them?”

Ofella laughed heartily. “I know you better than that, Lucius Cornelius! It will take more than a few Samnites to kill you.” And with the flourish of a magician producing a rabbit out of a chamber pot, Ofella reached behind him and displayed the head of Young Marius.

“Ah!” said Sulla, inspecting it closely. “Handsome fellow, wasn’t he? Took after his mother in looks, of course. Don’t know who he took after in cleverness, but it certainly wasn’t his dad.” Satisfied, he waved the head away. “Keep it for the time being. So Praeneste surrendered?”

“Almost immediately after I fired in the heads Catilina brought me. The gates popped open and they flooded out waving white flags and beating their breasts.”

“Young Marius too?” asked Sulla, surprised.

“Oh, no! He took to the sewers, looking for some way to escape. But I’d had all the outflows barred months before. We found him huddled against one such with his sword in his belly and his Greek servant weeping nearby,” Ofella said.

“Well, he’s the last of them!” said Sulla triumphantly.

Ofella glanced at him sharply; it wasn’t like Lucius Cornelius Sulla to forget anything! “There’s still one at large,” he said quickly, then could have bitten off his tongue. This was not a man to remind that he too had shortcomings!

But Sulla appeared unruffled. A slow smile grew. “Carbo, I suppose you mean?”

“Yes, Carbo.”

“Carbo is dead too, my dear Ofella. Young Pompeius took him captive and executed him for treason in the agora at Lilybaeum late in September. Remarkable fellow, Pompeius! I thought it would take him many months to organize Sicily and round up Carbo, but he did the lot in one month. And found the time to send me Carbo’s head by special messenger! Pickled in a jar of vinegar! Unmistakably him.” And Sulla chuckled.

“What about Old Brutus?”

“Committed suicide rather than tell Pompeius whereabouts Carbo had gone. Not that it mattered. The crew of his ship—he was trying to raise a fleet for Carbo—told Pompeius everything, of course. So my amazingly efficient young legate sent his brother-in-law off to Cossura, whence Carbo had fled, and had him brought back to Lilybaeum in chains. But I got three heads from Pompeius, not two. Carbo, Old Brutus, and Soranus.”

“Soranus? Do you mean Quintus Valerius Soranus the scholar, who was tribune of the plebs?’’

“The very same.”

“But why? What did he do?” asked Ofella, bewildered.

“He shouted the secret name of Rome out loud from the rostra,” said Sulla.

Ofella’s jaw dropped, he shivered. “Jupiter!”

“Luckily,” lied Sulla blandly, “the Great God stoppered up every ear in the Forum, so Soranus shouted to the deaf. All is well, my dear Ofella. Rome will survive.”

“Oh, that’s a relief!” gasped Ofella, wiping the sweat from his brow. “I’ve heard of strange doings, but to tell Rome’s secret name—it passes all imagination!” Something else occurred to him; he couldn’t help but ask: “What was Pompeius doing in Sicily, Lucius Cornelius?”

“Securing the grain harvest for me.”

“I’d heard something to that effect, but I confess I didn’t believe it. He’s a kid.”

“Mmmm,” agreed Sulla pensively. “However, what Young Marius didn’t inherit from his father, young Pompeius certainly grabbed from Pompeius Strabo! And more besides.”

“So the kid will be coming home soon,” said Ofella, not very enamored of this new star in Sulla’s sky; he had thought himself without rival in that firmament!

“Not yet,” said Sulla in a matter—of—fact tone. “I sent him on to Africa to secure our province for me. I believe he is at this moment doing just that.” He pointed down into No Man’s Land, where a great crowd of men stood abjectly in the chilly sun. “Are they those who surrendered bearing arms?”

“Yes. In number, twelve thousand. A mixed catch,” said Ofella, glad to see the subject change. “Some Romans who belonged to Young Marius, a good many Praenestians, and some Samnites for good measure. Do you want to look at them more closely?”

It seemed Sulla did. But not for long. He pardoned the Romans among the crowd, then ordered the Praenestians and Samnites executed on the spot. After which he made the surviving citizens of Praeneste—old men, women, children—bury the bodies in No Man’s Land. He toured the town, never having been there before, and frowned in anger to see the shambles to which Young Marius’s need for timber to build his siege tower had reduced the precinct of Fortuna Primigenia.

“I am Fortune’s favorite,” he said to those members of the town council who had not died in No Man’s Land, “and I shall see that your Fortuna Primigenia acquires the most splendid precinct in all of Italy. But at Praeneste’s expense.”

On the fourth day of November, Sulla rode to Norba, though he knew its fate long before he reached it.

“They agreed to surrender,” said Mamercus, tight—lipped with anger, “and then they torched the town before killing every last person in there—murder, suicide. Women, children, Ahenobarbus’s soldiers, all the men of the town died rather than surrender. I’m sorry, Lucius Cornelius. There will be no plunder or prisoners from Norba.”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Sulla indifferently. “The haul from Praeneste was huge. I doubt Norba could have yielded much of use or note.”

And on the fifth day of November, when the newly risen sun was glancing off the gilded statues atop the temple roofs and that fresh light made the city seem less shabby, Lucius Cornelius Sulla entered Rome. He rode in through the Capena Gate, and in solemn procession. His groom led the white horse which had borne him safely through the battle at the Colline Gate, and he wore his best suit of armor, its silver muscled cuirass tooled with a scene representing his own army offering him his Grass Crown outside the walls of Nola. Paired with him and clad in purple-bordered toga rode Lucius Valerius Flaccus, the Princeps Senatus, and behind him rode his legates in pairs, including Metellus Pius and Varro Lucullus, who had been summoned from Italian Gaul four days earlier, and had driven hard to be here on this great occasion. Of all the ones who were to matter in the future, only Pompey and Varro the Sabine were not present.

His sole military escort was the seven hundred troopers who had saved him by bluffing the Samnites; his army was back in the defile, tearing down its ramparts so that traffic on the Via Latina could move again. After that, there was Ofella’s wall to dismember and a vast stockpile of building material to dump in several fields. Much of the tufa block had been fragmented in the demolition, and Sulla knew what he was going to do with that; it would be incorporated into the opus incertum construction of the new temple of Fortuna Primigenia in Praeneste. No trace of the hostilities must remain.

Many people turned out of doors to see him enter the city; no matter how fraught with peril it was, no Roman could ever resist a spectacle, and this moment belonged to History. Many who saw him ride in genuinely believed they were witnessing the death throes of the Republic; rumor insisted that Sulla intended to make himself King of Rome. How else could he hang on to power? For how—given what he had done—could he dare relinquish power? And, it was quickly noted, a special squad of cavalry rode just behind the last pair of legates, their spears held upright; impaled on those lances were the heads of Carbo and Young Marius, Carrinas and Censorinus, Old Brutus and Marius Gratidianus, Brutus Damasippus and Pontius Telesinus, Gutta of Capua and Soranus—and Gaius Papius Mutilus of the Samnites.

*

Mutilus had heard the news of the battle at the Colline Gate a day after, and wept so loudly that Bastia came to see what was the matter with him.

“Lost, all lost!” he cried to her, forgetting the way she had insulted and tormented him, only seeing the one person left to whom he was bound by ties of family and time. “My army is dead! Sulla has won! Sulla will be King of Rome and Samnium will be no more!”

For perhaps as long as it would have taken to light all the wicks of a small chandelier, Bastia stared at the devastated man upon his couch. She made no move to comfort him, said no words of comfort either, just stood very still, eyes wide. And then a look crept into them of knowledge and resolution; her vivid face grew cold and hard. She clapped her hands.

“Yes, domina?” asked the steward from the doorway, gazing in consternation at his weeping master.

“Find his German and ready his litter,” said Bastia.

“Domina?” the steward asked, bewildered.

“Don’t just stand there, do as I say! At once!”

The steward gulped, disappeared.

Tears drying, Mutilus gaped at his wife. “What is this?’’

“I want you out of here,” she said through clenched teeth. “I want no part of this defeat! I want to keep my home, my money, my life! So out you go, Gaius Papius! Go back to Aesernia, or go to Bovianum—or anywhere else you have a house! Anywhere but this house! I do not intend to go down with you.”

“I don’t believe this!” he gasped.

“You’d better believe it! Out you go!”

“But I’m paralyzed, Bastia! I am your husband, and I’m paralyzed! Can’t you find pity in you, if not love?”

“I neither love you nor pity you,” she said harshly. “It was all your stupid, futile plotting and fighting against Rome took the power out of your legs—took away your use to me—took away the children I might have had—and all the pleasure in being a part of your life. For nearly seven years I’ve lived here alone while you schemed and intrigued in Aesernia—and when you did condescend to visit me, you stank of shit and piss, and ordered me about—oh no, Gaius Papius Mutilus, I am done with you! Out you go!”

And because his mind could not encompass the extent of his ruin, Mutilus made no protest when his German attendant took him from the couch and carried him through the front door to where his litter stood at the bottom of the steps. Bastia had followed behind like an image of the Gorgon, beautiful and evil, with eyes that could turn a man to stone and hissing hair. So quickly did she slam the door that the edge of his cloak caught in it and pulled the German up with a jerk. Shifting the full weight of his master to his left arm, the German began to tug at the cloak to free it.

On his belt Gaius Papius Mutilus wore a military dagger, a mute reminder of the days when he had been a Samnite warrior. Out it came; he pressed the top of his head against the wood of the door and cut his throat. Blood sprayed everywhere, drenched the door and pooled upon the steps, soaked the shrieking German, whose cries brought people running from up and down the narrow street. The last thing Gaius Papius Mutilus saw was his Gorgon wife, who had opened the door in time to receive the final spurt of his blood.

“I curse you, woman!” he tried to say.

But she didn’t hear. Nor did she seem stricken, frightened, surprised. Instead, she held the door wide and snapped at the weeping German, “Bring him in!” And inside, when her husband’s corpse was laid upon the floor, she said, “Cut off his head. I will send it to Sulla as my gift.”

Bastia was as good as her word; she sent her husband’s head to Sulla with her compliments. But the story Sulla heard from the wretched steward compelled by his mistress to bring the gift did not flatter Bastia. He handed the head of his old enemy to one of the military tribunes attached to his staff, and said without expression, “Kill the woman who sent me this. I want her dead.”

*

And so the tally was almost complete. With the single exception of Marcus Lamponius of Lucania, every powerful enemy who had opposed Sulla’s return to Italy was dead. Had he wished it, Sulla could indeed have made himself undisputed King of Rome.

But he had found a solution more to the liking of one who firmly believed in all the traditions of a Republican mos maiorum, and thus rode through the middle of the Circus Maximus absolutely free of kingly intent.

He was old and ill, and for fifty-eight years he had done battle against a mindless conspiracy of circumstances and events which had succeeded time and time again in stripping from him the pleasures of justice and reward, the rightful place in Rome’s scheme of things to which birth and ability entitled him. No choice had he been offered, no opportunity to pursue his ascent of the cursus honorum legally, honorably. At every turn someone or something had blocked him, made the straight and legal way impossible. So here he was, riding in the wrong direction down the length of the empty Circus Maximus, a fifty-eight-year-old wreck, his bowels knotted with the twin fires of triumph and loss. Master of Rome. The First Man in Rome. Vindication at last. And yet the disappointments of his age and his ugliness and his approaching death curdled his joy with the sourest sadness, destroyed pleasure, exacerbated pain. How late, how bitter, how warped was this victory...

He didn’t think of the Rome he now held at his mercy with love or idealism; the price had been too high. Nor did he look forward to the work he knew he had to do. What he most desired was peace, leisure, the fulfillment of a thousand sexual fantasies, head—spinning drunken binges, total freedom from care and from responsibility. So why couldn’t he have those things? Because of Rome, because of duty, because he couldn’t bear the thought of laying down his job with so much work undone. The only reason he rode in the wrong direction down the length of the empty Circus Maximus lay in the knowledge that there was a mountain of work to be done. And he had to do it. There was literally no one else who could.

He chose to assemble Senate and People together in the lower Forum Romanum, and speak to both from the rostra. Not with complete truth—was it Scaurus who had called him politically nonchalant? He couldn’t remember. But there was too much of the politician in him to be completely truthful, so he blandly ignored the fact that it had been he who pinned up the first head on the rostra—Sulpicius, to frighten Cinna.

“This hideous practice which has come into being so very recently that I was urban praetor in a Rome who did not know of it”—he turned to gesture at the row of speared heads—“will not cease until the proper traditions of the mos maiorum have been totally restored and the old, beloved Republic rises again out of the ashes to which it has been reduced. I have heard it said that I intend to make myself King of Rome! No, Quirites, I do not! Condemn myself to however many years I have left of intrigues and plots, rebellions and reprisals? No, I will not! I have worked long and hard in the service of Rome, and I have earned the reward of spending my last days free of care and free of responsibilities—free of Rome! So one thing I can promise you, Senate and People both—I will not set myself up as King of Rome, or enjoy one single moment of the power I must retain until my work is over.”

Perhaps no one had really expected this, even men as close to Sulla as Vatia and Metellus Pius, but as Sulla went on, some men began to understand that Sulla had shared his secrets with one other—the Princeps Senatus, Lucius Valerius Flaccus, who stood on the rostra with him, and did not look surprised at one word Sulla was saying.

“The consuls are dead,” Sulla went on, hand indicating the heads of Carbo and Young Marius, “and the fasces must go back to the Fathers, be laid upon their couch in the temple of Venus Libitina until new consuls are elected. Rome must have an interrex, and the law is specific. Our Leader of the House, Lucius Valerius Flaccus, is the senior patrician of the Senate, of his decury, of his family.” Sulla turned to Flaccus Princeps Senatus. “You are the first interrex. Please assume that office and acquit yourself of all its duties for the five days of your interregnum.”

“So far, so good,” whispered Hortensius to Catulus. “He has done exactly what he ought to do, appoint an interrex.”

“Tace!’’ growled Catulus, who was finding it difficult to understand every word Sulla was saying.

“Before our Leader of the House takes over the conduct of this meeting,” Sulla said slowly and carefully, “there are one or two things I wish to say. Rome is safe under my care, no one will come to any harm. Just law will be returned. The Republic will go back to its days of glory. But those are all things which must come from the decisions of our interrex, so I shall not dwell upon them any further. What I do want to say is that I have been well served by fine men, and it is time to thank them. I will start with those who are not here today. Gnaeus Pompeius, who has secured the grain supply from Sicily, and has thereby guaranteed that Rome will not be hungry this winter... Lucius Marcius Philippus, who last year secured the grain supply from Sardinia, and this year had to contend with the man who was sent against him, Quintus Antonius Balbus. He did contend with Antonius, who is dead. Sardinia is safe…. In Asia I left three splendid men behind to care for Rome’s richest and most precious province—Lucius Licinius Murena, Lucius Licinius Lucullus, and Gaius Scribonius Curio…. And here standing with me are the men who have been my loyalest followers through times of hardship and despair—Quintus Caecilius Metellus Pius and his legate, Marcus Terentius Varro Lucullus—Publius Servilius Vatia—the elder Gnaeus Cornelius Dolabella—Marcus Licinius Crassus …”

“Ye gods, the list will be endless!” grumbled Hortensius, who loathed listening to any man save himself speak, especially one whose rhetoric was as unskilled as Sulla’s.

“He’s finished, he’s finished!” said Catulus impatiently. “Come on, Quintus, he’s calling the Senate to the Curia, he’ll tell these Forum fools no more! Come on, quickly!”

But it was Lucius Valerius Flaccus Princeps Senatus who took the curule chair, surrounded only by the skeletal body of magistrates who had remained in Rome and survived. Sulla sat off to the right of the curule podium, probably about where he ought to have ordinarily placed himself in the front row of consulars, ex-censors, ex-praetors. He had not, however, changed out of his armor, and that fact told the senators that he was by no means relinquishing his control of the proceedings.

“On the Kalends of November,” said Flaccus in his wheezing voice, “we almost lost Rome. Had it not been for the valor and promptness of Lucius Cornelius Sulla, his legates, and his army, Rome would now be in the power of Samnium, and we would be passing under the yoke just as we did after the Caudine Forks. Well, I need go no further on that subject! Samnium lost, Lucius Cornelius won, and Rome is safe.”

“Oh, get on with it!” breathed Hortensius. “Ye gods, he’s growing more senile every day!”

Flaccus got on with it, fidgeting a little because he was not comfortable. “However, even with the war over, Rome has many other troubles to plague her. The Treasury is empty. So are the temple coffers. The streets are thin of business, the Senate thin of numbers. The consuls are dead, and only one praetor is left of the six who commenced at the beginning of the year.” He paused, drew a deep breath, and launched heroically into what Sulla had ordered him to say. “In fact, Conscript Fathers, Rome has passed beyond the point where normal governance is possible. Rome must be guided by the most able hand. The only hand capable of reaching out and drawing our beloved Lady Roma to her feet. My term as interrex is five days long. I cannot hold elections. I will be succeeded by a second interrex who will also serve for five days. He will be expected to hold elections. It may not lie in his power to do so, in which case a third interrex will have to try. And so on, and so forth. But this sketchy governance will not do, Conscript Fathers. The time is one of the acutest emergency, and I see only one man present here capable of doing what has to be done. But he cannot do what has to be done as consul. Therefore I propose a different solution—one which I will ask of the People in their Centuries, the most senior voting body of all. I will ask the People in their Centuries to draft and pass a lex rogata appointing and authorizing Lucius Cornelius Sulla the Dictator of Rome.”

The House stirred; men looked at each other, amazed.

“The office of Dictator is an old one,” Flaccus went on, “and normally confined to the conduct of a war. In the past, it has been the Dictator’s job to pursue a war when the consuls could not. And it is over one hundred years since the last Dictator was put into power. But Rome’s situation today is one she has never experienced before. The war is over. The emergency is not. I put it to you, Conscript Fathers, that no elected consuls can put Lady Roma back on her feet. The remedies called for will not be palatable, will incur huge resentments. At the end of his year in office, a consul can be compelled to answer to the People or the Plebs for his actions.

He can be charged with treason. If all have turned against him he may be sent into exile and his property confiscated. Knowing himself vulnerable to such charges in advance, no man can produce the strength and resolution Rome needs at this moment. A Dictator, however, does not fear retribution from People or Plebs. The nature of the office indemnifies him against all future reprisals. His acts as the Dictator are sanctioned for all time. He is not prosecutable at law on any charge. Bolstered by the knowledge that he is immune, that he cannot be vetoed by a tribune of the plebs or condemned in any assembly, a Dictator can utilize every ounce of his strength and purpose to put matters right. To set our beloved Lady Roma on her feet.”

“It sounds wonderful, Princeps Senatus,” said Hortensius loudly, “but the hundred and twenty years which have elapsed since the last Dictator took office have spoiled your memory! A Dictator is proposed by the Senate, but must be appointed by the consuls. We have no consuls. The fasces have been sent to the temple of Venus Libitina. A Dictator cannot be appointed.”

Flaccus sighed. “You were not listening to me properly, Quintus Hortensius, were you? I told you how it could be done. By means of a lex rogata passed by the Centuries. When there are no consuls to act as executives, the People in their Centuries are the executive. The only executive, as a matter of fact—the interrex must apply to them to execute his only function—which is to organize and hold curule elections. The People in their tribes are not an executive. Only the Centuries.”

“All right, I concede the point,” said Hortensius curtly. “Go on, Princeps Senatus.”

“It is my intention to convoke the Centuriate Assembly at dawn tomorrow. I will then ask it to formulate a law appointing Lucius Cornelius Sulla the Dictator. The law need not be very complicated—in fact, the simpler it is, the better. Once the Dictator is legally appointed by the Centuries, all other laws can come from him. What I will ask of the Centuries is that they formally appoint and authorize Lucius Cornelius Sulla the Dictator for however long it may take him to fulfill his commission; that they sanction all his previous deeds as consul and proconsul; that they remove from him all official odium in form of outlawry or exile; that they guarantee him indemnity from all his acts as Dictator at any time in the future; that they protect his acts as Dictator from tribunician veto and any Assembly’s rejection or negation, from the Senate and People in any form or through any magistrates, and from appeal to any Assembly or body or magistrates.”

“That’s better than being King of Rome!” cried Lepidus.

“No, it is simply different,” said Flaccus stubbornly; he had taken some time to get into the spirit of what Sulla wanted from him, but he was now well and truly launched. “A Dictator is not answerable for his actions, but he does not rule alone. He has the services of the Senate and all the Comitia as advisory bodies, he has his Master of the Horse, and he has however many magistrates he chooses to see elected beneath him. It is the custom for consuls to serve under the Dictator, for instance.”

Lepidus spoke up loudly. “The Dictator serves for six months only,” he said. “Unless my hearing has suddenly grown defective, what you propose to ask of the Centuries is that they appoint a Dictator with no time limit to his office. Not constitutional, Princeps Senatus! I am not against seeing Lucius Cornelius Sulla appointed the Dictator, but I am against his serving one moment longer than the proper term of six months.”

“Six months won’t even see my work begun,” said Sulla without rising from his stool. “Believe me, Lepidus, I do not want the wretched job for one single day, let alone for the rest of my life! When I consider my work is finished, I will step down. But six months? Impossible.”

“How so?” asked Lepidus.

“For one thing,” Sulla answered, “Rome’s finances are in chaos. To right them will take a year, perhaps two years. There are twenty-seven legions to discharge, find land for, pay out. The men who supported the lawless regimes of Marius, Cinna and Carbo have to be sought out and shown that they cannot escape just punishment. The laws of Rome are antiquated, particularly with regard to her courts and her governors of provinces. Her civil servants are disorganized and prey to both lethargy and cupidity. So much treasure, money and bullion were robbed from our temples that the Treasury still contains two hundred and eighty talents of gold and one hundred and twenty talents of silver, even after this year’s profligate waste. The temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus is a cinder.” He sighed loudly. “Must I go on, Lepidus?”

“All right, I concede that your task will take longer than six months. But what’s to stop your being reappointed every six months for however long the job takes?” asked Lepidus.

Sulla’s sneer was superlatively nasty without his teeth, despite the fact that those long canines were missing. “Oh, yes, Lepidus!” he cried. “I can see it all now! Half of every six—month period would have to be spent in conciliating the Centuries! Pleading, explaining, excusing, drawing pretty pictures, pissing in every knight—businessman’s purse, turning myself into the world’s oldest and saddest trollop!” He rose to his feet, fists clenched, and shook both of them at Marcus Aemilius Lepidus with more venom in his face than most men there had seen since he had quit Rome to go to war with King Mithridates. “Well, comfortable stay—at—home Lepidus, married to the daughter of a traitor who did try to set himself up as King of Rome, I will do it my way or not at all! Do you hear me, you miserable pack of self-righteous stay—at—home fools and cravens? You want Rome back on her feet, but you want the undeserved right to make the life of the man who is undertaking to do that as miserable and anxious and servile as you possibly can! Well, Conscript Fathers, you can make up your minds to it right here and now—Lucius Cornelius Sulla is back in Rome, and if he has a mind to it, he can shake her rafters until she falls down in ruins! Out there in the Latin countryside I have an army that I could have brought into this city and set on your despicable hides like wolves on lambs! I did not do that. I have acted in your best interests since first I entered the Senate. And I am still acting in your best interests. Peacefully. Nicely. But you are trying my patience, I give all of you fair warning. I will be Dictator for as long as I need to be Dictator. Is that understood? Is it, Lepidus?”

Silence reigned absolutely for many long moments. Even Vatia and Metellus Pius sat white—faced and trembling, gazing at the naked clawed monster fit only to screech at the moon—oh, how could they have forgotten what lived inside Sulla?

Lepidus too gazed white—faced and trembling, but the nucleus of his terror was not the monster inside Sulla; he was thinking of his beloved Appuleia, wife of many years, darling of his heart, mother of his sons—and daughter of Saturninus, who had indeed tried to make himself King of Rome. Why had Sulla made reference to her in the midst of that appalling outburst? What did he intend to do when he became Dictator?

*

Sick to death of civil wars, of economic depression and far too many legions marching endlessly up and down Italy, the Centuriate Assembly voted in a law which appointed Lucius Cornelius Sulla the Dictator for an unspecified period of time. Tabled at contio on the sixth day of November, the lex Valeria dictator legibus scribundis et rei publicae constituendae passed into law on the twenty-third day of November. It contained no specifics beyond the time span; as it bestowed virtually unlimited powers upon Sulla and also rendered him unanswerable for a single one of his actions, it did not need specificity. Whatever Sulla wanted to enact or do, he could.

Many in the city fully expected a flurry of activity from him the moment his appointment as Dictator was tabled, but he did nothing until the appointment was ratified three nundinae later, in accordance with the lex Caecilia Didia.

Having taken up residence in the house which had belonged to Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus (now a refugee in Africa), Sulla did, it seemed, little except walk constantly through the city. His own house had been wrecked and burned to the ground after Gaius Marius and Cinna had taken over Rome, and he walked across the Germalus of the Palatine to inspect its site, poke slowly among the heaps of rubble, gaze over the Circus Maximus to the lovely contours of the Aventine. At any time of day from dawn to dusk he might be seen standing alone in the Forum Romanum, staring up at the Capitol, or at the life—size statue of Gaius Marius near the rostra, or at some other among the numerous smaller statues of Marius, or at the Senate House, or at the temple of Saturn. He walked along the bank of the Tiber from the great trading emporium of the Aemilii in the Port of Rome all the way to the Trigarium, where the young men swam. He walked from the Forum Romanum to every one of Rome’s sixteen gates. He walked up one alley and down another.

Never did he display the slightest sign of fear for life or limb, never did he ask a friend to accompany him, let alone take a bodyguard along. Sometimes he wore a toga, but mostly he just wrapped himself voluminously in a more easily managed cloak—the winter was early, and promised to be as cold as the last. On one fine, unseasonably hot day he walked clad only in his tunic, and it could be seen then how small he was—though he had been a well-made man of medium size, people remembered. But he had shrunk, he was bent over, he crabbed along like an octogenarian. The silly wig was always on his head, and now that the outbreaks on his face were under control he had taken once more to painting his frost—fair brows and lashes with stibium.

And by the time one market interval of the Dictator’s wait for ratification was over, those who had witnessed his awful rage in the Senate but had not been direct objects of it (like Lepidus) had begun to feel comfortable enough to speak of this walking old man with some degree of contempt; so short is memory.

“He’s a travesty!” said Hortensius to Catulus, sniffing.

“Someone will kill him,” said Catulus, bored.

Hortensius giggled. “Or else he’ll tumble over in a fit or an apoplexy.” He grasped at his brother-in-law’s toga—swaddled left arm with his right hand, and shook it. “Do you know, I can’t see why I was so afraid! He’s here, but he’s not here. Rome doesn’t have a hard taskmaster after all—very peculiar! He’s cracked, Quintus. Senescent.”

An opinion which was becoming prevalent among all classes as every day his uninspiring figure could be seen plodding along with wig askew and stibium garishly applied. Was that powder covering up his mulberry—hued scars? Muttering. Shaking his head. Once or twice, shouting at no one. Cracked. Senescent.

It had taken a great deal of courage for such a vain man to expose his aged crudities to general gaze; only Sulla knew how much he loathed what disease had done to him, only Sulla knew how much he yearned again to be the magnificent man he was when he left to fight King Mithridates. But, he had told himself, shunning his mirror, the sooner he nerved himself to show Rome what he had become, the sooner he would learn to forget what the mirror would have shown him had he looked. And this did happen. Chiefly because his walks were not aimless, not evidence of senility. Sulla walked to see what Rome had become, what Rome needed, what he had to do. And the more he walked, the angrier he became—and the more excited, because it was in his hand to take this dilapidated, threadbare lady and turn her into the beauty she used to be.

He waited too for the arrival of some people who mattered to him, though he didn’t think of himself as loving them, or even needing them—his wife, his twins, his grown—up daughter, his grandchildren—and Ptolemy Alexander, heir to the throne of Egypt. They had been waiting patiently for many months under the care of Chrysogonus, first in Greece, then in Brundisium, but by the end of December they would be in Rome. For a while Dalmatica would have to live in Ahenobarbus’s house, but Sulla’s own residence had recently begun rebuilding; Philippus-looking brown and extremely fit—had arrived from Sardinia, unofficially convoked the Senate, and browbeaten that cowed body into voting nonexistent public funds to give back to Sulla what the State had taken away. Thank you, Philippus!

On the twenty-third day of November, Sulla’s dictatorship was formally ratified, and passed into law. And on that day Rome awoke to find every statue of Gaius Marius gone from the Forums Romanum, Boarium, Holitorium, various crossroads and squares, vacant pieces of land. Gone too were the trophies hung in his temple to Honor and Virtue on the Capitol, fire—damaged but still habitable for lifeless suits of enemy armor, flags, standards, all his personal decorations for valor, the cuirasses he had worn in Africa, at Aquae Sextiae, at Vercellae, at Alba Fucentia. Statues of other men had gone too—Cinna, Carbo, Old Brutus, Norbanus, Scipio Asiagenus—but perhaps because they were far fewer in number, their going was not noticed in the same way as the disappearance of Gaius Marius. He left a huge gap, a whole grove of empty plinths with his name obliterated from each, herms with their genitalia hammered off.

And at the same time the whispers increased about other, more serious disappearances; men were vanishing too! Men who had been strong and loud in their support of Marius, or Cinna, or Carbo, or of all three. Knights in the main, successful in business during a time when business success was difficult; knights who had gained lucrative State contracts, or loaned to partisans, or enriched themselves in other ways from affiliations to Marius, to Cinna, to Carbo, or to all three. Admittedly no senator had puffed out of existence, but suddenly the total of men who had was big enough to be noticed. Whether because of this public awareness or as a side effect of it, people now saw these men vanishing; some sturdy-looking private individuals, perhaps ten or fifteen in number, would knock upon a knight’s street door, be admitted, and then scant moments later would emerge with the knight in their midst, and march him off to—no one knew where!

Rome stirred uneasily, began to see the peregrinations of her wizened master as something more than just benign excursions; what had been quite amusing in a saddened way now took on a more sinister guise, and the innocent eccentricities of yesterday became the suspicious purposes of today and the terrifying objectives of tomorrow. He never spoke to anyone! He talked to himself! He stood in one place for far too long looking at who knew what! He had shouted once or twice! What was he really doing? And why was he doing it?

Exactly in step with this growing apprehension, the odd activities of those innocuous-looking bands of private persons who knocked on the street doors of houses belonging to knights became more overt. They were now noticed to stand here or there taking notes, or to follow like shadows behind an affluent Carboan banker or a prosperous Marian broker. The disappearing men disappeared with increasing frequency. And then one group of private persons knocked upon the street door of a pedarius senator who had always voted for Marius, for Cinna, for Carbo. But the senator was not marched away. When he emerged into the street there was a flurry of arms, the sweep of a sword, and his head fell to the ground with a hollow thock!, and rolled away. The body lay emptying itself of blood down the gutter, but the head disappeared.

Everyone began to find a reason for drifting past the rostra to count the heads—Carbo, Young Marius, Carrinas, Censorinus, Scipio Asiagenus, Old Brutus, Marius Gratidianus, Pontius Telesinus, Brutus Damasippus, Tiberius Gutta of Capua, Soranus, Mutilus…. No, that was all! The head of the backbencher senator was not there. Nor any head of any man who had vanished. And Sulla continued to walk with his idiotic wig not quite straight, and his brows and lashes painted. But whereas before people used to stop and smile to see him—albeit smiled with pity—now people felt a frightful hole blossom in their bellies at sight of him, and scrambled in any direction save toward him, or bolted at a run away from him. Wherever Sulla now was, no one else was. No one watched him. No one smiled, albeit with pity. No one accosted him. No one molested him. He brought a cold sweat in his wake, like the wraiths which issued from the mundus on the dies religiosi.

Never before had one of the great public figures been so shrouded in mystery, so opaque of purpose. His behavior was not normal. He should have been standing on the rostra in the Forum telling everyone in magnificent language all about his plans, or throwing rhetorical sand in the Senate’s eyes. Speeches of intent, litanies of complaint, flowery phrases—he should have been talking. To someone, if not everyone. Romans were not prone to keep their counsel. They talked things over. Hearsay ruled. But from Sulla, nothing. Just the solitary walks which acknowledged no complicity, implied no interest. And yet—all of it had to be emanating from him! This silent and uncommunicative man was the master of Rome.

*

On the Kalends of December, Sulla called a meeting of the Senate, the first such since Flaccus had spoken. Oh, how the senators hurried and scurried to the Curia Hostilia! Feeling colder even than the air, pulses so rapid heartbeats could not be counted, breathing shallow, pupils dilated, bowels churning. They huddled on their stools like gulls battered by a tempest, trying not to look up at the underside of the Curia roof for fear that, like Saturninus and his confederates, they would be felled in an instant by a rain of tiles from above.

No one was impervious to this nameless terror—even Flaccus Princeps Senatus—even Metellus Pius—even military darlings like Ofella and panders like Philippus and Cethegus. And yet when Sulla shuffled in he looked so harmless! A pathetic figure! Except that he was ushered in by an unprecedented twenty-four lictors, twice as many as a consul was entitled to—and twice as many as any earlier dictator.

“It is time that I told you of my intentions,” Sulla said from his ivory seat, not rising; his words came out in jets of white vapor, the chamber was so cold. “I am legally Dictator, and Lucius Valerius, the Leader of the House, is my Master of the Horse. Under the provisions of the Centuriate law which gave me my position, I am not obliged to see other magistrates elected if I so wish. However, Rome has always reckoned the passing of the years by the names of the consuls of each year, and I will not see that tradition broken. Nor will I have men call this coming year ‘In the Dictatorship of Lucius Cornelius Sulla.’ So I will see two consuls elected, eight praetors elected, two curule and two plebeian aediles elected, ten tribunes of the plebs elected, and twelve quaestors. And to give magisterial experience to men too young to be admitted into the Senate, I will see twenty-four tribunes of the soldiers elected, and I will appoint three men to be moneyers, and three to look after Rome’s detention cells and asylums.”

Catulus and Hortensius had come in a state of terror so great that both sat with anal sphincters clenched upon bowel contents turned liquid, and hid their hands so that others would not see how they shook. Listening incredulously to the Dictator announcing that he would hold elections for all the magistracies! They had expected to be pelted from the roof, or lined up and beheaded, or sent into exile with everything they owned confiscated—they had expected anything but this! Was he innocent? Did he not know what was going on in Rome? And if he did not know, who then was responsible for those disappearances and murders?

“Of course,” the Dictator went on in that irritatingly indistinct diction his toothlessness had wrought, “you realize that when I say elections, I do not mean candidates. I will tell you—and the various Comitia!—whom you will elect. Freedom of choice is not possible at this time. I need men to help me do my work, and they must be the men I want, not the men whom the electors would foist on me. I am therefore in a position to inform you who will be what next year. Scribe, my list!” He took the single sheet of paper from a clerk of the House whose sole duty seemed to be its custodian, while another secretary lifted his head from his work, which was to take down with a stylus on wax tablets everything Sulla said.

“Now then, consuls … Senior—Marcus Tullius Decula. Junior—Gnaeus Cornelius Dolabella—”

He got no further. A voice rang out, a togate figure leaped to his feet: Quintus Lucretius Ofella.

“No! No, I say! You’d give our precious consulship to Decula! No! Who is Decula? A nonentity who sat here safe and sound inside Rome while his betters fought for you, Sulla! What has Decula done to distinguish himself? Why, as far as I know he hasn’t even had the opportunity to wipe your podex with his sponge—on—a—stick, Sulla! Of all the miserable, malicious, unfair, unjust tricks! Dolabella I can understand—all of your legates got to know of the bargain you made with him, Sulla! But who is this Decula? What has this Decula done to earn the senior consulship? I say no! No, no, no!”

Ofella paused for breath.

Sulla spoke. “My choice for senior consul is Marcus Tullius Decula. That is that.”

“Then you can’t be allowed to have the choice, Sulla! We will have candidates and a proper election—and I will stand!”

“You won’t,” said the Dictator gently.

“Try and stop me!” Ofella shouted, and ran from the chamber. Outside a crowd had gathered, anxious to hear the results of this first meeting of the Senate since Sulla had been ratified Dictator. It was not composed of men who thought they had anything to fear from Sulla—they had stayed at home. A small crowd, but a crowd nonetheless. Pushing his way through it without regard for the welfare of anyone in his path, Ofella stormed down the Senate steps and across the cobblestones to the well of the Comitia and the rostra set into its side.

“Fellow Romans!” he cried. “Gather round, hear what I have to say about this unconstitutional monarch we have voluntarily appointed to lord over us! He says he will see consuls elected. But there are to be no candidates—just the two men of his choice! Two ineffectual and incompetent idiots—and one of them, Marcus Tullius Decula, is not even of a noble family! The first of his family to sit in the Senate, a backbencher who scrambled into a praetorship under the treasonous regime of Cinna and Carbo! Yet he is to be senior consul while men like me go unrewarded!”

Sulla had risen and walked slowly down the tesselated floor of the Curia to the portico, where he stood blinking in the stronger light and looking mildly interested as he watched Ofella shouting from the rostra. Without drawing attention to themselves, perhaps fifteen ordinary-looking men began to cluster together at the foot of the Senate steps right in the path of Sulla’s eyes.

And slowly the senators crept out of the Curia to see and hear what they could, fascinated at Sulla’s calm, emboldened by it too—he wasn’t the monster they had begun to think him, he couldn’t be!

“Well, fellow Romans,” Ofella went on, voice more stentorian as he got into stride, “I am one man who will not lie down under these studied insults! I am more entitled to be consul than a nonentity like Decula! And it is my opinion that the electors of Rome, if offered a choice, will choose me over both of Sulla’s men! Just as there are others they would choose did others step forward and declare themselves candidates!”

Sulla’s eyes met those of the leader of the ordinary-looking men standing just below him; he nodded, sighed, leaned his weary body against a convenient pillar.

The ordinary-looking men moved quietly through the thin crowd, came to the rostra, mounted it, and laid hold of Ofella. Their gentleness was apparent, not real; Ofella fought desperately, to no avail. Inexorably they bent him over until he collapsed on his knees. Then one of them took a handful of hair, stood well back, and pulled until head and neck were extended. A sword flashed up and down. The man holding the hair staggered despite his wide stance in the moment when his end parted company with the rest of Ofella, then whipped the head on high so all could see it. Within moments the Forum was empty save for the stunned Conscript Fathers of the Senate.

“Put the head on the rostra,” said Sulla, straightened himself, and walked back into the chamber.

Like automatons the senators followed.

“Very well, where was I?” asked Sulla of his secretary, who leaned forward and muttered low—voiced. “Oh, yes, so I was! I thank you! I had finished with the consuls, and I was about to commence on the praetors. Clerk, your list!” And out went Sulla’s hand. “Thank you! To proceed.... Mamercus Aemilius Lepidus Livianus. Marcus Aemilius Lepidus. Gaius Claudius Nero. Gnaeus Cornelius Dolabella the younger. Lucius Fufidius. Quintus Lutatius Catulus. Marcus Minucius Thermus. Sextus Nonius Sufenas. Gaius Papirius Carbo. I appoint the younger Dolabella praetor urbanus, and Mamercus praetor peregrinus.”

A truly extraordinary list! Clearly neither Lepidus nor Catulus, who might at a proper election have expected to come in at the top of the poll, was to be preferred to two men who had actively fought for Sulla. Yet there they were, praetors when loyal Sullans of senatorial status and the right age had been passed over! Fufidius was a relative nobody. And Nonius Sufenas was Sulla’s sister’s younger boy. Nero was a minor Claudius of no moment. Thermus was a good soldier, but so poor a speaker he was a Forum joke. And just to annoy all camps, the last place on the list of praetors had gone to a member of Carbo’s family who had sided with Sulla but failed to distinguish himself!

“Well, you’re in,” whispered Hortensius to Catulus. “All I can hope for is that I’m on next year’s list—or the year after that. Ye gods, what a farce! How can we bear him?”

“The praetors don’t matter,” said Catulus in a murmur. “They’ll all flog themselves to shine—Sulla isn’t fool enough to give the wrong job to the wrong man. It’s Decula interests me. A natural bureaucrat! That’s why Sulla picked him—had to, given that Dolabella had blackmailed him into a consulship! Our Dictator’s policies will be meticulously executed, and Decula will love every moment of the execution.”

The meeting droned on. One after another the names of the magistrates were read out, and no voice was raised in protest. Done, Sulla handed his paper back to its custodian and spread his hands upon his knees.

“I have said everything I want to say at this time, except that I have taken due note of Rome’s paucity of priests and augurs, and will be legislating very soon to rectify matters. But hear this now!’‘ he suddenly roared out, making everyone jump. “There will be no more elected Religious! It is the height of impiety to cast ballots to determine who will serve the gods! It turns something solemn and formal into a political circus and enables the appointment of men who have no tradition or appreciation of priestly duties. If her gods are not served properly, Rome cannot prosper.” Sulla rose to his feet.

A voice was raised. Looking mildly quizzical, Sulla sank back into his ivory chair.

“You wish to speak, Piglet dear?” he asked, using the old nickname Metellus Pius had inherited as his father’s son.

Metellus Pius reddened, but got to his feet looking very determined. Ever since his arrival in Rome on the fifth day of November, his stammer—almost nonexistent these days—had steadily and cruelly worsened. He knew why. Sulla. Whom he loved but feared. However, he was still his father’s son, and Metellus Numidicus Piggle—wiggle had twice braved terrible beatings in the Forum rather than abrogate a principle, and once gone into exile to uphold a principle. Therefore it behooved him to tread in his father’s footsteps and maintain the honor of his family. And his own dignitas.

“Luh—Luh—Lucius Cornelius, wuh—wuh—will you answer wuh—wuh—one question?”

“You’re stammering!” cried Sulla, almost singing.

“Truh—truh—true. Suh—suh—suh—sorry. I will try,” he said through gritted teeth. “Are you aware, Luh—Luh—Lucius Cornelius, that men are being killed and their property confiscated thruh—thruh—throughout Italy as well as in Rome?”

The whole House listened with bated breath to hear Sulla’s answer: did he know, was he responsible?

“Yes, I am aware of it,” said Sulla.

A collective sigh, a general flinching and huddling down on stools; the House now knew the worst.

Metellus Pius went on doggedly. “I uh—uh—uh—understand that it is necessary to punish the guilty, but no man has been accorded a truh—truh—trial. Could you cluh—cluh—clarify the situation for me? Could you, for instance, tuh—tuh—tuh—tell me whereabouts you intend to draw the line? Are any men going to be accorded a trial? And who says these men have committed treason if they are nuh—nuh—not tried in a proper court?’’

“It is by my dictate that they die, Piglet dear,” said the Dictator firmly. “I will not waste the State’s money and time on trials for men who are patently guilty.”

The Piglet labored on. “Then cuh—cuh—can you give me some idea of whom you intend to spare?”

“I am afraid I cannot,” said the Dictator.

“Then if yuh—yuh—yuh—you do not know who will be spared, can you tell me whom you intend to punish?”

“Yes, dear Piglet, I can do that for you.”

“In which case, Luh—Luh—Lucius Cornelius, would you please share that knowledge with us?” Metellus Pius ended, sagging in sheer relief.

“Not today,” said Sulla. “We will reconvene tomorrow.”

Everyone came back at dawn on the morrow, but few looked as if they had enjoyed any sleep.

Sulla was waiting for them inside the chamber, seated on his ivory curule chair. One scribe sat with his stylus and wax tablets, the other held a scroll of paper. The moment the House was confirmed in legal sitting by the sacrifice and auguries, out went Sulla’s hand for the scroll. He looked directly at poor Metellus Pius, haggard from worry.

“Here,” Sulla said, “is a list of men who have either died already as traitors, or who will die shortly as traitors. Their property now belongs to the State, and will be sold at auction. And any man or woman who sets eyes upon a man whose name is on this list will be indemnified against retaliation if he or she appoints himself or herself an executioner.” The scroll was handed to Sulla’s chief lictor. “Pin this up on the wall of the rostra,” said Sulla. “Then all men will know what my dear Piglet alone had the courage to ask to know.”

“So if I see one of the men on your list, I can kill him?” asked Catilina eagerly; though not yet a senator, he had been bidden by Sulla to attend meetings of the Senate.

“You can indeed, my little plate—licker! And earn two talents of silver for doing so, as a matter of fact,” said Sulla. “I will be legislating my program of proscriptions, of course—I will do nothing that has not the force of law! The reward will be incorporated into the legislation, and proper books will be kept of all such transactions so that Posterity will know who in our present day and age profited.”

It came out demurely, but men like Metellus Pius had no trouble in discerning Sulla’s malice; men like Lucius Sergius Catilina (if in truth they discerned Sulla’s malice) obviously did not care.

*

The first list of proscribed was in the number of forty senators and sixty-five knights. The names of Gaius Norbanus and Scipio Asiagenus headed it, with Carbo and Young Marius next. Carrinas, Censorinus and Brutus Damasippus were named, whereas Old Brutus was not. Most of the senators were already dead. The lists, however, were basically intended to inform Rome whose estates were confiscate; they did not say who was already dead, who still alive. The second list went up on the rostra the very next day, to the number of two hundred knights. And a third list went up the day after that, publishing a further group of two hundred and fifteen knights. Sulla apparently had finished with the Senate; his real target was the Ordo Equester.

His leges Corneliae covering proscription regulations and activities were exhaustive. The bulk of them, however, appeared over a period of a mere two days very early in December, and by the Nones of that month all was in a Deculian order, as Catulus had prophesied. Every contingency had been taken into account. All property in a proscribed man’s family was now the property of the State, and could not be transferred into the name of some scion innocent of transgression; no will of a man proscribed was valid, no heir named in it could inherit; the proscribed man could legally be slain by any man or woman who saw him, be he or she free, or freed, or still slave; the reward for murder or apprehension of a proscribed man was two talents of silver, to be paid by the Treasury from confiscated property and entered in the public account books; a slave claiming the reward was to be freed, a freedman transferred into a rural tribe; all men—civilian or military—who after Scipio Asiagenus had broken his truce had favored Carbo or Young Marius were declared public enemies; any man offering assistance or friendship to a proscribed man was declared a public enemy; the sons and grandsons of the proscribed were debarred from holding curule office and forbidden to repurchase confiscated estates, or come into possession of them by any other means; the sons and grandsons of those already dead would suffer in the same way as the sons and grandsons of those listed while still living. The last law of this batch, promulgated on the fifth day of December, declared that the whole process of proscription would cease on the first day of the next June. Six months hence.

Thus did Sulla usher in his Dictatorship, by demonstrating that not only was he master of Rome, but also a master of terror and suspense. Not all the days of itching agony had been spent in mindless torment or drunken stupor; Sulla had thought of this and that and many things. Of how he would achieve mastery of Rome; of how he would proceed when he became master of Rome; of how he would create a mental attitude in every man and woman and child that would enable him to do what had to be done without opposition, without revolt. Not soldiers garrisoning the streets but shadows in the mind, fears which led to hope as well as to despair. His minions would be anonymous people who might be the neighbors or friends of those they sneaked up on and whisked away. Sulla intended to create a climate rather than weather. Men could cope with weather. But climates? Ah, climates could prove unendurable.

And he had thought while he itched and tore himself to raw and bloody tatters of being an old and ugly and disappointed man given the world’s most wonderful toy to play with: Rome. Its men and women, dogs and cats, slaves and freedmen, lowly and knights and nobles. All his cherished resentments, all his grudges grown cold and dark, he detailed meticulously in the midst of his pain. And took exquisite comfort from shaping his revenge.

The Dictator had arrived.

The Dictator had put his gleeful hands upon his new toy.