1

Not two months had gone by when Sulla decided that Rome had adjusted satisfactorily to the presence of his proscriptions. The slaughter was only marginally more subtle than Marius’s slaughter during the few days of his seventh consulship; the streets of Rome didn’t run with quite so much blood, and there were no bodies piled in the lower Forum Romanum. The bodies of those killed in Sulla’s proscriptions (the victims were forbidden funeral rites and interment) were dragged with a meat hook under the sternum to the Tiber, and thrown in; only the heads were piled in the lower Forum Romanum, around the perimeter of the public fountain known as the Basin of Servilius.

As the amount of property gathered in for the State by the administrator, Chrysogonus, accumulated, a few more laws came into being: the widow of a man proscribed could not remarry, and the wax masks of Gaius Marius and Young Marius, of Cinna or his ancestors, or of any proscribed man and his ancestors, could not be displayed at any family funeral.

The house of Gaius Marius had been sold at auction to the present Sextus Perquitienus, grandson of the man who had made that family’s fortune, and next door to whom Marius had erected his house; it now served as an annex for art works to the Perquitienus residence, though it was not incorporated in it.

At first the auctions Chrysogonus conducted saw the estates of the proscribed knocked down to successful bidders at a fair market price, but the amount of money to buy was not great, so that by the time the tenth auction occurred, the prices being realized were dropping rapidly. It was at this moment that Marcus Crassus began to bid. His technique was shrewd; rather than set his heart on the best property on the agenda, he chose to concentrate upon less desirable estates, and was able to pick them up for very little. The activities of Lucius Sergius Catilina were more feral. He concentrated upon informing Chrysogonus of traitorous talk or actions, and thus succeeded in having his elder brother Quintus proscribed, after which he ensured that his brother-in-law Caecilius was proscribed. The brother was sent into exile, but the brother-in-law died, and Catilina applied to the Dictator for a special lawto inherit, arguing that in neither case was he named in the will, nor was he a direct heir—both men had male children. When Sulla acceded to his request, Catilina became rich without needing to spend a single sestertius at the auctions.

It was in a dually chilly climate, therefore, that Sulla celebrated his triumph on the last day of January. Ordinary Rome turned out en masse to do him honor, though the knights stayed home, apparently on the theory that should Sulla or Chrysogonus see their faces, they might wind up on the next proscription list. The Dictator displayed the spoils and tributes of Asia and King Mithridates with every tricky device conceivable to camouflage the fact that his conclusion of the war had been as hasty as it was premature, and that in consequence the booty was disappointing considering the wealth of the enemy.

On the following day Sulla held an exposition rather than a triumph, displaying what he had taken from Young Marius and Carbo; he was careful to inform the spectators that these items were to be returned to the temples and people they had been taken from. On this day the restored exiles—men like Appius Claudius Pulcher, Metellus Pius, Varro Lucullus and Marcus Crassus—marched not as senators of Rome, but as restored exiles, though Sulla considerately spared them the indignity of having to don the Cap of Liberty, normally the headgear of freedmen.

*

The taming of Pompey proved to be more difficult than reconciling Rome to the proscriptions, as Sulla learned the day before he held his triumph. Pompey had ignored his instructions from the Dictator and sailed with his whole army from Africa to Italy. The letter he sent Sulla from Tarentum informed Sulla that his army had refused to let him sail without every last one of his loyal soldiers coming along, and he claimed to have been powerless to prevent this mass embarkation (without explaining how it was that he had gathered sufficient ships to fit five extra legions and two thousand horse on board); at the end of his missive he again asked to be allowed to celebrate a triumph.

The Dictator sped a couriered letter to Tarentum in which for the second time he denied Pompey this mouth—watering triumph. The same courier carried back a letter from Pompey to Sulla apologizing for the refractory behavior of his army, which he protested yet again he could not control. Those naughty, naughty soldiers were insisting their darling general be allowed his well-deserved triumph! If the Dictator were to continue his negative attitude, Pompey was very much afraid his naughty, naughty soldiers might take matters into their own hands, and elect to march to Rome. He himself would—of course!—do everything in his power to prevent this!

A second letter was galloped from Sulla down the Via Appia to Tarentum, containing a third refusal: NO TRIUMPH. This proved to be one refusal too many. Pompey’s six legions and two thousand cavalry troopers set out to march to Rome. Their darling general came along with them, protesting in another letter to Sulla that he was only doing so in order to prevent his men taking actions they might later have cause to regret.

The Senate had been privy to every episode in this duel of wills, horrified at the presumption of a twenty-four-year-old knight, and had issued a senatus consultum to back every one of Sulla’s orders and denials. So when Sulla and the Senate were informed that Pompey and his army had reached Capua, resistance hardened. The time was now nearing the end of February, winter storms came and went, and the Campus Martius was already crowded because other armies were sitting on it—two legions belonging to Lucius Licinius Murena, the ex-governor of Asia Province and Cilicia, and two legions belonging to Gaius Valerius Flaccus, the ex-governor of Gaul-across-the-Alps. Each of these men was to triumph shortly.

Hot on the heels of the inevitable letter ordering Pompey to halt at Capua (and informing Pompey that there were four battle—hardened legions occupying the Campus Martius), the Dictator himself left Rome in the direction of Capua. With him were the consuls Decula and the elder Dolabella, Metellus Pius the Pontifex Maximus, Flaccus Princeps Senatus the Master of the Horse, and an escort of lictors; no soldiers traveled with them to protect them.

Sulla’s letter caught Pompey before he could leave Capua, and the news that four battle—hardened legions were encamped outside Rome shocked him into remaining where he was. It had never been Pompey’s intention to go to war against Sulla; the march was a bluff purely designed to obtain a triumph. So to learn that the Dictator had four battle—hardened legions at his immediate disposal broke upon Pompey like a torrent of ice—cold water. He himself knew he was bluffing—but did Sulla know it? Of course not! How could he? To Sulla, this march would look like a repeat of his own from Capua in the year that he had been consul. Pompey flew into an absolute funk.

So when the news came that Sulla in person was approaching without an army to back him, Pompey scrambled frantically to ride out of his camp and up the Via Appia—also without his army to back him. The circumstances of this meeting bore some resemblance to their first encounter at the ford across the Calor River. But today Sulla was not drunk, though inevitably he was mounted upon a mule. He was dressed in the purple-bordered toga praetexta and preceded by twenty-four lictors shivering in crimson tunics and brass—bossed black leather belts, with the ominous axes inserted in their bundles of rods. In Sulla’s wake there followed thirty more lictors—twelve belonging to Decula, twelve to the elder Dolabella, and six to the Master of the Horse, who had a praetor’s rank. So the occasion was more dignified and impressive than had been that at the Calor crossing. More in tune with poor Pompey’s original fantasies.

But there could be no arguing that Pompey had grown in stature during the twenty-two months which had elapsed since his original meeting with Sulla; he had conducted one campaign in conjunction with Metellus Pius and Crassus, another in Clusium with Sulla and Crassus, and a third in complete command abroad. So now he didn’t quibble about wearing his best gold—plated suit of armor, and flashed and glittered quite as much as did his gaily caparisoned Public Horse. The Dictator’s party was coming up on foot; unwilling to look more martial, Pompey dismounted.

Sulla was wearing his Grass Crown, an unkind reminder that Pompey as yet had not managed to win one—had not managed to win a Civic Crown, for that matter! Silly wig and all, scar—spattered face and all, the Dictator still contrived to look every inch the Dictator. Pompey was quick to note it. The lictors moved twelve to either side of the road, thus permitting the tanned young man in his gold—plated armor to walk between their files toward Sulla, who had halted and arranged his party so that he stood a few feet ahead of the others, but was not isolated from them.

“Ave, Pompeius Magnus!” cried Sulla, right hand lifted.

“Ave, Dictator of Rome!” cried Pompey, transported with joy. Sulla had actually called him in public by the third name he had given himself—he could now officially be Pompey the Great!

They kissed on the mouth, something neither man enjoyed. And, the lictors preceding as always, turned slowly to walk in the direction of Pompey’s camp, the others following on.

“You’re prepared to admit I’m Great!” said Pompey happily.

“The name has stuck,” said Sulla. “But so has Kid Butcher.”

“My army is determined that I triumph, Lucius Cornelius.”

“Your army has absolutely no right to make that determination, Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus.”

Out flew both powerful, freckled arms. “What can I do?”’ he cried. “They won’t take a scrap of notice of me!”

“Rubbish!” said Sulla roundly. “Surely you realize, Magnus, that throughout the course of four letters—if you count the original one you received in Utica—you have demonstrated that you are not competent enough to control your troops?’’

Pompey flushed, drew his small mouth in even smaller. “That is not a fair criticism!” he exclaimed.

“It most certainly is. You have admitted its truth yourself in no less than three letters.”

“You’re deliberately failing to understand!” said Pompey, red-faced. “They’re only behaving like this because they love me!”

“Love or hate, insubordination is insubordination. If they belonged to me, I’d be decimating them.”

“It’s a harmless insubordination,” Pompey protested lamely.

“No insubordination is harmless, as you well know. You are threatening the legally appointed Dictator of Rome.”

“This is not a march on Rome, Lucius Cornelius, it’s just a march to Rome,” labored Pompey. “There is a difference!

My men simply want to see that I receive what is due to me.”

“What is due to you, Magnus, is whatever I, as Dictator of Rome, decide to give you. You are twenty-four years old. You are not a senator. I have agreed to call you by a wonderful name which could only be improved by degree—Magnus can go to Maximus, but nowhere else—unless it be diminished to Parvus—or Minutus—or even Pusillus,” said Sulla.

Pompey stopped in the middle of the road, faced Sulla; the party behind somehow forgot to stop until they were well and truly close enough to hear.

“I want a triumph!” said Pompey loudly, and stamped a foot.

“And I say you can’t have one!” said Sulla, equally loudly.

Pompey’s broad, temper—reddened face grew beetling, the thin lips drew back to reveal small white teeth. “You would do well to remember, Lucius Cornelius Sulla, Dictator of Rome, that more people worship the rising than the setting sun!”

For no reason any of the enthralled listeners could determine, Sulla burst out laughing. He laughed until he cried, slapping his hands helplessly on his thighs and quite losing control of the many folds of toga draped upon his left arm; it began to fall away and drag upon the ground. “Oh, very well!” he gasped when he could speak at all. “Have your triumph!” And then, still shaken by fresh guffaws, he said, “Don’t just stand there, Magnus, you great booby! Help me pick up my toga!”

*

“You are a complete fool, Magnus,” said Metellus Pius to Pompey when he had an opportunity to speak in private.

“I think I’ve been very clever,” said Pompey smugly.

Still not consul though he had entered into his late forties, the Piglet had aged well; his curly brown hair was frosted with white at the temples and his skin bore none but attractive lines at the corners of his brown eyes. Even so, next to Pompey he paled into insignificance. And he knew it. Not so much with envy as with sadness.

“You’ve been anything but clever,” the Piglet said, pleased to see the brilliant blue eyes widen incredulously. “I know our master considerably better than you do, and I can tell you that his intelligence is greater than both of ours put together. If he has a failing, it is only a failing of temperament—not of character! And this failing doesn’t affect the brilliance of his mind one iota. Nor does it affect the consummate skill of his actions, as man or as Dictator.”

Pompey blew a derisive noise. “Oh, Pius, you’re not making any sense! Failing? What failing of Sulla’s can you possibly mean?”

“His sense of the ridiculous, of course. Better to cuh—cuh—call it that than a sense of huh—huh—huh—humor.” The Piglet floundered, his own disability recollected, and stopped for a few moments to discipline his tongue. “I mean things like his appointing me the Pontifex Maximus when I stumble over my words. He can never resist that kind of joke.”

Pompey contrived to look bored. “I have no idea where you are going, Pius, or what it has to do with me.”

“Magnus, Magnus! He’s been having a laugh at your expense all along! That’s what it has to do with you. He always intended that you should triumph—what does he care about your age or your knight’s status? You’re a military hero, and he raises them to all kinds of exalted heights! But he wanted to see how much it meant to you, and how far you’d go to get it. You should never have risen to his bait. Now, he has you properly assessed and tucked away in his mental accounting system. He knows now that your courage is almost the equal of your self-esteem, not to mention your ambition. Almost. But not quite. He knows now that at the bitter end, Magnus, you won’t stick the course.”

“What do you mean, I won’t stick the course?”

“You know perfectly well what I mean.”

“I was marching on Rome!”

“Rubbish!” The Piglet smiled. “You were marching to Rome. You said so yourself. And I believed you. So did Sulla.”

Confounded, Pompey glared at his critic, not sure what he ought to—what he could say. “I got my triumph.”

“Yes, you did. But he’s making you pay a price for it you wouldn’t have had to pay if you’d behaved yourself.”

“Price? Price?” Pompey shook his head like a large and angry animal confused by teasing. “Today, Pius, you seem quite determined to speak in riddles!”

“You’ll see,” said the Piglet, no less obscure.

*

And Pompey did see, but not until the day of his triumph. The clues were there; excitement clouded his perceptions, was the trouble. The date of his triumph was set at the twelfth day of March. On the sixth day of March, Gaius Flaccus, the ex-governor of Gaul-across-the-Alps, triumphed for victories over rebellious Gallic tribes; and on the ninth day of March, Murena, the ex-governor of Asia Province, triumphed for victories in Cappadocia and Pontus. So by the time that the day of Pompey’s triumph came round, Rome had had enough of victory parades. A few people turned out, but not a crowd; after Sulla’s magnificent two—day extravaganza Flaccus had been mildly interesting, Murena somewhat less so, and Pompey hardly at all. For no one knew his name, no one was aware of his youth or beauty, and no one could have cared less. Another triumph? Ho hum, said Rome.

However, Pompey wasn’t particularly worried as he set off from the Villa Publica; word would fly and the people would come running from all directions when they heard the style of this particular triumph! By the time he turned the corner from the Circus Maximus into the Via Triumphalis, all of Rome would be there to see. In almost every respect his procession was a standard one—first the magistrates and senators, then musicians and dancers, the carts displaying spoils and the floats depicting various incidents from the campaign, the priests and the white male sacrificial victims, the captives and hostages, and then the general in his chariot, followed by his army.

Even Pompey’s garb was correct—the purple toga solidly embroidered with gold, the laurel wreath upon his head, the palm—embroidered tunic with the massive purple stripe. But when it came to painting his face red with minim, he balked. It was vital to his plans that Rome should see his youth and beauty, the face of an individual. His likeness to Alexander the Great. If his face were to be reduced to a brick—red blob, he might be anyone of any age. Therefore, no minim!

This barefaced presentation was not the major difference between Pompey and every other triumphing general; that lay in the animals which drew the antique four—wheeled triumphal chariot in which Pompey rode. Instead of the customary matched white horses, he was using four enormous male African elephants he had personally captured in Numidia. Four mahouts had worked every day since—in Utica and Tarentum, on the Via Appia, at Capua—to tame the recalcitrant pachyderms sufficiently to persuade them to act as beasts of slight burden. No easy feat, yet accomplished. Thus Pompey was able to set off in a triumphal chariot towed by four elephants. His companion in the car did not drive, simply held on to a set of ornate reins attached to the flashy trappings worn by these fabulous creatures. The elephants were under the control of the mahouts, each one sitting between a pair of massive, wrinkled grey shoulders more than ten feet off the ground. Once word spread—and it would, very quickly!—crowds would line the route of the parade just to see this remarkable sight—the New Alexander drawn by the very animals Rome regarded as most sacred. Elephants! Gigantic elephants with ears the size of sails and tusks seven feet long!

The path of the parade led from the Villa Publica on the Campus Martius to a narrow roadway lined with villas and apartment houses that wound around the base of the Capitoline Hill and approached the Servian Walls below the sharp cliffs at the hill’s western end; here was the Porta Triumphalis, through which the parade passed into the city itself. As Pompey ‘s was the third triumph within six days, senators and magistrates were thoroughly fed up with the whole procedure, so this first contingent was thin of company and inclined to be brisk. Taking their cue from the leaders, the musicians, dancers, carts, floats, priests, sacrificial victims, captives and hostages also moved quickly. Trundling along at the leisurely pace of four elephants harnessed two abreast, Pompey soon fell behind.

The chariot came to the Triumphal Gate at last, and stopped dead. The army—minus swords and spears but carrying staves wrapped in laurels—also stopped. Because the triumphal car was so old it belonged to Etruscan times and had been ceremonial from the beginning, it was much lower to the ground than the classical two—wheeled war chariot still employed by some outlandish tribes of Gauls; Pompey couldn’t see what was happening over the majestic but tousled rumps of the pair of elephants in front of him. At first he merely fretted and fumed a little; then when the halt became tediously long, he sent his driver forward to see what was the matter.

Back came the driver, looking horrified. “Triumphator, the elephants are too big to fit through the gate!”

Pompey’s jaw dropped. He felt a prickling in his skin, beads of sweat popping out on his forehead. “Nonsense!” he said.

“Truly, Triumphator, it is so! The elephants are too big to fit through the gate,” the driver insisted.

Down from the chariot in all his glory descended Pompey to run, trailing gold and purple garments, in the direction of the gate. There the mahouts belonging to the two leading pachyderms were standing looking helpless; thankfully they turned to Pompey.

“The opening is too small,” said one.

While on his way to the gate, Pompey had been mentally unharnessing the beasts and leading them through the aperture one at a time to the far side, but now he saw what he had not been able to see from the chariot; it was not a question of width, but of height. This opening—the only one by which the triumphal parade was permitted to travel—was wide enough to allow an army to march through eight abreast, even to allow the entry of a chariot drawn by four horses abreast, or a huge float; but it was not high enough to pass the head of an old and mighty African tusker, as the masonry above it which burrowed into the cliff of the Capitoline Hill began at about the height of these elephants’ shoulders.

“All right,” said Pompey confidently, “unharness them and lead them through one at a time. Just make them bend their heads right down.”

“They’re not trained to do that!” said one mahout, aghast.

“I don’t care whether they’re trained to shit through the eye of a needle!” snapped Pompey, face beginning to look as if it had been painted with minim after all. “Just do it!”

The leading elephant refused to bend his head.

“Pull on his trunk and make him!” said Pompey.

But no amount of pulling on his trunk or sitting on his glorious curving tusks would persuade the beast to bend his head; instead, he became angry. His unrest began to infect the other three, two of whom were still attached to the chariot. They began to back away, and the chariot began to threaten the lionskin—clad band of Pompey’s standard—bearers immediately behind.

While the mahouts continued to battle to obey him, Pompey stood articulating every horrific profanity in a ranker soldier’s vocabulary and producing threats which reduced the mahouts to glassy-eyed jellies of fear. All to no avail. The elephants were too big and too unwilling to be brought through the gate.

Over an hour had gone by when Varro came through the gate to see what had gone wrong. He, of course, had been walking with the other senators at the very front of the parade.

One look was enough. A terrible urge invaded Varro to lie down in the road and howl with laughter. This he could not do—not, one glance at Pompey’s face told him, if he wanted to live.

“Send Scaptius and some of his men to the Stabulae to get the horses,” said Varro crisply. “Come, Magnus, abandon these tantrums and think! The rest of the parade has reached the Forum, and no one knows why you’re not following. Sulla is sitting up on Castor’s podium fidgeting more and more, and the caterers for the feast in Jupiter Stator are tearing their hair out!”

Pompey’s answer was to burst into tears and sit down on the dirty cobbles in all his triumphal finery to weep his heart out. Thus it was Varro who sent the men for horses, and Varro who supervised the unhitching of the elephants. By this the scene had been complicated by the arrival of several market gardeners from the Via Recta, armed with shovels and barrows, and determined to appropriate what was known to be the best fertilizer in the world. Stepping unconcernedly between the gigantic legs of the pachyderms, they busied themselves scooping up piles of dung the size of wheels of cheese from Arpinum. Only urgency and pity kept Varro’s mirth at bay as he shouted and shooed, finally saw the mahouts get their charges under way toward the Forum Holitorium—no one could have driven them back the way they had come, with six legions congesting the roadway.

In the meantime the front half of the parade had ground to a halt in the Forum Romanum opposite the imposing Ionic facade of the temple of Castor and Pollux—upon which, high up, sat Sulla with his Master of the Horse, the two consuls, and some of his family and friends. Courtesy and custom said that the triumphator must be the most important man in his parade as well as at his feast, so these august men did not participate in the parade, nor would they attend the feast afterward.

Everyone was restless; everyone was also cold. The day was fine, but a bitter north wind was blowing, and the sun in the depths of the lower Forum not strong enough to melt the icicles hanging from temple eaves. Finally Varro returned, took the steps of Castor’s two at a time, and bent to whisper in Sulla’s ear. A huge gust of laughter assailed all the suddenly curious men; then, still laughing, Sulla got to his feet and walked to the edge of the podium to address the crowd.

“Wait a little longer!” he shouted. “Our triumphator is coming! He decided he’d improve the look of his parade by using elephants to draw his car instead of horses! But the elephants wouldn’t fit through the Porta Triumphalis, so he’s had to send for horses!” A pause, and then (quite audibly), “Oh, how I wish I’d been there to see it!”

General titters followed that announcement, but only the men who knew Pompey—Metellus Pius, Varro Lucullus, Crassus—roared their amusement.

“You know, it isn’t wise to offend Sulla,” said Metellus Pius to those around him. “I’ve noticed it time and time again. He has some sort of exclusive claim on Fortune, so he doesn’t even have to exert himself to see a man humiliated. The Goddess does it for him. Sulla is her favorite person in the world.”

“What I can’t understand,” said Varro Lucullus, frowning, “is why Pompeius didn’t measure the gate beforehand. Give him his due, he’s usually very efficient.”

“Until his daydreams overpower his good sense,” said Varro, arriving breathless; he had run all the way from the Triumphal Gate as well as up Castor’s steps. “His mind was so set on those wretched elephants that it never occurred to him anything could go wrong. Poor Magnus, he was shocked.”

“I feel sorry for him, actually,” said Varro Lucullus.

“So do I, now I’ve proved my point to him,” said Metellus Pius, and looked closely at the panting, scarlet—faced Varro. “How is he taking it?”

“He’ll be all right by the time he gets to the Forum,” Varro said, too loyal to describe the bout of tears.

Indeed, Pompey carried the rest of his triumphal parade with grace and dignity, though there could be no denying, even in his mind, that the two—hour fracture in its middle relegated it to the level of a very pedestrian triumph. Nor had many people lined the route to see him; what were horses compared to old men elephants, especially the plodding bay mediocrities which were all Scaptius could find?

It was not until he entered the temple of Jupiter Stator, in which his feast was laid out, that he fully understood how funny the men who mattered thought his elephantine fiasco was. The ordeal had actually begun on his way down from the Capitol after the triumph itself had concluded, when he found a group of people clustered about the base of Scipio Africanus’s encolumned statue, laughing hilariously. The moment he drew near, however, everyone cleared a path to make sure he saw what some Forum wit had chalked upon the plinth in huge letters:

“Africanus up here in the air

Found elephants worthy of prayer.

Kid Butcher, precocious young shit,

Found elephants just wouldn’t fit!”

Inside Jupiter Stator it was even worse. Some of his guests contented themselves by putting a heavy emphasis on the word “Magnus” when they addressed him by it, but others feigned a slip in pronunciation which turned him into “Magus”—a ludicrous wise man from Persia—or punned deliciously on “Manus”—hand—to imply everything from his being on hand to smarm to Sulla, to smarming to Sulla by using his hand. A very few remained courteous, like Metellus Pius and Varro Lucullus; a few were Pompey’s own friends and relatives, who made matters worse by waxing indignant and offering to fight the mockers; and some, like Catulus and Hortensius, were conspicuous by their absence.

Pompey did make a new friend, however; none other than the Dictator’s long—lost nephew, Publius Cornelius Sulla, who was introduced to him by Catilina.

“I didn’t realize Sulla had a nephew!” said Pompey.

“Nor did he,” said Publius Sulla cheerfully, and added, “Nor did I until recently, for that matter.”

Catilina began to laugh. “It’s no less than the truth,” he said to Pompey, now obviously confused.

“You’d better enlighten me,” said Pompey, glad to hear a shout of laughter that was not directed at him.

“I grew up thinking I was the son of Sextus Perquitienus,” Publius Sulla explained. “Lived next door to Gaius Marius all my life! When my grandfather died and my father inherited, neither of us suspected the truth. But my father was friendly with Cinna, so after the proscription lists started going up on the rostra, he expected to see his name at the top of every new one that came out. And worried so much that he fell over dead.”

This was announced with such careless insouciance that Pompey correctly assumed there was no love lost between father and son—not a surprise, considering that old Sextus Perquitienus (and Publius Sulla’s father) had been detested by most of Rome.

“I’m fascinated,” Pompey said.

“I found out who I was when I was going through a chest of old documents belonging to my grandfather,” said Publius Sulla. “I unearthed the adoption papers! Turned out my father had been adopted by my grandfather before my uncle the Dictator was born—he never knew he had an older brother. Anyway, I thought I had better take the papers to Uncle Lucius the Dictator before someone put my name on a proscription list!”

“Well, you do have a look of Sulla about you,” Pompey said, smiling, “so I suppose you didn’t have much trouble convincing him.”

“No trouble at all! Isn’t it the most wonderful luck?” asked Publius Sulla happily. “Now I have all the Perquitienus wealth, I’m safe from proscription, and I’ll probably inherit a share of Uncle Lucius the Dictator’s millions as well.”

“Do you think he’ll groom you as some kind of successor?”

A question which sent Publius Sulla into slightly wine—soaked giggles. “I? Succeed Sulla? Ye gods, no! I, my dear Magnus, have no political ambitions whatsoever!”

“Are you in the Senate already?”

Catilina stepped into the breach. “We’re both summoned by Sulla to attend meetings of the Senate, though he hasn’t made us senators officially—yet. Publius Sulla and I just had a feeling you might need some young and friendly faces here today, so we came along to sample the eats and cheer you up.”

“I’m very glad you did come,” said Pompey gratefully.

“Don’t let these haughty sticklers for the mos maiorum grind you down,” said Catilina, clapping Pompey on the back. “Some of us were really delighted to see a young man triumph. You’ll be in the Senate very soon, I can promise you that. Sulla intends to fill it with men whom the haughty sticklers do not approve of!”

And suddenly Pompey saw red. “As far as I’m concerned,” he said through his teeth, “the Senate can disappear up its own fundamental orifice! I know what I intend to do with my life, and it does not include membership in the Senate! Before I’m done with that body—or enter it!—I mean to prove to it that it can’t keep an outstanding man from any office or command he might decide he wants—as a knight, not a senator!”

One of Catilina’s darkly slender eyebrows flew up, though Publius Sulla seemingly missed the significance of this remark.

Pompey gazed around the room, then beamed, his flash of temper gone. “Ah! There he is! All alone on his couch too! Do come and eat with me and my brother-in-law Memmius! He’s the best of good fellows!”

“You should be eating with all the haughty sticklers who unbent enough to come today,” said Catilina. “We’ll quite understand, you know, if you join Metellus Pius and his friends. You leave us with Gaius Memmius and we’ll be as happy as two elderly Peripatetics arguing about the function of a man’s navel.”

“This is my triumphal feast, and I can eat with whomsoever I like,” said Pompey.

*

At the beginning of April, Sulla published a list of two hundred new senators, promising that there would be more in the months to come. The name at the top was that of Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus, who went to see Sulla immediately.

“I will not enter the Senate!” he said angrily.

Sulla gazed at his visitor, astonished. “Why? I would have thought you’d be breaking your neck to get in!”

The anger fled; self-preservation came to the fore as Pompey realized how Sulla would see this extraordinary departure from what Sulla thought of as Pompey’s normal self; after all, he had been at some pains to build a certain image for Sulla. Cool, Magnus! Cool down and think this thing out. Find a reason Sulla will believe because it fits his idea of me. No! No! Give him a reason that fits his idea of himself!

“It’s all to do,” said the young man, gazing at Sulla in wide-eyed earnestness, “with the lesson you taught me over that wretched triumph.” He drew a breath. “I’ve had a good think since then, Lucius Cornelius. And I realize I’m too young, not educated enough. Please, Lucius Cornelius, let me find my own way into the Senate in my own good time. If I go in now, I’ll be laughed at for years.” And that, thought Pompey, is very true! I’m not joining a body of men who will all smirk every time they set eyes on me. I’ll join that body of men when their knees shake every time they set eyes on me.

Mollified, Sulla shrugged. “Have it your own way, Magnus.”

“Thank you, I really would prefer to. I’ll wait until I’ve done something they’ll remember over elephants. Like a decent and conscientious quaestorship when I’m thirty.”

That was a little too much; the pale eyes were now frankly amused, as if the mind behind them was reaching deeper into Pompey than Pompey wanted. But all Sulla said was, “A very good idea! I’ll remove your name before I take my list to the Popular Assembly for ratification—I am going to have all my major laws ratified by the People, and I’ll start with this one. But I want you in the House tomorrow just the same. It’s fitting that all my legates of the war should hear the beginning. So make sure you’re there.”

Pompey was there.

“I will begin,” said the Dictator in a strong voice, “by discussing Italy and the Italians. In accordance with my promises to the Italian leaders, I will see that every last Italian entitled is enrolled as a citizen of Rome in the proper way, with an equal distribution across the full spectrum of the thirty-five tribes. There can be no more attempts to cheat the Italian people of full suffrage by burying their votes in only a few selected tribes. I gave my word on the matter, and I will honor my word.”

Sitting side by side on the middle tier, Hortensius and Catulus exchanged a significant glance; neither was a man who favored this massive concession to people who were not, when it was all boiled down, a Roman’s bootlace.

Sulla shifted a little on his curule chair. “Regretfully, I find it impossible to honor my promise to distribute Rome’s freedmen across the thirty-five tribes. They will have to remain enrolled in urban Esquilina or Suburana. I do this for one specific reason: to ensure that a man who owns thousands of slaves will not at any time in the future be tempted to free large numbers of them and thus overload his own rural tribe with freedman clients.”

“Clever old Sulla!” said Catulus to Hortensius.

“Not much escapes him,” said Hortensius under his breath. “It sounds as if he’s heard that Marcus Crassus is going heavily into slaves, doesn’t it?”

Sulla went on to discuss towns and lands. “Brundisium, a city which treated me and my men with the honor we deserved, will be rewarded by becoming exempt from all customs and excise duties.”

“Phew!”’ said Catulus. “That little decree will make Brundisium the most popular port in Italy!”

The Dictator rewarded some districts but punished many more, though in varying degree; Praeneste suffered perhaps worst, though the lesser Sulmo was ordered razed to the ground, and Capua went back to its old status as well as losing every last iugerum of its lands to swell the Roman ager publicus.

Catulus only half—listened after Sulla began to drone an endless list of town names, to find himself rudely jerked back to the present by Hortensius’s elbow in his ribs. “Quintus, he’s talking about you!” said Hortensius.

“... Quintus Lutatius Catulus, my loyal follower, I hereby give the task of rebuilding the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus on the Capitol.” The puckered lips drew back to display gum, and a derisive, spiteful gleam flickered in Sulla’s eyes. “Most of the funds will come out of income generated from our new Roman ager publicus, but I also expect you, my dear Quintus Lutatius, to supplement this source from the depths of your private purse.”

Jaw dropping, Catulus sat filled with an icy fear, for he understood that this was Sulla’s way of punishing him for staying safely in Rome under Cinna and Carbo all those years.

“Our Pontifex Maximus, Quintus Caecilius Metellus Pius, is to restore the temple of Ops damaged in the same fire,” Sulla went on smoothly. “However, this project must be entirely funded from the public purse, as Ops is the manifestation of Rome’s public wealth. However, I do require that our Pontifex Maximus shall rededicate that temple himself when the work is finished.”

“That ought to be stammering good fun!” said Hortensius.

“I have just published a list containing the names of two hundred men I have elevated to the Senate,” Sulla continued, “though Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus has informed me that he does not wish to join the Senate at this time. His name has been deleted.”

That caused sufficient sensation to stir the whole House; all eyes turned to Pompey, who sat alone near the doors looking very comfortable with himself, and smiling demurely.

“I intend to add a further hundred or so men to the Senate in the future, which will bring total membership up to about four hundred, so many senators have we lost over the past decade.”

“You wouldn’t think he’d killed any of them, would you?” asked Catulus of Hortensius with a snap. How could he possibly find the huge sums he suspected would be required of his private purse in order to rebuild the Great Temple?

The Dictator proceeded. “I have tried to find my new members of the Senate from among senatorial families, though I have included knights of hitherto unsenatorial family, provided their bloodlines do the Senate honor. You will find no mushrooms growing on my list! However, in relation to one kind of new senator, I pass over all qualifications, from the completely unofficial census of one million sesterces to a suitable family background. I am referring to soldiers of exceptional valor. I intend that Rome should honor all such men as she did in the days of Marcus Fabius Buteo. Of recent generations we have entirely ignored the military hero. Well, I will see an end to that! If any man should win a Grass Crown or a Civic Crown, no matter who or what his antecedents, he will automatically enter the Senate. In this way, the little new blood I have permitted the Senate will at least be brave blood! And I would hope that there will be fine old names among the winners of our major crowns: it should not be left to newcomers to earn accolades as our bravest men!”

Hortensius grunted. “That’s a fairly popular edict.”

But Catulus could get no further than the financial burden Sulla had laid upon him, and merely rolled a pair of piteous eyes at his brother-in-law.

“One further thing, and I will dismiss this assemblage,” Sulla said. “Each man on my list of new senators will be presented to the Assembly of the People, patrician as well as plebeian, and I will require of that body that he be voted in.” He got to his feet. “The meeting is now concluded.”

“How am I going to find enough money?” wailed Catulus to Hortensius as they hurried out of the Curia Hostilia.

“Don’t find it,” said Hortensius coolly.

“I’ll have to!”

“He’s going to die, Quintus. Until he does, you’ll have to adopt delaying tactics. After he dies, who cares? Let the State find every sestertius of the money.”

“It’s all due to the flamen Dialis!” said Catulus savagely. “He caused the fire—let him pay for the new Great Temple!”

The fine legal mind of Hortensius found issue with this; its owner frowned. “You’d better not be heard saying that! The flamen Dialis cannot be held responsible for a mischance phenomenon unless he has been charged and tried in a court of law, as with any other priest. Sulla hasn’t explained why the young fellow has apparently fled from Rome, but he hasn’t proscribed him. Nor has a charge been laid against him.”

“He’s Sulla’s nephew by marriage!”

“Exactly, my dear Quintus.”

“Oh, brother-in-law, why do we bother with all this? There are times when I long to gather up all my money, sell my estates, and move to Cyrenaica,” said Catulus.

“We bother because we have the birthright,” said Hortensius.

*

New senators and old gathered two days later to hear Sulla announce that he intended to abolish the election of censors, at least for the time being; the way he would reorganize the State’s finances, he explained, would make it unnecessary to call for contracts, and no census of the people would be of value for at least another decade.

“At that point you may re-examine the matter of censors,” said the Dictator grandly. “I do not presume to legislate the censors completely out of existence.”

He would, however, do something special for the men of his own order, the Patriciate. “Over the centuries which have passed since the original plebeian revolt,” he said, “patrician rank has come to mean very little. The only advantage a patrician possesses over a plebeian these days is that he can assume certain religious offices barred to plebeians. I do not consider this worthy of the mos maiorum. A man born a patrician goes back to before the Kings in a clean, clear line. The mere fact that he exists shows that his family has served Rome for more than half a millennium. I think it fair in light of this that the patrician must enjoy some special honor—minor perhaps, but exclusive to him. I am therefore going to allow the patrician to stand for curule office—both praetor and consul—two years ahead of the plebeian.”

“What he means, of course, is that he’s looking after his own,” said the plebeian Marcus Junius Brutus to his wife Servilia, a patrician.

Servilia had found her husband slightly more communicative in these peril—fraught days. Ever since the news came that her father-in-law had died off Lilybaeum as a result of the Dictator’s house pet Pompey’s cleaning—up operations, Brutus had lived on a hairline. Would his father be proscribed? Would he be proscribed? As the son of a proscribed man he could inherit nothing, would lose everything; and if he himself were proscribed, he would lose his life. But Old Brutus’s name had not been among the forty proscribed senators, and no more senatorial names had been published since that first list. Brutus hoped the danger was over—but he couldn’t be sure. No one could be sure! Sulla dropped hints.

That he was less aloof toward Servilia was due to his sudden appreciation of the fact that it was probably his marriage to her that had kept the Marcus Junius Brutus name off Sulla’s lists. This new honor Sulla was providing for patricians was just one more way in which Sulla was saying that the patrician was special, due more honors than the richest and most powerful plebeian of a consular family. And among the Patriciate, what name was more august than Servilius Caepio?

“It is a pity,” said Servilia now, “that our son cannot have patrician status.”

“My name is sufficiently old and revered for our son,” said Brutus stiffly. “We Junii Bruti are descended from the founder of the Republic.”

“I’ve always found it odd,” said Servilia coolly, “that if that is really so, the present—day Junii Bruti are not patrician. For the founder of the Republic certainly was. You always talk of an expedient adoption into a plebeian family, but a plebeian family called Junius Brutus must have been descended from a slave or a peasant belonging to the patrician family.”

This speech, which Brutus felt himself obliged to swallow, was one more indication that Servilia was no longer a silent and compliant wife. Her fear of divorce had lessened, and her sense of power had correspondingly grown. The child in the nursery, now two years old, meant everything to her. Whereas the child’s father meant nothing. That she intended to preserve her husband’s status was purely because of her son. But that didn’t mean she had to bow and scrape to Brutus as she had in the days before the old man’s treason had threatened everything.

“Your younger sister will do superbly,” said Brutus with a slight tinge of malice. “A patrician married to another patrician! She and Drusus Nero can’t go wrong.”

“Drusus Nero is a plebeian,” said Servilia haughtily. “He may have been born a Claudian, but my uncle Drusus adopted him. He is a Livian, with rank no greater than yours.”

“I predict he’ll prosper all the same.”

“Drusus Nero is twenty years old, and has about a medicine spoon of intelligence. Why, our son is more capable at two!” said Servilia tartly.

Brutus eyed her warily; it had not been lost upon him that his wife’s attachment to little Brutus was phenomenal. To say the least. A lioness!

“Anyway,” said Brutus pacifically, “Sulla will continue to tell us what he means to do the day after tomorrow.”

“Have you any idea what he’s going to do?”

“Not until the day after tomorrow.”

The day after tomorrow saw Sulla tackling elections and elected offices with an expression on his face that did not brook argument. “I am tired of haphazard electoral scrambles,” he said, “and will legislate a proper procedure. In future, all elections will be held in Quinctilis, which is five to six months earlier than an elected man takes office. During the waiting period, the curule men will assume a new importance in the House. Consuls—elect will be asked to speak immediately after consuls in office, and praetors—elect immediately after praetors in office. From now on the Princeps Senatus, ex-censors and consulars will not speak until after the last praetor—elect. It is a plain waste of the House’s time to listen to men who have passed beyond office ahead of men occupying it or in transition toward occupying it.”

All eyes had turned to Flaccus Princeps Senatus, sharply demoted by this edict, but he sat blinking gently, apparently not at all put out.

Sulla continued. “The curule elections in the Centuriate Assembly will be held first, on the day before the Ides of Quinctilis. Then will follow the elections for quaestors, curule aediles, tribunes of the soldiers and other minor positions in the Assembly of the People ten days before the Kalends of Sextilis. And finally the plebeian elections in the Plebeian Assembly will be held on a date between two and six days before the Kalends.”

“Not too bad,” said Hortensius to Catilus. “We’ll all know our electoral fates well before the end of the year.”

“And enjoy a new prominence,” said Catulus, pleased.

“Now to the offices themselves,” said Sulla. “After I’ve personally finished adding the names of new senators to this distinguished body, I intend to close the door. From then on, the only entrance will be through the office of quaestor, which a man will stand for in his thirtieth year, no earlier. There will be twenty quaestors elected each year, a sufficient number to offset senatorial deaths and keep the House plump. There are two minor exceptions which will not affect overall numbers: a man elected tribune of the plebs who is not already a senator will continue to enter the Senate through this office. And a man who has been awarded the Grass Crown or the Civic Crown will be promoted to the Senate automatically.”

He shifted a little, looked at his mute flock. “I will see eight praetors elected every year. A plebeian man will not be able to seek election as praetor until his thirty-ninth year, but a patrician man two years sooner, as already said. There will be a two—year wait between a man’s election as praetor and his election as consul. No man will be able to stand for consul unless he has already been praetor. And I will restate the lex Genucia in the strongest terms, making it impossible for any man—patrician or plebeian!—to stand for consul a second time until after ten full years have elapsed. I will have no more Gaius Mariuses!”

And that, everyone thought, was an excellent thing!

*

But when Sulla introduced his legislation to cancel the powers of the tribunes of the plebs, approval was not so general or so strong. Over the centuries of the Republic, the tribunes of the plebs had gradually arrogated more and more legislative business unto themselves, and turned that Assembly which contained only plebeians into the most powerful of the lawmaking bodies. Often the main objective of the tribunes of the plebs had been to handicap the largely unwritten powers of the Senate, and to render the consuls less essential.

“That,” said Sulla in tones of great satisfaction, “is now all finished with. In future, tribunes of the plebs will retain little except their right to exercise the ius auxilii ferendi.’’

A huge stir; the House murmured and moved restlessly, then frowned and looked bleak.

“I will see the Senate supreme!” Sulla thundered. “To do that, I must render the tribunate of the plebs impotent—and I will! Under my new laws, no man who has been a tribune of the plebs will be able to hold any magistracy after it—he will not be able to become aedile or praetor or consul or censor! Nor will he be able to hold office as a tribune of the plebs for a second time until ten years have elapsed. He will be able to exercise the ius auxilii ferendi only in its original way, by rescuing an individual member of the Plebs from the clutches of a single magistrate. No tribune of the plebs will be able to call a law threatening the Plebs as a whole a part of that right! Or call a duly convened court a part of that right.”

Sulla’s eyes rested thoughtfully upon, oddly enough, two men who could not hold the office of tribune of the plebs because they were patricians—Catilina and Lepidus.

“The right of the tribune of the plebs to veto,” he went on, “will be severely curtailed. He will not be able to veto senatorial decrees, laws carrying senatorial approval, the right of the Senate to appoint provincial governors or military commanders, nor the right of the Senate to deal with foreign affairs. No tribune of the plebs will be allowed to promulgate a law in the Plebeian Assembly unless it has been authorized first by the Senate in passing a senatus consultum. He will no longer have the power to summon meetings of the Senate.”

There were many glum faces, quite a few angry ones; Sulla paused rather stagily to see if anyone was going to protest audibly. But no one did. He cleared his throat. “What do you have to say, Quintus Hortensius?”

Hortensius swallowed. “I concur, Lucius Cornelius.”

“Does anyone not concur?”

Silence.

“Good!” said Sulla brightly. “Then this lex Cornelia will go into law forthwith!”

“It’s horrific,” said Lepidus to Gaius Cotta afterward.

“I couldn’t agree more.”

“Then why,” demanded Catulus, “did we lie down under it so tamely? Why did we let him get away with it? How can the Republic be a genuine Republic without an active and properly constituted tribunate of the plebs?”

“Why,” asked Hortensius fiercely, taking this as a direct criticism of his own cowardice, “did you not speak out, then?”

“Because,” said Catulus frankly, “I like my head right where it is—firmly attached to my shoulders.”

“And that about sums it up,” said Lepidus.

“I can see,” said Metellus Pius, joining the group, “the logic behind it—how clever he’s been! A lesser man would simply have abolished the office, but not he! He hasn’t tampered with the ius auxilii ferendi. What he’s done is to pare away the powers added on in later times. So he can successfully argue that he’s working well within the framework of the mos maiorum—and that has been his theme in everything. Mind you, I don’t think this can possibly work. The tribunate of the plebs matters too much to too many.”

“It will last as long as he lives,” said Cotta grimly.

Upon which note, the party broke up. No one was very happy—but on the other hand, nor did anyone really want to pour his secret thoughts and feelings into another man’s ear. Too dangerous!

Which just went to show, thought Metellus Pius as he walked home alone, that Sulla’s climate of terror was working.

*

By the time Apollo’s games came round early in Quinctilis, these first laws had been joined by two more: a lex Cornelia sumptuaria and a lex Cornelia frumentaria. The sumptuary law was extremely strict, even going so far as to fix a ceiling of thirty sesterces per head on ordinary meals, and three hundred per head on banquets. Luxuries like perfumes, foreign wines, spices and jewelry were heavily taxed; the cost of funerals and tombs was limited; and Tyrian purple carried an enormous duty. The grain law was reactionary in the extreme. It abolished the sale of cheap grain by the State, though Sulla was far too shrewd to forbid the State to sell grain; his law just said that the State could not undercut the private grain merchants.

A heavy program, by no means ended. Perhaps because the onerous task of preparing all this legislation had been going on without let since just after Sulla’s triumph, the Dictator decided on the spur of the moment to take a few days off and attend the ludi Apollinares, celebrated during early Quinctilis. The events held in the Circus Maximus were not what he wanted to see, of course; he wanted to go to the plays, of which a good ten or eleven had been scheduled in the temporary wooden theater erected within the space of the Circus Flaminius on the Campus Martius. Comedy reigned. Plautus, Terence and Naevius were well represented, but there were several mimes listed too, and these were always Sulla’s favorites. True comedy contained written lines which could not be deviated from, but the mime was just a stock situation upon which the cast and its director extrapolated their own lines, and played without masks.

Perhaps it was his interlude with Aurelia’s delegation that led to his wholehearted participation in the plays put on during Apollo’s games; or perhaps the fact that one of his ancestors had founded Apollo’s games made him decide he must show himself; or was it a need to set eyes upon the actor Metrobius? Thirty years! Could it really be that long? Metrobius had been a lad, Sulla celebrating his thirtieth birthday in bitter frustration. Since his entry into the Senate three years afterward, their meetings had been few and far apart, and filled with torment.

Sulla’s decision to deny that part of himself had been considered, obdurate, firmly based in logic. Those men in public life who admitted to—or succumbed to—a preference for their own sex were damned for it. No law compelled them to retire, though there were several laws on the tablets, including a lex Scantinia which demanded a death penalty; mostly they were not used, for there was a certain tolerance in fair men. The reality was more subtle, need not even retard the public career if the man was able. It consisted in amusement, contempt, liberal applications of wit and pun and sarcasm, and it diminished a man’s dignitas drastically. Some men who ought to be his peers would always regard him as their inferior because of it. And that to Sulla made it something he couldn’t have, no matter how badly he wanted it—and he wanted it badly. His hopes were pinned on his eventual retirement—after which, he told himself, he didn’t care one iota what men said of him. He would come into his own, he would grab eagerly at a personal reward. His accomplishments at his retirement would be tangible and formidable, his dignitas accumulated over the length of his public career too cemented to be diminished by an old man’s last sexual fling.

But oh, he longed for Metrobius! Who probably wouldn’t be interested in an old and ugly man. That too had contributed to his decision to go to the plays. Better to find out now than when the time came to retire. Better to feast his worsening eyes upon this beloved object while he could still see.

There were several companies taking part in the festival, including the one now led by Metrobius, who had changed from acting in tragedies to formal comedy some ten years ago. His group was not scheduled to perform until the third day, but Sulla was there on the first and second days, devoted to mime, and enjoyed himself enormously.

Dalmatica came with him, though she couldn’t sit with the men, as she could at the Circus; a rigid hierarchy had been established in the theater, plays not being quite approved of in Roman society. Women, it was felt, might be corrupted if they sat with men to watch so much immorality and nudity. The two front rows of seating in the semicircular, tiered cavea were reserved for members of the Senate, and the fourteen rows just behind had used to be reserved for the knights of the Public Horse. This privilege had been conferred on the senior knights by Gaius Gracchus. And it had afforded Sulla intense pleasure to take it away. Thus all knights were now forced to battle for seats among their inferiors on a first—come, first—served basis. The few women who attended sat right up the top at the back of the cavea; they could hear well enough, but had difficulty in seeing anything titillating on the stage. In formal comedy (such as Metrobius played), no women were included in the fully masked cast, but in the mimes from Atella female roles were played by women, and nobody was masked; quite often, nobody was clothed.

The third day’s play was by Plautus, and a favorite: The Vainglorious Soldier. The starring role was taken by Metrobius—how foolish! All Sulla could see of his face was the grotesque covering with its gaping mouth curving up in a ridiculous smile, though the hands were there, and the neat, muscular body looked well in its Greek armor. Of course at the end the cast took their bows with masks off; Sulla was finally able to see what the years had done to Metrobius. Very little, though the crisp black hair was exquisitely sprinkled with white, and there was a deepening fissure on either side of the straight, high—bridged Greek nose.

He couldn’t weep, not there in the very middle of the front row upon his cushioned section of the wooden seat. But he wanted to, had to fight not to. The face was too far away, separated from him by the vacant half—moon of the orchestra, and he couldn’t see the eyes. Oh, he could distinguish two black pools, but not what they held. Not even whether they rested on him, or on some current lover three rows behind. Mamercus was with Sulla; he turned to his son-in-law and said, voice a little constricted,

“Ask the man who played the miles gloriosus to come down, would you? I have a feeling I used to know him, but I’m not sure. Anyway, I’d like to congratulate him in person.”

The audience was vacating the temporary wooden structure, and the women present were wending their way toward their spouses if they were respectable women, or trolling for business if they were prostitutes. Carefully escorted by Chrysogonus—and very carefully avoided by those in the audience who recognized them—Dalmatica and Cornelia Sulla joined the Dictator and Mamercus just as Metrobius, still in armor, finally arrived before Sulla.

“You did very well, actor,” said the Dictator.

Metrobius smiled to reveal that he still had perfect teeth. “I was delighted to see you in the audience, Lucius Cornelius.”

“You were a client of mine once, am I right?”

“Indeed I was. You released me from my cliental obligations just before you went to the war against Mithridates,” said the actor, eyes giving nothing away.

“Yes, I remember that. You warned me of the charges one Censorinus would try to bring against me. Just before my son died.” The wrecked face squeezed up, straightened with an effort. “Before I was consul, it was.”

“A happy chance that I could warn you,” said Metrobius.

“A lucky one for me.”

“You were always one of Fortune’s favorites.”

The theater was just about empty; weary of these continuing platitudes, Sulla swung to face the women and Mamercus.

“Go home,” he said abruptly. “I wish to talk with my old client for a while.”

Dalmatica (who had not been looking well of recent days) seemed fascinated with the Greek thespian, and stood with her eyes fixed on his face. Then Chrysogonus intruded himself into her reverie; she started, turned away to follow the pair of gigantic German slaves whose duty it was to clear a path for the Dictator’s wife wherever she went.

Sulla and Metrobius were left alone to follow too far behind for anyone to think they belonged to the same party. Under normal circumstances the Dictator would have been approached by clients and petitioners, but such was his luck that no one did approach.

“Just this stroll,” Sulla said. “I ask nothing more.”

“Ask what you will,” said Metrobius.

Sulla stopped. “Stand here in front of me, Metrobius, and see what time and illness have done. The position hasn’t changed. But even if it had, I am no use to you or to anyone else except these poor silly women who persist in—oh, who knows? Pitying me, in all probability. I don’t think it can be love.”

“Of course it’s love!” He was close now, close enough for Sulla to see that the eyes still held love, still looked at him with tenderness. And with a dynamic kind of interest unspoiled by disgust or revulsion. A softer, more personal version of the way Aurelia had looked at him in Teanum Sidicinum. “Sulla, those of us who have once fallen under your spell can never be free of you! Women or men, there is no difference. You are unique. After you, all others pale. It’s not a matter of virtue or goodness.” Metrobius smiled. “You have neither! Maybe no great man is virtuous. Or good. Perhaps a man rich in those qualities by definition is barred from greatness. I have forgotten all my Plato, so I am not sure what he and Socrates have to say about it.”

Out of the corner of his eye Sulla noticed Dalmatica turn back to stare in his direction, but what her face displayed he could not tell at the distance. Then she went round the corner, and was gone.

“Does what you say mean,” asked the Dictator, “that if I am allowed to put down this present burden, you would consider living with me until I die? My time grows short, but I hope at least some of it will be mine alone to spend without consideration of Rome. If you would go with me into retirement, I promise you would not suffer in any way—least of all financially.”

A laugh, a shake of the curly dark head. “Oh, Sulla! How can you buy what you have owned for thirty years?”

The tears welled, were blinked away. “Then when I retire, you will come with me?”

“I will.”

“When the time comes I’ll send for you.”

“Tomorrow? Next year?”

“Not for a long while. Perhaps two years. You’ll wait?”

“I’ll wait.”

Sulla heaved a sigh of almost perfect happiness: too short, too short! For he remembered that each time he had seen Metrobius on those last occasions, someone he loved had died. Julilla. His son. Who would it be this time? But, he thought, I do not care. Because Metrobius matters more. Except for my son, and he is gone. Only let it be Cornelia Sulla. Or the twins. Let it not be Dalmatica! He nodded curtly to Metrobius as if this had been the most trivial of encounters, and walked away.

Metrobius stood watching his retreating back, filled with happiness. It was true then what the little local gods of his half—remembered home in Arcadia said: if a man wanted something badly enough, he would get it in the end. And the dearer the price, the greater the reward. Only when Sulla had disappeared did he turn back toward the dressing rooms.

Sulla walked slowly, completely alone; that in itself was a seldom experienced luxury. How could he find the strength to wait for Metrobius? Not a boy any longer, but always his boy.

He could hear voices in the distance and slowed even more, unwilling that anyone should see his face just yet. For though his heart hoped and acknowledged a premonitory joy, there was anger in him because of this joyless task he still must finish, and fear in him that it might be Dalmatica to die.

The two voices were louder now, and one of them floated high above the other. He knew it well. Odd, how distinctive a man’s voice was! No two alike, once one got past superficial similarities of pitch and accent. This speaker could be no one save Manius Acilius Glabrio, who was his stepdaughter Aemilia Scaura’s husband.

“He really is the outside of enough,’’ said Glabrio now, in tones both forceful and aristocratically languid. “Thirteen thousand talents his proscriptions have put into the Treasury, and he boasts of it! The truth is, he ought to hang his head in shame! The sum should have been ten times as much! Properties worth millions knocked down for a few thousands, his own wife the proud owner of fifty millions in big estates bought for fifty thousands—it’s a disgrace!”

“I hear you’ve profited yourself, Glabrio,” said another familiar voice—that belonging to Catilina.

“A trifle only, and not more than my due. Frightful old villain! How dared he have the audacity to say the proscriptions would end on the Kalends of last month—the names are still going up on the rostra every time one of his minions or his relatives covets another luscious slice of Campania or the seashore! Did you notice him remain behind to have a chat to the fellow played the vainglorious soldier? He can’t resist the stage—or the riffraff who strut across it! That goes back to his youth, of course, when he was no better than the most vulgar strumpet who ever hawked her fork outside Venus Erucina’s! I suppose he’s worth a laugh or two among the pansies when they get together to see who is on which end today. Have you ever seen a daisy chain of pansies? Sulla’s seen plenty!”

“Be careful what you say, Glabrio,” said Catilina, sounding a little uneasy. “You too could wind up proscribed.”

But Glabrio laughed heartily. “Not I!” he cried gleefully. “I’m part of the family, I’m Dalmatica’s son-in-law! Even Sulla can’t proscribe a member of the family, you know.”

The voices faded as the two men moved off, but Sulla stayed where he was, just around the corner. All movement had stilled in him, and the ice—cold eyes glowed eerily. So that was what they said, was it? After all these years too… Of course Glabrio was privy to much Rome was not—but clearly Rome would soon be privy to everything Glabrio imagined or knew. How much was idle gossip, how much the opportunity to read documents and papers filed away year by year? Sulla was in the throes of collecting all his written evidence against the day of his retirement, for he intended to author his memoirs, as Catulus Caesar had done ten years earlier. So there were plenty of bits and pieces lying around, it wouldn’t have taken any great talent to unearth them. Glabrio! Why hadn’t he thought of Glabrio, always in and out of his house? Not every member of that privileged visiting circle was a Cornelia Sulla or a Mamercus! Glabrio! And who else?

The ashes of his anger at having to continue to hold Metrobius at arm’s length tumbled onto a fresh conflagration within Sulla’s mind and fueled it sourly, relentlessly. So, he thought as he picked up his feet and began to walk again, I cannot proscribe a member of my own family, eh? I cannot, he’s right about that. Yet—need it be proscription? Might there not be a better way?

Round the corner he came, straight into the arms of Pompey. Both men stepped back, reeling a little.

“What, Magnus, on your own?” asked Sulla.

“Sometimes,” said Pompey, falling into step alongside the Dictator, “it’s a pleasure to be alone.”

“I heartily concur. But don’t tell me you tire of Varro!”

“Too much Varro can be a pain in the podex, especially when he starts prating on about Cato the Censor and the old ways and when money had real value. Though I’d rather hear Varro on those topics than on invisible fingers of power,” grinned Pompey.

“That’s right, I’d forgotten he was a friend of poor old Appius Claudius’s,” said Sulla, rather glad that if in his present mood he had to collide with anyone, it had turned out to be Pompey. “I wonder why we all think of Appius Claudius as so old?”

Pompey chuckled. “Because he was born old! But you are out of touch, Sulla! Appius Claudius is quite eclipsed these days. There’s a new man in town—name of Publius Nigidius Figulus. A proper sophist. Or do I mean Pythagorean?” He shrugged casually. “No use, I never can keep one sort of philosopher distinct from all the others.”

“Publius Nigidius Figulus! It’s an old and hallowed name, but I hadn’t heard of the genuine article raising his head in Rome. Is he a bucolic gentleman, perhaps?”

“Not a hayseed, if that’s what you’re asking. More a gourd half—full of peas—rattle, rattle … He’s a great expert on Etruscan soothsaying, from lightning to livers. Knows more lobes in that organ than I know figures of speech.”

“How many figures of speech do you know, Magnus?” asked Sulla, highly diverted.

“Two, I think. Or is it three?”

“Name them.”

“Color and descriptio.”

“Two.”

“Two.”

They walked on in silence for a moment, both smiling, but at different thoughts entirely.

“So how does it feel to be a knight when they don’t have special seats at the theater anymore?” demanded Sulla.

“I’m not complaining,” said Pompey blithely. “I never go to the theater.”

“Oh. Where have you been today, then?”

“Out to the Via Recta. Just for a good walk, you know. I get very hamstrung in Rome. Don’t like the place.”

“On your own here?’’

“More or less. Left the wife behind in Picenum.” He pulled a sour face.

“Not to your liking, Magnus?”

“Oh, she’ll do until something better comes along. Adores me! Just not good enough, is all.”

“Well, well! It’s an aedilician family.”

“I come from a consular family. So ought my wife.”

“Then divorce her and find a consular wife.”

“Hate making small talk, to women or their fathers.”

At that precise moment a blinding inspiration came to Sulla, who stopped dead in the middle of the lane leading from the Velabrum to the Vicus Tuscus just below the Palatine.” Ye gods!” he gasped. “Ye gods!”

Pompey stopped too. “Yes?” he asked politely.

“My dear young knight, I have had a brilliant idea!”

“That’s nice.”

“Oh, stop mouthing platitudes! I’m thinking!”

Pompey obediently said nothing further, while Sulla’s lips worked in and out upon his toothless gums like a swimming jellyfish. Then out came Sulla’s hand, fixed itself on Pompey’s arm.

“Magnus,” come and see me tomorrow morning at the third hour,” he said, gave a gleeful skip, and departed at a run.

Pompey remained where he was, brow furrowed. Then he too began to walk, not toward the Palatine but toward the Forum; his house was on the Carinae.

Home went Sulla as if pursued by the Furies; here was a task he was really going to enjoy performing!

“Chrysogonus, Chrysogonus!” he bellowed in the doorway as his toga fell behind him like a collapsing tent.

In came the steward, looking anxious—something he did quite often of late, had Sulla only noticed. Which he didn’t.

“Chrysogonus, take a litter and go to Glabrio’s house. I want Aemilia Scaura here at once.”

“Lucius Cornelius, you came home without your lictors!”

“Oh, I dismissed them before the play began—sometimes they’re a wretched nuisance,” said the Dictator impenitently. “Now go and pick up my stepdaughter!”

“Aemilia? What do you want her for?” asked Dalmatica as she came into the room.

“You’ll find out,” said Sulla, grinning.

His wife paused, stared at him searchingly. “You know, Lucius Cornelius, ever since your interview with Aurelia and her delegation, you’ve been different.”

“In what way?”

This she found difficult to answer, perhaps because she was reluctant to provoke displeasure in him, but finally she said, “In your mood, I think.”

“For better or for worse, Dalmatica?”

“Oh, better. You’re—happy.”

“I am that,” he said in a happy voice. “I had lost sight of a private future, but she gave it back to me. Oh, what a time I’m going to have after I retire!”

“The actor fellow today—Metrobius. He’s a friend.”

Something in her eyes gave him pause; his carefree feeling vanished immediately, and an image of Julilla lying with his sword in her belly swam into his mind, actually blotted Dalmatica’s face from his gaze. Not another wife who wouldn’t share him, surely! How did she know? What could she know? Did they smell it?

“I’ve known Metrobius since he was a boy,” he said curtly, his tone not inviting her to enquire further.

“Then why did you pretend you didn’t know him before he came down from the stage?” she asked, frowning.

“He was wearing a mask until the end of the play!” Sulla snapped. “It’s been a good many years, I wasn’t sure.” Fatal! She had maneuvered him to the defensive, and he didn’t like it.

“Yes, of course,” she said slowly. “Yes, of course.”

“Go away, Dalmatica, do! I’ve frittered away too much of my time since the games began, I have work waiting.”

She turned to go, looking less perturbed.

“One more thing,” he said to her back.

“Yes?”

“I shall need you when your daughter arrives, so don’t go out or otherwise make yourself unavailable.”

How peculiar he was of late! she thought, walkingthrough the vast atrium toward the peristyle garden and her own suite of rooms. Touchy, happy, labile. Up one moment, down the next. As if he had made some decision he couldn’t implement at once, he who loathed procrastination. And that fine-looking actor … What sort of place did he occupy in Sulla’s scheme of things? He mattered; though how, she didn’t know. Had there been even a superficial resemblance, she would have concluded that he was Sulla’s son—such were the emotions she had sensed in her husband, whom she knew by now very well.

Thus it was that when Chrysogonus came to inform her that Aemilia Scaura had arrived, Dalmatica had not even begun to think further about why Sulla had summoned the girl.

Aemilia Scaura was in her fourth month of pregnancy, and had developed the sheen of skin and clearness of eye which some women did—no bouts of sickness here! A pity perhaps that she had taken after her father, and in consequence was short of stature and a little dumpy of figure, but there were saving echoes of her mother in her face, and she had inherited Scaurus’s beautiful, vividly green eyes.

Not an intelligent girl, she had never managed to reconcile herself to her mother’s marriage to Sulla, whom she both feared and disliked. It had been bad enough during the early years, when her brief glimpses of him had shown someone at least attractive enough to make her mother’s passion for him understandable; but after his illness had so changed him for the worse she couldn’t even begin to see why her mother apparently felt no less passionately about him. How could any woman continue to love such an ugly, horrible old man? She remembered her own father, of course, and he too had been old and ugly. But not with Sulla’s internal rot; though she had neither the perception nor the wit thus to describe it.

Now here she was summoned into his presence, and with no more notice than to leave a hasty message for Glabrio in her wake. Her stepfather greeted her with pats of her hand and a solicitous settling on a comfortable chair—actions which set her teeth on edge and made her fear many things. Just what was he up to? He was jam—full of glee and as pregnant with mischief as she was with child.

When her mother came in the whole business of hand pats and solicitous settlings began all over again, until, it seemed to the girl, he had arranged some sort of mood and anticipation in them that would make whatever he intended to do more enjoyable to him. For this was not unimportant. This was going to matter.

“And how’s the little Glabrio on the way?” he asked his stepdaughter, nicely enough.

“Very well, Lucius Cornelius.”

“When is the momentous event?”

“Near the end of the year, Lucius Cornelius.”

“Hmmm! Awkward! That’s still a good way off.”

“Yes, Lucius Cornelius, it is still a good way off.”

He sat down and drummed his fingers upon the solid oaken back of his chair, lips pursed, looking into the distance. Then the eyes which frightened her so much became fixed upon her; Aemilia Scaura shivered.

“Are you happy with Glabrio?” he asked suddenly.

She jumped. “Yes, Lucius Cornelius.”

“The truth, girl! I want the truth!”

“I am happy, Lucius Cornelius, I am truly happy!”

“Would you have picked somebody else had you been able?”

A blush welled up beneath her skin, her gaze dropped. “I had formed no other attachment, Lucius Cornelius, if that’s what you mean. Manius Acilius was acceptable to me.”

“Is he still acceptable?”

“Yes, yes!” Her voice held an edge of desperation. “Why do you keep asking? I am happy! I am happy!”

“That’s a pity,” said Lucius Cornelius Sulla.

Dalmatica sat up straight. “Husband, what is all this?” she demanded. “What are you getting at with these questions?”

“I am indicating, wife, that I am not pleased at the union between your daughter and Manius Acilius Glabrio. He deems it safe to criticize me because he is a member of my family,” said Sulla, his anger showing. “A sign, of course, that I cannot possibly permit him to continue being a member of my family. I am divorcing him from your daughter. Immediately.”

Both women gasped; Aemilia Scaura’s eyes filled with tears.

“Lucius Cornelius, I am expecting his child! I cannot divorce him!” she cried.

“You can, you know,” the Dictator said in conversational tones. “You can do anything I tell you to do. And I am telling you that you will divorce Glabrio at once.” He clapped his hands to summon the secretary called Flosculus, who entered with a paper in his hand. Sulla took it, nodded dismissal. “Come over here, girl. Sign it.”

Aemilia Scaura sprang to her feet. “No!”

Dalmatica also rose. “Sulla, you are unjust!” she said, lips thin. “My daughter doesn’t want to divorce her husband.”

The monster showed. “It is absolutely immaterial to me what your daughter wants,” he said. “Over here, girl! And sign.”

“No! I won’t, I won’t!”

He was out of his chair so quickly neither woman actually saw him move. The fingers of his right hand locked in a vise around Aemilia Scaura’s mouth and literally dragged her to her feet, squealing in pain, weeping frantically.

“Stop, stop!” shouted Dalmatica, struggling to prise those fingers away. “Please, I beg of you! Leave her be! She’s with child, you can’t hurt her!”

His fingers squeezed harder and harder. “Sign,” he said.

She couldn’t answer, and her mother had passed beyond speech.

“Sign,” said Sulla again, softly. “Sign or I’ll kill you, girl, with as little concern as I felt when I killed Carbo’s legates. What do I care that you’re stuffed full with Glabrio’s brat? It would suit me if you lost it! Sign the bill of divorcement, Aemilia, or I’ll lop off your breasts and carve the womb right out of you!”

She signed, still screaming. Then Sulla threw her away in contempt. “There, that’s better,” he said, wiping her saliva from his hand. “Don’t ever make me angry again, Aemilia. It is not wise. Now go.”

Dalmatica gathered the girl against her, and the look of loathing she gave Sulla was without precedent, a genuine first. He saw it, but seemed indifferent, turned his back upon them.

In her own rooms Dalmatica found herself with an hysterical girl on her hands and a huge burden of anger to deal with. Both took some time to calm.

“I have heard he could be like that, but I’ve never seen it for myself,” she said when she was able. “Oh, Aemilia, I’m so sorry! I’ll try to get him to change his mind as soon as I can face him without wanting to tear his eyes out of his head,”

But the girl, not besotted, chopped the air with her hand. “No! No, Mother, no. You’d only make things worse.”

“What could Glabrio have done to provoke this?”

“Said something he ought not have. He doesn’t like Sulla, I know that. He keeps implying to me that Sulla likes men in ways men shouldn’t.”

Dalmatica went white. “But that’s nonsense! Oh, Aemilia, how could Glabrio be so foolish? You know what men are like! If they do not deserve that slur, they can behave like madmen!”

“I’m not so sure it is undeserved,” said Aemilia Scaura as she held a cold wet towel to her face, where the marks of her stepfather’s fingers were slowly changing from red-purple to purple-black. “I’ve always thought there was woman in him.”

“My dear girl, I’ve been married to Lucius Cornelius for almost nine years,” said Dalmatica, who seemed to be shrinking in size, “and I can attest that it is an infamy.”

“All right, all right, have it your own way! I don’t care what he is! I just hate him, the vile beast!”

“I’ll try when I’m cooler, I promise.”

“Save yourself more of his displeasure, Mother. He won’t change his mind,” said Aemilia Scaura. “It’s my baby I’m worried about, it’s my baby matters to me.”

Dalmatica stared at her daughter painfully. “I can say the same thing.”

The cold wet towel fell into Aemilia Scaura’s lap. “Mother! You’re pregnant too?”

“Yes. I haven’t known for very long, but I’m sure.”

“What will you do? Does he know?”

“He doesn’t know. And I’ll do nothing that might provoke him to divorce me.”

“You’ve heard the tale of Aelia.”

“Who hasn’t?”

“Oh, Mother, that changes everything! I’ll behave, I’ll behave! He mustn’t be given any excuse to divorce you!”

“Then we must hope,” said Dalmatica wearily, “that he deals more kindly with your husband than he has with you.’

“He’ll deal more harshly.”

“Not necessarily,” said the wife who knew Sulla. “You were first to hand. Very often his first victim satisfies him. By the time Glabrio arrives to find out what’s the matter, he may be calm enough to be merciful.”

If he wasn’t calm enough to be merciful, Sulla was at least drained of the worst of his anger at Glabrio’s indiscreet words. And Glabrio was perceptive enough to see that blustering would only make his situation more perilous.

“There is no need for this, Lucius Cornelius,” he said. “If I have offended you, I will strive mightily to remove the cause of that offense. I wouldn’t put my wife’s position in jeopardy, I assure you.”

“Oh, your ex-wife is in no jeopardy,” said Sulla, smiling mirthlessly. “Aemilia Scaura—who is a member of my family!—is quite safe. But she cannot possibly stay married to a man who criticizes her stepfather and spreads stories about him that are manifest lies.”

Glabrio wet his lips. “My tongue ran away with me.”

“It runs away with you very often, I hear. That is your privilege, of course. But in future you’ll let it without the insulation of claiming to be a member of my family. You’ll let it and take your chances, just like everyone else. I haven’t proscribed a senator since my first list. But there’s nothing to stop my doing so. I honored you by appointing you to the Senate ahead of your thirtieth birthday, as I have a great many other young men of high family and illustrious forebears. Well, for the moment I will leave your name among the senators and will not attach it to the rostra. Whether in future I continue to be so clement depends on you, Glabrio. Your child is growing in the belly of my children’s half sister, and that is the only protection you have. When it is born, I will send it to you. Now please go.”

Glabrio went without another word. Nor did he inform any of his intimates of the circumstances behind his precipitate divorce. Nor the reasons why he felt it expedient to leave Rome for his country estates. His marriage to Aemilia Scaura had not mattered to him in an emotional way; she satisfied him, that was all. Birth, dowry, everything as it ought to be. With the years affection might have grown between them. It never would now, so much was sure. A small twinge of grief passed through him from time to time when he thought of her, mostly because his child would never know its mother.

What happened next did nothing to help heal the breach between Sulla and Dalmatica; Pompey came to see the Dictator the following morning, as directed.

“I have a wife for you, Magnus,” said Sulla without delay.

There was a quality of sleepy lion about Pompey that stood him in good stead when things happened he wished to think about before acting or speaking. So he took time to ingest this piece of information, face open rather than guarded; but what was going on inside his mind he did not betray. Rather, thought Sulla, watching him closely, he just rolled over in some metaphorical sun to warm his other side, and licked his chops to remove a forgotten morsel from his whiskers. Languid but dangerous. Yes, best to tie him to the family—he was no Glabrio.

Finally, “How considerate of you, Dictator!” said Pompey. “Who might she be?”

This unconscious grammatical betrayal of his Picentine origins grated, but Sulla did not let it show. He said, “My stepdaughter, Aemilia Scaura. Patrician. Of a family you couldn’t better if you looked for a millennium. A dowry of two hundred talents. And proven to be fertile. She’s pregnant to Glabrio. They were divorced yesterday. I realize, it’s a bit inconvenient for you to acquire a wife who is already expecting another man’s child, but the begetting was virtuous. She’s a good girl.”

That Pompey was not put off or put out by this news was manifest; he beamed foolishly. “Lucius Cornelius, dear Lucius Cornelius! I am delighted!”

“Good!” said Sulla briskly.

“May I see her? I don’t think I ever have!”

A faint grin came and went across the Dictator’s face as he thought of the bruises about Aemilia Scaura’s mouth; he shook his head. “Give it two or three market intervals, Magnus, then come back and I’ll marry you to her. In the meantime I’ll make sure every sestertius of her dowry is returned, and keep her here with me.”

“Wonderful!” cried Pompey, transported. “Does she know?’’

“Not yet, but it will please her very much. She’s been secretly in love with you ever since she saw you triumph,” lied Sulla blandly.

That shot penetrated the lion’s hide! Pompey almost burst with gratification. “Oh, glorious!” he said, and departed looking like a very well-fed feline indeed.

Which left Sulla to break the news to his wife and her daughter. A chore he found himself not averse to doing. Dalmatica had been looking at him very differently since this business had blown up out of a tranquillity almost nine years old, and he disliked her disliking him; as a result, he needed to hurt her.

The two women were together in Dalmatica’s sitting room, and froze when Sulla walked in on them unannounced. His first action was to study Aemilia Scaura’ s face, which was badly bruised and swollen below her nose. Only then did he look at Dalmatica. No anger or revulsion emanated from her this morning, though her dislike of him was there in her eyes, rather cold. She seemed, he thought, ill. Then reflected that women often took refuge in genuine illnesses when their emotions were out of sorts.

“Good news!” he said jovially.

To which they gave him no reply.

“I have a new husband for you, Aemilia.”

Shocked, she looked up and at him with tear—reddened, dull eyes. “Who?” she asked faintly.

“Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus.”

“Oh, Sulla, really!” snapped Dalmatica. “I refuse to believe you mean it! Marry Scaurus’s daughter to that Picentine oaf? My daughter, of Caecilius Metellus blood? I will not consent!”

“You have no say in the matter.”

“Then I wish Scaurus were alive! He’d have plenty to say!”

Sulla laughed. “Yes, he would, wouldn’t he? Not that it would make any difference in the end. I need to tie Magnus to me with a stronger bond than gratitude—he doesn’t have a grateful bone in his body. And you, stepdaughter, are the only female of the family available at the moment.”

The grey shade in Dalmatica’s skin deepened. “Please don’t do this, Lucius Cornelius! Please!”

“I’m carrying Glabrio’s baby,” whispered Aemilia Scaura. “Surely Pompeius wouldn’t want me?”

“Who, Magnus? Magnus wouldn’t care if you’d had sixteen husbands and had sixteen children in your nursery,” said Sulla. “He knows a bargain when he sees one, and you’re a bargain for him at any price. I give you twenty days to heal your face, then you’ll marry him. After the child is born, I’ll send it to Glabrio.”

The weeping broke out afresh. “Please, Lucius Cornelius, don’t do that to me! Let me keep my baby!”

“You can have more with Magnus. Now stop behaving like a schoolgirl and face facts!” Sulla’s gaze went to Dalmatica. “That goes for you as well, wife.”

He walked out, leaving Dalmatica to do what she could to comfort her daughter.

Two days later, Pompey informed him by letter that he had divorced his wife, and would like a firm wedding date.

“I plan to be out of town until the Nones of Sextilis,” said Sulla in his answer, “so I think two days after the Nones of Sextilis seems propitious. You may present yourself in my house at that time, not before.”

*

Hercules Invictus was the god of the triumphing imperator and held sway over the Forum Boarium, in which lay the various meat markets, and which formed the large open space in front of the starting—post end of the Circus Maximus. There he had his Great Altar, his temple, and there too his statue, naked save on the day a general held his victory parade, when it was dressed in triumphal robes. Other temples to other aspects of Hercules also dotted the area, for he was the patron god of olives, of merchant plutocrats, and of commercial voyages personally placed under his protection.

On the feast day of Hercules Invictus, announced Sulla in a citywide proclamation, he would dedicate one tenth of his private fortune to the god, as thanks for the god’s favor in all his martial endeavors. A huge stir of anticipatory pleasure went through the populace, as Hercules Invictus had no temple funds, so could not keep the moneys donated to him; they were spent in his and the triumphing general’s name on providing a public feast for all free men in Rome. On the day before the Ides of Sextilis—this being the god’s feast day—five thousand tables of food would be laid out, each table catering for more than a hundred hungry citizens (which was not to say that there were half a million free males in Rome—what it did say was that the donor of the feast understood that it was hard to exclude spry grannies, determined wives and cheeky children). A list of the location of these five thousand tables was appended to the proclamation; a formidable exercise in logistics, such an occasion was very carefully planned and executed so that the participants by and large remained in their own districts, did not clog the streets or overflow into rival regions and thereby cause fights, public disturbances, crime waves and riots.

The event set in train, Sulla left for his villa at Misenum with his wife, his daughter, his children, his grandchildren, his stepdaughter, and Mamercus. Dalmatica had avoided him ever since the dissolution of Aemilia Scaura’s marriage to Glabrio, but when he did see her in passing, he had noticed that she looked ill. A holiday beside the sea was clearly called for. This entourage was augmented by the consul Decula, who drafted all Sulla’s laws for him, and by the ubiquitous Chrysogonus.

It was therefore some days after they had settled into seaside living before he found the leisure to spend a little time with his wife, still tending to avoid him.

“There’s no point in holding things like Aemilia against me,” he said in reasonable but unapologetic tones. “I will always do what I have to do. You should know that by now, Dalmatica.”

They were sitting in a secluded corner of the loggia overlooking the water, cooled by a gentle zephyr wind and shaded by a judiciously planted row of cypresses. Though the light was not harsh, it revealed that several days of healthier air had not served to improve Dalmatica’s ailment, whatever it might be; she looked drawn and grey, much older than her thirty-seven years.

“I do know it,” she said in answer to this overture of peace, but not with equanimity. “I wish I could accept it! But when my own children are involved, it’s different.”

“Glabrio had to go,” he said, “and there was only one way to do that—sever him from my family. Aemilia is young.

She will get over the blow. Pompeius is not such a bad fellow.”

“He is beneath her.”

“I agree. Nonetheless, I need to bind him to me. Marriage between him and Aemilia also drives home to Glabrio that he dare not continue to speak out against me, when I have the power to give Scaurus’s daughter to the likes of a Pompeius from Picenum.” He frowned. “Leave it be, Dalmatica! You don’t have the strength to withstand me.”

“I know that,” she said, low—voiced.

“You’re not well, and I’m beginning to think it has nothing to do with Aemilia,” he said, more kindly. “What is it?”

“I think—I think …”

“Tell me!”

“I’m going to have another child.”

“Jupiter!” He gaped, recovered, looked grim.

“I agree it isn’t what either of us wants at this time,” she said wearily. “I fear I am a little old.”

“And I am far too old.” He shrugged, looked happier. “Oh well, it’s an accomplished thing, and we’re equally to blame. I take it you don’t want to abort the process?”

“I delayed too long, Lucius Cornelius. It wouldn’t be safe for me at five months. I didn’t notice, I really didn’t.”

“Have you seen a doctor or a midwife?”

“Not yet.”

He got up. “I’ll send Lucius Tuccius to you now.”

She flinched. “Oh, Sulla, please don’t! He’s an ex-army surgeon, he knows nothing about women!”

“He’s better than all your wretched Greeks!”

“For doctoring men, I agree. But I would much rather see a lady doctor from Neapolis or Puteoli.”

Sulla abandoned the struggle. “See whomever you like,” he said curtly, and left the loggia.

Several lady physicians and midwives came to see her; each agreed she was run down, then said that as time went on and the baby in her womb settled, she would feel better.

And so on the Nones of Sextilis the slaves packed up the villa and the cavalcade set off for Rome, Sulla riding ahead because he was too impatient to dawdle at the snail’s pace the women’s litters made inevitable. In consequence he reached the city two days ahead of the rest of his party, and plunged into the last—moment details concerning his coming feast.

“Every baker in Rome has been engaged to make the bread and the cakes, and the special shipments of flour are already delivered,” said Chrysogonus smugly; he had arrived in the city even earlier than Sulla.

“And the fish will be fresh? The weather is scorching.”

“All taken care of, Lucius Cornelius, I do assure you. I have had a section of the river above the Trigarium fenced off with nets, and the fish are already swimming there against the day. A thousand fish—slaves will commence to gut and cook on the morning of the feast.”

“The meats?”

“Will be freshly roasted and sweet, the guild of caterers has promised. Sucking pigs, chickens, sausages, baby lambs. I have had a message from Italian Gaul that the early apples and pears will arrive on time—five hundred wagons escorted by two squadrons of cavalry are proceeding down the Via Flaminia at this moment. The strawberries from Alba Fucentia are being picked now and packed in ice from the Mons Fiscellus. They will reach Rome the night before the feast—also under military escort.”

“A pity people are such thieves when it comes to food,” said the Dictator, who had been poor enough and hungry enough in his youth to understand, for all he pretended otherwise.

“If it were bread or porridge, Lucius Cornelius, there would be no need to worry,” soothed Chrysogonus. “They mostly steal what has a novel taste, or a season.”

“Are you sure we have enough wine?”

“There will be wine and food left over, domine.”

“None of the wine’s vinegary, I hope!”

“It is uniformly excellent. Those vendors who might have been tempted to throw in a few air—contaminated amphorae know well who the buyer is.” Chrysogonus smiled reminiscently. “I told every one of them that if we found a single amphora of vinegar, the lot of them would be crucified, Roman citizens or no.”

“I want no hitches, Chrysogonus. No hitches!”

But the hitch when it came bore no connection (or so it seemed) to the public feast; it involved Dalmatica, who arrived attended by every wisewoman Cornelia Sulla could find as they passed through the towns on the Via Appia.

“She’s bleeding,” said Sulla’s daughter to her father.

The relief on his face was naked. “She’ll lose the thing?” he asked eagerly.

“We think she may.”

“Far better that she does.”

“I agree it won’t be a tragedy if she loses the baby,” said Cornelia Sulla, who didn’t waste her emotions on anger or indignation; she knew her father too well. “The real worry is Dalmatica herself, tata.”

“What do you mean?”

“She may die.”

Something darkly appalled showed in his eyes, just what his daughter couldn’t tell; but he made a movement of distress, shook his head violently. “He is a harbinger of death!” he cried, then, “It is always the highest price! But I don’t care, I don’t care!” The look of amazement on Cornelia Sulla’s face brought him back to his senses, he snorted. “She’s a strong woman, she won’t die!”

“I hope not.”

Sulla got to his feet. “She wouldn’t consent to see him before, but she will now. Whether she wants to or not.”

“Who?”

“Lucius Tuccius.”

When the ex-army surgeon arrived in Sulla’s study some hours later, he looked grave. And Sulla, who had waited out those hours alone, had passed from horror at what always seemed to happen after he saw Metrobius, through guilt, to resignation. As long as he didn’t have to see Dalmatica; for he didn’t think he could face her.

“You don’t bear good tidings, Tuccius.”

“No, Lucius Cornelius.”

“What exactly is wrong?’’ Sulla asked, pulling at his lip.

“There seems to be a general impression that the lady Dalmatica is pregnant, and that is certainly what she thinks,” said Lucius Tuccius, “but I doubt the existence of a child.”

The crimson patches of scar tissue on Sulla’s face stood out more starkly than usual. “Then what does exist?’’

The women speak of haemorrhage, but the loss of blood is too slow for that,” said the little doctor, frowning. “There is some blood, but mixed with a foul—smelling substance I would call pus were she a wounded soldier. I diagnose some kind of internal suppuration, but with your permission, Lucius Cornelius, I would like to obtain some further opinions.”

“Do whatever you like,” said Sulla sharply. “Just keep the comings and goings unobtrusive tomorrow—I have a wedding to see to. I suppose my wife cannot attend?”

“Definitely not, Lucius Cornelius.”

Thus it was that Aemilia Scaura, five months pregnant by her previous husband, married Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus in Sulla’s house without the support of anyone who loved her. And though beneath her veils of flame and saffron she wept bitterly, Pompey set himself the moment the ceremony was over to soothing and pleasing her, and succeeded so well that by the time they left, she was smiling.

It ought to have been Sulla who informed Dalmatica of this unexpected bonus, but Sulla continued to find excuse after excuse as to why he couldn’t visit his wife’s rooms.

“I think,” said Cornelia Sulla, upon whom his communication with Dalmatica had devolved, “that he can’t bear to see you looking so ill. You know what he’s like. If it’s someone he doesn’t care about he is utterly indifferent. But if it’s someone he loves, he can’t bring himself to face the situation.”

There was a smell of corruption in the big airy room where Dalmatica lay, reinforced the closer a visitor came to the bed. She was, Cornelia Sulla knew, dying; Lucius Tuccius had been right, no baby was growing inside her. What was pushing her poor laboring belly into a travesty of pregnancy no one seemed to know, except that it was morbid, malign. The putrid discharge flowed out of her with sluggish remorselessness, and she burned with a fever no amount of medicine or care seemed to cool: She was still conscious, however, and her eyes, bright as two flames, were fixed on her stepdaughter painfully.

“I don’t matter,” she said now, rolling her head upon her sweat—soaked pillow. “I want to know how my poor little Aemilia got on. Was it very bad?’’

“Actually, no,” said Cornelia Sulla, with surprise in her voice. “Believe it or not, darling stepmother, by the time she left to go to her new home, she was quite happy. He’s rather a remarkable fellow, Pompeius—I’d never more than seen him in the distance before today, and I had all a Cornelian’s prejudice against him. But he’s terribly good-looking—far more attractive than silly Glabrio!—and turned out to have a great deal of charm. So she started out in floods of tears, but a few moments of Pompeius’s telling her how pretty she was and how much he loved her already, and she was quite lifted out of her despond. I tell you, Dalmatica, the man has more to him than ever I expected. I predict he makes his women happy.”

Dalmatica appeared to believe this. “They do tell stories about him. Years ago, when he was scarcely more than a child, he used to have congress with Flora—you know who I mean?’’

“The famous whore?”

“Yes. She’s a little past her prime now, but they tell me she still mourns the passing of Pompeius, who never left her without leaving the marks of his teeth all over her—I cannot imagine why that pleased her, but apparently it did! He tired of her and handed her over to one of his friends, which broke her heart. Poor, silly creature! A prostitute in love is a butt.”

“Then it may well be that Aemilia Scaura will end in thanking tata for freeing her from Glabrio.”

“I wish he would come to see me!”

*

The day before the Ides of Sextilis arrived; Sulla donned his Grass Crown and triumphal regalia, this being the custom when a man of military renown sacrificed on the Ara Maxima in the Forum Boarium. Preceded by his lictors and heading a procession of members of the Senate, the Dictator walked the relatively short distance from his house to the Steps of Cacus, and down them to the empty area in which the meat markets were normally located. When he passed by the statue of the god—today also clad in full triumphal regalia—he paused to salute it and pray. Then on he went to the Great Altar, beyond which stood the little round temple of Hercules Invictus, an old plainly Doric structure which enjoyed some fame because inside it were located some frescoes executed by the famous tragic poet Marcus Pacuvius.

The victim, a plump and perfect cream—colored heifer, was waiting in the care of popa and cultarius, chewing her drugged cud and watching the frenzied pre-banquet activity within the marketplace through gentle brown eyes. Though Sulla wore his Grass Crown, the rest of those assembled were crowned with laurel, and when the younger Dolabella—who was urban praetor and therefore in charge of this day’s ceremonies—began his prayers to Hercules Invictus, no one covered his head. A foreigner within the sacred boundary, Hercules was prayed to in the Greek way, with head bare.

Everything proceeded in flawless fashion. As donor of the heifer and celebrant of the public feast, Sulla bent to catch some of the blood in the skyphos, a special vessel belonging to Hercules. But as he crouched and filled the cup, a low black shape slunk like a shadow between the Pontifex Maximus and the cultarius, dipped its snout into the growing lake of blood on the cobbles, and lapped noisily.

Sulla’s shriek of horror ripped out of him as he leaped back and straightened; the skyphos emptied as it fell from his nerveless hand, and the wizened, stringy Grass Crown tumbled off his head to lie amid the blood. By this the panic was spreading faster than the ripples on the crimson pool at which the black dog, starving, still lapped. Men scattered in all directions, some screaming thinly, some hurling their laurels away, some plucking whole tufts from their hair; no one knew what to do, how to end this nightmare.

It was Metellus Pius the Pontifex Maximus who took the hammer from the stupefied popa and brought it crashing down upon the dog’s working head. The cur screeched once and began to whirl in a circular dance, its bared teeth snapping and gnashing, until after what seemed an eternity it collapsed in a convulsing tangle of limbs and slowly stilled, dying, its mouth spewing a cascade of bloodied foam.

Skin whiter than Sulla’s, the Pontifex Maximus dropped the hammer to the ground. “The ritual has been profaned!” he cried in the loudest voice he had ever produced. “Praetor urbanus, we must begin again! Conscript Fathers, compose yourselves! And where are the slaves of Hercules, who ought to have made sure no dog was here?”

Popa and cultarius rounded up the temple slaves, who had drifted off before the ceremony got under way to see what sort of goodies were being piled upon the readied tables. His wig askew, Sulla found the strength at last to bend over and pick up his blood—dabbled Grass Crown.

“I must go home and bathe,” he said to Metellus Pius. “I am unclean. In fact, all of us are unclean, and must go home and bathe. We will reassemble in an hour.” To the younger Dolabella he said, less pleasantly, “After they’ve cleared away the mess and thrown the carcass of the heifer and that frightful creature into the river, have the viri capitales lock the slaves up somewhere until tomorrow. Then have them crucified—and don’t break their legs. Let them take days to die. Here in the Forum Boarium, in full sight of the god Hercules. He doesn’t want them. They allowed his sacrifice to be polluted by a dog.”

Unclean, unclean, unclean, unclean: Sulla kept repeating the word over and over as he hurried home, there to bathe and clothe himself this time in toga praetexta—a man did not have more than one set of triumphal regalia, and that one set only if he had triumphed. The Grass Crown he washed with his own hands, weeping desolately because even under his delicate touch it fell apart. What remained when finally he laid it to dry on a thick pad of white cloth was hardly anything beyond a few tired, limp fragments. My corona graminea is no more. I am accursed. My luck is gone. My luck! How can I live without my luck? Who sent it, that mongrel still black from its journey through the nether darknesses? Who has spoiled this day, now that Gaius Marius cannot? Was it Metrobius? I am losing Dalmatica because of him! No, it is not Metrobius….

So back to the Ara Maxima of Hercules Invictus he went, now wearing a laurel wreath like everyone else, his terrified lictors ruthlessly clearing a path through the crowds gathering to descend on the feast once it was laid out. There were still a few ox—drawn carts bringing provisions to the tables, which created fresh panics as their drivers saw the cavalcade of approaching priests and hastened to unyoke their beasts, drive them out of the way; if one ox plopped a pile of dung in the path of priests, the priests were defiled and the owner of the ox liable to be flogged and heavily fined.

Chrysogonus had obtained a second heifer quite as lovely as the first, and already flagging from the drug the frantic steward had literally rammed down its throat. A fresh start was made, and this time all went smoothly right to the last. Every one of the three hundred senators present spent more time making sure no dog lurked than in paying attention to the ritual.

A victim sacrificed to Hercules Invictus could not be taken from the pyre alongside the god’s Great Altar, so like Caesar’s white bull on the Capitol, it was left to consume itself among the flames, while those who had witnessed the morning’s dreadful events scurried home the moment they were free to do so. Save for Sulla, who went on as he had originally planned; he must walk through the city wishing the feasting populace a share of his good fortune. Only how could he wish them that when Fortune’s favoritism had been canceled out of existence by a black mongrel?

Each made of planks laid on top of trestles, five thousand tables groaned with food, and wine ran faster than blood on a battlefield. Unaware of the disaster at the Ara Maxima, more than half a million men and women gorged themselves on fish and fruit and honey cakes, and stuffed the sacks they had brought with them full to the top so that those left at home—including slaves—might also feast. They greeted Sulla with cheers and invocations to the gods, and promised him that they would remember him in their prayers until they died.

Night was falling when he finally returned to his house on the Palatine, there to dismiss his lictors with thanks and the news that they would be feasted on the morrow in their precinct, behind the inn on the corner of the Clivus Orbius.

Cornelia Sulla was waiting for him in the atrium.

“Father, Dalmatica is asking for you,” she said.

“I’m too tired!” he snapped, knowing he could never face his wife, whom he loved—but not enough.

“Please, Father, go to her! Until she sees you, she won’t abandon this idiotic notion your conduct has put into her head.”

“What idiotic notion?” he asked, stepping out of his toga as he walked to the altar of the Lares and Penates on the far wall. There he bent his head, broke a salt—cake upon the marble shelf, and laid his laurel wreath upon it.

His daughter waited patiently until this ceremony was done with and Sulla turned back in her direction.

“What idiotic notion?” he asked again.

“That she is unclean. She keeps saying she’s unclean.”

Like stone he stood there, the horror crawling all over him, in and out and round and round, a wormy army of loathsome sensations he could neither control nor suffer. He jerked, flung his arms out as if to ward off assassins, stared at his daughter out of a madness she had not seen in him in all her life.

“Unclean!” he screamed. “Unclean!”

And vanished, running, out of the house.

Where he spent the night no one knew, though Cornelia Sulla sent parties armed with torches to look for him amid the ruins of those five thousand tables, no longer groaning. But with the dawn he walked, clad only in his tunic, into the atrium, and saw his daughter still waiting there. Chrysogonus, who had remained with Cornelia Sulla throughout the night because he too had much to fear, advanced toward his master hesitantly.

“Good, you’re here,” said Sulla curtly. “Send to all the priests—minor as well as major!—and tell them to meet me in one hour’s time at Castor’s in the Forum.”

“Father?” asked Cornelia Sulla, bewildered.

“Today I have no truck with women” was all he said before he went to his own rooms.

He bathed scrupulously, then rejected three purple-bordered togas before one was presented to him that he considered perfectly clean. After which, preceded by his lictors (four of whom were ordered to change into unsoiled togas), he went to the temple of Castor and Pollux, where the priests waited apprehensively.

“Yesterday,” he said without preamble, “I offered one tenth of everything I own to Hercules Invictus. Who is a god of men, and of men only. No women are allowed near his Great Altar, and in memory of his journey to the Underworld no dogs are permitted in his precincts, for dogs are chthonic, and all black creatures. Hercules is served by twenty slaves, whose main duty is to see that neither women nor dogs nor black creatures pollute his precincts. But yesterday a black dog drank the blood of the first victim I offered him, a frightful offense against every god—and against me. What could I have done, I asked myself, to incur this? In good faith I had come to offer the god a huge gift, together with a sacrificial victim of exactly the right kind. In good faith I expected Hercules Invictus to accept my gift and my sacrifice. But instead, a black dog drank the heifer’s blood right there at the foot of the Ara Maxima. And my Grass Crown was polluted when it fell into the blood the black dog drank.”

The ninety men he had commanded to attend him stood without moving, hackles rising at the very thought of so much profanation. Everyone present in Castor’s had been at the ceremony the day before, had recoiled in horror, and then had spent the rest of that day and the night which followed in wondering what had gone wrong, why the god had vented such displeasure upon Rome’s Dictator.

“The sacred books are gone, we have no frame of reference,” Sulla went on, fully aware of what was going through the minds of his auditors. “It was left to my daughter to act as the god’s messenger. She fulfilled all the criteria: she spoke without realizing what she said; and she spoke in ignorance of the events which occurred before the Great Altar of Hercules Invictus.”

Sulla stopped, peering at the front ranks of priests without seeing the face he was looking for. “Pontifex Maximus, come out before me!” he commanded in the formal tones of a priest.

The ranks moved, shuffled a little; out stepped Metellus Pius. “I am here, Lucius Cornelius.”

“Quintus Caecilius, you are closely concerned in this. I want you in front of the rest because no man should see your face. I wish I too had that privilege, but all of you must see my face. What I have to say is this: my wife, Caecilia Metella Dalmatica, daughter of one Pontifex Maximus and first cousin of our present Pontifex Maximus, is”—Sulla drew a deep breath—“unclean. In the very instant that my daughter told me this, I knew it for the truth. My wife is unclean. Her womb is rotting. Now I had been aware of that for some time. But I did not know that the poor woman’s condition was offensive to the gods of men until my daughter spoke. Hercules Invictus is a god of men. So too is Jupiter Optimus Maximus. I, a man, have been entrusted with the care of Rome. To me, a man, has been given the task of helping Rome recover from the wars and vicissitudes of many years. Who I am and what I am matters. And nothing in my life can be unclean. Even my wife. Or so I see it today. Am I right in my assumption, Quintus Caecilius, Pontifex Maximus?”

How much the Piglet has grown! thought Sulla, the only one privileged to see his face: Yesterday it was the Piglet took charge, and today it is only he who fully understands.

“Yes, Lucius Cornelius,” said Metellus Pius in steady tones.

“I have called all of you here today to take the auspices and decide what must be done,” Sulla went on. “I have informed you of the situation, and told you what I believe. But under the laws I have passed, I can make no decision without consulting you. And that is reinforced because the person most affected is my wife. Naturally I cannot have it said that I have used this situation to be rid of my wife. I do not want to rid myself of my wife, I must make that clear. To all of you, and through you, to all of Rome. Bearing that in mind, I believe that my wife is unclean, and I believe the gods of men are offended. Pontifex Maximus, as the head of our Roman religion, what do you say?”

“I say that the gods of men are offended,” said Metellus Pius. “I say that you must put your wife from you, that you must never set eyes upon her again, and that you must not allow her to pollute your dwelling or your legally authorized task.”

Sulla’s face revealed his distress; that was manifest to everyone. “I love my wife,” he said thickly. “She has been loyal and faithful to me. She has given me children. Before me, she was a loyal and faithful wife to Marcus Aemilius Scaurus, and gave him children. I do not know why the gods of men require this of me, or why my wife has ceased to please them.”

“Your affection for your wife is not in question,” said the Pontifex Maximus, her first cousin. “Neither of you needs to have offended any god, of men or of women. It is better to say that her presence in your house and your presence in her life have in some unknown way interrupted or distorted the pathways whereby divine grace and favor are conducted to Rome. On behalf of my fellow priests, I say that no one is to blame. That we find no fault on either your side, Lucius Cornelius, or on your wife’s side. What is, is. There can be no more to be said.”

He spun round to face the silent assemblage, and said in loud, stern, unstammering voice, “I am your Pontifex Maximus! That I speak without stammer or stumble is evidence enough that Jupiter Optimus Maximus is using me as his vessel, and that I am gifted with his tongue. I say that the wife of this man is unclean, that her presence in his life and house is an affront to our gods, and that she must be removed from his life and his house immediately. I do not require a vote. If any man here disagrees with me, let him say so now.”

The silence was profound, as if no men stood there at all.

Metellus Pius swung back to face the Dictator. “We direct you, Lucius Cornelius Sulla, to instruct your servants to carry your wife, Caecilia Metella Dalmatica, out of your house and convey her to the temple of Juno Sospita, where she must remain until she dies. On no account must you set eyes upon her. And after she has been taken away, I direct the Rex Sacrorum and the flamen Martialis in lieu of the flamen Dialis to conduct the purification rites in Lucius Cornelius’s house.”

He pulled his toga over his head. “O Celestial Twins, you who are called Castor and Pollux, or the Dioscuri, or the Dei Penates, or any other name you might prefer—you who may be gods or goddesses or of no sex at all—we have come together in your temple because we have need of your intercession with the mighty Jupiter Optimus Maximus—whose offspring you may or may not be—and with the triumphator Hercules Invictus. We pray that you will testify before all the gods that we are sincere, and have striven to right whatever wrong it is that has been done. In accordance with our contractual agreements, which go back to the battle at Lake Regillus, we hereby promise you a sacrifice of twin white foals as soon as we can find such a rare offering. Look after us, we beg you, as you have always done.”

The auspices were taken, and confirmed the decision of the Pontifex Maximus. The clear morning light, which struck the interior of the temple through its open doorway, turned suddenly darker when the sun moved toward its zenith, and a chill breath of some strange wind came whistling softly in the sunlight’s stead.

“One final matter before we go,” said Sulla.

The feet stilled at once.

“We must replace the Sibylline Books, for though we have the Book of Vegoe and Tages still safe in the temple of Apollo, that work is unhelpful in any situation wherein foreign gods are involved, as is Hercules Invictus. There are many sibyls throughout the world, and some who are closely connected to the Sibyl of Cumae who wrote her verses on palm leaves and offered them to King Tarquinius Priscus so long ago. Pontifex Maximus, I wish you to depute someone to organize a search throughout the world for the verses which were contained in our prophetic books.”

“You are right, Lucius Cornelius, it must be done,” said Metellus Pius gravely. “I will find a man fit for the purpose.”

The Dictator and the Pontifex Maximus walked back to Sulla’s house together.

“My daughter won’t take it kindly,” said the Dictator, “but if she hears it from you, she may not blame me for it.”

“I am very sorry for this mess.”

“So,” said Sulla unhappily, “am I!”

Cornelia Sulla did believe her father, a fact which surprised her as much as it did him.

“Insofar as you’re able, Father, I think you do love her, and I don’t think so badly of you that I credit you with wanting to be rid of her.”

“Is she dying?” asked Metellus Pius, smitten with a qualm because it had been his idea to place Dalmatica in the temple of Juno Sospita for however much longer she had to live.

“Very soon now, Lucius Tuccius says. She’s full of a growth.”

“Then let us get it over and done with.”

Eight sturdy litter—bearers took Dalmatica from her sickbed, but not in dignified silence; the forbearance with which Sulla’s wife had conducted her life to date vanished in the moment she was informed of the priests’ decision, and realized she would never see Sulla again. She screamed, she wept, she shrieked his name over and over and over as they carried her away, while Sulla sat in his study with his hands over his ears and the tears coursing down his face. One more price to pay. But did he have to pay it for Fortune’s sake—or for the sake of Metrobius?

There were four temples in a row outside the Servian Walls in the vegetable markets: Pietas, Janus, Spes, and Juno Sospita. Though this Juno was not one of the primary goddesses who looked after gravid women, she was simultaneously a warrior offshoot of the Great Mother of Pessinus, Juno of Snakes from Lanuvium, Queen of Heaven, and Savior of Women. Perhaps because of this last aspect in her makeup, it had long been the custom for women safely delivered of a child to bring the afterbirth to Juno Sospita and leave it in her temple as an offering.

At the time of the Italian War, when money had been short and temple slaves few, the Metella Balearica who had been wife to Appius Claudius Pulcher had dreamed that Juno Sospita appeared to her complaining bitterly that her temple was so filthy she couldn’t live in it. So Balearica had gone to the consul, Lucius Caesar, and demanded that he help her scrub it out. They had found more than rotting placentas; the place was green and runny with the detritus of dead women, dead bitches, dead babies, rats. Herself pregnant at the time she and Lucius Caesar had performed their stomach—turning labor, Caecilia Metella Balearica had died two months later after giving birth to her sixth child, Publius Clodius.

But the temple had been beautifully kept ever since; the offered afterbirths were placed in an ooze—proof basket and taken away regularly to be ritually burned by the flaminica Dialis (or, in these days, by her designated replacement), and no temple floor was cleaner or temple interior sweeter—smelling. Cornelia Sulla had prepared a place for Dalmatica’s bed, to which the litter—bearers transferred her in an agony of terror, men brought into a woman’s precinct. She was still crying out for Sulla, but weakly, near her end, and seemed not to recognize her surroundings.

A painted statue of the goddess stood upon a plinth; she wore shoes with upturned toes, brandished a spear, and faced a rearing snake, but the most striking aspect of her image was the real goatskin draped about her shoulders, tied at her waist, and with its head and horns perched atop the goddess’s dark brown hair like a helmet. There beneath this outlandish creature sat Cornelia Sulla and Metellus Pius, each holding one of Dalmatica’s hands to help her surmount the mortal barriers of pain and loss. The wait was one of hours only, a spiritual rather than a physical ordeal. The poor woman died still asking to see Sulla, apparently deaf to the reasonable answers both Cornelia Sulla and Metellus Pius gave her.

When she was dead the Pontifex Maximus had the undertakers set up her lectus funebris inside the temple, as she could not be taken home to lie in state. Nor could she be displayed; she sat in the traditional upright position completely covered by a black, gold—edged cloth, hedged in by the keening professional mourners, and had for her background that strange goddess with goatskin and rearing snake and spear.

“When one has written the sumptuary law,” said Sulla afterward, “one can afford to ignore it.”

As a result, Caecilia Metella Dalmatica’s funeral cost one hundred talents, and boasted over two dozen chariot—borne actors who wore the ancestral wax masks of the Caecilii Metelli and two patrician families, Aemilius Scaurus and Cornelius Sulla. But the crowd which thronged the Circus Flaminius (it had been decided that to bring her body inside the pomerium would be imprudent, given her unclean status) appreciated so much luster less than they did the sight of Dalmatica’s three-year-old twins, Faustus and Fausta, clad in black and carried by a black—festooned female giant from Further Gaul.

*

On the Kalends of September the real legislating began, an onslaught of such dimensions that the Senate reeled.

“The present law courts are clumsy, time—consuming and not realistic,” said Sulla from his curule chair. “No comitia should hear civil or criminal charges—the procedures are too long, too liable to political manipulation, and too influenced by the fame or popularity of the accused—not to mention his defending advocates. And a jury which might be as large as several thousand electors is as unwieldy as it is injudicious.”

Having thus neatly disposed of a trial process in one of the Assemblies, Sulla went on. “I will give Rome seven permanent standing courts. Treason, extortion, embezzlement, bribery, forgery, violence, and murder. All of these except the last one involve the State or the Treasury in some way, and will be presided over by one of the six junior praetors, according to the lots. The murder court will try all cases of murder, arson, magic, poison, perjury, and a new crime which I will call judicial murder—that is, exile achieved through the agency of a court. I expect that the murder court will be the busiest, though the simplest. And I will see it presided over by a man who has been aedile, though not yet praetor. The consuls will appoint him.”

Hortensius sat horrified, for his greatest victories had been fought in one of the Assemblies, where his style and his ability to sway a big crowd had made of him a legend; juries of the size staffing a court were too intimate to suit him.

“Genuine advocacy will die!” he cried.

“What does that matter?” asked Sulla, looking astonished. “More important by far is the judicial process, and I intend to take that off the Assemblies, Quintus Hortensius, make no mistake about it! However, from the Assembly of the People I will seek a law to sanction the establishment of my standing courts, and by the provisions of that law all three Assemblies will formally hand over their juridical duties to my standing courts.”

“Excellent!” said the historian Lucius Cornelius Sisenna. “Every man tried in court will therefore be tried by the consent of the Assemblies! That means a man will not be able to appeal to an Assembly after the court has delivered its verdict.”

“Exactly, Sisenna! It renders the appeal process null and void, and eliminates the Assemblies as judges of men.”

“That is disgusting!” shouted Catulus. “Not only disgusting, but absolutely unconstitutional! Every Roman citizen is entitled to an appeal!”

“Appeal and trial are one and the same, Quintus Lutatius,” said Sulla, “and part of Rome’s new constitution.”

“The old constitution was good enough in matters like this!”

“In matters like this history has shown us all too clearly that the provisions of the old constitution led to many a man who ought to have been convicted getting off because some Assembly was persuaded by some trick rhetoric to overturn a legal court decision. The political capital made out of such Assembly trials and appeals was odious, Quintus Lutatius. Rome is too big and too busy these days to be mired down in customs and procedures invented when Rome was little more than a village. I have not denied any man a fair trial. I have in fact made his trial fairer. And made the procedure simpler.”

“The juries?’’ asked Sisenna.

“Will be purely senatorial—one more reason why I need a pool of at least four hundred men in the Senate. Jury duty was a burden, and will be a burden when there are seven courts to staff. However, I intend to reduce the size of juries. The old fifty-one—man jury will be retained only in cases of the highest crimes against the State. In future jury size will depend on the number of men available to sit, and if for any reason there is an even number of men on a jury, then a tied decision will count as an acquittal. The Senate is already divided into decuries of ten men, each headed by a patrician senator. I will use these decuries as the jury base, though no decury will be permanently seconded to duty in one particular court. The jury for each individual trial in any court will be selected by lot after the trial date has been set.”

“I like it,” said the younger Dolabella.

“I hate it!” cried Hortensius. “What happens if my decury is drawn for jury duty while I myself am occupied in acting for a defendant in another trial?’’

“Why, then you’ll just have to learn to fit both in,” said Sulla, smiling mirthlessly. “Whores do it, Hortensius! You ought to be able to.”

“Oh, Quintus, shut your mouth!” breathed Catulus.

“Who decides the number of men to staff a particular jury?” asked the younger Dolabella.

“The court president,” said Sulla, “but only to a limited extent. The real determination will depend upon the number of decuries available. I would hope to see a figure between twenty-five and thirty-five men. Not all of a decury will be seconded at once—that would keep jury numbers even.”

“The six junior praetors will be each given presidency of a court by lot,” said Metellus Pius. “Does that mean the old system will still prevail to decide who will be urban and who foreign praetor?”

“No, I will abolish giving urban praetor to the man at the top of the poll, and foreign praetor to the man who comes in second,” said Sulla. “In future, all eight jobs will be decided purely by the lots.”

But Lepidus wasn’t interested in which praetor would get what; he asked the question he already knew the answer to, just to make Sulla say it. “You therefore intend to remove all court participation from the knights?’’

“Absolutely. With one brief intermission, the control of Rome’s juries has rested with the knights since the time of Gaius Gracchus. That will stop! Gaius Gracchus neglected to incorporate a clause in his law which allowed a corrupt knight juror to be prosecuted. Senators are fully liable under the law, I will make sure of that!”

“So what is left for the urban and foreign praetors to do?” asked Metellus Pius.

“They will be responsible for all civil litigation,” said Sulla, “as well as, in the case of the foreign praetor, criminal litigation between non—Romans. However, I am removing the right of the urban and foreign praetor to make a judgment in a civil case himself—instead, he will pass the case to a single judge drawn by lot from a panel of senators and knights, and that man will act as iudex. His decision will be binding on all of the parties, though the urban or foreign praetor may elect to supervise the proceedings.”

Catulus now spoke because Hortensius, still red-faced and angry at Sulla’s gibe, would not ask. “As the constitution stands at the moment, Lucius Cornelius, only a legally convoked Assembly can pass a sentence of death. If you intend to remove all trials from the Assemblies, does this mean you will empower your courts to levy a death sentence?”

“No, Quintus Lutatius, it does not. It means the opposite. The death sentence will no longer be levied at all. Future sentences will be limited to exiles, fines, and/or confiscation of some or all of a convicted man’s property. My new laws will also regulate the activity of the damages panel—this will consist of between two and five of the jurors chosen by lot, and the court president.”

“You have named seven courts,” said Mamercus. “Treason, extortion, embezzlement, bribery, forgery, violence, and murder. But there is already a standing court in existence for cases of public violence under the lex Plautia. I have two questions: one, what happens to this court? and two, what happens in cases of sacrilege?”

“The lex Plautia is no longer necessary,” said Sulla. He leaned back, looking pleased; the House seemed happy at the idea of having criminal procedures removed from the comitia. “Crimes of violence will be tried either in my violence court or in the treason court if the magnitude is great enough. As for sacrilege, offenses of this nature are too infrequent to warrant a standing court. A special court will be convened when necessary, to be presided over by an ex-aedile. Its conduct, however, will be the same as the permanent courts—no right of appeal to the Assemblies. If the matter concerns the un—chastity of a Vestal Virgin, the sentence of being buried alive will continue to be enforced. But her lover or lovers will be tried in a separate court and will not face a death sentence.”

He cleared his throat, continued. “I am nearly done for today. First of all, a word about the consuls. It is not good for Rome to see the consuls embroiled in foreign wars. These two men during their year in office should be directly responsible for the welfare and well-being of Rome and Italy, nothing else. Now that the tribunes of the plebs have been put in their proper place, I hope to see the consuls more active in promulgating laws. And secondly, conduct within the Senate itself. In future, a man may rise to his feet to speak if he so wishes, but he will no longer be permitted to stride up and down the floor as he does so. He must speak from his allocated place, either seated or standing. Noise will not be tolerated. No applause, no drumming of feet, no calls or outcries will be tolerated. The consuls will levy a fine of one thousand denarii upon any man who infringes my new standards of conduct within the House.”

A small group of senators clustered below the Curia Hostilia steps after Sulla had dismissed the meeting; some of them (like Mamercus and Metellus Pius) were Sulla’s men to the last, whereas others (like Lepidus and Catulus) agreed that Sulla was at best an evil necessity.

“There’s no doubt,” said the Piglet, “that these new courts will take a great burden off the legislating bodies—no more fiddling about trying to induce the Plebeian Assembly to enact a special court to try someone, no more worrying about some unknown knight taking a bribe—yes, they are good reforms.”

“Oh come, Pius, you’re old enough to remember what it was like during the couple of years after Caepio the Consul gave the courts back to the Senate!” cried Philippus. “I was never not on some jury or other, even during the summer!” He turned to Marcus Perperna, his fellow censor. “You remember, surely.”

“Only too well,’’ said Perperna with feeling.

“The trouble with you two,” said Catulus, “is that you want the Senate to control juries, but you complain when it’s your turn to serve. If we of the Senate want to dominate the trial process, then we have to be prepared to take the pain along with the pleasure.”

“It won’t be as difficult now as it was then,” said Mamercus pacifically. “There are more of us.”

“Go on, you’re the Great Man’s son-in-law, he pulls your strings and you howl like a dog or bleat like a sheep!” snapped Philippus. “There can’t be enough of us! And with permanent courts there will be no delays—at least back then we could hold things up by getting the Assemblies to dither about for a few market intervals while we had a holiday. Now, all the president of a court has to do is empanel his jury! And we won’t even know in advance whether we’ll be sitting on it, so we won’t be able to plan a thing. Sulla says the lots won’t be drawn until after the trial date has been set. I can see it now! Two days into a lovely summer laze by the sea, and it’s off back to Rome to sit on some wretched jury!”

“Jury duty ought to have been split,” said Lepidus. “Keep the important courts for the Senate—you know, extortion and treason. The murder court could function properly on knight jurors—it would probably function properly if its juries were drawn from the Head Count!”

“What you mean,” said Mamercus acidly, “is that juries trying senators should be composed of senators, whereas juries trying the rest of the world on charges like witchcraft or poisoning are not important enough for senators.”

“Something like that,” said Lepidus, smiling.

“What I’d like to know,” said the Piglet, deeming it time to change the subject a little, “is what else he plans to legislate.”

“I’d be willing to bet it won’t be to our advantage!” said Hortensius.

“Rubbish!” said Mamercus, not a bit dismayed at being called Sulla’s puppet. “Everything he’s done so far has strengthened the influence of the Senate and tried to bring Rome back to the old values and the old customs.”

“It may be,” said Perperna thoughtfully, “that it is too late to go back to the old ways and the old customs. A lot of what he’s abolished or changed has been with us long enough to deserve being lumped in with the rest of the mos maiorum. These days the Plebeian Assembly is like a club for playing knucklebones or dice. That won’t last because it can’t last. The tribunes of the plebs have been Rome’s major legislators for centuries.”

“Yes, what he did to the tribunes of the plebs isn’t at all popular,” said Lepidus. “You’re right. The new order of things in the Plebeian Assembly can’t last.”

*

On the Kalends of October the Dictator produced new shocks; he shifted the sacred boundary of Rome exactly one hundred feet in the vicinity of the Forum Boarium, and thus made Rome a little bit larger. No one had ever tampered with the pomerium after the time of the Kings of Rome; to do so was considered a sign of royalty, it was an un—Republican act. But did that stop Sulla? Not in the least. He would shift the pomerium, he announced, because he now declared the Rubico River the official boundary between Italy and Italian Gaul. That river had been so regarded for a very long time, but the last formal fixing of the boundary had been at the Metaurus River. Therefore, said Sulla blandly, he could justifiably be said to have enlarged the territory of Rome within Italy, and he would mark the event by moving Rome’s pomerium an infinitesmal hundred feet.

“Which as far as I’m concerned,” said Pompey to his new (and very pregnant) wife, “is splendid!”

Aemilia Scaura looked puzzled. “Why?” she asked.

She did a lot of asking why and might thus have irritated a less egotistical man, but Pompey adored being asked why.

“Because, my darling little roly—poly girl who looks as if she has swallowed a giant melon whole”—he tickled her tummy with a leer and a wink—“I own most of the Ager Gallicus south of Ariminum, and it now falls officially into Umbria. I am now one of the biggest landowners in all Italy, if not the very biggest. I’m not sure. There are men who own more land thanks to their holdings in Italian Gaul, like the Aemilii Scauri—your tata, my delectable wee pudding—and the Domitii Ahenobarbi, but I inherited most of the Lucilian estates in Lucania, and with the southern half of the Ager Gallicus added to my lands in Umbria and northern Picenum, I doubt I have a rival inside Italy proper! There are many going around deploring the Dictator’s action, but he’ll get no criticism from me.”

“I can’t wait to see your lands,” she said wistfully, putting her hand on the mound of her abdomen. “As soon as I am able to travel, Magnus—you promised.”

They were sitting side by side on a couch, and he turned to tip her over with a gentle push in just the right place, then pinched her lips painlessly between his fingers and kissed her all over her ecstatic face.

“More!” she cried when he finished. His head hung over hers, his impossibly blue eyes twinkled. “And who’s the greedy little piggy—wiggy?” he asked. “The greedy little piggy—wiggy should know better, shouldn’t she?”

She fell into cascades of giggles, which provoked him to tickle her because he liked the sound of them so; but soon he wanted her so badly that he had to get up and move away.

“Oh, bother this wretched baby!” she cried crossly.

“Soon, my adorable kitten,” he managed to say cheerfully. “Let’s get rid of Glabrio before we try for our own.”

And indeed Pompey had been continent, determined that no one, least of all Aemilia Scaura’s stiff and haughty Caecilius Metellus relatives, should be able to say that he was not the most considerate and kindest of husbands; Pompey wanted badly to join the clan.

Learning that Young Marius had made an intimate of Praecia, Pompey had taken to visiting her sumptuous house, for he deemed it no comedown to sample someone else’s leavings provided that the someone else had been famous, or stuffed with clout, or awesomely noble. Praecia was, besides, a sexual delight sure to please him in ways he knew very well Aemilia Scaura would not when her turn came. Wives were for the serious business of making babies, though poor Antistia had not even been accorded that joy.

If he liked being married—which he did—it was because Pompey had the happy knack of knowing how to make a wife besotted. He paid her compliments galore, he didn’t care how silly what he said might sound were Metellus Pius Pontifex Maximus to overhear (he just made very sure he never said things like that in the hearing of Metellus Pius Pontifex Maximus), and he maintained a jolly, good—tempered attitude which disposed her to love him. Yet—clever Pompey!—he allowed her to have moods, to weep, to carp a trifle, to chastise him. And if neither Antistia nor Aemilia Scaura knew that he manipulated them while they thought they did the manipulating, then that was all for the good; all parties were satisfied, and strife was nonexistent.

His gratitude to Sulla for bestowing Scaurus Princeps Senatus’s daughter upon him knew almost no bounds. He understood that he was more than good enough for Scaurus’s daughter, but it also reinforced his positive opinion of himself to know that a man like Sulla considered him good enough for Scaurus’s daughter. Of course he was quite aware that it suited Sulla to bind him by a tie of marriage, and that too contributed to his positive opinion of himself; Roman aristocrats like Glabrio could be thrown aside at the Dictator’s whim, but the Dictator was concerned enough about Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus to give him what he had taken from Glabrio. Sulla might (for example) have given Scaurus’s daughter to his own nephew, Publius Sulla, or to the much-favored Lucullus.

Pompey had set his heart against belonging to the Senate, but it was no part of his plans to alienate himself from the circle of the Dictator; rather, his dreams had taken a fresh direction, and he now saw himself becoming the sole military hero in the history of the Republic who would seize proconsular commands without being at the very least a senator. They said it couldn’t be done. They had sneered at him, smirked at him, mocked him. But those were dangerous activities when they were aimed at Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus! In the years to come he would make every last one of them suffer—and not by killing them, as Marius might have—nor by proscribing them, as Sulla would have. He would make them suffer by forcing them to come to him, by maneuvering them into a position so invidious that the pain of being nice to him would well-nigh kill their fine opinions of themselves. And that was far sweeter to Pompey than seeing them die!

So it was that Pompey managed to contain his desire for this delectable sprig of the gens Aemilia, contented himself with many visits to Praecia, and consoled himself by eyeing Aemilia Scaura’s belly, never again to be filled with any but his progeny.

She was due to have her baby at some time early in December, but toward the end of October she went into a sudden and terrible labor. Thus far her pregnancy had been uneventful, so this very late miscarriage came as a shock to everyone, including her doctors. The scrawny male child who came so prematurely into the world died the day after, and was not long survived by Aemilia Scaura, who bled her way inexorably from pain to eternal oblivion.

Her death devastated Pompey. He had genuinely loved her in his proprietary, unselective fashion; if Sulla had searched Rome for the right bride for Pompey in a conscious effort to please him, he could not have chosen better than the giggly, slightly dense, completely ingenuous Aemilia Scaura. The son of a man called The Butcher and himself called Kid Butcher, Pompey’s exposure to death had been lifelong, and not conditioned by impulses of compassion or mercy. A man lived, a man died. A woman lived, a woman died. Nothing was certain. When his mother died he had cried a little, but until the death of Aemilia Scaura only the death of his father had profoundly affected him.

Yet his wife’s death smote Pompey almost to joining her upon her funeral pyre; Varro and Sulla were never sure afterward whether Pompey’s struggle to leap into the flames was genuine or only partly genuine, so frantic and grief—stricken was he. In truth, Pompey himself didn’t know. All he did know was that Fortune had favored him with the priceless gift of Scaurus’s daughter, then snatched the gift away before it could be enjoyed.

Still weeping desolately, the young man quit Rome through the Colline Gate, a second time because of sudden death. First his father, now Aemilia Scaura. To a Pompeius from northern Picenum, there was only one alternative. To go home.

*

“Rome now has ten provinces,” said Sulla in the House the day after the funeral of his stepdaughter. He was wearing the senatorial mourning, which consisted of a plain white toga and a tunic bearing the thin purple stripe of a knight rather than the senator’s broad purple stripe. Had Aemilia Scaura been his blood daughter he could not easily have gone about public business for ten days, but the absence of any close blood relationship obviated that. A good thing; Sulla had a schedule.

“Let me list them for you, Conscript Fathers: Further Spain, Nearer Spain, Gaul-across-the-Alps, Italian Gaul, Macedonia together with Greece, Asia, Cilicia, Africa together with Cyrenaica, Sicily, and Sardinia together with Corsica. Ten provinces for ten men to govern. If no man remains in his province for more than one year, that will leave ten men for ten provinces at the beginning of every year—two consuls and eight praetors just coming out of office.”

His gaze lighted upon Lepidus, to whom he appeared to address his next remarks—for no better reason, it seemed, than random selection. “Each governor will now routinely be assigned a quaestor except for the governor of Sicily, who will have two quaestors, one for Syracuse and one for Lilybaeum. That leaves nine quaestors for Italy and Rome out of the twenty. Ample. Each governor will also be assigned a full staff of public servants, from lictors and heralds to scribes, clerks, and accountants. It will be the duty of the Senate—acting on advice from the Treasury—to assign each governor a specific sum to be called the stipend—and this stipend will not be added to for any reason during the year. It therefore represents the governor’s salary, and will be paid to him in advance. Out of it he must pay his staff and expenses of office, and must present a full and proper accounting of it at the end of his year’s governorship, though he will not be obliged to refund any part of it he has not spent. It is his the moment it is paid over to him, and what he does with it is his own business. If he wishes to invest it in Rome in his own name before he leaves for his province, that is permitted. However, he must understand that no more moneys will be forthcoming! A further word of warning is necessary. As his stipend becomes his personal property the moment it is paid over, it can legally be attached by lien if the new governor is in debt. I therefore advise all potential governors that their public careers will be jeopardized if they get themselves into debt. A penniless governor going out to his province will be facing heavy criminal charges when he returns home!”

A glare around the chamber, then Sulla went back to business. “I am removing all say in the matters of wars, provinces and other foreign affairs from the Assemblies. From now on the Assemblies will be forbidden to so much as discuss wars, provinces and other foreign affairs, even in contio. These matters will become the exclusive prerogative of the Senate.”

Another glare. “In future, the Assemblies will pass laws and hold elections. Nothing else. They will have no say in trials, in foreign affairs, or in any military matter.”

A small murmur started as everyone took this in. Tradition was on Sulla’s side, but ever since the time of the Brothers Gracchi the Assemblies had been used more and more to obtain military commands and provinces—or even to strip men appointed by the Senate of their military commands and provinces. It had happened to the Piglet’s father when Marius had taken the command in Africa off him, and it had happened to Sulla when Marius had taken the command against Mithridates off him. So this new legislation was welcome.

Sulla transferred his gaze to Catulus. “The two consuls should be sent to the two provinces considered most volatile or endangered. The consular provinces and the praetorian ones will be apportioned by the casting of lots. Certain conventions must be adhered to if Rome is to keep her good name abroad. If ships or fleets are levied from provinces or client kingdoms, the cost of such levies must be deducted from the annual tribute. The same law applies to the levying of soldiers or military supplies.”

Marcus Junius Brutus, so long a mouse, took courage. “If a governor is heavily committed to a war in his province, will he be obliged to give up his province at the end of one year?”

“No,” said Sulla. He was silent for a moment, thinking, then said, “It may even be that the Senate will have no other choice than to send the consuls of the year to a foreign war. If Rome is assailed on all sides, it is hard to see how this can be avoided. I only ask the Senate to consider its alternatives very carefully before committing the consuls of the year to a foreign campaign, or before extending a governor’s term of office.”

When Mamercus lifted up his hand to speak, the senators pricked up their ears; by now he was so well known as Sulla’s puppet asker—of—questions that everyone knew this meant he was going to ask something which Sulla thought best to introduce via the medium of a question.

“May I discuss a hypothetical situation?” Mamercus asked.

“By all means!” said Sulla genially.

Mamercus rose to his feet. As he was this year’s foreign praetor and therefore held curule office, he was sitting on the podium at the far end of the hall where all the curule magistrates sat, and so could be seen by every eye when he stood up. Sulla’s new rule forbidding men to leave their place when they spoke made the men on the curule podium the only ones who could be seen by all.

“Say a year comes along,” said Mamercus carefully, “when Rome does indeed find herself assailed on all sides. Say that the consuls and as many of the praetors of the year as can be spared have gone to fight during their tenure of office—or say that the consuls of the year are not militarily skilled enough to be sent to fight. Say that the governors are depleted—perhaps one or two killed by barbarians, or dead untimely from other causes. Say that among the Senate no men can be found of experience or ability who are willing or free to take a military command or a governorship. If you have excluded the Assemblies from debating the matter and the decision as to what must be done rests entirely with the Senate, what ought the Senate to do?’’

“Oh, what a splendid question, Mamercus!” Sulla exclaimed, just as if he hadn’t worded it himself. He ticked the points off on his fingers. “Rome is assailed on all sides. No curule magistrates are available. No consulars or ex-praetors are available. No senator of sufficient experience or ability is available. But Rome needs another military commander or governor. Is that right? Have I got it right?’’

“That is right, Lucius Cornelius,” said Mamercus gravely.

“Then,” said Sulla slowly, “the Senate must look outside its ranks to find the man, must it not? What you are describing is a situation beyond solution by normal means. In which case, the solution must be found by abnormal means. In other words, it is the duty of the Senate to search Rome for a man of known exceptional ability and experience, and give that man all the legal authorities necessary to assume a military command or a governorship.”

“Even if he’s a freedman?” asked Mamercus, astonished.

“Even if he’s a freedman. Though I would say he was more likely to be a knight, or perhaps a centurion. I knew a centurion once who commanded a perilous retreat, was awarded the Grass Crown, and afterward given the purple-bordered toga of a curule magistrate. His name was Marcus Petreius. Without him many lives would have been lost, and that particular army would not have been able to fight again. He was inducted into the Senate and he died in all honor during the Italian War. His son is among my own new senators.”

“But the Senate is not legally empowered to give a man outside its own ranks imperium to command or govern!” objected Mamercus.

“Under my new laws the Senate will be legally empowered to do so—and ought to do so, in fact,” said Sulla. “I will call this governorship or military command a ‘special commission,’ and I will bestow the necessary authority upon the Senate to grant it—with whatever degree of imperium is considered necessary!—to any Roman citizen, even a freedman.”

“What is he up to?’’ muttered Philippus to Flaccus Princeps Senatus. “I’ve never heard the like!”

“I wish I knew, but I don’t,” said Flaccus under his breath.

But Sulla knew, and Mamercus guessed; this was one more way to bind Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus, who had refused to join the Senate, but because of all those veterans of his father’s was still a military force to be reckoned with. It was no part of Sulla’s plan to allow any man to lead an army on Rome; he would be the last, he had resolved on that. Therefore if times changed and Pompey became a threat, a way had to be open for Pompey’s considerable talents to be legally harnessed by the legal body responsible—the Senate. Sulla intended to legislate what amounted to pure common sense.

*

“It remains for me to define treason,” the Dictator said a few days later. “Until my new law courts came into being some time ago, there were several different kinds of treason, from perduellio to maiestas minuta—big treasons, little treasons, and treasons in between. And what all of these treasons lacked was true specificity. In future all charges of treason will be tried in the quaestio de maiestate, my standing treason court. A charge of treason, as you will shortly see, will be largely limited to men given provincial governorships or commands in foreign wars. If a civilian Roman generates treason within Rome or Italy, then that man will be the object of the only trial process I will allow an Assembly to conduct. Namely, that man will be tried perduellio in the Centuries, and will in consequence face the old penalty—death tied to a cross suspended from an unlucky tree.”

He let that sink in a little, then continued. “Any and all of the following will be treasonable:

“A provincial governor may not leave his province.

“A provincial governor may not permit his armies to march beyond the provincial frontier.

“A provincial governor may not start a war on his own initiative.

“A provincial governor may not invade the territory of a client king without formal permission from the Senate.

“A provincial governor may not intrigue with a client king or any body of foreign nationals in order to change the status quo of any foreign country.

“A provincial governor may not recruit additional troops without the consent of the Senate.

“A provincial governor may not make decisions or issue edicts within his own province that will alter his province’s status without the formal consent of the Senate.

“A provincial governor may not remain in his province for more than thirty days after the arrival in that province of his Senate—appointed successor.

“That is all.” Sulla smiled. “On the positive side of things, a man with imperium will continue to hold that imperium until he crosses the sacred boundary of Rome. This has always been so. I now reaffirm it.”

“I do not see,” said Lepidus angrily, “why all these specific rules and regulations are necessary!”

“Oh come, Lepidus,” said Sulla wearily, “you’re sitting here looking straight at me. Me! A man who did almost every ‘may not’ on my list! I was justified! I had been illegally deprived of my imperium and my command. But I am here now passing laws which will make it impossible for any man to deprive another of his imperium and his command! Therefore the situation I was in cannot happen again. Therefore those men who break any of my ‘may nots’ will be guilty of treason. No man can be permitted to so much as toy with the idea of marching on Rome or leading his army out of his province in the direction of Rome. Those days are over. And I am sitting here to prove it.”

*

On the twenty-sixth day of October, Sulla’s nephew, Sextus Nonius Sufenas (who was Sulla’s sister’s younger boy) put on the first performance of what were to become annual victory games, the ludi Victoriae; they culminated at the Circus Maximus on the first day of November, which was the anniversary of the battle at the Colline Gate. They were good but not magnificent games, save that for the first time in a dozen decades the Trojan Game was performed. The crowd loved it because of its novelty—a complex series of maneuvers on horseback carried out by youths who had to be of noble birth. Greece, however, was not amused. Sufenas had combed Greece for athletes, dancers, musicians and entertainers, so that the Olympic Games in Olympia, celebrated at about the same time of year, were an absolute disaster. And—juicy scandal!—the younger son of Antonius Orator, Gaius Antonius Hybrida, utterly disgraced himself by driving a chariot in one of the races; if it was a social cachet for a nobleman to participate in the Trojan Game, it was an horrific solecism for a nobleman to drive a chariot.

On the Kalends of December, Sulla announced the names of the magistrates for the coming year. He would be senior consul himself, with Quintus Caecilius Metellus Pius the Piglet as his junior. Loyalty was rewarded at last. The elder Dolabella received Macedonia as his province, and the younger Dolabella was given Cilicia. Though well provided by the lots with a quaestor in the person of Gaius Publicius Malleolus, the younger Dolabella insisted upon taking none other than Gaius Verres along as his senior legate. Lucullus remained in the east serving under Thermus, the governor of Asia, but Gaius Scribonius Curio came home to a praetorship.

It was now time for Sulla to begin the most massive undertaking of all—the awarding of land to his veterans. During the next two years the Dictator intended to demobilize one hundred and twenty thousand men belonging to twenty-three legions. During his first consulship at the end of the Italian War he had handed over the rebel lands of Pompeii, Faesulae, Hadria, Telesia, Grumentum and Bovianum to his Italian War veterans, but that had been a tiny task compared to the present one.

The program was meticulously worked out, and incorporated graduations of reward according to the length of a man’s service, his rank, and his personal valor. Primus pilus centurions in his Mithridatic legions (they all had many decorations into the bargain) were each given five hundred iugera of prime land, whereas the ranker soldiers of Carboan legions which had deserted to Sulla received the smallest pensions, ten iugera of less desirable land.

He began with the confiscated lands of Etruria in the areas which had belonged to Volaterrae and Faesulae, punished yet again. Because Etruria had by now established what amounted to a tradition of opposition to Sulla, he did not at first concentrate his veterans in enclosed soldier—communities; instead he scattered them far and wide, thinking thereby to contain future rebellion. This turned out to be a mistake. Volaterrae rose almost at once, shut its gates after lynching many of Sulla’s veterans, and prepared to withstand a siege. As the town lay in a deep ravine yet was raised up on a very high, flat—topped hill in the middle of the ravine, Volaterrae looked forward to a long defiance. Sulla went there in person to establish his blockade, stayed for three months, then went back to Rome when he saw how long and wearisome a job reducing Volaterrae was going to be.

He learned from this lesson, however, and changed his mind about how his veterans would be settled on their lands; his later colonies were just that, cohesive nuclei of ex-soldiers able to stick together in the face of bitter local opposition. His one overseas experiment occurred on Corsica, where he set up two separate soldier colonies, thinking to civilize the place and eliminate the Corsican curse, banditry. A futile hope.

*

The new law courts settled down well, providing the perfect arena for a new legal star, the young man Marcus Tullius Cicero. Quintus Hortensius (who had thriven in the trial atmosphere of the Assemblies) took time to telescope his act down to the intimate size of the open—air courtroom; whereas Cicero found it ideal. At the end of the old year Cicero appeared alone for the defendant in a preliminary hearing before the younger Dolabella, who was praetor urbanus. The object of the hearing was to decide whether the sum of money known as sponsio should be lodged, or whether the case could proceed without it. Cicero’s advocate opponents were formidable—Hortensius and Philippus. But he won, Hortensius and Philippus lost, and Cicero embarked upon a forensic career which was to have no equal.

It was in June of the year that Sulla was senior consul with Metellus Pius as his junior consul that a twenty-six-year-old nobleman of patrician family, Marcus Valerius Messala Niger, appealed to his good friend, the twenty-six-year-old Marcus Tullius Cicero, to act on behalf of a man who was Niger’s friend as well as his client.

“Sextus Roscius Junior, from Ameria,” said Messala Niger to Cicero. “He’s charged with murdering his father.”

“Oh!” said Cicero, astonished. “You’re a good advocate, my dear Niger. Why not defend him yourself? Murder is juicy, but very easy, you know. No political overtones.”

“That’s what you think,” said Messala Niger grimly. “This case has more political pitfalls than a ditch has sharpened stakes! There is only one man who has a chance of winning, and that man is you, Marcus Tullius. Hortensius recoiled in horror.”

Cicero sat up straighter, a gleam of interest in his dark eyes; he used one of his favorite tricks, dipping his head and shooting Messala Niger a keen glance from under his brows. “A murder case so complicated? How?”

“Whoever takes on the defense of Roscius of Ameria will be taking on Sulla’s whole system of proscription,” said Messala Niger. “In order to get Roscius off, it will be necessary to prove that Sulla and his proscriptions are utterly corrupt.”

The generous mouth with the full lower lip pursed into a soundless whistle. “Ye gods!”

“Ye gods, indeed. Still interested?”

“I don’t know….” Cicero frowned, at war with himself; preservation of his skin was mandatory, and yet a case so difficult had the potential to win him legal laurels no other kind of case could. “Tell me about it, Niger. Then I’ll see.”

Niger settled down to tell his story cleverly enough that Cicero’s interest would be stimulated further. “Sextus Roscius is my own age, and I’ve known him since we were at school together. We both served in our six campaigns under Lucius Caesar and then Sulla in Campania. Roscius’s father owned most of Ameria, including no less than thirteen river frontage properties along the Tiber—fabulously rich! Roscius is his only son. But there are also two cousins, sons of his brother, who are the real villains of the piece. Old Roscius went to Rome on a visit at the beginning of the year, and was murdered in Rome. I don’t know whether the cousins did it, nor does Roscius. Probable, but not necessary.” Messala Niger grimaced. “The news of the father’s murder came to Ameria through an agent of the cousins, certainly. And the most suspicious part about it is that this agent didn’t tell poor Roscius at all! Instead he told the cousins, who hatched a plot to filch all the property off my friend Roscius.”

“I think I begin to see,” said Cicero, whose mind was razor—keen when it came to the criminal perfidies of men.

“Volaterrae had just revolted, and Sulla was there conducting the initial stages of the siege. With him was Chrysogonus.”

There was no need to inform Cicero who was this Chrysogonus; all of Rome knew the infamous bureaucrat in charge of the lists, the books, and all the data pertaining to Sulla’s proscriptions.

“The cousins rode to Volaterrae and were granted an interview with Chrysogonus, who was willing to make a deal with them—but for a huge price. He agreed to forge Roscius’s dead father’s name on one of the old proscription lists. He would then ‘happen to see’ a routine report on the murder, and pretend to ‘remember’ that this name was a proscribed one. That is what transpired. Roscius’s father’s properties—worth a cool six million—were immediately put up for auction by Chrysogonus, who bought them all himself—for two thousand, if you please.”

“I love this villain!” cried Cicero, looking as alert as a huntsman’s hound.

“Well, I do not! I loathe the man!” said Messala Niger.

“Yes, yes, he’s loathsome! But what happened next?”

“All of this occurred before Roscius even knew his father was dead. The first intimation he had was when Cousin Two appeared bearing Chrysogonus’s proscription order, and evicted Roscius from his father’s properties. Chrysogonus kept ten of the thirteen estates for himself and installed Cousin Two on them as his live—in manager and agent. The other three estates Chrysogonus signed over to Cousin One as outright payment. The blow for poor Roscius was a twin one, of course—not only did he learn that his father had been proscribed months before, but also that he was murdered.”

“Did he believe this tissue of lies?” asked Cicero.

“Absolutely. Why should he not have? Everyone with two sesterces to rub together expected to find himself named on a proscription list, whether he lived in Rome or in Ameria. Roscius just believed! And got out.”

“Who smelled the rotten carcass?”

“The elders of the town,” said Messala Niger. “A son is never as sure of his father’s worth and nature as his father’s friends are, which is not illogical. A man’s friends know him without the concomitant emotional distortions suffered by his son.”

“True,” said Cicero, who didn’t get on with his own father.

“So the friends of the old man held a conference, and agreed that there had not been a Marian, Cinnan or Carboan bone in the old man’s entire body. They agreed to ride to Volaterrae and seek an audience with Sulla himself, beg him to reverse the proscription and allow Roscius to inherit. They gathered up masses of evidence and set off at once.”

“Accompanied by which cousin?” asked Cicero shrewdly.

“Quite correct,” said Messala Niger, smiling. “They were joined by Cousin One, who actually had the temerity to assume command of the mission! In the meantime Cousin Two rode at the gallop for Volaterrae to warn Chrysogonus what was in the wind. Thus it was that the deputation never got to see Sulla. It was waylaid by Chrysogonus, who took all the details—and all the masses of evidence!—from them, and promised them that he would see the Dictator reverse his proscription. Don’t worry! was his cry. Everything will be right and Roscius will inherit.”

“Did no one suspect that he was talking to the real owner of ten of the thirteen estates?’’ asked Cicero incredulously.

“Not a one, Marcus Tullius.”

“It’s a sign of the times, isn’t it?”

“I fear so.”

“Go on, please.”

“Two months went by. At the end of them old man Roscius’s friends realized that they had been neatly tricked, for no order rescinding the proscription came through, and Cousin One and Cousin Two were now known to be living on the confiscated property as if they owned it. A few enquiries revealed that Cousin One was the outright owner of three, and Chrysogonus of the other ten. That terrified everyone, as everyone assumed Sulla was a part of the villainy.”

“Do you believe he was?” asked Cicero.

Messala Niger thought long, finally shook his head. “No, Cicero, I doubt it.”

“Why?” asked the born lawyer.

“Sulla is a hard man. Frankly, he terrifies me. They say that in his youth he murdered women for their money, that he got into the Senate over their bodies. Yet I knew him slightly when I was in the army—too junior to be on close terms, of course, but he was always around, always busy, always in control of the job—and he struck me as aristocratically scrupulous. Do you know what I mean by that?”

Cicero felt a tinge of red creeping under his skin, but pretended he was at ease. Did he know what the patrician nobleman Marcus Valerius Messala Niger meant by aristocratic scrupulousness? Oh, yes! No one understood better than Cicero, who was a New Man, and envied patricians like Messala Niger and Sulla very much.

“I think so,” he said.

“He has a dark side to him, Sulla. He’d probably kill you or me without a qualm if it suited him. But he would have a patrician’s reasons for killing us. He wouldn’t do it because he coveted thirteen lush properties on the banks of the Tiber. If it occurred to him to go to an auction of proscribed property and he was able to pick up some very cheap estates, he would. I don’t say he wouldn’t. But conspire to enrich himself or his freedman in a dishonorable way when nothing as vital as his career was at stake? No. I don’t think so. His honor matters to him. I see it in his laws, which I think are honorable laws. I may not agree with him that the tribunes of the plebs must be legislated out of all their power, but he’s done it legally and openly. He’s a Roman patrician.”

“So Sulla doesn’t know,” said Cicero thoughtfully.

“I believe that to be the truth.”

“Pray continue, Marcus Valerius.”

“About the time that the elders of Ameria began to think that Sulla was a part of the conspiracy, my friend Roscius became more vocal. The poor fellow really was utterly flattened for months, you know. It took a long time for him to say anything. But the moment he did begin to say things, there were several attempts on his life. So two months ago he fled to Rome and sought shelter with his father’s old friend, the retired Vestal Metella Balearica. You know, the sister of Metellus Nepos. His other sister was the wife of Appius Claudius Pulcher—she died giving birth to that frightful monster of a child, Publius Clodius.”

“Get on with it, Niger,” said Cicero gently.

“The fact that Roscius knew such powerful people as Metellus Nepos and a retired Vestal Virgin of the Caecilii Metelli gave the two cousins some sleepless nights, it would appear. They began to believe that Roscius just might manage to see Sulla in person. But they didn’t dare murder Roscius, not without risking being found out if the Caecilii Metelli insisted upon an enquiry. So they decided it was better to destroy Roscius’s reputation, by fabricating evidence that he had murdered his own father. Do you know a fellow called Erucius?’’

Cicero’s face twisted in contempt. “Who doesn’t? He’s a professional accusator.”

“Well, he came forward to charge Roscius with the murder of his father. The witnesses to old Roscius’s death were his slaves, and of course they had been sold along with the rest of his estate to Chrysogonus. Therefore there was no likelihood that they would appear to tell the real story! And Erucius is convinced that no advocate of ability will take on Roscius’s defense because every advocate will be too afraid of Sulla to dare say damning things about the proscription process.”

“Then Erucius had better look to his laurels,” said Cicero briskly. “I’ll defend your friend Roscius gladly, Niger.”

“Aren’t you worried that you’ll offend Sulla?”

“Pooh! Rubbish! Nonsense! I know exactly how to do it—and do it, I will! I predict, in fact, that Sulla will thank me,” said Cicero blithely.

Though other cases had been heard in the new Murder Court, the trial of Sextus Roscius of Ameria on a charge of parricide created a huge stir. Sulla’s law stipulated that it be presided over by an ex-aedile, but in that year it was under the presidency of a praetor, Marcus Fannius. Fearlessly Cicero aired the story of Roscius in his actio prima, and left no juror or spectator in any doubt that his main defense was the corruption behind Sulla’s proscriptions.

Then came the final day of the trial, when Cicero himself was to give his final address to the jury. And there, seated on his ivory curule chair to one side of the president’s tribunal, was Lucius Cornelius Sulla.

The presence of the Dictator dismayed Cicero not a jot; instead, it pushed him to hitherto undreamed—of heights of eloquence and brilliance.

“There are three culprits in this hideous affair,” he said, declaiming not to the jury, but to Sulla. “The cousins Titus Roscius Capito and Titus Roscius Magnus are obvious, but actually secondary. What they did, they could not have done without the proscriptions. Without Lucius Cornelius…... Chrysogonus,” he said, pausing so long between the second and the third names that even Messala Niger began to think he might say, “Sulla.”

On went Cicero. “Who exactly is this ‘golden child’? This Chrysogonus? Let me tell you! He is a Greek. There is no disgrace in that. He is an ex-slave. There is no disgrace in that. He is a freedman. There is no disgrace in that. He is the client of Lucius Cornelius Sulla. There is no disgrace in that. He is rich. There is no disgrace in that. He is powerful. There is no disgrace in that. He is the administrator of the proscriptions. There is no disgrace in that—ooops! Ooops, ooops! I beg your collective pardons, Conscript Fathers! You see what happens when one bumps along in a rhetorical rut for too long? I got carried away! I could have gone on saying ‘There is no disgrace in that’ for hours! And oh, what a rhetorical ravine I would have dug for myself!”

Fairly launched, Cicero paused to revel consciously in what he was doing. “Let me say it again. He is the administrator of the proscriptions. And in that there is a monumental, a gigantic, an Olympian disgrace! Do all of you see this splendid man on his curule chair—this model of every Roman virtue, this general without rival, this lawmaker who has brokennew bounds of statesmanship, this brilliant jewel in the crown of the illustrious gens Cornelia? Do all of you see him? Sitting so calmly, Zeus—like in his detachment? Do all of you see him? Then look well!”

Now Cicero turned away from Sulla to glare at the jury from under his brows, a rather sticklike figure, so thin was he even in his toga; and yet he seemed to tower, to have the thews of Hercules and the majesty of Apollo.

“Some years ago this splendid man bought himself a slave. To be his steward. An excellent steward, as things turned out. When this splendid man’s late wife was forced to flee from Rome to Greece, his steward was there to help and console. His steward was there in complete charge of this splendid man’s dependents—wife and children and grandchildren and servants—while our great Lucius Cornelius Sulla strode up the Italian peninsula like a titan. His steward was trusted, and did not betray that trust. So he was freed, and took for himself the first two parts of a mighty name—Lucius Cornelius. As is the custom, for his third name he kept his own original name—Chrysogonus. The golden child. Upon whose head was heaped honor after honor, trust after trust, responsibility after responsibility. He was now not merely the freedman steward of a great household, but also the director, the administrator, the executor of that process which was designed to fulfill two aims: the first, to see a just and rightful punishment meted out to all those traitors who followed Marius, who followed Cinna, who even followed an insect as small as Carbo; and the second, to use the property and estates of traitors as fuel to fan poor impoverished Rome into the flame of prosperity again.”

Back and forth across the open space left in front of Marcus Fannius’s tribunal did Cicero stride, his left arm raised to hold his toga at its left shoulder, his right arm limply by his side. No one moved. Every eye was fixed upon him, men breathed in shallow gasps thinking they didn’t breathe at all.

“So what did he do, this Chrysogonus? All the while keeping his oily smiling bland face toward his employer, his patron, he slithered to exact his revenge on this one who had insulted him, on that one who had impeded him—he toiled mightily in the secret marches of the night with forger’s pen and patron’s trust to slip in this name and that name whose property he slavered for, to conspire with worms and vermin to enrich himself at the expense of his patron, at the expense of Rome. Ah, members of the jury, but he was cunning! How he plotted and schemed to cover his tracks, how he smarmed and greased in the presence of his patron, how he manipulated his little army of pimps and panders—how industriously he worked to make sure that his noble and illustrious patron could have no idea of what was really going on! For that is what happened. Given trust and authority, he abused both in the vilest and most despicable ways.”

The tears began to flow; Cicero sobbed aloud, wrung his hands, stood hunched over in a paroxysm of pain. “Oh, I cannot look at you, Lucius Cornelius Sulla! That it should be I—a mean and simple man from the Latin countryside—a hick, a hayseed, a bucolic shyster—that it should have to be I who must draw the wool from your eyes, who must open them to the—the—what adjective can I find adequate to describe the level of the treachery of your most esteemed client, Lucius Cornelius Chrysogonus? Vile treachery! Disgusting treachery! Despicable treachery! But none of those adjectives is low enough!”

The easy tears were dashed away. “Why did it have to be me? Would that it could have been anybody else! Would that it had been your Pontifex Maximus or your Master of the Horse—great men both, and hung about with honors! But instead the lot has fallen to me. I do not want it. But I must accept it. Because, members of the jury, which do you think I would rather do? Spare the great Lucius Cornelius Sulla this agony by saying nothing about the treachery of Chrysogonus, or spare the life of a man who, though accused of murdering his own father, has actually done nothing to warrant the charge? Yes, you are right! It must be the embarrassment, the public mortification of an honorable and distinguished and legendary man—because it cannot be the unjust conviction of an innocent man.” He straightened, drew himself up. “Members of the jury, I now rest my case.”

The verdict, of course, was a foregone conclusion: ABSOLVO. Sulla rose to his feet and strolled toward Cicero, who found the crowd around him melting away.

“Well done, my skinny young friend,” the Dictator said, and held out his hand. “What an actor you would have made!”

So exhilarated that he felt as if his feet were floating free in air, Cicero laughed, clasped the hand fervently. “What an actor I am, you mean! For what is superlative advocacy except acting out one’s own words?”

“Then you’ll end the Thespis of Sulla’s standing courts.”

“As long as you forgive me for the liberties I had to take in this case, Lucius Cornelius, I will be anything you like.”

“Oh, I forgive you!” said Sulla airily. “I think I could forgive almost anything if it meant I sat through a good show. And with only one exception, I’ve never seen a better amateur production, my dear Cicero. Besides, I’ve been wondering how to get rid of Chrysogonus for some time—I’m not entirely a fool, you know. But it can be ticklish.” The Dictator looked around. “Where is Sextus Roscius?”

Sextus Roscius was produced.

“Sextus Roscius, take back your lands and your reputation, and your dead father’s reputation,” said Sulla. “I am very sorry that the corruption and venality of one I trusted has caused you so much pain. But he will answer for it.”

“Thanks to the brilliance of my advocate, Lucius Cornelius, it has ended well,” said Sextus Roscius shakily.

“There is an epilogue yet to play,” said the Dictator, jerked his head at his lictors, and walked away in the direction of the steps which led up onto the Palatine.

The next day Lucius Cornelius Chrysogonus, who was a Roman citizen of the tribe Cornelia, was pitched headlong from the Tarpeian Rock.

“Think yourself lucky,” said Sulla to him beforehand. “I could have stripped you of your citizenship and had you flogged and crucified. You die a Roman death because you cared so well for my womenfolk when times were hard. I can do nothing more for you than that. I hired you originally because I knew you were a toad. What I didn’t count on was becoming so busy that I was unable to keep an eye on you. But sooner or later it comes out. Bye—bye, Chrysogonus.”

The two cousins Roscius—Capito and Magnus—disappeared from Ameria before they could be apprehended and brought to trial; no further trace of them was ever discovered. As for Cicero, he was suddenly a great name and a hero besides. No one else had taken on the proscriptions and won.