Caesar had seen no reason to hurry home after he left the service of Publius Servilius Vatia; rather, his journey was a tour of exploration of those parts of Asia Province and Lycia he had not yet visited. However, he was back in Rome by the end of September in the year Lepidus and Catulus were consuls to find Rome acutely apprehensive about the conduct of Lepidus, who had left the city to recruit in Etruria before doing what he was supposed to do—hold the curule elections. Civil war was in the air, everyone talked it.
But civil war—real or imagined—was not high on Caesar’s list of priorities. He had personal matters to attend to.
His mother seemed not to have aged at all, though there had been a change in her; she was very sad.
“Because Sulla is dead!” her son accused, a challenge in his voice that went back to the days when he had thought Sulla was her lover.
“Yes.”
“Why? You owed him nothing!”
“I owed him your life, Caesar.”
“Which he put in jeopardy in the first place!”
“I am sorry he is dead,” said Aurelia flatly.
“I am not.”
“Then let us change the subject.”
Sighing, Caesar leaned back in his chair, acknowledging himself defeated. Her chin was up, a sure sign that she would not bend no matter what brilliant arguments he used.
“It is time I took my wife into my bed, Mater.”
Aurelia frowned. “She’s barely sixteen.”
“Too young for a girl to marry, I agree. But Cinnilla has been married for nine years, and that makes her situation quite different. When she greeted me I could see in her eyes that she is ready to come to my bed.”
“Yes, I think you’re right, my son. Though your grandfather would have said that the union of two patricians is fraught with peril in childbirth. I would have liked to see her just a little more grown up before she dealt with that.”
“Cinnilla will be fine, Mater.”
“Then when?”
“Tonight.”
“But there should be some sort of reinforcement of marriage first, Caesar. A family dinner—both your sisters are in Rome.”
“There will be no family dinner. And no fuss.”
Nor was there. Having been told no fuss, Aurelia didn’t mention the coming change in her status to her daughter-in-law, who, when she went to go to her own little room, found herself detained by Caesar in a suddenly empty triclinium.
“It’s this way today, Cinnilla,” Caesar said, taking her by the hand and leading her toward the master’s sleeping cubicle.
She went pale. “Oh! But I’m not ready!”
“For this, no girl ever is. A good reason to get it over and done with. Then we can settle down together comfortably.”
It had been a good idea to give her no time to spend in thinking about what was to come, though of course she had thought of little else for four long years. He helped her off with her clothes, and because he was incurably neat folded them carefully, enjoying this evidence of feminine occupation of a room that had known no mistress since Aurelia had moved out after his father died. Cinnilla sat on the edge of the bed and watched him do this, but when he began to divest himself of his own clothes she shut her eyes.
Done, he sat beside her and took both her hands in his, resting them upon his bare thigh.
“Do you know what will happen, Cinnilla?”
“Yes,” she said, eyes still closed.
“Then look at my face.”
The big dark eyes opened, fixed themselves painfully on his face, which was smiling and, she fancied, full of love.
“How pretty you are, wife, and how nicely made.” He touched her breasts, full and high, with nipples almost the color of her tawny skin. Her hands came up to caress his, she sighed.
Arms about her now, he kissed her, and this she found just wonderful, so long dreamed of, so much better than the dreams. She opened her lips to him, kissed him back, caressed him, found herself lying alongside him on the bed, her body responding with delicious flinches and shivers to this full—length contact with his. His skin, she discovered, was quite as silky as her own, and the pleasure it gave her to feel it warmed her to the quick.
Though she had known exactly what would happen, imagination was no substitute for reality. For so many years she had loved him, made him the focus of her life, that to be his wife in flesh as well as at law was glorious. Worth the wait, the wait which had become a part of her state of exaltation. In no hurry, he made sure she was absolutely ready for him, and did nothing to her that belonged to more sophisticated realms than the dreams of virgin girls. He hurt her a little, but not nearly enough to spoil her spiraling excitement; to feel him within her was best of all, and she held him within her until some magical and utterly unexpected spasm invaded every part of her. That, no one had told her about. But that, she understood, was what made women want to remain married.
When they rose at dawn to eat bread still hot from the oven and water cold from the stone cistern in the light—well garden, they found the dining room filled with roses and a flagon of light sweet wine on the sideboard. Tiny dolls of wool and ears of wheat hung from the lamps. Then came Aurelia to kiss them and wish them well, and the servants one by one, and Lucius Decumius and his sons.
“How nice it is to be properly married at last!” said Caesar.
“I quite agree,” said Cinnilla, who looked as beautiful and fulfilled as any bride ought to look after her wedding night.
Gaius Matius, last to arrive, found the little celebratory breakfast enormously touching. None knew better than he how many women Caesar had enjoyed; yet this woman was his wife, and how wonderful it was to see that he was not disappointed. For himself, Gaius Matius doubted that he could have gratified a girl of Cinnilla’s age after living with her as a sister for nine long years. But evidently Caesar was made of sterner stuff.
*
It was at the first meeting of the Senate Caesar attended that Philippus succeeded in persuading that body to summon Lepidus back to Rome to hold the curule elections. And at the second meeting he heard Lepidus’s curt refusal read out, to be followed by the senatorial decree ordering Catulus back to Rome.
But between that meeting and the third one Caesar had a visit from his brother-in-law, Lucius Cornelius Cinna.
“There will be civil war,” young Cinna said, “and I want you to be on the winning side.”
“Winning side?”
“Lepidus’s side.”
“He won’t win, Lucius. He can’t win.”
“With all of Etruria and Umbria behind him he can’t lose!”
“That’s the sort of thing people have been saying since the beginning of the world. I only know one person who can’t lose.”
“And who might that be?” Cinna demanded, annoyed.
“Myself.”
A statement Cinna saw as exquisitely funny; he rolled about with laughter. “You know,” he said when he was able, “you really are an odd fish, Caesar!”
“Perhaps I’m not a fish at all. I might be a fowl, which would certainly make an odd-looking fish. Or I might be a side of mutton on a hook in a butcher’s stall.”
“I never know when you’re joking,” said Cinna uncertainly.
“That’s because I rarely joke.”
“Rubbish! You weren’t serious when you said you were the only man who couldn’t lose!”
“I was absolutely serious.”
“You won’t join Lepidus?”
“Not if he were poised at the gates of Rome, Lucius.”
“Well, you’re wrong. I’m joining him.”
“I don’t blame you. Sulla’s Rome beggared you.”
And off went young Cinna to Saturnia, where Lepidus and his legions lay. Issued this time by Catulus on behalf of the Senate, the second summons went to Lepidus, and again Lepidus refused to return to Rome. Before Catulus went back to Campania and his own legions, Caesar asked for an interview.
“What do you want?” asked the son of Catulus Caesar coldly; he had never liked this too—beautiful, too—gifted young man.
“I want to join your staff in case there’s war.”
“I won’t have you on my staff.”
Caesar’s eyes changed, assumed the deadly look Sulla’s used to get. “You don’t have to like me, Quintus Lutatius, to use me.”
“How would I use you? Or to put it better, what use would you be to me? I hear you’ve already applied to join Lepidus.”
“That’s a lie!”
“Not from what I hear. Young Cinna went to see you before he left Rome and the two of you fixed it all up.”
“Young Cinna came to wish me well, as is the duty of a brother-in-law after his sister’s marriage has been consummated.”
Catulus turned his back. “You may have convinced Sulla of your loyalty, Caesar, but you’ll never convince me that you’re anything other than a troublemaker. I won’t have you because I won’t have any man on my staff whose loyalty is suspect.”
“When—and if!—Lepidus marches, cousin, I will fight for Rome. If not as a member of your staff, then in some other capacity. I am a patrician Roman of the same blood family as you, and nobody’s client or adherent.” Halfway to the door, Caesar paused. “You would do well to file me in your mind as a man who will always abide by Rome’s constitution. I will be consul in my year—but not because a loser like Lepidus has made himself Dictator of Rome. Lepidus doesn’t have the courage or the steel, Catulus. Nor, I might add, do you.”
Thus it was that Caesar remained in Rome while events ran at an ever—accelerating rate toward rebellion. The senatus consultum de re publica defendenda was passed, Flaccus Princeps Senatus died, the second interrex held elections, and finally Lepidus marched on Rome. Together with several thousand others of station high and low and in between, Caesar presented himself in full armor to Catulus on the Campus Martius; he was sent as a part of a group of several hundred to garrison the Wooden Bridge from Transtiberim into the city. Because Catulus would sanction no kind of command for this winner of the Civic Crown, Caesar did duty as a man in the ranks. He saw no action, and when the battle under the Servian Walls of the Quirinal was over, he betook himself home without bothering to volunteer for the chase after Lepidus up the coast of Etruria.
Catulus’s arrogance and spite were not forgotten. But Gaius Julius Caesar was a patient hater; Catulus’s turn would come when the time was right. Until then, Catulus would wait.
*
Much to Caesar’s chagrin, when he had arrived in Rome he found the younger Dolabella already in exile and Gaius Verres strutting around oozing virtue and probity. Verres was now the husband of Metellus Caprarius’s daughter—and very popular with the knight electors, who thought his giving evidence against the younger Dolabella was a great compliment to the disenjuried Ordo Equester—here was a senator who was not afraid to indict one of his fellow senators!
However, Caesar let it be known through Lucius Decumius and Gaius Matius that he would act as advocate for anyone in the Subura, and busied himself during the months which saw the downfall of Lepidus and Brutus—and the rise of Pompey—with a series of court cases humble enough, yet highly successful. His legal reputation grew, connoisseurs of advocacy and rhetoric began to attend whichever court it was he pleaded before—mostly the urban or foreign praetor’s, but occasionally the Murder Court. Contrive to smear him though Catulus did, people listened to Catulus less and less because they liked what Caesar had to say, not to mention how he said it.
When some of the cities of Macedonia and central Greece approached him to prosecute the elder Dolabella (back from his extended governorship because Appius Claudius Pulcher had finally arrived in his province), Caesar consented. This was the first really important trial he had undertaken, for it was to be heard in the quaestio de repetundae—the Extortion Court—and involved a man of highest family and great political clout. He knew little of the circumstances behind this elder Dolabella’s governorship, but proceeded to interview possible witnesses and gather evidence with meticulous care. His ethnarch clients found him a delight; scrupulously considerate of their rank, always pleasant and easy to get on with. Most amazing of all did they find his memory—what he had heard he never forgot, and would often seize upon some tiny, inadvertent statement which turned out to be far more important than anyone had realized.
“However,” he said to his clients on the morning that the trial opened, “be warned. The jury is composed entirely of senators, and senatorial sympathies are very much on Dolabella’s side. He’s seen as a good governor because he managed to keep the Scordisci at bay. I don’t think we can win.”
They didn’t win. Though the evidence was so strong only a senatorial jury hearing the case of a fellow senator could have ignored it—Caesar’s oratory was superb—the verdict was ABSOLVO. Caesar didn’t apologize to his clients, nor were they disappointed in his performance. Both the forensic presentation and Caesar’s speeches were hailed as the best in at least a generation, and men flocked to ask him to publish his speeches.
“They will become textbooks for students of rhetoric and the law,” said Marcus Tullius Cicero, asking for copies for himself. “You shouldn’t have lost, of course, but I’m very glad I got back from abroad in time to hear you best Hortensius and Gaius Cotta.”
“I’m very glad too, Cicero. It’s one thing to be gushed over by Cethegus, quite another to be asked crisply by an advocate of your standing for copies of my work,” said Caesar, who was indeed pleased that Cicero should ask.
“You can teach me nothing about oratory,” said Cicero, quite unconsciously beginning to demolish his compliment, “but rest assured, Caesar, that I shall study the way you investigated your case and presented your evidence very closely.” They strolled up the Forum together, Cicero still talking. “What fascinates me is how you’ve managed to project your voice. In normal conversation it’s so deep! Yet when you speak to a crowd you pitch it high and clear, and it carries splendidly. Who taught you that?’’
“No one,” said Caesar, looking surprised. “I just noticed that men with deep voices were harder by far to hear than men with higher voices. So since I like to be heard, I turned myself into a tenor.”
“Apollonius Molon—I’ve been studying with him for the last two years—says it all depends on the length of a man’s neck what sort of voice he has. The longer the neck, the deeper the voice. And you do have a long, scraggy neck! Luckily,” he added complacently, “my neck is exactly the right length.”
“Short,” said Caesar, eyes dancing.
“Medium,” said Cicero firmly.
“You look well, and you’ve put on some much-needed weight.”
“I am well. And itching to be back in the courts. Though,” said Cicero thoughtfully, “I do not think I will match my skills against yours. Some titans should never clash. I fancy the likes of Hortensius and Gaius Cotta too.”
“I expected better of them,” said Caesar. “If the jury hadn’t made up its mind before the trial began instead of paying attention to my case, they would have lost, you know. They were sloppy and clumsy.”
“I agree. Gaius Cotta is your uncle, is he not?”
“Yes. Not that it matters. He and I enjoy a clash.”
They stopped to buy a pasty from a vendor who had been selling his famous savory snacks for years outside the State House of the flamen Dialis.
“I believe,” said Cicero, wolfing his pasty down (he liked his food), “that there is still considerable legal doubt about your erstwhile flaminate. Aren’t you tempted to use it and move into that commodious and very nice house behind Gavius’s stall there? I understand you live in an apartment in the Subura. Not the right address for an advocate with your style, Caesar!”
Caesar shuddered, threw the remainder of his turnover in the direction of a begging bird. “Not if I lived in the meanest hovel on the Esquiline, Cicero, would I be tempted!” he declared.
“Well, I must say I’m glad to be on the Palatine these days,” Cicero said, starting on his second pasty. “My brother, Quintus, has the old family house on the Carinae,” he said grandly, just as if his family had owned it for generations rather than bought it when he had been a boy. He thought of something, and giggled. “Speaking of acquittals and the like, you heard what Quintus Calidius said after a jury of his peers convicted him in the Extortion Court, didn’t you?”
“I’m afraid I missed it. Do enlighten me.”
“He said he wasn’t surprised he lost, because the going rate to bribe a jury in these days of Sulla’s all—senatorial courts is three hundred thousand sesterces, and he just couldn’t lay his hands on that kind of cash.”
Caesar saw the funny side too, and laughed. “Then I must remember to stay out of the Extortion Court!”
“Especially when Lentulus Sura is foreman of the jury.”
As Publius Cornelius Lentulus Sura had been the foreman of the elder Dolabella’s jury, Caesar’s brows rose. “That is handy to know, Cicero!”
“My dear fellow, there is absolutely nothing I can’t tell you about our law courts!” said Cicero, waving one hand in a magnificent gesture. “If you have any questions, just ask me.”
“I will, be sure of it,” said Caesar. He shook hands with Cicero and walked off in the direction of the despised Subura.
Quintus Hortensius ducked out from behind a convenient column to join Cicero while he was still watching Caesar’s tall form diminishing in the distance.
“He was very good,” said Hortensius. “Give him a few more years of experience, my dear Cicero, and you and I will have to look to our laurels.”
“Give him an honest jury, my dear Hortensius, and your laurels would have been off your head this morning.”
“Unkind!”
“It won’t last, you know.”
“What?”
“Juries composed entirely of senators.”
“Nonsense! The Senate is back in control forever.”
“That is nonsense. There’s a swell in the community to have their powers restored to the tribunes of the plebs. And when they have their old powers back, Quintus Hortensius, the juries will be made up of knights again.”
Hortensius shrugged. “It makes no difference to me, Cicero. Senators or knights, a bribe is a bribe—when necessary.”
“I do not bribe my juries,” said Cicero stiffly.
“I know you don’t. Nor does he.” Hortensius flapped his hand in the direction of the Subura. “But it’s an accepted custom, my dear fellow, an accepted custom!”
“A custom which can afford an advocate no satisfaction. When I win a case I like to know I won it on my merits, not on how much money my client gave me to dole out in bribes.”
“Then you’re a fool and you won’t last.”
Cicero’s good-looking but not classically handsome face went stiff. The brown eyes flashed dangerously. “I’ll outlast you, Hortensius! Never doubt it!”
“I am too strong to move.”
“That was what Antaeus said before Hercules lifted him off the ground. Ave, Quintus Hortensius.”
*
At the end of January in the following year, Cinnilla gave birth to Caesar’s daughter, Julia, a frost—fair and delicate mite who pleased father and mother enormously.
“A son is a great expense, dearest wife,” said Caesar, “whereas a daughter is a political asset of infinite value when her lineage is patrician on both sides and she has a good dowry. One can never know how a son will turn out, but our Julia is perfect. Like her grandmother Aurelia, she will have her pick of dozens of suitors.”
“I can’t see much prospect for the good dowry,” said the mother, who had not had an easy time of it during labor, but was now recovering well.
“Don’t worry, Cinnilla my lovely! By the time Julia is old enough to marry, the dowry will be there.”
Aurelia was in her element, having taken charge of the baby and fallen head—over—heels in love with this grandchild. She had four others by now, Lia’s two sons by their different fathers and Ju—Ju’s daughter and son, but none of them lived in her house. Nor were they the progeny of her son, the light of her life.
“She will keep her blue eyes, they’re very pale,” said Aurelia, delighted baby Julia had thrown to her father’s side, “and her hair has no more color than ice.”
“I’m glad you can see hair,” said Caesar gravely. “To me she looks absolutely bald—and that, since she’s a Caesar and therefore supposed to have a thick head of hair, is not welcome.”
“Rubbish! Of course she has hair! Wait until she’s one year old, my son, and then you’ll see that she has a thick head of hair. It will never darken much. She’ll be silver rather than gold, the precious little thing.”
“She looks as homely as poor Gnaea to me.”
“Caesar, Caesar! She’s newborn! And she’s going to look very like you.”
“What a fate,” said Caesar, and departed.
He proceeded to the city’s most prestigious inn, on the corner of the Forum Romanum and the Clivus Orbius; he had received a message that his clients who had commissioned him to prosecute the elder Dolabella were back in Rome, and anxious to see him.
“We have another case for you,” said the leader of the Greek visitors, Iphicrates of Thessalonica.
“I’m flattered,” said Caesar, frowning. “But who is there you could be interested in prosecuting? Appius Claudius Pulcher hasn’t been governor long enough to bring a case against him, surely, even if you could persuade the Senate to consent to trying a governor still in office.”
“This is an odd task which has nothing to do with Macedonian governors,” said Iphicrates. “We want you to prosecute Gaius Antonius Hybrida for atrocities he committed while he was a prefect of cavalry under Sulla ten years ago.”
“Ye gods! After all this time, why?”
“We do not expect to win, Caesar. That is not the object of our mission. Simply, our experiences under the elder of the two Dolabellae has brought home to us forcibly that there are some Romans put over us who are little better than animals. And we think it high time that the city of Rome was made aware of this. Petitions are useless. No one bothers to read them, least of all the Senate. Charges of treason or extortion are rarefied businesses in courts only the upper classes of Rome bother to attend. What we want is to attract the attention of the knights, and even of the lower classes. So we thought of a trial in the Murder Court, a juicy arena all classes attend. And when we cast around for a suitable subject, the name of Gaius Antonius Hybrida leaped to every mind immediately.”
“What did he do?” Caesar asked.
“He was the prefect of cavalry in charge of the districts of Thespiae, Eleusis and Orchomenus during the time when Sulla or some of his army lived in Boeotia. But he did very little soldiering. Instead he found delight in terrible pleasures—torture, maiming, rape of women and men, boys and girls, murder.”
“Hybrida?”
“Yes, Hybrida.”
“Well, I always knew he was a typical Antonian—drunk more than sober, incapable of keeping any money in his purse, avid for women and food in enormous excess.” An expression of distaste appeared on Caesar’s face. “But torture? Even for an Antonian, that’s not usual. I’d believe it quicker of an Ahenobarbus!”
“Our evidence is absolutely unassailable, Caesar.”
“I suppose he must get it from his mother. She wasn’t a Roman, though I always heard she was a decent enough woman. An Apulian. But the Apulians are not barbarians, and what you describe is pure barbarism. Even Gaius Verres didn’t go so far!”
“Our evidence is absolutely unassailable,” said Iphicrates again. He looked a little sly. “Now perhaps you understand our plight: who in Rome’s highest circles will believe us unless all of Rome is talking, and all of Rome sees our evidence with its own eyes?”
“You have victims for witnesses?”
“Dozens of them if necessary. People of unimpeachable virtue and standing. Some without eyes, some without ears, some without tongues, some without hands—or feet—or legs—or genitals—or wombs—or arms—or skin—or noses—or combinations of these. The man was a beast. So were his cronies, though they do not matter, as they were not of the high nobility.”
Caesar looked sick. “His victims lived, then.”
“Most of them lived, that is true. Antonius, you see, thought that what he did was an art. And the art lay in inflicting the most pain and dismemberment without death ensuing. Antonius’s greatest joy was to ride back into one of his towns months later to see that his victims still lived.”
“Well, it will be awkward for me, but I will certainly take the case,” said Caesar sternly.
“Awkward? How, awkward?”
“His elder brother, Marcus, is married to my first cousin once removed—the daughter of Lucius Caesar, who was consul and later murdered by Gaius Marius. There are three little boys—Hybrida’s nephews—who are my first cousins twice removed. It is not considered good form to prosecute members of one’s own family, Iphicrates.”
“But is the actual relationship one which extends to Gaius Antonius Hybrida? Your cousin is not married to him.”
“True, and it is for that reason I will take the case. But many will disapprove. The blood does link in Julia’s three sons.”
It was Lucius Decumius he chose to talk to, rather than to Gaius Matius or someone else closer to his rank.
“You hear everything, dad. But have you heard of this?”
Having been dowered with a physical apparatus incapable of looking older when he was younger and younger when he was older, Lucius Decumius remained ever the same; Caesar was hard put to calculate his age, which he guessed at around sixty.
“A bit, not much. His slaves don’t last beyond six months, yet you never sees them buried. I always gets suspicious when I never sees them buried. Usually means all sorts of nasty antics.”
“Nothing is more despicable than cruelty to a slave!”
“Well, you’d think so, Caesar. You got the world’s best mother, you been brought up right.”
“It should not have to do with how one is brought up!” said Caesar angrily. “It surely has to do with one’s innate nature. I can understand such atrocities when they’re perpetrated by barbarians—their customs, traditions and gods ask things of them which we Romans outlawed centuries ago. To think of a Roman nobleman—one of the Antonii!—taking pleasure in inflicting such suffering—oh, dad, I find it hard to believe!”
But Lucius Decumius merely looked wise. “It’s all around you, Caesar, and you knows it is. Maybe not quite so horrible, but that’s mostly because people is afraid of getting caught. You just consider for a moment! This Antonius Hybrida, he’s a Roman nobleman just like you say. The courts protects him and his own sort protects him. What’s he got to be afraid of, once he starts? All what stops most people starting, Caesar, is the fear of getting caught. Getting caught means punishment. And the higher a man is, the further he’s got to fall. But just sometimes you finds a man with the clout to be whatever he wants to be who goes ahead and is what he wants to be. Like Antonius Hybrida. Not many like him in any place. Not many! But there’s always some, Caesar. Always some.”
“Yes, you’re right. Of course you’re right.” The eyelids fell tiredly, blocked out Caesar’s thoughts. “What you’re saying is that such men must be brought to book. Punished.”
“Unless you wants a lot more of the same. Let one off and two more gets daring.”
“So I must bring him to book. That won’t be easy.”
“It won’t be easy.”
“Aside from dark rumors of disappearing slaves, what else do you know about him, dad?”
“Not much, except that he’s hated. Tradesmen hates him. So do ordinary people. When he pinches a sweet little girl as he walks down the street, he pinches too hard, makes her cry.”
“And where does my cousin Julia fit into all this?”
“Ask your mother, Caesar, not me!”
“I can’t ask my mother, Lucius Decumius!”
Lucius Decumius thought about that, and nodded. “No, you can’t, right enough.” He paused to ponder. “Well, that Julia’s a silly woman—not one of your smarter Julias for sure! Her Antonius is a bit of a lad, if you follows me, but not cruel. Thoughtless. Don’t know when to give his boys a good kick up the arse, little beggars.”
“You mean his boys run wild?”
“As a forest boar.”
“Let me see…. Marcus, Gaius, Lucius. Oh, I wish I knew more about family matters! I don’t listen to the women talking, is the trouble. My mother could tell me in an instant.... But she’s too clever, dad, she’d want to know why I’m interested, and then she’d try to persuade me not to take the case. After which we’d quarrel. Far better that when she does learn I’m taking the case, it’s an accomplished fact.” He sighed, looked rueful. “I think I’d better hear more about Hybrida’s brother’s boys, dad.”
Lucius Decumius screwed up his eyes, pursed his lips. “I sees them about the Subura—shouldn’t be scampering in the Subura with no pedagogue or servant, but they does. Steal food from the shops, more to torment than because they wants it.”
“How old are they?”
“Can’t tell you exactly, but Marcus looks about twelve in size and acts five in mind, so put him at seven or eight. The other two is littler.”
“Yes, they’re hulking brutes, all the Antonii. I take it the father of these boys hasn’t much money.”
“Always on the edge of disaster, Caesar.”
“I won’t do him or his boys any good if I prosecute, then.”
“You won’t.”
“I have to take the case, dad.”
“Well, I knows that!”
“What I need are some witnesses. Preferably free men—or women—or children—who are willing to testify. He must be doing it here too. And his victims won’t all be vanished slaves.”
“I’ll go looking, Caesar.”
His womenfolk knew the moment he came in the front door that some trouble had come upon him, but neither Aurelia nor Cinnilla tried to discover its nature. Under more normal circumstances Aurelia certainly would have, but the baby occupied her attention more than she would have cared to admit, so she missed the significance of Caesar’s mood. And therefore the chance to talk him out of prosecuting Gaius Antonius Hybrida, whose nephews were Caesar’s close cousins.
*
The Murder Court was the logical venue, but the more Caesar thought about the case the less he liked the idea of a trial in the Murder Court. For one thing, the president was the praetor Marcus Junius Juncus, who resented his allocation to an ex-aedile’s court, but no ex-aediles had volunteered this year; Caesar had already clashed with him during a case he had pleaded in January. The other great difficulty was the un—Roman litigants. It was very difficult indeed in any court to get a favorable verdict when the plaintiffs were foreign nationals and the defendant a Roman of high birth and standing. All very well for his clients to say that they didn’t mind losing the case, but Caesar knew a judge like Juncus would ensure the proceedings were kept quiet, the court shoved away somewhere designed to discourage a large audience. And the worst of it was that the tribune of the plebs Gnaeus Sicinius was monopolizing Forum audiences by agitating ceaselessly for a full restoration of all the powers which had used to belong to the tribunes of the plebs. Nobody was interested in anything else, especially after Sicinius had come out with a witticism already going down in the collection of every literary dilettante who amassed political witticisms.
“Why,” the consul Gaius Scribonius Curio had asked him, exasperated, “is it that you harass me and my colleague Gnaeus Octavius, you harass the praetors, the aediles, your fellow tribunes of the plebs, Publius Cethegus, all our consulars and great men, bankers like Titus Atticus, even the poor quaestors!—and yet you never say a word against Marcus Licinius Crassus? Isn’t Marcus Crassus worthy of your venom? Or is it Marcus Crassus who is putting you up to your antics? Go on, Sicinius, you yapping little dog, tell me why you leave Crassus alone!”
Well aware that Curio and Crassus had had a falling—out, Sicinius pretended to give the question serious consideration before answering.
“Because Marcus Crassus has hay wrapped around both his horns,” he said gravely.
The very large audience had collapsed on the ground laughing, appreciating every nuance. The sight of an ox with hay wrapped around one horn was common enough; the hay was a warning that the animal might look placid, but it would suddenly gore with the hayed horn. Oxen with hay wrapped around both horns were avoided like lepers. Had Marcus Crassus not possessed the unruffled, bovine look and build of an ox, the remark would not have been so apt; but what made it so hilarious was the inference that Marcus Crassus was such a prick he had two of them.
Therefore, how to attract away some of Sicinius’s devoted following? How to give the case the audience it deserved? And while Caesar chewed these matters over, his clients journeyed back to Boeotia to gather evidence and witnesses in the exact way Caesar had instructed; the months went on, the clients returned, and still Caesar had not applied to Juncus to hear the case.
“I do not understand!” cried Iphicrates, disappointed. “If we do not hurry, we may not be heard at all!”
“I have a feeling there’s a better way,” said Caesar. “Be patient with me a little longer, Iphicrates. I promise I will make sure you and your colleagues don’t have to wait in Rome for more months. Your witnesses are well hidden?”
“Absolutely, just as you ordered. In a villa outside Cumae.”
And then one day early in June, the answer came. Caesar had paused by the tribunal of the praetor peregrinus, Marcus Terentius Varro Lucullus. The younger brother of the man most of Rome deemed her brightest man of the future was very like Lucullus—and very devoted to him. Separated as children by the vicissitudes of fortune, the bond had not weakened; rather, it had grown much stronger. Lucullus had delayed his climb up the cursus honorum so that he could be curule aedile in tandem with Varro Lucullus, and together they had thrown games of such brilliance that people still talked about them. It was commonly believed that both the Luculli would achieve the consulship in the near future; they were as popular with the voters as they were aristocratic.
“How goes your day?” Caesar asked, smiling; he liked the foreign praetor, in whose court he had pleaded many little cases with a confidence and freedom few other judges engendered. Varro Lucullus was extremely knowledgeable about law, and a man of great integrity.
“My day goes boringly,” said Varro Lucullus, answering the smile with one of his own.
Somehow Caesar’s brilliant idea was born and reached full maturity between his question and Varro Lucullus’s answer; that was usually what happened, the lightning perception of how to go about some difficult thing after months of puzzling.
“When are you leaving Rome to hear the rural assizes?”
“It’s traditional for the foreign praetor to pop up on the Campanian seaside just as summer reaches its most unendurable pitch,” said Varro Lucullus, and sighed. “However, it looks as if I’ll be tied down in Rome for at least another month.”
“Then don’t cut it short!” said Caesar.
Varro Lucullus blinked; one moment he had been talking to a man whose legal acumen and ability he prized highly, the next moment he was gazing at the space where Caesar had been.
“I know how to do it!” Caesar was saying shortly afterward to Iphicrates in the private parlor he had hired at his inn.
“How?” asked the important man of Thessalonica eagerly.
“I knew I was right to delay, Iphicrates! We’re not going to use the Murder Court, nor will we lay criminal charges against Gaius Antonius Hybrida.”
“Not lay criminal charges?” gasped Iphicrates. “But that is the whole object!”
“Nonsense! The whole object is to create a huge stir in Rome. We won’t do that in Juncus’s court, nor will his court enable us to steal Sicinius’s Forum audiences. Juncus will tuck himself away in the smallest, most airless corner of the Basilica Porcia or Opimia, everyone compelled to be present will faint from the heat, and no one who is not compelled to be present will be there at all. The jury will hate us and Juncus will gallop through the proceedings, egged on by jurors and advocates.”
“But what other alternative is there?”
Caesar leaned forward. “I will lay this case before the foreign praetor as a civil suit,” he said. “Instead of charging Hybrida with murder, I will sue him for damages arising out of his conduct while a prefect of cavalry in Greece ten years ago. And you will lodge an enormous sponsio with the foreign praetor—a sum of money far greater than Hybrida’s whole fortune. Could you raise two thousand talents? And be prepared if something goes wrong to lose them?”
Iphicrates drew a breath. “The sum is indeed enormous, but we came prepared to spend whatever it takes to make Rome see that she must cease to plague us with men like Hybrida—and the elder Dolabella. Yes, Caesar,” said Iphicrates deliberately, “we will raise two thousand talents. It will take some doing, but we will find it here in Rome.”
“All right, then we lodge two thousand talents in sponsio with the foreign praetor in the civil suit against Gaius Antonius Hybrida. That will create a sensation in itself. It will also demonstrate to the whole of Rome that we are serious.”
“Hybrida won’t be able to find a quarter of that sum.”
“Absolutely right, Iphicrates, he won’t. But it is in the jurisdiction of the foreign praetor to waive the lodgement of sponsio if he considers there is a case to be answered. And if there’s one thing about Varro Lucullus, it’s that he is fair. He will waive Hybrida’s matching sum, I’m sure of it.”
“But if we win and Hybrida has not lodged two thousand talents as his matching sponsio, what happens?”
“Then, Iphicrates, he has to find it! Because he has to pay it! That’s how a civil suit works under Roman law.”
“Oh, I see!” Iphicrates sat back and linked his arms about his knees, smiling gently. “Then if he loses, he’s a beggar. He will have to leave Rome a bankrupt—and he will never be able to return, will he?”
“He will never be able to return.”
“On the other hand, if we lose, he takes our two thousand?”
“That’s right.”
“Do you think we will lose, Caesar?”
“No.”
Then why are you warning me that something could go wrong? Why do you say we must be prepared to forfeit our money?”
Frowning, Caesar tried to explain to this Greek what he, a Roman through and through, had absorbed from infancy. “Because Roman law is not as watertight as it seems. A lot depends on the judge, and the judge under Sulla’s law cannot be Varro Lucullus. In that respect, I pin my faith upon Varro Lucullus’s integrity, that he will choose a judge prepared to be dispassionate. And then there is another risk. Sometimes a brilliant advocate will find a hole in the law that can let in an entire ocean—Hybrida will be defended by the best advocates in Rome.” Caesar tensed, held his hands like claws. “If I can be inspired to find an answer to our problem, do you think there is no one else capable of being inspired to find an answer to Hybrida’s problem? That is why men like me enjoy legal practice, Iphicrates, when judge and process are free from taint or bias! No matter how conclusive and watertight we think our case is, beware of the bright fellow on the other side. What if Cicero defends? Formidable! Mind you, I don’t think he’ll be tempted when he learns the details. But Hortensius wouldn’t be so fussy. You must remember too that one side has to lose. We are fighting for a principle, and that is the most dangerous reason of all for going to law.”
“I will consult with my colleagues and give you our answer tomorrow,” said Iphicrates.
The answer was that Caesar should proceed to ask the foreign praetor to hear a civil suit against Gaius Antonius Hybrida. Down to Varro Lucullus’s tribunal went Caesar with his clients, there to apply to lodge a sponsio of two thousand talents, the sum in damages being demanded from Hybrida.
Varro Lucullus sat mute, deprived of breath, then shook his head in wonder and held out his hand to examine the bank draft. “This is real and you are serious,” he said to Caesar.
“Absolutely, praetor peregrinus.’’
“Why not the Extortion Court?”
“Because the suit does not involve extortion. It involves murder—but more than murder! It involves torture, rape, and permanent maiming. After so many years, my clients do not wish to seek criminal justice. They are seeking damages on behalf of the people of Thespiae, Eleusis and Orchomenus whom Gaius Antonius Hybrida damaged. These people are incapable of working, of earning their livings, of being parents or husbands or wives. To support them in comfort and with kindness is costing the other citizens of Thespiae, Eleusis and Orchomenus a fortune that my clients consider Gaius Antonius Hybrida should be paying. This is a civil suit, praetor peregrinus, to recover damages.”
“Then present your evidence in brief, advocate, so that I may decide whether there is a case to be answered.”
“I will offer before your court and the judge you appoint the testimony of eight victims or witnesses of atrocities. Six of these will be residents of the towns of Thespiae, Eleusis and Orchomenus. The other two are residents of the city of Rome, one a freedman citizen, the other a Syrian national.”
“Why do you offer Roman testimony, advocate?”
“To show the court that Gaius Antonius Hybrida is still indulging in his atrocious practices, praetor peregrinus.”
Two hours later Varro Lucullus accepted the suit in his court and lodged the Greek sponsio. A summons was issued against Gaius Antonius Hybrida to appear to answer the charges on the morrow. After which Varro Lucullus appointed his judge. Publius Cornelius Cethegus. Keeping his face straight, Caesar cheered inside. Brilliant! The judge was a man so wealthy he based his whole power upon the claim that he could not be bought, a man so cultivated and refined that he wept when a pet fish or a lapdog died, a man who covered his head with his toga so he couldn’t see a chicken being decapitated in the marketplace. And a man who had no love whatsoever for the Antonii. Would Cethegus consider that a fellow senator must be protected, no matter what the crime? Or the civil suit? No, not Cethegus! After all, there was no possibility of loss of Roman citizenship or of exile. This was civil litigation, only money at stake.
Word ran round the Forum Romanum quicker than feet could run; a crowd began to gather within moments of Caesar’s appearance before the foreign praetor’s tribunal. As Caesar stimulated interest by enlarging upon the injuries Hybrida’s victims had sustained, the crowd grew, hardly able to wait for the case to begin on the morrow—could there truly be such awful sights to be seen as a flayed man and a woman whose genitalia had been so cut up she couldn’t even urinate properly?
News of the case beat Caesar home, as he could see from his mother’s face.
“What is this I hear?” she demanded, bristling. “You’re acting in a case against Gaius Antonius Hybrida? That is not possible! There is a blood tie.”
“There is no blood tie between Hybrida and me, Mater.”
“His nephews are your cousins!”
“They are his brother’s children, and the blood tie is from their mother. Consanguinity could only matter if it were Hybrida’s sons—did he have any, that is!—who were my cousins.”
“You can’t do this to a Julia!”
“I dislike the family implication, Mater, but there is no direct involvement of a Julia.”
“The Julii Caesares have allied themselves in marriage with the Antonii! That is reason enough!”
“No, it is not! And more fool the Julii Caesares for seeking an alliance with the Antonii! They’re boors and wastrels! For I tell you, Mater, that I would not let a Julia of my own family marry any Antonius,” said Caesar, turning his shoulder.
“Reconsider, Caesar, please! You will be condemned.”
“I will not reconsider.”
The result of this confrontation was an uncomfortable meal that afternoon. Helpless to contend with two such steely opponents as her husband and her mother-in-law, Cinnilla fled back to the nursery as soon as she could, pleading colic, teething, rashes, and every other baby ailment she could think of. Which left Caesar, chin up, to ignore Aurelia, chin up.
Some did voice disapproval, but Caesar was by no means setting a precedent in taking this case; there had been many others in which consanguinity was in much higher degree than the technical objections men like Catulus raised in the prosecution of Gaius Antonius Hybrida.
Of course Hybrida could not ignore the summons, so he was waiting at the foreign praetor’s tribunal with a retinue of famous faces in attendance, including Quintus Hortensius and Caesar’s uncle, Gaius Aurelius Cotta. Of Marcus Tullius Cicero there was no sign, even in the audience; until, Caesar noticed out of the corner of his eye, the moment in which Cethegus opened the hearing. Trust Cicero not to miss such scandalous goings—on! Especially when the legal option of a civil suit had been chosen.
Hybrida was uneasy, Caesar saw that at once. A big, muscular fellow with a neck as thick as a corded column, Hybrida was a typical Antonius; the wiry, curly auburn hair and red-brown eyes were as Antonian as the aquiline nose and the prominent chin trying to meet across a small, thick mouth. Until he had heard about Hybrida’s atrocities Caesar had dismissed the brutish face as that of a lout who drank too much, ate too much, and was overly fond of sexual pleasures. Now he knew better. It was the face of a veritable monster.
Things got off to a bad start for Hybrida when Hortensius elected to take a high hand and demanded that the suit forthwith be dismissed, alleging that if the matter was one—tenth as serious as the suit indicated, it should be heard before a criminal court. Varro Lucullus sat expressionless, unwilling to intervene unless his judge asked for his advice. Which Cethegus was not about to do. Sooner or later his turn would have come up to preside over this court, and he had not looked forward to some monotonous argument about a purse of moneys. Now here he was with a veritable plum of a case—one which might repel him, but would at least not bore him. So he dealt smartly with Hortensius and got things under way with smooth authority.
By noon Cethegus was ready to hear the witnesses, whose appearance created a sensation. Iphicrates and his companions had chosen the victims they had brought all the way from Greece with an eye to drama as well as to pity. Most moving was a man who could not testify on his own behalf at all; Hybrida had removed most of his face—and his tongue. But his wife was as articulate as she was filled with hatred, and a damning witness. Cethegus sat listening to her and looking at her poor husband green—faced and sweating. After their testimony concluded he adjourned for the day, praying he got home before he was sick.
But it was Hybrida who tried to have the last word. As he left the area of the tribunal he grasped Caesar by the arm and detained him.
“Where did you collect this sorry lot?” he asked, assuming an expression of pained bewilderment. “You must have had to comb the world! But it won’t work, you know. What are they, after all? A handful of miscreant misfits! That’s all! A mere handful anxious to take hefty Roman damages instead of existing on piddling Greek alms!”
“A mere handful?” roared Caesar at the top of his voice, and stilling the noise of the dispersing crowd, which turned to hear what he said. “Is that all? I say to you, Gaius Antonius Hybrida, that one would be too many! Just one! Just one man or woman or child despoiled in this frightful way is one too many! Just one man or woman or child plundered of youth and beauty and pride in being alive is one too many! Go away! Go home!”
Gaius Antonius Hybrida went home, appalled to discover that his advocates had no wish to accompany him. Even his brother had found an excuse to go elsewhere. Though he did not walk alone; beside him trotted a small plump man who had become quite a friend in the year and a half since he had joined the Senate. This man’s name was Gaius Aelius Staienus, and he was hungry for powerful allies, hungry to eat free of charge at someone else’s table, and very hungry for money. He had had some of Pompey’s money last year, when he had been Mamercus’s quaestor and incited a mutiny—oh, not a nasty, bloody mutiny! And it had all worked out extremely well in the end, with not a whiff of suspicion stealing his way.
“You’re going to lose,” he said to Hybrida as they entered Hybrida’s very nice mansion on the Palatine.
Hybrida was not disposed to argue. “I know.”
“But wouldn’t it be nice to win?” asked Staienus dreamily. “Two thousand talents to spend, that’s the reward for winning.”
“I’m going to have to find two thousand talents, which will bankrupt me for more years than I have left to live.”
“Not necessarily,” said Staienus in a purring voice. He sat down in Hybrida’s cliental chair, and looked about. “Have you any of that Chian wine left?’’ he asked.
Hybrida went to a console table and poured two undiluted goblets from a flagon, handed one to his guest, and sat down. He drank deeply, then gazed at Staienus. “You’ve got something boiling in your pot,” he said. “What is it?”
“Two thousand talents is a vast sum. In fact, one thousand talents is a vast sum.”
“That’s true.” The gross little mouth peeled its thick lips back to reveal Hybrida’s small and perfect white teeth. “I am not a fool, Staienus! If I agree to split the two thousand talents equally with you, you’ll guarantee to get me off. Is that right?”
“That’s right.”
“Then I agree. You get me off, and one thousand of those Greek talents are yours.”
“It’s simple, really,” said Staienus thoughtfully. “You have Sulla to thank for it, of course. But he’s dead, so he won’t care if you thank me instead.”
“Stop tormenting me and tell me!”
“Oh, yes! I forgot that you prefer to torment others than be tormented yourself.” Like many small men suddenly given a position of power, Staienus was incapable of concealing his pleasure at owning power, even though this meant that when the affair was over, so was his friendship with Hybrida. No matter how successful his ploy. But he didn’t care. A thousand talents was reward enough. What was friendship with a creature like Hybrida anyway?
“Tell me, Staienus, or get out!”
“The ius auxilii ferendi” was what Staienus said.
“Well, what about it?”
“The original function of the tribunes of the plebs, and the only function Sulla didn’t take off them—to rescue a member of the plebs from the hands of a magistrate.”
“The ius auxilii ferendi!” cried Hybrida, amazed. For a moment his pouting face lightened, then darkened again. “They wouldn’t do it,” he said.
“They might,” said Staienus.
“Not Sicinius! Never Sicinius! All it takes is one veto within the college and the other nine tribunes of the plebs are powerless. Sicinius wouldn’t stand for it, Staienus. He’s a wretched nuisance, but he’s not bribable.”
“Sicinius,” said Staienus happily, “is not popular with any of his nine colleagues. He’s made such a thorough nuisance of himself—and stolen their thunder in the Forum!—that they’re sick to death of him. In fact the day before yesterday I heard two of them threaten to throw him off the Tarpeian Rock unless he shut up about restoring their rights.”
“You mean Sicinius could be intimidated?”
“Yes. Definitely. Of course you’ll have to find a goodly sum of cash between now and tomorrow morning, because none of them will be in it unless they’re well rewarded. But you can do that—especially with a thousand talents coming in because of it.”
“How much?’’ asked Hybrida.
“Nine times fifty thousand sesterces. That’s four hundred and fifty thousand. Can you do it?”
“I can try. I’ll go to my brother, he doesn’t want scandal in the family. And there are a few other sources. Yes, Staienus, I believe I can do it.”
And so it was arranged. Gaius Aelius Staienus had a busy evening bustling from the house of one tribune of the plebs to another—Marcus Atilius Bulbus, Manius Aquillius, Quintus Curius, Publius Popillius, and on through nine of the ten. He did not go near the house of Gnaeus Sicinius.
The hearing was due to recommence two hours after dawn; by then the Forum Romanum had already experienced high drama, so it promised to be quite a day for the Forum frequenters, who were ecstatic. Just after dawn his nine fellow tribunes of the plebs had ganged up on Gnaeus Sicinius and physically hauled him to the top of the Capitol, where they beat him black and blue, then held him over the end of the overhanging ledge called the Tarpeian Rock and let him look down at the needle—sharp outcrop below. No more of this perpetual agitating to see the powers of the tribunate of the plebs restored! they cried to him as he dangled, and got an oath from him that he would in future do as his nine colleagues told him. Sicinius was then packed off home in a litter.
And not more than a very few moments after Cethegus opened the second day’s proceedings in the suit against Hybrida, nine tribunes of the plebs descended upon Varro Lucullus’s tribunal shouting that a member of the Plebs was being detained against his will by a magistrate.
“I appeal to you to exercise the ius auxilii ferendi!” cried Hybrida, arms extended piteously.
“Marcus Terentius Varro Lucullus, we have been appealed to by a member of the Plebs to exercise the ius auxilii ferendi!” said Manius Aquillius. “I hereby notify you that we so exercise it!”
“This is a manifest outrage!” Varro Lucullus shouted, leaping to his feet. “I refuse to allow you to exercise that right! Where is the tenth tribune?”
“At home in bed, very sick,” sneered Manius Aquillius, “but you can send to him if you like. He won’t veto us.”
“You transgress justice!” yelled Cethegus. “An outrage! A shame! A scandal! How much has Hybrida paid you?”
“Release Gaius Antonius Hybrida, or we will take hold of every last man who objects and throw him from the Tarpeian Rock!” cried Manius Aquillius.
“You are obstructing justice!” said Varro Lucullus.
“There can be no justice in a magistrate’s court, as you well know, Varro Lucullus,” said Quintus Curius. “One man is not a jury! If you wish to proceed against Gaius Antonius, then do so in a criminal court, where the ius auxilii ferendi does not apply!”
Caesar stood without moving, nor did he try to object. His clients huddled in his rear, shivering. Face stony, he turned to them and said softly, “I am a patrician, and not a magistrate. We must let the praetor peregrinus deal with this. Say nothing!”
“Very well, take your member of the Plebs!” said Varro Lucullus, hand on Cethegus’s arm to restrain him.
“And,” said Gaius Antonius Hybrida, standing in the midst of nine tribunes of the plebs bent on war, “since I have won the case, I will take the sponsio lodged by our Greek—loving Caesar’s clients here.”
The reference to Greek love was a deliberate slur which brought back to Caesar in one red flash all the pain of that accusation concerning King Nicomedes. Without hesitating, he walked through the ranks of the tribunes of the plebs and took Hybrida’s throat between his hands. Hybrida had always considered himself a Hercules among men, but he could neither break the hold nor manage to come at his taller assailant, whose strength he would not have believed were he not its victim. It took Varro Lucullus and his six lictors to drag Caesar off him, though some men in the crowd wondered afterward at the inertia of the nine tribunes of the plebs, who made no move to help Hybrida at all.
“This case is dismissed!” bawled Varro Lucullus at the top of his lungs. “There is no suit! I, Marcus Terentius Varro Lucullus, so declare it! Plaintiffs, take back your sponsio! And every last mother’s son of you go home!”
“The sponsio! The sponsio belongs to Gaius Antonius!” cried another voice: Gaius Aelius Staienus.
“It does not belong to Hybrida!” Cethegus yelled. “The case has been dismissed by the praetor peregrinus, in whose jurisdiction it lies! The sponsio returns to its owners, there is no wager!”
“Will you take your member of the Plebs and quit my tribunal!” said Varro Lucullus through his teeth to the tribunes of the plebs. “Go, get out of here, all of you! And I take leave to tell you that you have done the cause of the tribunate of the plebs no good by this scandalous miscarriage of its original purpose! I will do my utmost to keep you muzzled forever!”
Off went the nine men with Hybrida, Staienus trailing after them howling for the lost sponsio, Hybrida tenderly feeling his bruised throat.
While the excited crowd milled, Varro Lucullus and Caesar looked at each other.
“I would have loved to let you strangle the brute, but I hope you understand that I could not,” said Varro Lucullus.
“I understand,” said Caesar, still shaking. “I thought I was well in control! I’m not a hot man, you know. But I don’t care for excrement like Hybrida calling me a deviate.”
“That’s obvious,” said Varro Lucullus dryly, remembering what his brother had had to say on the subject.
Caesar too now paused to recollect whose brother he was with, but decided that Varro Lucullus was quite capable of making up his own mind.
“Do you believe,” said Cicero, rushing up now that the violence appeared to be at an end, “the gall of that worm? To demand the sponsio, by all the gods!”
“It takes a lot of gall to do that,” said Caesar, pointing to the mutilated man and his spokeswoman wife.
“Disgusting!” cried Cicero, sitting down on the steps of the tribunal and mopping his face with his handkerchief.
“Well,” said Caesar to Iphicrates, who hovered uncertainly, “at least we managed to save your two thousand talents. And I would say that if what you wanted was to create a stir in Rome, you have succeeded. I think the Senate will be very careful in future whom it sends to govern Macedonia. Now go back to your inn, and take those poor unfortunates with you. I’m just sorry that the citizens of their towns will have to continue supporting them. But I did warn you.”
“I am sorry about only one thing,” said Iphicrates, moving away. “That we failed to punish Gaius Antonius Hybrida.”
“We didn’t succeed in ruining him financially,” said Caesar, “but he will have to leave Rome. It will be a long time before he dares to show his face in this city again.”
“Do you think,” asked Cicero, “that Hybrida actually bribed nine tribunes of the plebs?’’
“I for one am sure of it!” snapped Cethegus, whose anger was slow to cool. “Apart from Sicinius—little though I love that man!—this year’s tribunes of the plebs are a shabby lot!”
“Why should they be splendid?” asked Caesar, whose anger had cooled completely. “There’s no glory to be had in the office these days. It’s a dead end.”
“I wonder,” asked Cicero, loath to abandon the direction of his thoughts, “how much nine tribunes of the plebs cost Hybrida?”
Cethegus pursed his lips. “About forty thousand each.”
Varro Lucullus’s eyes danced. “You speak with such absolute authority, Cethegus! How do you know?”
The King of the Backbenchers set his ire aside; it did not become his style, though, he assured himself, it was excusable. He proceeded to answer the foreign praetor with raised brows and the customary drawl in his voice. “My dear praetor peregrinus, there is nothing I do not know about the cupidity of senators! I could give you every bribable senator’s price down to the last sestertius. And for that shabby lot, forty thousand each.”
And that, as Hybrida was busy discovering, was what Gaius Aelius Staienus had paid; he had kept ninety thousand sesterces for himself.
“Give them back!” said the man who loved to torture and mutilate his fellow men. “Give the extra money back, Staienus, or I’ll tear your eyes out with my own fingers! I’ll be three hundred and sixty thousand sesterces out of purse as it is—you and your two thousand talents!”
“Don’t forget,” said the uncowed Staienus, looking vicious, “that it was my idea to use the ius auxulii ferendi. I’ll keep the ninety thousand. As for you—thank all the gods that you’re not stripped of your whole fortune!”
*
The sensation of the almost—hearing took some time to die away, and there were several long—lasting results of it. One was that that year’s College of Tribunes of the Plebs went down in the annals of political diarists as the most shameful ever; one other was that Macedonia did remain in the hands of responsible—if warlike—governors; Gnaeus Sicinius spoke no more in the Forum about restoring its full powers to the tribunate of the plebs; Caesar’s fame as an advocate soared; and Gaius Antonius Hybrida absented himself from Rome and the places Romans frequented for several years. In fact, he went on a little trip to the island of Cephallenia in the Ionian Sea, where he found himself the only civilized man (if such he could be called) in the whole region, and discovered too several incredibly ancient grave mounds rilled with treasure—exquisitely chased and inlaid daggers, masks made of pure gold, electrum flagons, rock—crystal cups, heaps of jewelry. Greater by far in value than two thousand talents. Great enough to assure him the consulship when he returned home, if he had to buy every single vote.
*
No stirring incidents enlivened the next year for Caesar, who remained in Rome and practiced as an advocate with resounding success. Cicero was not in Rome that year, however. Elected quaestor, he drew the lot for Lilybaeum in western Sicily, where he would work under the governor, Sextus Peducaeus. As his quaestorship meant he was now a member of the Senate, he was willing to leave Rome (though he had hoped for a job within Italy, and cursed his luck in the lots) and plunge himself enthusiastically into his work, which was mostly to do with the grain supply. It was a poor year, but the consuls had dealt with the coming shortage in an effective way; they bought huge quantities of grain still in storage in Sicily, and sold it cheaply in Rome by enacting a lex frumentaria.
Like almost everyone else literate, Cicero adored both to write and receive letters, and had been an avid correspondent for many years before this one, his thirty-first. But it was to this time in western Sicily that the enduring focus of his epistolary efforts was to date; that is, the steady flow of letters between him and the erudite plutocrat, Titus Pomponius Atticus. Thanks to Atticus, the loneliness of those many months in insular Lilybaeum was alleviated by a steady flow of information and gossip about everything and everyone in Rome.
Said Atticus in a missive sent toward the end of Cicero’s Sicilian exile:
The expected food riots never happened, only because Rome is fortunate in her consuls. I had a few words with Gaius Cotta’s brother, Marcus, who is now consul—elect for next year. In this nation of clever men, I asked, why are the common people still obliged from time to time to subsist on millet and turnips? It is high time, I said, that Rome levied against the private growers of Sicily and our other grain provinces and forced them to sell to the State rather than hang on for higher prices from the private grain merchants, for all too often that simply means the grain sits ensiloed in Sicily when it ought to be feeding the common people. I disapprove of stockpiling for profit when that affects the well-being of a nation full of clever men. Marcus Cotta listened to me with great attention, and promised to do something about it next year. As I do not have shares in grain, I can afford to be patriotic and altruistic. And stop laughing, Marcus Tullius.
Quintus Hortensius, our most self-important plebeian aedile in a generation, has given magnificent games. Along with a free distribution of grain to the populace. He intends to be consul in his year! Of course your absence has meant he is enjoying a high time of it in the law courts, but young Caesar always manages to give him a fright, and often filches his laurels. He doesn’t like it, and was heard to complain the other day that he wished Caesar would depart from Rome too. But those bits of Hortensical nonsense are as nothing compared to the banquet he gave on the occasion of his (yes, it has finally happened!) inauguration as an augur. He served roast peacock. You read aright: roast peacock. The birds (six of them all told) had been roasted and carved down to the eunuch’s nose, then the cooks somehow reassembled all the feathers over the top, so that they were carried in head—high on golden platters in all their fine plumage, tails fanned out and crests nodding. It created a sensation, and other gourmets like Cethegus, Philippus and the senior consul—elect, Lucullus, sat there contemplating suicide. However, dear Marcus, the actual eating of the birds was an anticlimax. An old army boot would have tasted—and chewed!—better.
The death of Appius Claudius Pulcher in Macedonia last year has led to a most amusing situation. That family never seems to have much luck, does it? First, nephew Philippus when he was censor stripped Appius Claudius of everything, then Appius Claudius wasn’t enterprising enough to buy up big at the proscription auctions, then he became too ill to govern his province, then he caps a bitter life by getting to his province at last, doing very well in military terms, and expiring before he could fix his fortune.
The six children he has left behind we all know only too well, of course. Frightful! Especially the youngest members. But Appius Claudius, the oldest son, is turning out to be very clever and enterprising.
First, the moment his father’s back was turned he gave the oldest girl, Claudia, to Quintus Marcius Rex, though she had no dowry whatsoever. I believe Rex paid through the nose for her! Like all the Claudii Pulchri she is a ravishing piece of goods, and that certainly helped. We expect that Rex will fare reasonably well as her husband, as she is reputed to be the only one of the three girls with a nice disposition.
Three boys are a difficulty, no one denies that. And adoption is out of the question. The youngest boy (who calls himself plain Publius Clodius) is so repulsive and wild that no one can be found willing to adopt him. Gaius Claudius, the middle boy, is an oaf. Unadoptable too. So there is young Appius Claudius, just twenty years of age, obliged to fund not only his own career in the Senate, but the careers of two younger brothers as well. What Quintus Marcius Rex was compelled to contribute can be but a drop in the empty Claudius Pulcher bucket.
Yet he has done remarkably well, dear Marcus Tullius. Knowing that he would be refused by every tata with a grain of sense, he looked around for a rich bride and went a—wooing—guess who? None other than that dismally plain spinster, Servilia Gnaea! You know who I mean—she was, you might say, hired by Scaurus and Mamercus to live with Drusus’s six orphans. Had no dowry and the most terrifying mother in Rome, a Porcia Liciniana. But it appears Scaurus and Mamercus dowered Gnaea with a full two hundred talents to be paid to her the moment Drusus’s orphans were all grown. And they are grown! Marcus Porcius Cato, the youngest of the brood, aged eighteen at the moment, lives in his father’s house and has declared his independence.
When the twenty-year-old Appius Claudius Pulcher came a—wooing, Servilia Gnaea grabbed him. She is, they say, all of thirty-two years old now, and an old maid to her core. I do not believe the rumor that she shaves! Her mother does, but that everybody knows. The best part about Appius Claudius’s bargain is that his mother-in-law, the aforementioned Porcia Liciniana, has retired to a commodious seaside villa which, it seems, Scaurus and Mamercus bought against this day at the time they hired the daughter. So Appius Claudius does not have to live with his mother-in-law. The two hundred talents will come in handy.
But that is not the best of it, Marcus. The best is that Appius Claudius has married off his youngest sister, Clodilla, to none other than Lucullus! All of fifteen years old—he and Lucullus say. I’d make her fourteen, but I might be wrong. What a match! Thanks to Sulla, Lucullus is fabulously rich, and has besides control of the fortunes of The Heavenly Twins. Oh, I am not implying that our upright, downright Lucullus would embezzle from Faustus and Fausta—but what is to stop him popping the interest in his purse?
Thus due to the amazing energy and enterprise of this twenty-year-old youth, the fortunes of the family Appius Claudius Pulcher have taken an astonishing turn for the better. All of Rome is laughing, but not without sincere admiration. He is worth watching, our Appius Claudius! Publius Clodius, aged fourteen—then Clodilla is fifteen—is already a menace, and his big brother will do nothing to discipline him. He’s very good-looking and precocious, he’s dangerous with girls and up to all kinds of mischief. I believe, however, that he is intellectually brilliant, so he may settle down in time and become a model of the patrician Roman nobleman.
And what else have I got to tell you? Oh, yes. That famous pun of Gnaeus Sicinius’s about Marcus Crassus—you will not have forgotten the hay on both Crassus’s horns!—is even cleverer than we thought at the time. It has just come out that Sicinius has been heavily in debt to Crassus for years. So the pun contained yet another nuance. Faenum is “hay’’ and faenerator is “moneylender.” The hay wrapped round Crassus’s horns is loan money! Rome learned of the additional nuance because Sicinius is a ruined man and cannot pay Crassus back. I wasn’t aware that Crassus lent money, but his nose is clean, alas. He lends only to senators and does not levy interest. His way of building up a senatorial clientele. I think it will pay to watch friend Crassus. Do not borrow money from him, Marcus! Interest—free is a great temptation, but Crassus calls in his debts whenever he feels like it—no notice whatsoever—and he expects to be paid at once. If he isn’t paid, you’re ruined. And there is not a thing the censors (if we had censors) could do about it, because he charges no interest. Quod erat demonstrandum: he cannot be called a usurer. He’s just a thoroughly nice fellow busy helping his senatorial friends out.
And I believe that is all. Terentia is well, as is little Tullia. What a nice child your daughter is! Your brother is much as always. How I wish he could learn to get on better with my sister! But I think both you and I have given up on that. Pomponia is a termagant, Quintus is a real country squire. By that I mean he is stubborn, frugal, and proud. And wants to be master of his house.
Keep well. I will write again before I leave Rome to go back to Epirus, where my cattle ranch is thriving. Too wet for sheep, of course—their feet rot. But everyone is so keen to grow wool that they forget how much cowhide the world consumes. Cattle as an investment are underestimated.