2

At the end of Sextilis, Caesar received an urgent summons from Bithynia. King Nicomedes was dying, and asking for him. This was exactly what Caesar needed; Rome was growing daily more suffocating, the courts duller. And though the news from Bithynia was not happy, it was to be expected. Within one day of reading Oradaltis’s note, he was packed and ready to go.

Burgundus would be with him as always, Demetrius who plucked his body hair could not be left behind nor could the Spartan Brasidas, who made his Civic Crowns out of oak leaves. In fact, this time Caesar traveled with more state than of yore; his importance was increasing, and he now found himself in need of a secretary, several scribes, several personal servants, and a small escort of his own freedmen. Therefore it was with twenty persons in his entourage that he left for the east. An expensive exercise. He was now twenty-five years old, and he had been in the Senate for five of those years.

“But don’t think,” said Burgundus to the new members of the party, “that you’re going to travel in comfort. When Gaius Julius moves, he moves!”

*

Nicomedes was still alive when Caesar reached Bithynia, though he could not recover from this illness.

“It’s really nothing more nor less than plain old age,” said Queen Oradaltis, weeping. “Oh, I shall miss him! I have been his wife since I was fifteen. How will I manage without him?”

“You will because you have to,” said Caesar, drying her eyes. “I see that dog Sulla is still brisk enough, so you’ll have his company. From what you tell me, Nicomedes will be glad to go. I for one dread the idea of lingering beyond my usefulness.”

“He took to his bed for good ten days ago,” said Oradaltis, pattering down a marble corridor, “and the physicians say he may go at any time—today, tomorrow, next month—no one knows.”

When he set eyes on the wasted figure in the big carven bed, Caesar could not believe he would last beyond that day. Little was left save skin and bone, and nothing at all of the King’s physical individuality; he was dry and wrinkled as a winter apple. But when Caesar spoke his name he opened his eyes at once, held out his hands and smiled gummily, the tears falling.

“You came!” he cried, voice surprisingly strong.

“How could I not?” asked Caesar, sitting down on the edge of the bed to take both skeletal claws in a firm grip. “When you ask me to come, I come.”

With Caesar there to carry him from bed to couch and couch to chair somewhere in the sun and out of the wind, Nicomedes brightened, though the use of his legs was gone permanently and he would drop into a light doze halfway through a sentence, then wake up long moments later with no memory of what he had been saying. His ability to eat solid foods had gone; he existed upon beakers of goat’s milk mixed with fortified wine and honey, and dribbled more of them down his outside than he managed to drink. It is interesting, thought the fastidious and immaculate Caesar, that when this is happening to someone so beloved, the usual reactions are not present. I am not repelled. I am not tempted to command a servant to clean him up. Rather, it is a pleasure to care for him. I would empty his chamber pot gladly.

“Have you heard from your daughter?” Caesar asked him on one of his better days.

“Not directly. However, it seems she is still alive and well at Cabeira.”

“Can’t you negotiate with Mithridates to bring her home?”

“At the price of the kingdom, Caesar, you know that.”

“But unless she comes home there is no heir anyway.”

“Bithynia has an heir right here,” said Nicomedes.

“In Nicomedia? Who?”

“I thought of leaving Bithynia to you.”

“Me?”

“Yes, you. To be King.”

“No, my dear old friend, that isn’t possible.”

“You would make a great king, Caesar. Wouldn’t you like to rule your own land?”

“My own land is Rome, Nicomedes, and like all Romans, I was brought up to believe in the Republic.”

The King’s bottom lip trembled. “Can’t I tempt you?”

“No.”

“Bithynia needs someone young and very strong, Caesar. I can think of no one but you!”

“There is Rome herself.”

“And Romans like Gaius Verres.”

“That’s true. But there are also Romans like me. Rome is the only answer, Nicomedes. Unless you want to see Pontus rule.”

“Anything is preferable to that!”

“Then leave Bithynia to Rome.”

“Can you draw up my testament in a properly Roman fashion?”

“Yes.”

“Then do so, Caesar. I will leave my kingdom to Rome.”

*

Halfway through December, King Nicomedes III of Bithynia died. One hand was given to Caesar and the other to his wife, though he did not wake from his long dream to say goodbye.

The will had been couriered to Rome soon enough that Caesar had received a reply from the Senate before the eighty—five-year-old King died, to the effect that the governor of Asia Province, Marcus Junius Juncus, was being notified, and would journey to Bithynia to begin incorporating Bithynia into Asia Province after the King was dead; as Caesar intended to stay until this happened, Caesar was to inform Juncus when it had.

That was a disappointment; Bithynia’s first governor would not be a nice or understanding man.

“I want every treasure and work of art in the whole kingdom catalogued,” said Caesar to the widowed queen, “also the contents of the treasury, the size of the fleets, the size of the army, and every suit of armor, sword, spear, piece of artillery and siege engine you have.”

“It will be done, but why?” asked Oradaltis, frowning.

“Because if the governor of Asia Province thinks to enrich his own purse by appropriating as much as one spear or one drachma, I want to know,” said Caesar grimly. “I will then make it my business to prosecute him in Rome, and I’ll secure a conviction too! Because while you’re cataloguing everything, you will make sure you have at least six of the most important Romans in your land as witnesses that the catalogue is correct. That will render the document hard evidence even a senatorial jury cannot ignore.”

“Oh, dear! Will I be safe?” asked the Queen.

“In person, quite safe. However, if you can bear to uproot yourself and move into a private house—preferably not here in Nicomedia or in Chalcedon or Prusa—taking everything you want with you, then you ought to survive in peace and comfort for the rest of your life.”

“You dislike this Marcus Junius Juncus very much.”

“I dislike him very much.”

“Is he a Gaius Verres?”

“I doubt that, Oradaltis. Just ordinarily venal. Thinking himself the first official representative of Rome on the scene, I imagine he’ll steal whatever he decides Rome will let him get away with,” said Caesar calmly. “Rome will demand a catalogue of everything from him, but it’s my guess that the list you make and the list he makes won’t tally. Then we’ll have him!”

“Won’t he suspect the existence of a catalogue?”

Caesar laughed. “Not he! Eastern realms are not prone to be so precise—precision is Roman. Of course knowing I’m here he’ll think I’ve skimmed the place first, so it won’t even cross his mind that I might have conspired with you to trap him.”

By the end of December it was all done. The Queen shifted her residence to the little fishing village of Rheba, around the corner of the Bosporus on the Euxine shore. Here Nicomedes had maintained a private villa which his queen thought an ideal place for a retired ruler to occupy.

“When Juncus demands to annex your villa, you will show him a copy of the deed of ownership and inform him that the original is in the hands of your bankers. Where will you bank?”

“I had thought Byzantium. It will be closest to me.”

“Excellent! Byzantium is not a part of Bithynia, so Juncus won’t be able to get a look at your accounts—or his hands on your funds. You will also inform Juncus that the contents of your villa are yours, a part of your dowry. That will prevent his taking anything away from you. So don’t list anything you do take with you in the catalogue! If anyone is entitled to skim the place, it’s you.”

“Well, I must think of Nysa too,” said the old woman wistfully. “Who knows? Perhaps one day before I am dead, my daughter will be returned to me.”

Word came that Juncus had sailed into the Hellespont and would arrive in Nicomedia some days hence; he intended to pause en route to inspect Prusa, said his messenger. Caesar established the Queen in her villa, made sure that the treasury yielded her enough to provide her with an adequate income, lodged Oradaltis’s funds and the catalogue with her chosen bankers in Byzantium, and then took ship from Byzantium with his retinue of twenty. He would hug the Thracian coast of the Propontis all the way to the Hellespont, and thus avoid encountering Marcus Junius Juncus, the governor of Asia Province—and the governor now of Bithynia.

Caesar was not going back to Rome. Instead he planned to sail to Rhodes, and there study with Apollonius Molon for a year or two. Cicero had convinced him that this would put an additional polish on his oratory, though he was well aware how good his oratory already was. He didn’t miss Rome as Cicero always did, nor did he miss his family. Very pleasant and reassuring though possession of that family was, his wife and child and mother were there to wait for him, and would be there when eventually he returned. It never occurred to him that one or more of them might be snatched from him by death while he was away.

This trip, he was discovering, was an expensive one, and he had refused to allow Nicomedes or Oradaltis to give him money. He had asked for a keepsake only, and been given a genuine emerald from Scythia rather than the much paler, cloudier stones from the Sinus Arabicus; a flattish cabochon the size of a hen’s egg, it had the King and Queen of Bithynia engraved in profile upon it. Not for sale at any price, nor for any need. However, Caesar never worried about money. For the time being he had sufficient, and the future, he was convinced, would look after itself; an attitude which drove his careful mother to distraction. But retinues of twenty and hired ships did multiply by a factor of ten those early journeys he had made!

In Smyrna he spent time with Publius Rutilius Rufus again, and was highly entertained by the old man’s stories of Cicero, who had visited him on his way back to Rome from Rhodes.

“An amazing kind of mushroom!” was Rutilius Rufus’s verdict to Caesar. “He’ll never be happy in Rome, you know, though he worships the place. I would call him the salt of the earth—a decent, warmhearted and old—fashioned fellow.”

“I know what you mean,” nodded Caesar. “The trouble is, Uncle Publius, that he has a superbly able mind and much ambition.”

“Like Gaius Marius.”

“No,” said Caesar firmly. “Not like Gaius Marius.”

*

In Miletus he learned how Verres had stolen the finest wools and tapestries and rugs the city owned, and advised the ethnarch to lodge a complaint with the Senate in Rome.

“Though,” he said, preparing to embark for the voyage to Halicarnassus, “you were lucky he didn’t pilfer your art and despoil your temples as well. That was what he did elsewhere.”

The ship he had hired in Byzantium was a neat enough cargo vessel of some forty oars, high in the poop where the two great rudder oars resided, and having a cabin for his use on the deck amidships. Thirty assorted mules and horses—including the Nesaean and his own beloved Toes—were accommodated in stalls between his cabin and the poop. As they never sailed more than fifty miles without putting in at another port, readying to sail again was something of a fussy ordeal as horses and mules were brought back on board and settled down.

Miletus was no different from Smyrna, Pitane, half a dozen earlier ports of call; everyone in the harborside area knew that this particular ship was on hire to a Roman senator, and everyone was hugely interested. Look, there he was! The lovely young man in the pristine toga who walked as if he owned the world! Well, and didn’t he own the world? He was a Roman senator. Of course the lesser lights in his retinue contributed to the talk, so that all the habitual loiterers around the Miletus harborfront knew that he was a high aristocrat, a brilliant man, and single—handedly responsible for persuading King Nicomedes of Bithynia to leave his realm to Rome when he died. Little wonder then that Caesar himself was always glad when the gangplanks were away, the anchors up, and the ship cast off to put out to sea again.

But it was a beautiful day and the water was calm, a good breeze blew to fill the great linen sail and spare the oarsmen, and Halicarnassus, the captain assured Caesar as they stood together on the poop, would be reached on the following day.

Some seven or eight miles down the coast, the tip of a promontory jutted into the sea; Caesar’s ship sailed placidly between it and a looming island.

“Pharmacussa,” said the captain, pointing to the island.

They passed it close inshore with Iasus on the mainland much further away, on a course which would skirt the next peninsula on that dissected coast. A very small place, Pharmacussa was shaped like a lopsided pair of woman’s breasts, the southernmost mound being the bigger of the two.

“Does anyone live there?” asked Caesar idly.

“Not even a shepherd and his sheep.”

The island had almost slid by when a low, sleek war galley emerged from behind the bigger breast, moving very fast, and on a course to intercept Caesar’s ship.

“Pirates!” squawked the captain, face white.

Caesar, who had turned his head to look down their wake, nodded. “Yes, and another galley coming up our rear. How many men aboard the one in front?’’ he asked.

“Fighting men? At least a hundred, armed to the teeth.”

“And on the one behind?”

The captain craned his neck. “It’s a bigger ship. Perhaps one hundred and fifty.”

“Then you do not recommend that we resist.”

“Ye gods, Senator, no!” the man gasped. “They would kill us as soon as look at us! We must hope they’re looking for a ransom, because they know from our lie in the water that we’re not carrying cargo.”

“Do you mean they’re aware there’s someone aboard us who will fetch a good ransom?”

“They know everything, Senator! They have spies in every port around the Aegean. It’s my guess the spies rowed out from Miletus yesterday with a description of my vessel and the news that she carries a Roman senator.”

“Are the pirates based on Pharmacussa, then?”

“No, Senator. It would be too easy for Miletus and Priene to scour them out. They’ve just been hiding there for a few days—on the lookout for a likely victim. It’s never necessary to wait more than a few days. Something juicy always comes along. We’re unlucky. This being winter and usually stormy, I’d hoped to escape pirates. But the weather has been too good, alas!”

“What will they do with us?”

“Take us back to their base and wait for the ransom.”

“Whereabouts is their base likely to be?”

“Lycia, probably. Somewhere between Patara and Myra.”

“Quite a long way from here.”

“Several days’ sail.”

“Why so far away?”

“It’s absolutely safe there—a haven for pirates! Hundreds of hidden coves and valleys—there are at least thirty big pirate settlements in the area.”

Caesar looked unperturbed, though the two galleys were now closing on his ship very quickly; he could see the armed men lining each gunwale, and hear their shouts. “What’s to stop me sailing back with a fleet after I’ve been ransomed and capturing the lot of them?’’

“You’d never find the right cove, Senator. There are hundreds, and they all look exactly the same. A bit like the old Knossus labyrinth, only linear rather than square.’’

Summoning his body servant, Caesar asked calmly for his toga, and when the terrified man came back bearing an off—white armful, Caesar stood while he draped it.

Burgundus appeared. “Do we fight, Caesar?”

“No, of course not. It’s one thing to fight when the odds are even remotely favorable, quite another when the odds indicate that to fight is suicide. We’ll go tamely, Burgundus. Hear me?”

“I hear.”

“Then make sure you tell everyone—I want no foolhardy heroes.” Back he turned to the captain. “So I’d never locate the right cove again, eh?”

“Never, Senator, believe me. Many have tried.”

“In Rome we were led to believe Publius Servilius Vatia got rid of the pirates when he conquered the Isauri. He was even let call himself Vatia Isauricus, so great was his campaign.”

“Pirates are like swarming insects, Caesar. Smoke them out all you like, but as soon as the air is clear again, they’re back.”

“I see. Then when Vatia put—ooops, Vatia Isauricus !—put an end to the reign of King Zenicetes of the pirates, he only scraped the scum off the surface. Is that correct, Captain?”

“Yes and no. King Zenicetes was just one pirate chieftain. As for the Isauri”—the captain shrugged—“none of us who sail these waters could ever understand why a great Roman general went to war against an inland tribe of Pisidian savages thinking he was striking a blow at piracy! Perhaps a few Isauric grandsons have joined the pirates, but the Isauri are too far from the sea to be concerned with piracy and pirates.”

Both warships were now alongside, and men were pouring on board the merchantman.

“Ah! Here comes the leader,” said Caesar coolly.

A tall, youngish man clad in a Tyrian purple tunic heavily embroidered with gold pushed his way between the milling hordes on the deck and mounted the plank steps to the poop. He was not armed, nor did he look at all martial.

“Good day to you,” said Caesar.

“Am I mistaken in thinking that you are the Roman senator Gaius Julius Caesar, winner of the Civic Crown?’’

“No, you are not mistaken.”

The pirate chieftain’s light green eyes narrowed; he put a manicured hand up to his carefully curled yellow hair. “You’re very collected, Senator,” the pirate said, his Greek indicating that perhaps he came from one of the isles of the Sporades.

“I see no point in being anything else,” said Caesar, lifting his brows. “I presume you will allow me to ransom myself and my people, so I have little to fear.”

“That’s true. But it doesn’t stop my captives from shitting themselves in terror.”

“Not this captive!”

“Well, you’re a war hero.”

“What happens now—er—I didn’t quite catch the name?”

“Polygonus.” The pirate turned to look at his men, who had gathered the merchantman’s crew into one group and Caesar’s twenty attendants into another.

Like their chief, the rest of the pirates were dandies; some sported wigs, some used hot tongs to produce rolling curls in their long locks, some were painted like whores, some preferred exquisitely close shaves and the masculine look, and all were very well dressed.

“What happens now?’’ Caesar repeated.

“Your crew is put aboard my ship, I put a crew of my own men at the oars of your ship, and we all row south as fast as we can, Senator. By sunset we’ll be off Cnidus, but we’ll keep on going. Three days from now you’ll be safe in my home, where you will live as my guest until your ransom is paid.”

“Won’t it be easier to allow some of my servants to leave the ship here? A lighter could take them back to Miletus—that is a rich city, it ought not to have too much difficulty raising my ransom. How much is my ransom, by the way?”

The chieftain ignored the second question for the moment; he shook his head emphatically. “No, we’ve had our last ransom from Miletus for a while. We distribute the burden around because sometimes the ransomed men are slow to pay it back to whichever community scraped it together. It’s the turn of Xanthus and Patara—Lycia. So we’ll let you send your servants off when we get to Patara.” Polygonus tossed his head to make his curls float. “As for the sum—twenty silver talents.” —

Caesar reared back in horror. “Twenty silver talents?” he cried, outraged. “Is that all I’m worth?”

“It’s the going rate for senators, all pirates have agreed. You’re too young to be a magistrate.”

“I am Gaius Julius Caesar!” said the captive haughtily. “Clearly, fellow, you fail to understand! I am not only a patrician, I am also a Julian! And what does being a Julian mean, you ask? It means that I am descended from the goddess Aphrodite through her son, Aeneas. I come from consular stock, and I will be consul in my year. I am not a mere senator, fellow! I am the winner of a Civic Crown—I speak in the House—I sit on the middle tier—and when I enter the House every man—including consulars and censors!—must rise to his feet and applaud me. Twenty silver talents? I am worthy fifty silver talents!”

Polygonus had listened fascinated to all this; his captives were never like this one! So sure of himself, so unafraid, so—arrogant! Yet there was something in the handsome face Polygonus liked—could that be a twinkle in the eyes? Was this Gaius Julius Caesar mocking him? But why should he mock in a way which meant he was going to have to pay back more than double his proper ransom? He was serious—he had to be serious! However ... Surely that was a twinkle in his eyes!

“All right, Your Majesty, fifty silver talents it is!” said Polygonus, his own eyes twinkling.

“That’s better,” said Caesar. And turned his back.

*

Three days later—having encountered no Rhodian or other city fleet patrolling the empty seas—Caesar’s staff were put ashore opposite Patara. Polygonus had sailed aboard his own galley; Caesar had seen no more of him. But he came to supervise the off—loading of Caesar’s staff into a lighter.

“You can keep the lot except for one if you like,” said the pirate leader. “One’s enough to raise a ransom.”

“One is not appropriate for a man of my importance,” said Caesar coldly. “I will keep three men only—my body servant Demetrius and two scribes. If I have to wait a long time I shall need someone to copy out my poetry. Or perhaps I’ll write a play. A comedy! Yes, I should have plenty of material for a comedy. Or perhaps a farce.”

“Who will lead your people?”

“My freedman, Gaius Julius Burgundus.”

“The giant? What a man! He’d fetch a fortune as a slave.”

“He did in his day. He’ll have to have his Nesaean horse,” Caesar went on, tones fussy, “and the others must have their mounts too. They will have to keep some state, I insist upon that.”

“You can insist all you like, Your Majesty. The horses are good ones, I’ll keep them.”

“You will not!” snapped Caesar. “You’re getting fifty talents in ransom, so you can hand the horses over. I’ll just keep Toes for myself—unless your roads are paved? Toes isn’t shod, so he can’t be ridden on sealed roads.”

“You,” said Polygonus, awed, “are beyond a joke!”

“Put the horses ashore, Polygonus,” said Caesar.

The horses went ashore. Burgundus was acutely unhappy at leaving Caesar so poorly attended in the custody of these villains, but knew better than to argue. His job was to find the ransom.

And then it was onward into eastern Lycia, hugging a coast as lonely and desolate as any in the world. No roads, hamlets or fishing villages, only the mighty mountains of the Solyma plunging from permanently snowcapped heights all the way into the water. The coves were upon them before their presence could be spied out, and then were only tiny indentations in some mountain flank, a sliver of reddish—yellow sand running up against a reddish—yellow cliff. But never a sign of a pirate settlement! Intriguing! Caesar remained without moving from the poop from the time his ship sailed past the river on which stood Patara and Xanthus, watching the coast slide by hour after hour.

At sunset the two galleys and the merchantman they escorted veered inshore toward one of innumerable similar-looking coves, and were run up on the sand until they beached. Only when he had leaped down and was walking on the shifting ground did Caesar see what no one could have from the water; the cliff at the back of the cove was actually two cliffs, a flange of one concealing the gap between them, and in behind them a big hollow bowl of low—lying land. The pirate lair!

“It’s winter, and the fifty talents we’ll get for you means we can afford to have a lovely holiday instead of sailing in the early spring storms,” said Polygonus, joining Caesar as he strolled through the gap in the cliffs.

His men were already rigging rollers beneath the prows of the galleys and the cargo vessel; while Caesar and Polygonus watched, the three ships were pulled up from the sand and between the cliffs, then brought to permanent rest propped on struts inside the hidden valley.

“Do you always do this?” asked Caesar.

“Not if we’re going out again, but that would be unusual. While we’re out on the prowl we don’t come home.”

“A very nice arrangement you have here!” said Caesar, voice full of appreciation.

The hollow bowl was perhaps a mile and a half in width and about half that in length, more or less oval in shape. At its terminus furthest from the cove, a thin waterfall tumbled from hidden heights above into a pool; the pool turned into a stream and meandered down to the cove, though it could not be seen from the water. The pirates (or Mother Earth) had gouged a thin channel for it at the very end of the sands, below the cliff.

A well-built and properly organized town filled most of the valley. Stone houses three and four storeys high lined gravel streets, several very large stone silos and warehouses stood opposite the place where the ships were grounded, and a marketplace with a temple provided a focus for communal life.

“How many people do you have?” asked Caesar.

“Including wives and mistresses and children—and lovers for some of the men!—about—oh, a thousand plus five hundred. Then there are the slaves.”

“How many slaves?”

“Two thousands, or thereabouts. We don’t lift a finger for ourselves,” said Polygonus proudly.

“I’m surprised there’s not an insurrection when the men are absent. Or are the women and the male lovers fearsome warriors?”

The pirate chieftain laughed scornfully. “We’re not fools, Senator! Every slave is chained permanently. And since there is no escape, why rise?”

“That wouldn’t stop me,” said Caesar.

“You’d be caught when we came back. There are no spare ships here to sail away in.”

“Perhaps it’s I who would catch you when you came back.”

“Then I’m very glad that all of us will be here until your ransom arrives, Senator! You’ll do no rising.”

“Oh!” said Caesar, looking disappointed. “Do you mean to say I am to provide you with fifty talents and not even be offered a little feminine diversion while I wait? I don’t rise for men, but I’m rather famous with women.”

“I’ll bet you are, if such is your preference,” Polygonus said, chuckling. “Never fear! If you want women, we have them.”

“Do you have a library in this wonderful little haven?”

“There are a few books around, though we’re not scholars.”

The two men arrived outside a very large house. “This is my place. You’ll stay here—I prefer to keep you under my eye, I think. You’ll have your own suite of rooms, of course.”

“A bath would be most welcome.”

“Since I have all the comforts of the Palatine, a bath you shall have, Senator.”

“I wish you’d call me Caesar.”

“Caesar it is.”

The suite of rooms was big enough to accommodate Demetrius and the two scribes as well as Caesar, who was soon luxuriating in a bath of exactly the right temperature, a little above tepid.

“You’ll have to shave me as well as pluck me for however many days we’re here, Demetrius,” said Caesar, combing the slight waves of his pale hair downward from the crown. He put down the mirror, made of chased gold encrusted with gems, shaking his head. “There’s a fortune in this house.”

“They have stolen many fortunes,” said Demetrius.

“And no doubt stored much of the loot away in some of these many buildings. They’re not all inhabited.” And off drifted Caesar to join Polygonus in the dining room.

The food was excellent and varied, the wine superb.

“You keep a good cook,” said Caesar. *

“I see you eat abstemiously and drink no wine,” said Polygonus.

“I am passionate about nothing except my work.”

“What, not your women?”

“Women,” said Caesar, washing his hands, “are work.”

“I’ve never heard them called that before!” laughed Polygonus. “You’re an odd fish, Caesar, to save your passions for work.” He patted his belly and sniffed appreciatively at the contents of his rock—crystal goblet. “For myself, the only thing I like about piracy is the delightful life it brings me when I’m not sailing the sea. But most of all, I love good wine!”

“I don’t dislike the taste,” said Caesar, “but I detest the sensation of losing my wits, and I notice that even half a cup of watered wine takes the edge off them.”

“But when you wake up, that’s as good as you’re going to feel all day!” cried Polygonus.

Caesar grinned. “Not necessarily.”

“What do you mean?”

“For instance, my dear fellow, I will wake completely sober and in my normal robust health on the morning of the day I sail in here with a fleet at my command, capture this place, and take all of you into my custody. I can assure you that when I look at you in chains, I will feel infinitely better than I did when I woke up! But even that is relative. For on the day I crucify you, Polygonus, I will feel as I have never felt before!”

Polygonus roared with laughter. “Caesar, you are the most entertaining guest I’ve ever housed! I love your sense of humor!”

“How terribly nice of you to say so. But you won’t laugh when I crucify you, my friend.”

“It can’t happen.”

“It will happen.”

A vision of gold and purple, hands loaded down with rings and chest flashing with necklaces, Polygonus lay back on his couch and laughed again. “Do you think I didn’t see you standing on your ship watching the shore? Rubbish, Caesar, rubbish! No one can find his way back!”

“You do.”

“That’s because I’ve done it a thousand times. For the first hundred times I lost myself over and over again.”

“I can believe that. You’re not nearly as intelligent as I.”

That cut: Polygonus sat up. “Clever enough to have captured a Roman senator! And to bleed him of fifty talents!”

“Your egg isn’t hatched yet.”

“If this egg doesn’t hatch, it will sit here and rot!”

Shortly after this spirited exchange Polygonus flounced off, leaving his prisoner to find his own way back to his rooms. There a very pretty girl waited for him, a gift very much appreciated—after Caesar sent her to Demetrius to make sure she was clean.

*

For forty days he remained in the pirate hideout; no one restricted his freedom to wander where he willed, talk to whomsoever he fancied. His fame spread from one end of the place to the other, and soon everyone knew that he believed he would sail back after he had been ransomed, would capture and crucify them all.

“No, no, only the men!” said Caesar, smiling with great charm at a party of women come to quiz him. “How could I crucify beauty such as I see here?”

“Then what will you do with us?” the most forward female asked, eyes inviting.

“Sell you. How many women and children are here?”

“A thousand.”

“A thousand. If the average price you fetch in whatever slave market I send you to is one thousand three hundred sesterces each, then I will have repaid my ransom to those obliged to find it, and made them a small profit. But you women and children are far more beautiful than one usually finds in a small town, so I expect an average price of two thousand sesterces each. That will give my ransomers a fat profit.”

The women dissolved into giggles; oh, he was lovely!

In fact, everyone liked him enormously. He was so pleasant, so jolly and good—humored, and he never displayed the slightest sign of fear or depression. He would joke with everyone, and joked so often about crucifying the men and selling the women and children into slavery that it became almost a constant entertainment. His eyes twinkled, his lips twitched, he thought it as hugely funny as they did. The first girl talked of his prowess as a lover, which meant that many of the women cast lures in his direction; but it didn’t take the men long to find out that he was scrupulous about the women he selected—never a woman belonging permanently to someone else.

“The only men I cuckold are my peers,” he would say in a lordly voice, looking every inch the aristocrat.

“Friends?” they would ask, guffawing.

“Enemies,” Caesar would answer.

“Well, and aren’t we your enemies?”

“My enemies, yes. But not my peers, you low collection of absolute scum!” he would say.

At which point everybody would fall about laughing, loving the way he insulted them with such affectionate good humor.

And then one afternoon as he dined with Polygonus, the pirate chieftain sighed.

“I’ll be sorry to lose you, Caesar.”

“Ah! The ransom has been found.”

“It will arrive with your freedman tomorrow.”

“How do you arrange that? I must presume he will be guided here, since you say the place cannot be found.”

“Oh, he has had some of my men with him the whole time. When the last talent was in the last bag, I received a message. They’ll be here tomorrow about noon.”

“And then I can go?”

“Yes.”

“What about my hired ship?”

“It too.”

“The captain? His sailors?”

“They’ll be on board. You’ll sail at dusk, westward.”

“So you included my hired ship in your price.”

“Certainly not!” said Polygonus, astonished. “The captain raised ten talents to buy back his ship and crew.”

“Ah!” breathed Caesar. “Another debt I must in honor pay.”

As predicted, Burgundus arrived at noon the following day, the fortieth of Caesar’s imprisonment.

“Cardixa will allow me to continue being the father of her sons,” said Burgundus, wiping the tears from his eyes. “You look very well, Caesar.”

“They were considerate hosts. Who raised the ransom?”

“Patara half, Xanthus half. They weren’t happy, but they didn’t dare refuse. Not so soon after Vatia.”

“They’ll get their money back, and sooner than they think.”

*

The whole pirate town turned out to see Caesar off, some of the women openly weeping. As did Polygonus.

“I’ll never have another captive like you!” he sighed.

“That’s very true,” said Caesar, smiling. “Your career as a pirate is over, my friend. I’ll be back before the spring.”

As always, Polygonus found this exquisitely funny, and was still sniggering as he stood on the sandy little beach to watch the captain of Caesar’s hired ship maneuver its bow into the west. Of light there was little.

“Don’t stop, Captain!” the pirate leader shouted. “If you do, you’ll have my escort up your arse!”

And out from behind the mountain flank to the east it came, a hemiolia capable of keeping up with any craft that sailed.

But by dawn it wasn’t there, and the river upon which stood Patara lay ahead.

“Now to soothe some financial fears,” said Caesar. He looked at the captain. “By the way, I will repay you the ten talents you had to outlay to ransom your ship and crew.”

Obviously the captain didn’t believe it lay in Caesar’s power to do this. “An unfortunate voyage!” he mourned.

“I predict that when it’s over you’ll sail back to Byzantium a very happy man,” said Caesar. “Now get me ashore.”

His visit was very quickly over, he was back and waiting to leave on the following day before all the horses and mules had been loaded aboard. With him was the rest of his entourage. He looked brisk. “Come, Captain, hustle yourself!”

“To Rhodus?”

“To Rhodus, of course.”

That voyage took three days, calling at Telmessus on the first night and Caunus on the second. Caesar refused to allow his animals to be off—loaded in either place.

“I’m in too big a hurry—they’ll survive,” he said. “Oh, my luck! Favored by Fortune as always! Thanks to my career as a raiser of fleets, I know exactly where to go and whom to see when we reach Rhodus!”

He did indeed, with the result that he had collected the men he wanted to see not two hours after his ship had tied up.

“I need a fleet of ten triremes and about five hundred good men,” he said to the group of Rhodians congregated in the offices of the harbormaster.

“For what reason?” asked the young admiral Lysander.

“To accompany me back to the headquarters of the pirate chief Polygonus. I intend to capture the place.”

“Polygonus? You’ll never find his lair!”

“I’ll find it,” said Caesar. “Come, let me have the fleet! There will be some rich pickings for Rhodes.”

Neither his enthusiasm nor his confidence persuaded the men of Rhodes to agree to this wild scheme; it was Caesar’s authority that earned him his ten triremes and five hundred soldiers. They knew him of old, and some of Vatia’s clout still clung to him. Though King Zenicetes had burned his eyrie on top of Mount Termessus when Vatia arrived to capture it, Rhodian respect for Vatia had grown a thousandfold; unperturbed at what seemed the loss of untold plunder, Vatia had simply waited for the ashes to cool, then sieved the lot, and so retrieved the melted precious metals. If Vatia could do that, then his erstwhile legate, Caesar, might be likely to have some of Vatia’s style. Therefore, the men of Rhodes concluded, Caesar was worth a bet.

At the mouth of Patara’s river the fleet moored on the last night before the search for Polygonus’s lair would begin; Caesar went into the city and commandeered every empty merchantman to follow in the Rhodian wake. And all the next day he stood on the poop of his hired ship, eyes riveted on the cove—scalloped coast sliding by for hour after hour.

“You see,” he said to his captain, “before Polygonus left Patara I knew enough from listening to the pirates talk to have an idea what the coves were going to look like. So in my mind I set a definition of what I was going to call a cove, and what I would not. Then I simply counted every cove.”

“I was looking for landmarks—rocks in the sea shaped like this or that, an oddly shaped mountain—that sort of thing,” said the captain, and sighed. “I am lost already!”

“Landmarks are deceptive, a man’s memory of them treacherous. Give me numbers any day,” said Caesar, smiling.

“What if you’ve missed your count?”

“I haven’t.”

Nor had he. The cove wherein the five hundred soldiers from Rhodes landed looked exactly like every other. The fleet had lain all night to the west of it, undetected, though as it turned out Polygonus had set no watches. All four of his war galleys were drawn up inside the hidden bowl; he deemed himself safe. But the sun had scarcely risen before he and his men were standing in the chains they had used to confine their slaves.

“You can’t say I didn’t warn you,” said Caesar to Polygonus, wearing a stout set of manacles.

“I’m not crucified yet, Roman!”

“You will be. You will be!”

“How did you find this place?”

“Arithmetic. I counted every cove between Patara and here.” Caesar turned, beckoning to the Rhodian admiral Lysander. “Come, let’s see what sort of fortune Polygonus has salted away.”

Many fortunes, as it turned out. Not only were the granaries almost full, but of other foodstuffs there were enough to feed all of Xanthus and Patara for the rest of that winter and spring. One big building was crammed with priceless fabrics and purples, with citrus—wood tables of rarest grain, with golden couches and the finest of chairs. Another building contained chest after chest of coins and jewelry. Much of the jewelry was Egyptian in make, rich with faience, beryl, carnelian, sard, onyx, lapis lazuli and turquoise. One small chest when opened revealed several thousand ocean pearls, some of them as big as pigeon’s eggs, others in rare colors.

“I’m not truly surprised,” said Lysander. “Polygonus has been raiding these sea—lanes for twenty years, and he’s a well-known hoarder. What I didn’t realize was that he must also have been raiding the shipping between Cyprus and Egypt.”

“Because of the ocean pearls and the jewelry?’’

“One doesn’t see such stuff elsewhere.”

“And the Alexandrians on Cyprus had the gall to tell me that their shipping was safe!”

“They dislike outsiders knowing their weaknesses, Caesar.”

“That, I soon understood.” Caesar huffed, pleased. “Well, Lysander, let’s divide the spoils.”

“Strictly speaking, Caesar, we are your agents. Provided you pay us for the hire of men and ships, the spoils belong to you,” said Lysander.

“Some but by no means all, my friend. I want no questions asked of me in the House that I cannot answer with an unmistakable ring of truth. So I will take a thousand talents in coin for the Treasury of Rome, five hundred talents more in coin for myself, and a handful of these pearls if I may choose whichever ones I fancy. I suggest that the few remaining coins and all the jewelry go to Rhodes as her share. The warehouse of furniture and fabrics you can sell, but I would like the sum realized used to build a temple in Rhodus to honor my ancestress, Aphrodite.”

Lysander blinked. “Most generous, Caesar! Why not take the whole chest of pearls for yourself? It would keep you free from money worries for the rest of your life.”

“No, Lysander, I’ll take just one handful. I like wealth as much as the next man, but too much might turn me into a miser.” Caesar bent to run his hands through the pearls, picking out this one and that: twenty the dark and iridescent colors of the scum on the Palus Asphaltites in Palestina; a pearl the size of a strawberry that was the same color and shape as a strawberry; a dozen the color of the harvest moon; one giant with purple in it; and six perfect silver—cream ones. “There! I can’t sell them, you know, without all of Rome wondering where they came from. But I can give them away to certain women when I need to.”

“Your fame will spread, to be so unavaricious.”

“I want no word of it spoken, Lysander, and I do mean that! My continence has absolutely nothing to do with lack of avarice. It has to do with my reputation in Rome, and with a vow I made that I would never lay myself open to charges of extortion or the theft of Rome’s property.” He shrugged. “Besides, the more money I have, the faster I’ll throw it away.”

“And Patara and Xanthus?”

“Receive the women and children to sell into slavery, plus all the food stored here. They should get back far more than they had to find to ransom me from the slave sales, and the food is a bonus. But with your permission I will take ten more talents for the captain of my ship. He too had to pay a ransom.” One hand on Lysander’s shoulder, Caesar guided him out of the building. ‘ The ships from Xanthus and Patara will be here by dusk. May I suggest that you put Rhodus’s share on board your galleys before they arrive? I’ll have my clerks catalogue everything. Send the money for Rome to Rome under escort.”

“What do you want done with the pirate men?”

“Load them on board Pataran or Xanthian ships, and give them to me to take to Pergamum. I’m not a curule magistrate, so I have not the power to execute in the provinces. That means I must take the men to the governor in Pergamum and ask him for permission to do what I promised I would do—crucify them.”

“Then I’ll put Rome’s share on board my own galleys. It’s a small enough cargo. The moment the seas are safe—early summer, perhaps—I’ll send the money to Rome from Rhodus.” Lysander thought of something else. “I’ll send four of my ships with you to Pergamum as an escort. You’ve brought Rhodes so much wealth that Rhodes will be delighted to oblige you in everything.”

“Just remember that I did! Who knows? One day I may need to call in the favor,” said Caesar.

The pirates were being led off toward the beach; Polygonus, last in the endless line, gave Caesar a grave salute.

“What luxury—loving fellows they were,” said Caesar, shaking his head. “I had always thought of pirates as dirty, unschooled and in love with fighting. But these men were soft.”

“Of course,” said Lysander. “Their savagery is overrated. How often do they need to fight for what they pillage, Caesar? Rarely. When they do fight it is under the supervision of their own admirals, who are remarkably skilled. The smaller pirates like Polygonus don’t attack convoys. They prey on unescorted merchantmen. The pirates who sail in fleets are mostly to be found around Crete. But when you live behind the walls of the Solyma like Polygonus, you tend to regard yourself as permanently secure—literally an independent kingdom.”

“Rhodes could do more than it does to arrest the pirate menace,” said Caesar.

But Lysander shook his head, chuckled. “Blame Rome for that! It was Rome insisted we reduce the size of our fleets when Rome took on the burden of ruling the eastern end of our great sea. She thought she could police everything, including the shipping lanes. But she’s too parsimonious to spend the necessary money. Rhodes is under her direction these days. So we do as we are bidden. If we were to strike out independently with sufficient naval power to eradicate the pirates, Rome would begin to think that she was hatching her own Mithridates.”

And that, reflected Caesar, was inarguable.

*

Marcus Junius Juncus was not in Pergamum when Caesar reached the river Caicus and moored in the city port; it was nearing the end of March by Roman reckoning, which meant that winter was not yet over, though the voyage up the coast had been uneventful. The city of Pergamum looked magnificent upon its lofty perch, but even from the lowlands of the river traces of snow and ice could be seen upon temple roofs and palace eaves.

“Where is the governor? In Ephesus?” asked Caesar when he found the proquaestor, Quintus Pompeius (closer by blood to the branch Rufus than to Pompey’s branch).

“No, he’s in Nicomedia,” said Pompeius curtly. “I was just on my way to join him, actually. You’re lucky to catch any of us here, we’ve been so busy in Bithynia. I came back to fetch some cooler clothes for the governor—we didn’t expect Nicomedia to be warmer than Pergamum.”

“Oh, it always is,” said Caesar gravely, and managed to refrain from asking the proquaestor of Asia Province did he not have more urgent things to do than fetch cooler clothing for Juncus? “Well, Quintus Pompeius,” he went on affably, “if you like, I’ll carry the governor’s clothing. I’m giving you a little work to do before you can leave. See those ships there?”

“I see them,” said Pompeius, none too pleased at being told by a younger man that he would have to do this, and not do that.

“There are some five hundred pirates on board who need to be incarcerated somewhere for a few days. I’m off to Bithynia to obtain formal permission from Marcus Junius to crucify them.”

“Pirates? Crucify?”

“That’s right. I captured a pirate stronghold in Lycia—with the aid of ten ships of the Rhodian navy, I hasten to add.”

“Then you can stay here and look after your own wretched prisoners!” snapped Pompeius. “I’ll ask the governor!”

“I’m very sorry, Quintus Pompeius, but that’s not the way it’s done,” said Caesar gently. “I am a privatus, and I was a privatus when I captured the men. I must see the governor in person. Lycia is a part of his province, so I must explain the circumstances myself. That is the law.”

The tussle of wills was prolonged a few moments more, but there was never any doubt as to who would win; off went Caesar in a fast Rhodian galley to Nicomedia, leaving Pompeius behind to deal with the pirate prisoners.

And, thought Caesar sadly as he cooled his heels in a small palace anteroom until the busy Marcus Junius Juncus had time to see him, things had already changed almost beyond recognition. The gilding was still there, the frescoes and other objects of art which could not be removed without leaving obvious damage behind, but certain familiar and beloved statues were gone from hallways and chambers, as were several paintings.

The light was fading when Juncus flounced into the room; evidently he had paused to eat dinner before releasing a fellow senator from his long wait.

“Caesar! How good to see you! What is it?” the governor asked, holding out his hand.

“Ave, Marcus Junius. You’ve been busy.”

“That’s right, you know this palace like the look of your hand, don’t you?” The words were smooth enough, but the inference was plain.

“Since it was I sent you word when King Nicomedes died, you must know that.”

“But you didn’t have the courtesy to wait here for me.”

“I am a privatus, Marcus Junius, I would only have been in your way. A governor is best left to his own devices when he has a task to do as important as incorporating a new province into Rome’s flock,” said Caesar.

“Then what are you doing here now?” Juncus eyed his visitor with intense dislike, remembering their little exchanges in the Murder Court—and who had mostly won them.

“I was captured by pirates off Pharmacussa two months ago.”

“Well, that happens to many. I presume that you managed to ransom yourself, since you’re standing before me. But there’s nothing I can do to help you recover the ransom, Caesar. However, if you insist I will have my staff enter a complaint with the Senate in Rome.”

“I am able to do that myself,” said Caesar pleasantly. “I am not here to complain, Marcus Junius. I’m here to request your permission to crucify five hundred captured pirates.”

Juncus stared. “What?”

“As you so perceptively perceived, I ransomed myself. Then in Rhodus I requisitioned a small fleet and some soldiers, went back to the pirate stronghold, and captured it.”

“You had no right to do that! I am the governor, it was my job!” snapped Juncus.

“By the time I had sent word to Pergamum—I have just come from Pergamum, where I left my prisoners—and a message had been forwarded to you here in Nicomedia, Marcus Junius, the winter would have been over, and Polygonus the pirate vanished from his base to do his campaigning. I may be a privatus, but I acted as all members of the Senate of Rome are expected to—I proceeded to ensure that Rome’s enemies did not escape Rome’s retribution.”

This swift retort gave Juncus pause; he had to search for the proper answer. “Then you are to be commended, Caesar.”

“So I think.”

“And you’re asking me for permission to crucify five hundred good strong men? I can’t do that! Your captives are now mine. I shall sell them into slavery.”

“I pledged them my word that they would be crucified,” said Caesar, lips tightening.

“You pledged them your word?” asked Juncus, genuinely aghast. “They’re outlaws and thieves!”

“It would not matter to me if they were barbarians and apes, Marcus Junius! I swore that I would crucify them. I am a Roman and my word is my bond. I must fulfill my word.”

“The promise was not yours to give! As you’ve pointed out, you’re a privatus. I do agree that you acted correctly in moving to ensure that Rome’s enemies did not escape retribution. But it is my prerogative to say what will happen to prisoners in my sphere of auctoritas. They will be sold as slaves. And that is my last word on the subject.”

“I see,” said Caesar, eyes glassy. He got up.

“Just a moment!” cried Juncus.

Caesar faced him again. “Yes?”

“I presume there was booty?’’

“Yes.”

“Then where is it? In Pergamum?”

“No.”

“You can’t keep it for yourself!”

“I did not. Most of it went to the Rhodians, who provided the manpower and seapower for the exercise. Some went to the citizens of Xanthus and Patara, who provided the fifty talents for my ransom. My share I donated to Aphrodite, asking that the Rhodians build a temple in her honor. And Rome’s share is on its way to Rome.”

“And what about my share?”

“I wasn’t aware you were entitled to one, Marcus Junius.”

“I am the governor of the province!”

“The haul was rich, but not that rich. Polygonus was no King Zenicetes.”

“How much did you send to Rome?”

“A thousand talents in coin.”

“Then there was enough.”

“For Rome, yes. For you, no,” said Caesar gently.

“As governor of the province, it was my job to send Rome’s share to the Treasury!”

“Minus how much?”

“Minus the governor’s share!”

“Then I suggest,” said Caesar, smiling, “that you apply to the Treasury for the governor’s share.”

“I will! Never think I will not!”

“I never would, Marcus Junius.”

“I will complain to the Senate about your arrogance, Caesar! You have taken the governor’s duties upon yourself!”

“That is true,” said Caesar, walking out. “And just as well. Otherwise the Treasury would be a thousand talents the poorer.”

*

He hired a horse and rode overland to Pergamum through a melting landscape, Burgundus and Demetrius hard put to keep up. On and on without pausing to rest he rode, his anger fueling his tired head and aching muscles. Just seven days after leaving Pergamum he was back—and two full days ahead of the Rhodian galley, still traversing the Hellespont.

“All done!” he cried cheerfully to the proquaestor Pompeius. “I hope you’ve made the crosses! I haven’t any time to waste.”

“Made the crosses?” asked Pompeius, astonished. “Why would I cause crosses to be made for men Marcus Junius will sell?”

“He was inclined that way at first,” said Caesar lightly, “but after I had explained that I had given my word they would be crucified, he understood. So let’s start making those crosses! I was due to commence studying with Apollonius Molon two months ago. Time flies, Pompeius, so up and into it!”

The bewildered proquaestor found himself hustled as Juncus never did, but could not move quickly enough to satisfy Caesar, who ended in buying timber from a yard and then set the pirates to making their own crosses.

“And make them properly, you scum, for hang on them you will! There’s no worse fate than lingering for days because a cross is not well made enough to hasten death.”

“Why didn’t the governor elect to sell us as slaves?” asked Polygonus, who was unhandy with tools and therefore not progressing in his cross making. “I was sure he would.”

“Then you were wrong,” said Caesar, taking the bolts from him and beginning to fasten crosspiece to tree. “How did you ever manage to forge a successful career as a pirate, Polygonus? You are hopelessly incompetent!”

“Some men,” said Polygonus, leaning on a spade, “make very successful careers out of being incompetent.”

Caesar straightened, cross bolted. “Not I!” he said.

“I realized that some time ago,” said Polygonus, sighing.

“Go on, start digging!”

“What are those for?’’ Polygonus asked, allowing Caesar to take his spade while he himself pointed at a pile of wooden pins.

“Wedges,” grunted Caesar, soil flying. “When this hole is deep enough to take the weight of cross and man together, your cross will be dropped in it. But the earth here is too loose to fix it firmly upright, so we’ll hammer wedges into the ground all around the base. Then when the job’s done and you’re dead, your cross will come out easily the moment the wedges are removed. That way, the governor can save all these wonderful instruments of an ignominious death for the next lot of pirates I capture.”

“Don’t you get out of breath?”

“I have sufficient breath to work and talk at the same time. Come, Polygonus, help me drop your final resting place in the hole…. There!” Caesar stood back. “Now shove one of the wedges into the hole—the cross is leaning.” He put down the spade and picked up a mallet. “No, no, on the other side! Toward the lean! You’re no engineer, are you?”

“I may not be an engineer,” said Polygonus, grinning, “but I have engineered my executioner into making my cross!”

Caesar laughed. “Do you think I’m not aware of that, friend? However, there is a price to pay. As any good pirate should know.”

Amusement fled; Polygonus stared. “A price?”

“The rest will have their legs broken. They’ll die quickly.

You, on the other hand, I will provide with a little rest for your feet so there’s not too much weight dragging you down. It is going to take you days to die, Polygonus!”

When the Rhodian galley which had followed Caesar from Nicomedia rowed into the river leading to the port of Pergamum, the oarsmen gaped and shivered. Men died—even by execution—in Rhodes, but Roman—style justice was not a part of Rhodian life; Rhodes was Friend and Ally, not part of a Roman province. So the sight of five hundred crosses in a field lying fallow between the port and the sea was as strange as it was monstrous. A field of dead men—all save one, the leader, whose head was adorned with the irony of a diadem. He still moaned and cried out.

Quintus Pompeius had remained in Pergamum, unwilling to leave until Caesar was gone. It was the sight of those crosses, as if a forest had been devised wherein no tree differed from its fellows in the slightest degree. Crucifixions happened—this was the death meted out to a slave, never to a free man—but never en masse. Yet there in neat rows, uniformly spaced apart, stood a regimented death. And the man who could organize and achieve it in such a short time was not a man to ignore. Or leave in charge of Pergamum, however unofficially. Therefore Quintus Pompeius waited until Caesar’s fleet sailed for Rhodes and Patara.

*

The proquaestor arrived in Nicomedia to find the governor elated; Juncus had found a cache of gold bullion in a dungeon beneath the palace and appropriated it for himself, unaware that Caesar and Oradaltis had put it there to trap him.

“Well, Pompeius, you’ve worked very hard to incorporate Bithynia into Asia Province,” said Juncus magnanimously, “so I shall accede to your request. You may call yourself Bithynicus.”

As this raised Pompeius (Bithynicus) to a state of exaltation almost equal to the governor’s, they reclined to eat dinner in a positive glow of well-being.

It was Juncus who brought up the subject of Caesar, though not until the last course had been picked over.

“He’s the most arrogant mentula I’ve ever encountered,” he said, lips peeled back. “Denied me a share of the spoils, then had the temerity to ask for my permission to crucify five hundred hale and hearty men who will at least fetch me some compensation when I sell them in the slave market!”

Pompeius stared at him, jaw dropped. “Sell them?”

“What’s the matter?”

“But you ordered the pirates crucified, Marcus Junius!”

“I did not!”

Pompeius (Bithynicus) shriveled visibly. “Cacat!’’

“What’s the matter?” Juncus repeated, stiffening.

“Caesar arrived back in Pergamum seven days after he had gone to see you and told me that you had consented to his crucifying the men. I admit I was a bit surprised, but it never occurred to me that he was lying! Marcus Junius, he crucified the lot of them!”

“He wouldn’t dare!”

“He did dare! With such complete assurance—so relaxed! He pushed me around like a bond servant! I even said to him that I was surprised to hear you’d consented, and did he look uncomfortable or guilty? No! Truly, Marcus Junius, I believed every word he said! Nor did you send a message to the contrary,” he added craftily.

Juncus was beyond anger; he wept. “Those men were worth two million sesterces on the market! Two million, Pompeius ! And he sent a thousand talents to the Treasury in Rome without even reporting to me first, or offering me a share! Now I’m going to have to apply to the Treasury for a share, and you know what a circus that is! I’ll be lucky if the decision comes through before my first great—grandchild is born! While he—the fellator!—must have appropriated thousands of talents for himself! Thousands!”

“I doubt it,” said Pompeius (Bithynicus), trying to look anywhere but at the desolate Juncus. “I had some speech with the senior captain of the Rhodian ships, and it appears that Caesar really did give all the loot to Rhodes, Xanthus and Patara. The haul was rich, but not an Egyptian treasure. The Rhodian believed Caesar took very little for himself, and that seems to be the common belief among all those concerned. One of his own freedmen said Caesar liked money well enough, but was too clever to prize it ahead of his political skin, and informed me with a sly smile that Caesar would never find himself arraigned in the Extortion Court. It also appears that the man had pledged the pirates he would crucify them while he was living at their stronghold waiting to be ransomed. It may be difficult to prove he took a thing from the pirate spoils, Marcus Junius.”

Juncus dried his eyes, blew his nose. “I can’t prove he took anything in Nicomedia or elsewhere in Bithynia, either. But he did! He must have! I’ve known virtuous men in my time, and I would swear he isn’t among them, Pompeius! He’s too sure of himself to be virtuous. And far too arrogant. He acts as if he owns the world!”

“According to the pirate leader—who thought Caesar very strange—he acted as if he owned the world while he was held a prisoner. Used to sweep around insulting everybody with high good humor! The ransom was levied at twenty talents, which apparently outraged Caesar! He was worth at least fifty talents, he said—and made them set the ransom at fifty talents!”

“So that’s why he said fifty talents! I noticed it at the time, but I was too angry with him to take him up on it, and then I forgot.” Juncus shook his head. “That probably explains him, Pompeius. The man’s mad! Fifty talents is a censor’s ransom. Yes, I believe the man is mad.”

“Or perhaps he wanted to frighten Xanthus and Patara into paying up quickly,” said Pompeius.

“No! He’s mad, and the madness comes out in self-importance. He’s never been any different.” A bitter look descended upon Juncus’s countenance. “But his motives are irrelevant. All I want is to make him pay for what he’s done to me! Oh, I don’t believe it! Two million sesterces!”

*

If Caesar suffered any misgivings about the accumulating enmity his activities were provoking, he concealed them perfectly; when his ship finally docked in Rhodus he paid off the captain with a most generous bonus, hired a comfortable but not pretentious house on the outskirts of the city, and settled to studying with the great Apollonius Molon.

Since this big and independent island at the foot of Asia Province was a crossroads for the eastern end of the Middle Sea, it was constantly bombarded with news and gossip, so there was no need for any visiting Roman student to feel cut off from Rome or from developments in any part of the Roman world. Thus Caesar soon learned of Pompey’s letter to the Senate and the Senate’s reaction—including the championship of Lucullus; and he learned that last year’s senior consul, Lucius Octavius, had died in Tarsus soon after he had arrived there early in March to govern Cilicia, It was too soon to know what the Senate planned to do about a replacement. The testamentary gift of Bithynia had pleased everyone in Rome from highest to lowest, but, Caesar learned in Rhodes, not everyone had wanted this new land to be a part of Asia Province, and the battle was not over just because Juncus had been ordered to go ahead with incorporation. Both Lucullus and Marcus Cotta, now the consuls, were in favor of making Bithynia a separate province with a separate governor, and Marcus Cotta had his eye on the post in the following year.

Of more interest to the Rhodians, however, was more local news; what was happening in Pontus and Cappadocia held an importance for them that Rome and Spain could not. It was said that after King Tigranes had invaded Cappadocia four years ago, not one citizen had been left in Eusebeia Mazaca, so many had the King deported to resettle in Tigranocerta; the Cappadocian king who had not impressed Caesar when he saw him had been living in exile in Alexandria since the invasion, giving as his reason for this peculiar choice of location the fact that Tarsus was too close to Tigranes, and Rome too expensive for his purse.

There were plenty of rumors that King Mithridates was busy mobilizing a new and vast army in Pontus, so angry had the King been at the news that Bithynia had fallen to Rome’s lot in a will; but no one had any details, and Mithridates was still definitely well within his own borders.

Marcus Junius Juncus came in for his share of gossip too. About him it was being said that he had alienated some of the most important Roman citizens in Bithynia—particularly those resident in Heracleia on the Euxine—and that formal complaints had been sent off to the Senate in Rome alleging that Juncus was plundering the country of its greatest treasures.

Then at the beginning of June the whole of Asia Province jolted, shuddered; King Mithridates was on the march, had overrun Paphlagonia and reached Heracleia, just on the Bithynian border. Word had flown to Rome that the King of Pontus intended to take Bithynia for himself. Blood, birth and proximity all dictated that Bithynia belonged to Pontus, not to Rome, and King Mithridates would not lie down while Rome usurped Bithynia! But at Heracleia the vast Pontic horde stopped short, and there remained; as usual, having thrown down the challenge to Rome, Mithridates had balked and now lay still, waiting to see what Rome would do.

Marcus Junius Juncus and Quintus Pompeius (Bithynicus) fled back to Pergamum, where they spent more time writing lengthy reports to the Senate than attempting to ready Asia Province for another war against the King of Pontus. With no governor in Cilicia thanks to the death of Lucius Octavius, the two legions stationed in Tarsus made no move to march to the aid of Asia Province, and Juncus did not summon them. The two legions of the Fimbriani stationed in Ephesus and Sardes were recalled to Pergamum, but were moved no closer to Bithynia than Pergamum. Speculation had it that Juncus intended to defend his own skin, not Bithynia.

In Rhodus, Caesar listened to the gossip but made no effort to journey to Pergamum, more concerned, it seemed, at the talk that Asia Province wanted no more truck with Mithridates but was not willing to fight him either—unless the governor issued firm orders. And the governor made no attempt to issue firm orders about a thing. The harvest would begin in Quinctilis in the southern part of the province and by Sextilis the northern parts would also be reaping. Yet Juncus did nothing, made no move to commandeer grain against the possibility of war.

Word came during Sextilis that both the consuls, Lucullus and Marcus Cotta, had been authorized by the Senate to deal with Mithridates; suddenly Bithynia was a separate province and given to Marcus Cotta, while Cilicia went to Lucullus. No one could say what the fate of Asia Province would be, its governor only a praetor and caught between the two consuls of the year. Outranked by Lucullus and Marcus Cotta, Juncus would have to do as he was told. But he was not a Lucullus man; he wasn’t efficient nor beyond reproach. Things boded ill for Juncus.

Not many days later Caesar received a letter from Lucullus’s brother, Varro Lucullus.

Rome is in an uproar, as you can imagine. I write to you, Caesar, because you are out of things at the moment, because I need to air my thoughts on paper and am not a diarist, and because I can think of no one I would rather write to. I am doomed to remain here in Rome no matter what happens short of the deaths of both the consuls, and since the senior consul is my brother and the junior consul is your uncle, neither of us will want that. Why am I doomed to remain in Rome? I have been elected senior consul for next year! Isn’t that excellent? My junior colleague is Gaius Cassius Longinus—a good man, I think.

Some local news first. You have probably heard that our mutual friend Gaius Verres succeeded in smarming up to the electorate and the lot officials so successfully that he is urban praetor. But have you heard how he managed to turn that usually thankless job into a profit—making one? After the plutocrat Lucius Minucius Basilus died without leaving a will behind him, Verres had to hear the plea of his closest relative to inherit. This closest relative is a nephew, one Marcus Satrius. But guess who contested? None other than Hortensius and Marcus Crassus, each of whom had rented a rich property from Basilus during his lifetime. They now came before Verres and alleged that Basilus would have left them these properties had he made a will! And Verres upheld their claims! Off went Hortensius and Marcus Crassus the richer, off went wretched Satrius the poorer. As for Gaius Verres—well, you don’t think he found for Hortensius and Marcus Crassus out of the goodness of his heart, do you?

Of course we have the annual nuisance among our ten tribunes of the plebs. This year’s specimen is a peculiar man, Lucius Quinctius. Fifty years old and self-made, likes to dress when not obliged to be togate in a full—length robe of Tyrian purple, and full of detestable affectations of speech and manner. The college had not been in office for one full day before Quinctius was haranguing the Forum crowds about restoring the full powers of the tribunate, and in the House he concentrated his venom upon my brother.

Quinctius is now very quiet and well behaved. My dear brother Lucullus dealt with him beautifully, using a two—pronged attack (as he put it). The first prong consisted in throwing last year’s tribune of the plebs, Quintus Opimius, to the dogs—the dogs being Catulus and Hortensius, who prosecuted Opimius for constantly exceeding his authority and succeeded in having him fined a sum exactly equal to his whole fortune. Opimius has been obliged to retire from public life, a ruined man. The second prong consisted in Lucullus’s sweetly reasonable and relentless whispering in Quinctius’s ear, to the effect that if Quinctius didn’t shut up and would not tone down his behavior, he too would be thrown to Catulus and Hortensius, and he too would be fined a sum exactly equal to his whole fortune. The exercise took some time, but it worked.

In case you think you are gone and absolutely forgotten, you are not, my dear Caesar. All of Rome is talking about the little flirtation you had with some pirates, and how you crucified them against the orders of the governor. What, I hear you ask, it’s known in Rome already? Yes, it is! And no, Juncus didn’t talk. His proquaestor, that Pompeius who has actually had the effrontery to add Bithynicus to his utterly undistinguished name, wrote the story to everyone. Apparently his intention was to make Juncus the hero, but such is popular caprice that everyone—even Catulus!—deems you the hero. In fact, there was some talk about giving you a Naval Crown to add to your Civic Crown, but Catulus was not prepared to go that far, and reminded the Conscript Fathers that you were a privatus, therefore were not eligible for military decorations.

Pirates have been the subject of much discussion in the House this year, but please put your mental emphasis on the word discussion. Whether it is because Philippus seems in the grip of a permanent lethargy, or because Cethegus has largely absented himself from meetings, or because Catulus and Hortensius are more interested in the courts than in the Senate these days, I do not know: but the fact remains that this year’s House has proven itself a slug. Make a decision? Oh, impossible! Speed things up? Oh, impossible!

Anyway, in January our praetor Marcus Antonius agitated to be given a special commission to eradicate piracy from Our Sea. His chief reason for demanding that this job be given to him appears to lie in the fact that his father, the Orator, was given a similar command thirty years ago. There can be no doubt that piracy has grown beyond a joke, and that in this time of grain shortages we must protect shipments of grain from the east to Italy. However, most of us were inclined to laugh at the thought of Antonius—not a monster like brother Hybrida, admittedly, but an amiable and feckless idiot, certainly—being given a huge command like eradicating piracy from one end of Our Sea to its other.

Beyond interminable discussion, nothing happened. Save that Metellus the eldest son of the Billy—goat Caprarius (he is a praetor this year) also thought it a good idea, and began to lobby for the same job. When Metellus’s lobbying became a threat to Antonius, Antonius went to see—guess who? Give up? Praecia! You know, the mistress of Cethegus. She has Cethegus absolutely under her dainty foot—so much so that when the lobbyists need Cethegus these days, they rush round to pay court to Praecia. One can only assume that Praecia must harbor a secret craving for big, beefy cretins—more mentula than mente —because it ended in Antonius’s getting the job! Little Goat retired from the arena maimed in self-esteem, but will live to fight again another day, I predict. Cethegus was so lavish in his support that Antonius got an unlimited imperium on the water and a regular proconsular imperium on the land. He was told to recruit one legion of land troops—though his fleets, he was told, he would have to requisition from the port cities in whatever area he happens to be cruising unlimitedly. This year, the western end of Our Sea.

If the complaints the House is beginning to get from the port cities of the west are anything to go by, then it would seem that Marcus Antonius is better at raising sums of money than eradicating pirates. So far, his pirate tally is considerably less than yours! He fought an engagement off the coast of Campania which he claimed as a great victory, but we have seen no proof like ship’s beaks or prisoners. I believe he has shaken his fist at Lipara and roared lustily at the Baleares, but the east coast of Spain remains firmly in the hands of Sertorius’s pirate allies, and Liguria is untamed. Most of his time and energy (according to the complaints) is expended upon riotous and luxurious living. Next year, he informs the Senate in his latest dispatch, he will transfer himself to the eastern end of Our Sea, to Gytheum in the Peloponnese. From this base he says he will tackle Crete, where all the big pirate fleets harbor. My thought is that Gytheum is reputed to have an unparalleled climate and some very beautiful women.

Now to Mithridates.

The news that King Nicomedes had actually died failed to reach Rome until March—delayed by winter storms, it seems. Of course the will was safely lodged with the Vestals and Juncus had already received his instructions to proceed with incorporation of Bithynia into the Asia Province the moment you informed him the King was dead, so the House presumed all was in train. But hard on the heels of this news came a formal letter from King Mithridates, who said that Bithynia belonged to Nysa, the aged daughter of King Nicomedes, and that he was marching to put Nysa on the throne. No one took it seriously; the daughter hadn’t been heard of in years. We sent Mithridates a stiff note refusing to countenance any pretender on the Bithynian throne, and ordering him to stay within his own borders. Usually when we prod him he behaves like a snail, so no one thought any more about the matter.

Except for my brother, that is. His nose, refined by all those years of living and fighting in the east, sniffed coming war. He even tried to speak about the possibility in the House, but was—not howled down—more snored out. His province for next year was Italian Gaul. When he drew it in the New Year’s Day lots he was delighted; his worst fear until that moment had been that the Senate would take Nearer Spain off Pompeius and give it to him! Which was why he always spoke up so vigorously for Pompeius in the House—oh, he didn’t want Nearer Spain!

Anyway, when at the end of April we learned that Lucius Octavius had died in Tarsus, my brother asked that he be given Cilicia as his province, and that Italian Gaul be given to one of the praetors. There was going to be war with King Mithridates, he insisted. And what was senatorial reaction to these forebodings? Lethargy! Smothered yawns! You would have thought that Mithridates had never massacred eighty thousand of us in Asia Province not fifteen years ago! Or taken the whole place over until Sulla threw him out. The Conscript Fathers discussed, discussed, discussed…. But could come to no conclusions.

When the news came that Mithridates was on the march and had arrived at Heracleia with three hundred thousand men, you’d think something would have happened! Well, nothing did. The House couldn’t agree what ought to be done, let alone who ought to be sent east—at one stage Philippus got up and suggested the command in the east should be given to Pompeius Magnus! Who (to give him his due) is far more interested in retrieving his tattered reputation in Spain.

Finally my poor Lucullus did something he despised himself for doing—he went to see Praecia. As you can quite imagine, his approach to the woman was very different from Marcus Antonius’s! Lucullus is far too stiff—necked to smarm, and far too proud to beg. So instead of expensive presents, languishing sighs, or protestations of undying love and lust, he was very crisp and businesslike. The Senate, he said, was comprised of fools from one back tier clear to the other, and he was fed up wasting his breath there. Whereas he had always heard that Praecia was as formidably intelligent as she was well educated. Did she see why it was necessary that someone be sent to deal with Mithridates as soon as possible—and did she see that the best person for the job was Lucius Licinius Lucullus? If she did see both of these facts, would she please kick Cethegus up the arse to do something about the situation? Apparently she loved being told she was more intelligent and better educated than anyone in the Senate (one presumes she lumped Cethegus in with the rest!), for she must have given Cethegus a thundering great kick up the arse—things happened in the House immediately!

Italian Gaul was put aside to be given to a praetor (as yet not named), and Cilicia awarded to my brother. With orders to proceed to the east during his consulship, and to take over as governor of Asia Province on the first day of next year without relinquishing Cilicia. Juncus was supposed to stay on in Asia Province, prorogued yet again, but that was canceled. He is to come home at the end of the year; there have been so many complaints about his conduct in poor Bithynia that the House agreed unanimously to recall him.

There is only one legion of troops in Italy. Its men were being recruited and trained to be sent to Spain, but will now go east with Lucullus. The kick Praecia administered to Cethegus was so hard that the Conscript Fathers voted Lucullus the sum of seventy—two million sesterces to assemble fleets, whereas Marcus Antonius wasn’t offered any money at all. Marcus Cotta was appointed governor of the new Roman province of Bithynia, but he has Bithynia’s navy at his disposal, so is quite well off for ships—he wasn’t offered any money either! What have we come to, Caesar, when a woman has more power than the consuls?

My dear brother covered himself in glory by declining the seventy—two millions. He said that the provisions Sulla had made in Asia Province would be adequate for his needs—he would levy his fleets upon the various cities and districts of Asia Province, then deduct the cost from the tributes. Since money is almost nonexistent, the Conscript Fathers voted my brother their sincere thanks.

It is now the end of Quinctilis, and Lucullus and Marcus Cotta will be leaving for the east in less than a month. Luckily under Sulla’s constitution the consuls—elect outrank the urban praetor, so Cassius and I basically will be in charge of Rome, rather than the awful Gaius Verres.

The expedition will sail all the way—not so huge an undertaking with only one legion to transport—because it is faster in summer than marching across Macedonia. I think too that my brother doesn’t want to get bogged down in a campaign west of the Hellespont, as Sulla did. He believes that Curio is well and truly capable of dealing with a Pontic invasion of Macedonia—last year Curio and Cosconius in Illyricum worked as a team to such effect that they rolled up the Dardani and the Scordisci, and Curio is now making inroads on the Bessi.

Lucullus ought to arrive in Pergamum around the end of September, though what will happen after that I do not know. Nor, I suspect, does my brother Lucullus.

And that, Caesar, brings you up to date. Please write whatever news you hear—I do not think Lucullus will have the time to keep me informed!

The letter made Caesar sigh; suddenly breathing exercises and rhetoric were not very stimulating. However, he had received no summons from Lucullus, and doubted he ever would. Especially if the tale of his pirate coup was all over Rome. Lucullus would have approved the deed—but not the doer. He liked things bureaucratically tidy, officially neat. A privatus adventurer usurping the governor’s authority would not sit well with Lucullus, for all he would understand why Caesar had acted.

I wonder, thought Caesar the next day, if the wish is father to the actuality? Can a man influence events by the power of his unspoken desires? Or is it rather the workings of Fortune? I have luck, I am one of Fortune’s favorites. And here it is yet again. The chance! And offered while there is no one to stop me. Well, no one except the likes of Juncus, who doesn’t matter.

Rhodus now insisted that King Mithridates had launched not one invasion, but three, each originating at Zela in Pontus, where he had his military headquarters and trained his vast armies. The main thrust he was definitely heading himself, three hundred thousand foot and horse rolling down the coast of Paphlagonia toward Bithynia, and supported by his general—cousins Hermocrates and Taxiles—as well as a fleet of one thousand ships, a good number of them pirate craft, under the command of his admiral—cousin Aristonicus. But a second thrust commanded by the King’s nephew Diophantus was proceeding into Cappadocia, its eventual target Cilicia; there were a hundred thousand troops involved. Then there was a third thrust, also one hundred thousand strong, under the command of a general—cousin, Eumachus, and the bastard son of Gaius Marius sent to the King by Sertorius, Marcus Marius. This third force was under orders to penetrate Phrygia and try to enter Asia Province by the back door.

A pity, sighed Caesar, that Lucullus and Marcus Cotta would not hear this news soon enough; the two legions which belonged to Cilicia were already on their way by sea to Pergamum at the command of Lucullus, which left Cilicia unprotected against an invasion by Diophantus. So there was nothing to do there except hope that events contrived to slow Diophantus down; he would meet little opposition in Cappadocia, thanks to King Tigranes.

The two legions of Fimbriani were already in Pergamum with the craven governor, Juncus, and there was no likelihood that Juncus would send them south to deal with Eumachus and Marcus Marius; he would want them where they could ensure his own escape when Asia Province fell to Mithridates for the second time in less than fifteen years. And with no strong Roman to command them, the people of Asia Province would not resist. Could not resist. It was now the end of Sextilis, but Lucullus and Marcus Cotta were at sea for at least another month—and that month, thought Caesar, would prove the vital one as far as Asia Province was concerned.

“There is no one else,” said Caesar to himself.

The other side of Caesar answered: “But I will get no thanks if I am successful.”

“I don’t do it for thanks, but for satisfaction.”

“Satisfaction? What do you mean by satisfaction?”

“I mean I must prove to myself that I can do it.”

“They won’t adore you the way they adore Pompeius Magnus.”

“Of course they won’t! Pompeius Magnus is a Picentine of no moment, he could never be a danger to the Republic. He has not the blood. Sulla had the blood. And so do I.”

“Then why put yourself at risk? You could end in being had up for treason—and it’s no use saying there is no treason! There doesn’t have to be. Your actions will be open to interpretation, and who will be doing the interpreting?” .

“Lucullus.”

“Exactly! He’s already got you marked as a born troublemaker and he’ll see this in the same light, even if he did award you a Civic Crown. Don’t congratulate yourself because you were sensible enough to give most of the pirate spoils away—you still kept a fortune that you didn’t declare, and men like Lucullus will always suspect you of keeping that fortune.”

“Even so, I must do it.”

“Then try to do it like a Julius, not a Pompeius! No fuss, no fanfares, no shouting, no puffing yourself up afterward, even if you are completely successful.”

“A quiet duty for the sake of satisfaction.”

“Yes, a quiet duty for the sake of satisfaction.”

*

He summoned Burgundus.

“We’re off to Priene at dawn tomorrow. Just you, me, and the two most discreet among the scribes. A horse and a mule each—Toes and a shod horse for me, however, as well as a mule. You and I will need our armor and weapons.”

Long years of serving Caesar had insulated Burgundus against surprise, so he displayed none. “Demetrius?” he asked.

“I won’t be away long enough to need him. Besides, he’s best left here. He’s a gossip.”

“Do I seek passage for us, or hire a ship?’’

“Hire one. Small, light, and very fast.”

“Fast enough to outdistance pirates?”

Caesar smiled. “Definitely, Burgundus. Once is enough.”

The journey occupied four days—Cnidus, Myndus, Branchidae, Priene at the mouth of the Maeander River. Never had Caesar enjoyed a sea voyage more, whipping along in a sleek undecked boat powered by fifty oarsmen who rowed to the beat of a drum, their chests and shoulders massively developed by years of this same exercise; the boat carried a second crew equally good, and they spelled each other before real tiredness set in, eating and drinking hugely in between bouts of rowing.

They reached Priene early enough on the fourth day for Caesar to seek out the ethnarch, a man of Aethiopian name, Memnon.

“I presume you wouldn’t be an ethnarch so soon after the reign of Mithridates in Asia Province if you had sympathized with his cause,” said Caesar, brushing aside the customary courtesies. “Therefore I must ask you—do you welcome the idea of another term under Mithridates?’’

Memnon flinched. “No, Caesar!”

“Good. In which case, Memnon, I require much of you, and in the shortest period of time.”

“I will try. What do you require?”

“Call up the militia of Priene yourself and send to every town and community from Halicarnassus to Sardes to call up its militia. I want as many men as you can find as quickly as you can. Four legions, and all under their usual officers. The assembly point will be Magnesia—by—the—Maeander eight days from now.”

Light broke; Memnon beamed. “The governor has acted!”

“Oh, absolutely,” said Caesar. “He’s placed me in command of the Asian militia, though unfortunately he can spare no other Roman staff. That means, Memnon, that Asia Province will have to fight for itself instead of sitting back and letting Roman legions take all the glory.”

“Not before time!” said Memnon, a martial spark in his eye.

“I feel the same way. Good local militia, Roman—trained and Roman—equipped, are much underestimated. But after this I can assure you they won’t be.”

“Whom do we fight?” asked Memnon.

“A Pontic general named Eumachus and a renegade Spaniard named Marcus Marius—no relation to my uncle the great Gaius Marius,” lied Caesar, who wanted his militia full of confidence, not awed by that name.

So off went Memnon to organize the calling up of the Asian militia, without asking to see an official piece of paper or even pausing to wonder if Caesar was who and what he said he was. When Caesar was doing the pushing, nobody thought to question him.

That night after he retired to his rooms in Memnon’s house, Caesar conferred with Burgundus.

“You won’t be with me on this campaign, old friend,” he said, “and there’s no use protesting that Cardixa wouldn’t speak to you again if you weren’t on hand to protect me. I need you to do something far more important than standing on the sidelines of a battle wishing you were a Roman legionary—or a militiaman. I need you to ride for Ancyra to see Deiotarus.”

“The Galatian thane,” said Burgundus, nodding. “Yes, I remember him.”

“And he’s bound to remember you. Even among the Gauls of Galatia, men don’t come as big as you. I’m sure he knows more about the movements of Eumachus and Marcus Marius than I do, but it isn’t to warn him that I’m sending you. I want you to tell him that I’m organizing an army of Asian militia and will try to lure the Pontic forces down the Maeander. Somewhere along the Maeander I hope to trap and defeat them. If I do, they’ll retreat back into Phrygia before re-forming their ranks and then trying to invade again. I want you to tell Deiotarus that he will never have a better opportunity to wipe this Pontic army out than if he catches it in Phrygia attempting to re-form. In other words, tell him, he will be acting in concert with me. If I in Asia Province and he in Phrygia both do our jobs well, then there will be no invasion of Asia Province or Galatia this year.”

“How do I travel, Caesar? I mean, looking like what?”

“I think you ought to look like a war god, Burgundus. Put on the gold armor Gaius Marius gave you, stuff the biggest purple feathers you can find in the marketplace into the crest of your helmet, and sing some frightful German song as loudly as you can. If you encounter Pontic soldiers, ride right through the middle of them as if they didn’t exist. Between you and the Nesaean, you’ll be the personification of martial terror.”

“And after I’ve seen Deiotarus?”

“Return to me along the Maeander.”

*

The hundred thousand Pontic men who had set out with Eumachus and Marcus Marius from Zela in the spring were under orders to concentrate upon infiltrating Asia Province as their first priority, but to travel in a more or less direct line between Zela in Pontus and any Phrygian backwater meant traversing Galatia, and Mithridates was not sure about Galatia. A new generation of chieftains had arisen to replace those he had murdered at a feast almost thirty years ago, and Pontic authority over Galatia was at best a tenuous thing. Eventually it would be necessary to deal with this odd outcrop of misplaced Gauls, but not first of all. His best men Mithridates had reserved for his own divisions, so the soldiers under the command of Eumachus and Marcus Marius were not properly seasoned. A campaign down the Maeander against disorganized communities of Asian Greeks would stiffen the troops, endow them with confidence.

As a result of these cogitations, the King of Pontus kept Eumachus and Marcus Marius and their army with him as he marched into Paphlagonia. He was, he congratulated himself, superbly well equipped for this sally against Rome; in Pontic granaries there lay two million medimni of wheat, and one medimnus produced two one—pound loaves of bread a day for thirty days. Therefore in wheat alone he had sufficient in storage to feed all his people and all his armies for several years. Therefore it mattered to him not at all that he carried an extra hundred thousand men with him into Paphlagonia. Petty details about how these enormous quantities of grain and other foodstuffs were to be transported he did not concern himself with; that lay in the domain of underlings, whom he simply assumed would wave their conjuring sticks and transport. In reality these hirelings had neither the training nor the practical imagination to do what came naturally to a Roman praefectus fabrum—though no Roman general would have dreamed of moving an army over long distances if it numbered more than ten legions all told.

Consequently by the time that Eumachus and Marcus Marius split their hundred thousand men away from the three hundred thousand belonging to Mithridates, supplies were running so short that the King was obliged to send snakelike trails of men back many miles to struggling oxcarts and make these men carry heavy loads of foods on their shoulders to feed the army. Which in turn meant a percentage of the soldiers were always exhausted from having to work as porters. The fleet was bringing supplies to Heracleia, the King was told; in Heracleia all would be set to rights, the King was told.

However, Heracleia was scant comfort to Eumachus and Marcus Marius, who left the main forces to march inland down the Billaeus River, crossed a range of mountains and emerged in the valley of the Sangarius. In this fertile part of Bithynia they ate well at the expense of the local farmers, but soon were heading into heavily forested uplands where only small vales and pockets lay under cultivation.

Thus what brought Eumachus and Marcus Marius to the parting of their ways was their inability to feed one hundred thousand Pontic soldiers.

“You won’t need the whole army to deal with a few Asian Greeks,” said Marcus Marius to Eumachus, “and certainly you won’t need cavalry. So I’m going to remain on the Tembris River with some of the foot and all the horse. We’ll farm and we’ll forage, and wait for news of you. Just make sure you’re back by winter—and that you’re marching half the people of Asia Province with you as food porters! It isn’t far from the upper Tembris to the lands of the Galatian Tolistobogii, so in the spring we’ll fall on them and annihilate them. Which will give us plenty of Galatian food to eat next year.”

“I don’t think the King my cousin would like to hear you belittle his glorious military venture by speaking of it in terms of food,” said Eumachus, not fiercely or haughtily; he was too afraid of Mithridates ever to feel fierce or haughty.

“The King your cousin is in bad need of some good Roman training, then he’d appreciate how hard it is to feed so many men on a march,” said Marcus Marius, unimpressed. “I was sent to teach you lot the art of ambush and raid, but so far all I’ve done is general an army. I’m not a professional at it. But I do have common sense, and common sense says half of this force has to stay somewhere on a river where there’s enough flat land to farm and yield sustenance. Hard luck if speaking of a campaign in terms of food upsets the King! If you want my opinion, he doesn’t even live on the same earth the rest of us do.”

More time was wasted while Marcus Marius relocated himself, for Eumachus refused to leave until he was sure whereabouts he would find Marius on his return. Thus it was the beginning of September before he and some fifty thousand infantrymen crossed the Dindymus Mountains and picked up one of the tributaries of the Maeander. Naturally the further downstream the army moved the better foraging and food became, a stimulus to continue until the whole of this rich part of the world belonged once more to King Mithridates of Pontus.

Because most of the biggest towns along the ever—winding river lay on its south bank, Eumachus marched on its north bank, following a paved road which had started in the town of Tripolis. Promising the soldiers that they would be allowed to sack when Asia Province was secured, Eumachus bypassed Nysa, the first big city they encountered, and continued downstream in the direction of Tralles. It was impossible to keep the men entirely together on the march, since food had constantly to be found, and sometimes attractions like a flock of succulent young sheep or fat geese would send several hundred men whooping and chasing until every last animal was caught and slaughtered, by which time troop unrest had spread.

In fact, the pleasant and placid progress through rich land had produced an element of festival. The scouts Eumachus sent out reported back twice a day, always with the same news: no sign of opposition. That, thought Eumachus scornfully, was because no focus of resistance existed south of Pergamum! All the Roman legions (even those of Cilicia) were garrisoned on the outskirts of Pergamum to protect the governor’s precious person; this had been known to every Pontic general for some time, and Marcus Marius had confirmed it by sending scouts to the Caicus.

So lulled and secure was Eumachus that he was not concerned when one evening his scouts failed to report back at their usual time, an hour before sunset. The city of Tralles was now somewhat closer than Nysa was behind, and the gently tilting undulations of the river valley which threw the Maeander into so many wandering, winding turns were flushed gold, long light upon harvest stubble. Eumachus gave the order to halt for the night. No fortifications were thrown up, no organized routine went into the making of a general camp; what happened resembled starlings settling, a process fraught with chatter, squabbles, relocations.

There was just enough light to see by when out of the dim shadows four legions of Asian militia in properly Roman rank and file fell upon the supping Pontic army and slaughtered its unprepared soldiers piecemeal. Though they outnumbered the Asian militiamen by more than two to one, the Pontic troops were so taken unaware that they could put up no resistance.

Provided with horses and by sheer chance located on the far side of the Pontic camp from Caesar’s attack, Eumachus and his senior legates managed to get away, rode without caring about the fate of the army for the Tembris River and Marcus Marius.

But luck was not with King Mithridates that year. Eumachus arrived back at the Tembris just in time to see Deiotarus and the Galatian Tolistobogii descend upon Marcus Marius’s half of the invasion force. This was a cavalry battle in the main, but it never developed into a bitter contest; the largely Sarmatian and Scythian levies which had enlisted with Mithridates fought best on open steppe, could not maneuver in the steep—sided valley of the upper Tembris, and fell in thousands.

By December, the remnants of the Phrygian army had struggled back to Zela under the command of Eumachus; Marcus Marius himself had set out to find Mithridates, preferring to tell the King in person what had happened than detail it in a report.

*

The Asian militia was jubilant, and joined with the whole population of the Maeander valley in victory celebrations which lasted for many days.

In his speech to the troops before the battle Caesar had harped upon the fact that Asia Province was defending itself, that Rome was far away and incapable of helping, that for once the fate of Asia Province depended wholly upon the Asian Greeks of that land. Speaking in the colloquial Greek of the region, he worked upon the feelings of patriotism and self-help to such effect that the twenty thousand men of Lydia and Caria whom he led to ambush the camping Eumachus were so fired that the battle was almost an anticlimax. For four nundinae he had drilled and disciplined them, for four nundinae he had imbued them with a consciousness of their own worth, and the results were everything that he could possibly have hoped for.

“No more Pontic armies will come this year,” he said to Memnon at the victory feast in Tralles two days after the defeat of Eumachus, “but next year you may see more. I have taught you what to do and how to do it. Now it’s up to the men of Asia Province to defend themselves. Rome, I predict, will be so caught up on other fronts that there won’t be legions or generals available for duty anywhere in Asia Province. But you know now that you can look after yourselves.”

“That we do, Caesar, and we owe it to you,” said Memnon.

“Nonsense! All you really needed was someone to get you started, and it was my good fortune that I was to hand.”

Memnon leaned forward. “It is our intention to build a temple to Victory as close to the site of the battle as the flood—plain permits—there is talk of a small hill upon the outskirts of Tralles. Would you allow us to erect a statue of you within the temple so that the people never forget who led them?”

Not if Lucullus had been present to veto the request would Caesar have declined this singular honor. Tralles was a long way from Rome and not one of Asia Province’s biggest cities; few if any Romans of his own class would ever visit a temple to Victory which could claim no distinctions of age or (probably) great art. But to Caesar this honor meant a great deal. At the age of twenty-six he would have a life—sized statue of himself in full general’s regalia inside a victory temple. For at twenty-six he had led an army to victory.

“I would be delighted,” he said gravely.

“Then tomorrow I will send Glaucus to see you and take all the measurements. He’s a fine sculptor who works out of the studios in Aphrodisias, but since he is in the militia he’s here with us now. I’ll make sure he brings his painter with him to make some colored sketches. Then you need not stay for further sittings if you have things to do elsewhere.”

Caesar did have things to do elsewhere. Chief among these was a journey to see Lucullus in Pergamum before news of the victory near Tralles reached him by other means. As Burgundus had come back from Galatia seven days before the battle, he was able to send the German giant to Rhodes escorting the two scribes and his precious Toes. The journey to Pergamum he would make alone.

He rode the hundred and thirty miles without stopping for longer than it took to change horses, which he did often enough to get ten miles an hour out of those he rode during daylight, and seven miles an hour out of those he rode during the night. The road was a good Roman one, and though the moon was thin, the sky was cloudless; his luck. Having started out from Tralles at dawn the day after the victory feast had ended, he arrived in Pergamum three hours after dark on the same day. It was the middle of October.

Lucullus received him at once. Caesar found it significant that he did so unaccompanied by Caesar’s uncle Marcus Cotta, who was also in the governor’s palace; in the consul’s favor, however, of Juncus there was no sign either.

Caesar found his outstretched hand ignored. Nor did Lucullus bid him sit down; the interview was conducted throughout with both men on their feet.

“What brings you so far from your studies, Caesar? Have you encountered more pirates?” Lucullus asked, voice cold.

“Not pirates,” said Caesar in a businesslike manner, “but an army belonging to Mithridates. It came down the Maeander fifty thousand strong. I heard about its advent before you arrived in the east, but I thought it pointless to notify the governor, whose access to information was better than mine, but who had made no move to defend the Maeander valley. So I had Memnon of Priene call up the Asian militia—which, as you know, he is authorized to do provided he has been so instructed by Rome. And he had no reason to assume I was not acting for Rome. By the middle of September the local city leaders of Lydia and Caria had assembled a force of twenty thousand men, which I put through drills and exercises in preparation for combat. The Pontic army entered the province in the latter part of September. Under my command, the Asian militia defeated Prince Eumachus near the city of Tralles three days ago. Almost all the Pontic soldiers were killed or captured, though Prince Eumachus himself got away. I understand that another Pontic army under the Spaniard Marcus Marius will be dealt with by the tetrarch Deiotarus of the Tolistobogii. You should receive word as to whether Deiotarus has succeeded within the next few days. That is all,” Caesar ended.

The long face with the chilly grey eyes did not thaw. “I think that is quite enough! Why didn’t you notify the governor? You had no way of knowing what he planned.”

“The governor is an incompetent and venal fool. I have already experienced his quality. Had he been willing to take control—which I doubt—nothing would have been done quickly enough. I knew that. And that is why I didn’t notify him. I didn’t want him underfoot because I knew I could do what had to be done far better than he could.”

“You exceeded your authority, Caesar. In fact, you had no authority to exceed.”

“That’s true. Therefore I exceeded nothing.”

“This is not a contest in sophistry!”

“Better perhaps if it was. What do you want me to say? I am not very old, Lucullus, but I have already seen more than enough of these fellows Rome sends to her provinces endowed with imperium, and I do not believe that Rome is better served by blind obedience to the likes of Juncus, the Dolabellae or Verres than it is by men of my kind, imperium or not. I saw what had to be done and I did it. I might add, I did it knowing I would get no thanks. I did it knowing I would be reprimanded, perhaps even put on trial for a little treason.”

“Under Sulla’s laws, there is no little treason.”

“Very well then, a big treason.”

“Why have you come to see me? To beg for mercy?”

“I’d sooner be dead!”

“You don’t change.”

“Not for the worse, anyway.”

“I cannot condone what you’ve done.”

“I didn’t expect you to.”

“Yet you came to see me. Why?”

“To report to the magistrate in command, as is my duty.”

“I presume you mean your duty as a member of the Senate of Rome,” said Lucullus, “though that was surely owed to the governor as much as to me. However, I am not unjust, and I see that Rome has cause to be grateful for your swift action. In similar circumstances I might have acted in a similar way—could I have assured myself I was not flouting the governor’s imperium. To me, a man’s imperium is far more important than his quality. I have been blamed by some for the fact that King Mithridates is at large to commence this third war against Rome because I refused to aid Fimbria in capturing Mithridates at Pitane, and—it is commonly said—thereby allowed Mithridates the room to escape. You would have collaborated with Fimbria on the premise that the end justifies the means. But I did not see my way clear to acknowledging the outlawed representative of an illegal Roman government. I stand by my refusal to help Fimbria. I stand by every Roman man endowed with imperium. And to conclude, I find you far too much like the other youth with big ideas, Gnaeus Pompeius who calls himself Magnus. But you, Caesar, are infinitely more dangerous than any Pompeius. You are born to the purple.”

“Odd,” Caesar interrupted. “I said the same thing myself.”

Lucullus gave him a withering look. “I will not prosecute you, Caesar, but nor will I commend you. The battle fought at Tralles will be reported very briefly in my dispatches to Rome, and described as conducted by the Asian militia under local command. Your name will not be mentioned. Nor will I appoint you to my staff, nor will I permit any other governor to appoint you to his staff.”

Caesar had listened to this with wooden face and distant eyes, but when Lucullus indicated by an abrupt gesture that he was finished, Caesar’s expression changed, became mulish.

“I do not insist that I be mentioned in dispatches as the commander of the Asian militia, but I do absolutely insist that I be named in dispatches as present for the entire duration of the campaign on the Maeander. Unless I am listed, I will not be able to claim it as my fourth campaign. I am determined to serve in ten campaigns before I stand for election as quaestor.”

Lucullus stared. “You don’t have to stand as quaestor! You are already in the Senate.”

“According to Sulla’s law, I must be quaestor before I can be praetor or consul. And before I am quaestor, I intend to have ten campaigns listed.”

“Many men elected quaestor have never served in the obligatory ten campaigns. This isn’t the time of Scipio Africanus and Cato the Censor! No one is going to bother to count up how many campaigns you’ve served in when your name goes up for the quaestorian elections.”

“In my case,” said Caesar adamantly, “someone will make it his business to count up my campaigns. The pattern of my life is set. I will get nothing as a favor and much against bitter opposition. I stand above the rest and I will outdo the rest. But never, I swear, unconstitutionally. I will make my way up the cursus honorum exactly as the law prescribes. And if I am listed as having served in ten campaigns, in the first of which I won a Civic Crown, then I will come in at the top of the quaestor’s poll. Which is the only place I would find acceptable after so many years a senator.”

Eyes flinty, Lucullus looked at the handsome face with its Sullan eyes and understood he could go so far, no further. “Ye gods, your arrogance knows no bounds! Very well, I will list you in dispatches as present for the duration of the campaign and also present at the battle.”

“Such is my right.”

“One day, Caesar, you will overextend yourself.”

“Impossible!” said Caesar, laughing.

“It’s remarks like that make you so detestable.”

“I fail to see why when I speak the truth.”

“One further thing.”

About to go, Caesar stayed. “Yes?”

“This winter the proconsul Marcus Antonius is moving his theater of command against the pirates from the western end of Our Sea to its eastern end. I believe he means to concentrate upon Crete. His headquarters will be at Gytheum, where some of his legates are already working hard—Marcus Antonius has to raise a vast fleet. You, of course, are our best gatherer of ships, as I know from your activities in Bithynia and Vatia Isauricus from your activities in Cyprus. Rhodes has obliged you twice! If you wish to add another campaign to your count, Caesar, then report to Gytheum at once. Your rank, I will inform Marcus Antonius, will be junior military tribune, and you will board with Roman citizens in the town. If I hear that you have set up your own establishment or exceeded your junior status in any way, I swear to you, Gaius Julius Caesar, that I will have you tried in Marcus Antonius’s military court! And do not think I can’t persuade him! After you—a relative!—prosecuted his brother, he doesn’t love you at all. Of course you can refuse the commission. Such is your right as a Roman. But it’s the only military commission you’ll get anywhere after I write a few letters. I am the consul. That means my imperium overrules every other imperium, including the junior consul’s—so don’t look for a commission there, Caesar!”

“You forget,” said Caesar gently, “that the aquatic imperium of Marcus Antonius is unlimited. On water, I believe he would outrank even the senior consul of the year.”

“Then I’ll make sure I’m never upon the same piece of water as the one where Antonius is bobbing up and down,” said Lucullus tiredly. “Go and see your uncle Cotta before you leave.”

“What, no bed for the night?”

“The only bed I’d give you, Caesar, belonged to Procrustes.”

Said Caesar to his uncle Marcus Aurelius Cotta some moments later: “I knew dealing with Eumachus would land me in hot water, but I had no idea Lucullus would go as far as he has. Or perhaps I ought to say that I thought either I would be forgiven or tried for treason. Instead, Lucullus has concentrated upon personal retaliations aimed at hampering my career.”

“I have no genuine influence with him,” said Marcus Cotta. “Lucullus is an autocrat. But then, so are you.”

“I can’t stay, Uncle. I’m ordered to leave at once for—oh, Rhodes I suppose, preparatory to relocating myself at Gytheum—in a boardinghouse which has to be run by a Roman citizen! Truly, your senior colleague’s conditions are extraordinary! I will have to send my freedmen home, including Burgundus—I am not to be allowed to live in any kind of state.”

“Most peculiar! Provided his purse is fat enough, even a contubernalis can live like a king if he wants. And I imagine,” said Marcus Cotta shrewdly, “that after your brush with the pirates, you can afford to live like a king.”

“No, I’ve been strapped. Clever, to pick on Antonius. I am not beloved of the Antonii.” Caesar sighed. “Fancy his giving me junior rank! I ought at least to be a tribunus militum, even if of the unelected kind.”

“If you want to be loved, Caesar—oh, rubbish! What am I doing, advising you? You know more answers than I know questions, and you know perfectly well how you want to conduct your life. If you’re in hot water, it’s because you stepped into the cauldron of your own free will—and with both eyes wide open.”

“I admit it, Uncle. Now I must go if I’m to find a bed in the town before all the landlords bolt their doors. How is my uncle Gaius?”

“Not prorogued for next year in Italian Gaul, despite the fact it needs a governor. He’s had enough. And he expects to triumph.”

“I wish you luck in Bithynia, Uncle.”

“I suspect I’m going to need it,” said Marcus Cotta.

*

It was the middle of November when Caesar arrived in the small Peloponnesian port city of Gytheum, to find that Lucullus had wasted no time; his advent was anticipated and the terms of his junior military tribunate spelled out explicitly.

“What on earth have you done?” asked the legate Marcus Manius, who was in charge of setting up Antonius’s headquarters.

“Annoyed Lucullus,” said Caesar briefly.

“Care to be more specific?”

“No.”

“Pity. I’m dying of curiosity.” Manius strolled down the narrow, cobbled street alongside Caesar. “I thought first I’d show you where you’ll be lodging. Not a bad place, actually. Two old Roman widowers named Apronius and Canuleius who share a huge old house. Apparently they were married to sisters—women of Gytheum—and moved in together after the second sister died. I thought of them immediately when the orders came through because they have lots of room to spare, and they’ll spoil you. Funny old codgers, but very nice. Not that you’ll be in Gytheum much. I don’t envy you, chasing ships from the Greeks! But your papers say you’re the best there is, so I daresay you’ll manage.”

“I daresay I will,” agreed Caesar, smiling.

Collecting warships in the Peloponnese was not entirely unenjoyable, however, for one soaked in the Greek classics: did sandy describe Pylos, did titans build the walls of Argos? There was a certain quality of ageless dreaming about the Peloponnese that rendered the present irrelevant, as if the gods themselves were mere nurselings compared to the generations of men who had lived here. And while he was very good at incurring the enmity of the Roman great, when Caesar dealt with humbler men he found himself much liked.

The fleets grew slowly through the winter, but at a rate Caesar thought Antonius would find hard to criticize. Instead of accepting promises, the best gatherer of ships in the world would commandeer any warlike vessels he saw on the spot, then tie the towns down to signed contracts guaranteeing delivery of newly built galleys to Gytheum in April. Marcus Antonius, Caesar thought, would not be ready to move before April, as he wasn’t expected to sail from Massilia until March.

In February the Great Man’s personal entourage began to dribble in, and Caesar—brows raised, mouth quivering—got a far better idea of how Marcus Antonius campaigned. When Gytheum did not prove to own a suitable residence, the entourage insisted that one be built on the shore looking down the Laconian Gulf toward the beautiful island of Cythera; it had to be provided with pools, waterfalls, fountains, shower baths, central heating and imported multicolored marble interiors.

“It can’t possibly be finished until summer,” said Caesar to Manius, eyes dancing, “so I was thinking of offering the Great Man room and board with Apronius and Canuleius.”

“He won’t be happy when he finds his house unfinished,” said Manius, who thought the situation as funny as Caesar did. “Mind you, the locals are adopting a praiseworthily Greek attitude toward sinking their precious town funds into that vast sybaritic eyesore—they’re planning on renting it for huge sums to all sorts of would—be potentates after Antonius has moved on.”

“I shall make it my business to spread the fame of the vast sybaritic eyesore far and wide,” said Caesar. “After all, this is one of the best climates in the world—ideal for a long rest cure or a secret espousal of unmentionable vices.”

“I’d like to see them get their money back,” said Man—ius. “What a waste of everyone’s resources! Though I didn’t say that.”

“Eh?” shouted Caesar, hand cupped around his ear.

When Marcus Antonius did arrive, it was to find Gytheum’s commodious and very safe habor filling up with ships of all kinds (Caesar had not been too proud to accept merchantmen, knowing that Antonius had a legion of land troops to shunt about), and his villa only half finished. Nothing, however, could dent his uproariously jolly mood; he had been drinking unwatered wine to such effect that he had not been sober since leaving Massilia. As far as his fascinated legate Marcus Manius and his junior military tribune Gaius Julius Caesar could see, Antonius’s idea of a campaign was to assault the private parts of as many women as he could find with what, so rumor had it, was a formidable weapon. A victory was a howl of feminine protest at the vigor of the bombardment and the size of the ram.

“Ye gods, what an incompetent sot!” said Caesar to the walls of his pleasant and comfortable room in the house of Canuleius and Apronius; he dared not say it to any human listener.

He had, of course, seen to it that Marcus Manius mentioned his fleet—gathering activities in dispatches, so when his mother’s letter arrived at the end of April not many days after Antonius, the news it contained presented a merciful release from duty in Gytheum without the loss of a campaign credit.

Caesar’s eldest uncle, Gaius Aurelius Cotta, returned from Italian Gaul early in the new year, dropped dead on the eve of his triumph. Leaving behind him—among many other things—a vacancy in the College of Pontifices, for he had been in length of years the oldest serving pontifex. And though Sulla had laid down that the college should consist of eight plebeians and seven patricians, at the time of Gaius Cotta’s death it contained nine plebeians and only six patricians, due to Sulla’s need to reward this man and that with pontificate or augurship. Normally the death of a plebeian priest meant that the college replaced him with another plebeian, but in order to arrange the membership as Sulla had laid down, the members of the college decided to co-opt a patrician. And their choice had fallen upon Caesar.

As far as Aurelia could gather, Caesar’s selection hinged upon the fact that no Julian had been a member of the College of Pontifices or the College of Augurs since the murders of Lucius Caesar (an augur) and Caesar Strabo (a pontifex) thirteen years before. It had been generally accepted that Lucius Caesar’s son would fill the next vacancy in the College of Augurs, but (said Aurelia) no one had dreamed of Caesar for the College of Pontifices. Her informant was Mamercus, who had told her that the decision had not been reached with complete accord; Catulus opposed him, as did Metellus the eldest son of the Billy—goat. But after many auguries and a consultation of the prophetic books, Caesar won.

The most important part of his mother’s letter was a message from Mamercus, that if he wanted to make sure of his priesthood, Caesar had better get back to Rome for consecration and inauguration as soon as he possibly could; otherwise it was possible Catulus might sway the college to change its mind.

His fifth campaign recorded, Caesar packed his few belongings with no regrets. The only people he would miss were his landlords, Apronius and Canuleius, and the legate Marcus Manius.

“Though I must confess,” he said to Manius, “that I wish I could have seen the vast sybaritic eyesore standing on the cove in all its ultimate glory.”

“To be pontifex is far more important,” said Manius, who had not realized quite how important Caesar was; to Manius he had always seemed a down—to—earth and unassuming fellow who was very good at everything he did and a glutton for work. “What will you do after you’ve been inducted into the college?”

“Try to find some humble propraetor with a war on his hands he can’t handle,” said Caesar. “Lucullus is proconsul now, which means he can’t order the other governors about.”

“Spain?”

“Too prominent in dispatches. No, I’ll see if Marcus Fonteius needs a bright young military tribune in Gaul-across-the-Alps. He’s a vir militaris, and they’re always sensible men. He won’t care what Lucullus thinks of me as long as I can work.” The fair face looked suddenly grim. “But first things first, and first is Marcus Junius Juncus. I shall prosecute him in the Extortion Court.”

“Haven’t you heard?” asked Manius.

“Heard what?”

“Juncus is dead. He never got back to Rome. Shipwrecked.”