In November the Senate gave in. Marcus Licinius Crassus was informed that he would be allowed to stand in absentia for the consulship. Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus was informed that the Senate had sent a decree to the Assembly of the People asking that body to waive the usual requirements—membership in the Senate, the quaestorship and praetorship—and legislate to allow him to stand for the consulship. As the Assembly of the People had passed the necessary law, the Senate was pleased to inform Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus that he would be allowed to stand in absentia for the consulship, et cetera, et cetera.
When a candidate stood for office in absentia, canvassing was difficult. He couldn’t cross the pomerium into the city to meet the voters, chat to everyone in the Forum, pose modestly nearby when some tribune of the plebs called a contio of the Plebeian Assembly to discuss the merits of this favored candidate—and lambaste his rivals. Because in absentia required special permission from the House, it was rarely encountered, but never before had two candidates for the consulship both stood in absentia. However, as things turned out the usual disadvantages mattered not a bit. Debate in the Senate—even under the threat of those two undischarged armies—had been as feverishly hot as it had been protracted;when the House gave in at last, every other candidate for the consulship had withdrawn from the contest as a protest against the blatant illegality of Pompey’s candidature. If there were no other candidates, Pompey and Crassus would look what they were: dictators in disguise.
Many and varied were the threats called down upon Pompey’s head and Crassus’s head, mostly in the form of prosecution for treason the moment imperium was lost; so when the tribune of the plebs Marcus Lollius Palicanus (a man from Picenum) called a special meeting of the Plebeian Assembly in the Circus Flaminius on the Campus Martius, every senator who had turned his back on Pompey and Crassus sat up with a shock of realization. They were going to wriggle out of treason charges by bringing back the full powers of the tribunate of the plebs and having ten grateful tribunes of the plebs legislate them immunity from the consequences of their actions!
Many in Rome wanted to see the restoration, most people because the tribunate of the plebs was a hallowed institution in proper harmony with the mos maiorum, and not a few people because they missed the vigor and buzz of the old days in the lower Forum Romanum when some militant demagogue fired up the Plebs until fists swung and hired ex-gladiators waded into the fray. So Lollius Palicanus’s meeting, widely advertised as being to discuss the restoration of the tribunate of the plebs, was bound to attract crowds. But when the news got round that the consular candidates Pompey and Crassus were going to speak in support of Palicanus, enthusiasm reached heights unknown since Sulla had turned the Plebeian Assembly into a rather attenuated men’s club.
Used for the less well patronized games, the Circus Flaminius held a mere fifty thousand people; but on the day of Palicanus’s meeting every bleacher was full. Resigned to the fact that no one save those lucky enough to be within a couple of hundred feet would hear a word, most of those who had streamed out along the bank of the Tiber had only come so that they could tell their grandchildren that they had been there on the day two consular candidates who were also military heroes had promised to restore the tribunate of the plebs. Because they would do it! They would!
Palicanus opened the meeting with a rousing speech aimed at procuring the most possible votes for Pompey and Crassus at the curule elections; those close enough to hear were those high enough in the classes to have a worthwhile vote. All Palicanus’s nine colleagues were present, and all spoke in support of Pompey and Crassus. Then Crassus appeared to great applause and spoke to great applause. A nice series of preliminary entertainments before the main performance. And here he came, Pompey the Great! Clad in glittering golden armor as bright as the sun, looking absolutely gorgeous. He did not have to be an orator; for all the crowd cared, he might have recited gibberish. The crowd had come to see Pompey the Great, and went home deliriously satisfied. No surprise then that when the curule elections took place on the day before the Nones of December, Pompey was voted in as senior consul and Crassus as his junior. Rome was going to have a consul who had never been a member of the Senate—and Rome had preferred him to his more elderly and orthodox colleague.
*
“So Rome has her first consul who was never a senator,” said Caesar to Crassus after the election gathering had dispersed. He was sitting with Crassus on the loggia of the Pincian villa where once King Jugurtha of Numidia had sat plotting; Crassus had bought the property after he saw the long list of illustrious foreign names who had rented it over the years. Both of them were looking at the public slaves clearing up the enclosures, bridges and voting platforms from the Saepta.
“For no other reason than that he wanted to be consul,” said Crassus, aping the peevish note Pompey put into his voice whenever he was thwarted. “He’s a big baby!”
“In some ways, yes.” Caesar turned his head to glance at Crassus’s face, which bore its usual placid expression. “It’s you who’ll have to do the governing. He doesn’t know how.”
“Oh, don’t I know! Though he must have absorbed something by now from Varro’s handy little instant manual on senatorial and consular conduct,” said Crassus, and grunted. “I ask you! The senior consul having to peruse a manual of behavior! I have these wonderful visions of what Cato the Censor would say.”
“He’s asked me to draft the law returning all its powers to the tribunate of the plebs, did he tell you?’’
“When does he ever tell me anything?”
“I declined.”
“Why?”
“First of all, because he assumed he’d be senior consul.”
“He knew he’d be senior consul!”
“And secondly, you’re perfectly capable of drafting any law the pair of you might want to promulgate—you were urban praetor!”
Crassus shook his huge head, put his hand on Caesar’s arm. “Do it, Caesar. It will keep him happy! Like all spoiled big babies, he has a gift for using the right people to achieve his ends. If you decline because you don’t care to be used, that’s all right by me. But if you’d like the challenge and you think it would add to your legislative experience, then do it. No one is going to know—he’ll make sure of that.”
“How right you are!” laughed Caesar, then sobered. “I would like to do it, as a matter of fact. We haven’t had decent tribunes of the plebs since I was a boy—Sulpicius was the last. And I can foresee a time when all of us might need tribunician laws. It has been very interesting for a patrician to associate with the tribunes of the plebs the way I have been lately. Palicanus has a replacement ready for me, by the way.”
“Who?”
“A Plautius. Not one of the old family Silvanus. This one is from Picenum and seems to go back to a freedman. A good fellow. He’s prepared to do whatever I need done through the newly revitalized Plebeian Assembly.”
“The tribunician elections haven’t been held yet. Plautius may not get in,” said Crassus.
“He’ll get in,” said Caesar confidently. “He can’t lose—he’s Pompeius’s man.”
“And isn’t that an indictment of our times?”
“Pompeius is lucky having you for a colleague, Marcus Crassus. I keep seeing Metellus Little Goat there instead. A disaster! But I am sorry that you haven’t the distinction of being senior consul.”
Crassus smiled, it seemed without rancor. “Don’t worry, Caesar. I am reconciled.” He sighed. “However, it would be nice to see Rome mourn my passing more than she does Pompeius’s passing when we leave office.”
“Well,” said Caesar, rising, “it’s time I went home. I have devoted little time to the women of my family since I came back to Rome, and they’ll be dying to hear all the election news.”
*
But one glance at his reception room caused Caesar to rue his decision to go home; it appeared to be full of women! A count of heads reduced full to six—his mother, his wife, his sister Ju—Ju, his Aunt Julia, Pompey’s wife, and another woman closer inspection placed as his cousin Julia called Julia Antonia because she was married to Marcus Antonius, the pirate eradicator. Everyone’s attention was focused on her, not surprising: she was perched on the edge of a chair with her legs stretched out rigidly before her, and she was bawling.
Before Caesar could move any further, someone gave him a tremendous buffet in the small of the back, and he whipped around to see a big, unmistakably Antonian child standing there grinning. Not for long! Caesar’s hand went out to grasp the boy painfully by his nose, dragged him forward. Howls quite as loud as those his mother was producing erupted from his gaping mouth, but he wasn’t about to curl into a helpless ball; he lashed out with one big foot at Caesar’s shins, doubled his hands into fists and swung with both of them. At the same time two other, smaller boys dived on Caesar too, pummeling his sides and chest, though the immense folds of toga prevented this triple assault from inflicting any real damage.
Then too quickly for anyone to see how it was done, all three boys were rendered hors de combat. The two smaller ones Caesar dealt with by banging their heads together with an audible crack and throwing them heavily against the wall; the biggest boy got a wallop on the side of the face that made his eyes water, and was marched to join his brothers in a jerking progress punctuated by resounding kicks on his backside.
The bawling mother had ceased her plaints when all this had begun, and now leaped from her chair to descend upon the tormentor of her darling precious sons.
“Sit down, woman!’‘ roared Caesar in a huge voice.
She tottered back to her chair and collapsed, bawling.
He turned back to where the three boys half—lay, half—sat against the wall, blubbering as lustily as their mother.
“If any one of you moves, he’ll wish he’d never been born. This is my house, not the Pincian menagerie, and while you’re guests in it you’ll behave like civilized Romans, not Tingitanian apes. Is that quite clear?”
Holding the crumpled disorder of dirty toga around him, he walked through the midst of the women to the door of his study. “I am going to rectify the damage,” he said in the deceptively quiet tones his mother and wife recognized as temper reined in by an iron hold, “and when I return, I expect to see a beautiful peace descended. Shut that wretched woman up if you have to gag her, and give her sons to Burgundus. Tell Burgundus he has my full permission to strangle them if necessary.”
Caesar was not gone long, but when he returned it was to find the boys vanished and the six women sitting bolt upright in utter silence. Six pairs of enormous eyes followed him as he went to sit between his mother and his wife.
“Well, Mater, what’s the trouble?” he asked pleasantly.
“Marcus Antonius is dead,” Aurelia explained, “by his own hand, in Crete. You know that he was defeated by the pirates twice on the water and once on the land, and lost all his ships and men. But you may not know that the pirate strategoi Panares and Lasthenes literally forced him to sign a treaty between Rome and the Cretan people. The treaty has just arrived in Rome, accompanied by poor Marcus Antonius’s ashes. Though the Senate hasn’t had time to meet about it, they are already saying around the city that Marcus Antonius has disgraced his name forever—people are even beginning to refer to him as Marcus Antonius Creticus! But they don’t mean Crete, they mean Man of Chalk.”
Caesar sighed, his face betraying exasperation rather than sorrow. “He wasn’t the right man for that job,” he said, not willing to spare the feelings of the widow, a vastly silly woman. “I saw it when I was his tribune in Gytheum. However, I confess I didn’t see precisely what the end would be. But there were plenty of signs.” He looked at Julia Antonia. “I’m sorry for you, lady, but I fail to see what I can do for you.”
“Julia Antonia came to see if you would organize Marcus Antonius’s funeral rites,” said Aurelia.
“But she has a brother. Why can’t Lucius Caesar do it?” asked Caesar blankly.
“Lucius Caesar is in the east with the army of Marcus Cotta, and your cousin Sextus Caesar refuses to have anything to do with it,” said Aunt Julia. “In the absence of Gaius Antonius Hybrida, we are the closest family Julia Antonia has in Rome.”
“In that case I will organize the obsequies. It would be wise, however, to make it a very quiet funeral.”
Julia Antonia rose to go, shedding handkerchiefs, brooches, pins, combs in what seemed an endless cascade; she seemed now to hold no umbrage against Caesar for his summary treatment of her sons—or for his dispassionate appraisal of her late husband’s ability. Evidently she liked being roared at and told to behave, reflected Caesar as he escorted her toward the door. No doubt the late Marcus Antonius had obliged her! A pity he hadn’t also disciplined his children, as the mother was incapable of it. Her boys were fetched from Burgundus’s quarters, where they had undergone a salutary experience; the sons of Cardixa and Burgundus had dwarfed them completely. Like their mother they seemed not to have taken permanent offense. All three eyed Caesar warily.
“There’s no need to be afraid of me unless you’ve stepped over the mark of common decent behavior,” said Caesar cheerfully, his eyes twinkling. “If I catch you doing that—watch out!”
“You’re very tall, but you don’t look all that strong to me,” said the oldest boy, who was the handsomest of the three, though his eyes were too close together for Caesar’s taste. However, they stared at him straightly enough, and their expression did not lack courage or intelligence.
“One day you’ll encounter a tiny little fellow who slaps you flat on your back before you can move a finger,” said Caesar. “Now go home and look after your mother. And do your homework instead of prowling through the Subura getting up to mischief and stealing from people who’ve done you no harm. Homework will benefit you more in the long run.”
Mark Antony blinked. “How do you know about that?”
“I know everything,” said Caesar, shutting the door on them. He returned to the rest of the women and sat down again. “The invasion of the Germans,” he said, smiling. “What a frightful tribe of little boys! Does no one supervise them?”
“No one,” said Aurelia. She heaved a sigh of pure pleasure. “Oh, I did enjoy watching you dispose of them! My hand had been itching to administer a good spanking ever since they arrived.”
Caesar’s eyes were resting on Mucia Tertia, who looked, he thought, marvelously attractive; marriage to Pompey obviously agreed with her. Mentally he added her name to his list of future conquests—Pompey had more than asked for it! But not yet. Let the abominable Kid Butcher first climb even higher. Caesar had no doubt he could succeed with Mucia Tertia; he had caught her staring at him several times. No, not yet. She needed more time to ripen on Pompey’s vine before he snipped her off. At the moment he had enough on his plate dealing with Metella Little Goat, who was the wife of Gaius Verres. Now ploughing her furrow was one exercise in horticulture he found enormously gratifying!
His sweet little wife was watching him, so he removed his eyes from Mucia Tertia and focused them on her instead. When he dropped one lid in a wink Cinnilla had to suppress a giggle, and demonstrated that she had inherited one characteristic from her father; she blushed scarlet. A dear lady. Never jealous, though of course she heard the rumors—and probably believed them. After all these years she must surely know her Caesar! But she was too shaped by Aurelia ever to bring up the subject of his philanderings, and naturally he did not. They had nothing to do with her.
With his mother he was not so circumspect—it had been her idea in the first place to seduce the wives of his peers. Nor was he above asking her advice from time to time, when some woman proved difficult. Women were a mystery he suspected would always remain a mystery, and Aurelia’s opinions were worth hearing. Now that she mixed with her peers from Palatine and Carinae she heard all the gossip and faithfully reported it to him free of embellishments. What he liked of course was to drive his women out of their minds for love of him before dropping them; it rendered them useless to their cuckolded husbands ever after.
“I suppose all of you gathered to console Julia Antonia,” he said, wondering if his mother would have the gall to offer him sweet watered wine and little cakes.
“She arrived at my house trailing trinkets and those awful boys,” said Aunt Julia, “and I knew I couldn’t cope with all four of them. So I brought them here.”
“And you were visiting Aunt Julia?” asked Caesar of Mucia Tertia, his smile devastating.
She drew a breath, caught it, coughed. “I visit Julia a lot, Gaius Julius. The Quirinal is very close to the Pincian.”
“Yes, of course.” He gave much the same smile to Aunt Julia, who was by no means impervious to it, but naturally saw it in a different way.
“I suspect I’ll see a great deal more of Julia Antonia in the future, alas,” said Aunt Julia, sighing. “I wish I had your technique with her sons!”
“Her visits won’t go on for long, Aunt Julia, and I’ll make it my business to have a little word with the boys, don’t worry. Julia Antonia will be married again in no time.”
“No one would have her!” said Aurelia, snorting.
“There are always men peculiarly susceptible to the charms of utterly helpless women,” said Caesar. “Unfortunately she’s a bad picker. So whoever she marries will prove no more satisfactory a husband than did Marcus Antonius the Man of Chalk.””
“In that, my son, you are definitely right.”
He turned his attention to his sister Ju—Ju, who had said not one word so far; she had always been the silent member of the family, despite owning a lively disposition. “I used to accuse Lia of being a bad picker,” he said, “but I didn’t give you a chance to show me what sort of picker you were, did I?”
She gave him back his own smile. “I am very well content with the husband you picked for me, Caesar. However, I’m quite prepared to admit that the young men I used to fancy before I married have all turned out rather disappointing.’’
“Then you’d better let Atius and me pick your daughter’s husband when the time comes. Atia is going to be very beautiful. And intelligent, which means she won’t appeal to everyone.”
“Isn’t that a pity?” asked Ju—Ju.
“That she’s intelligent, or that men don’t appreciate it?”
“The latter.”
“I like intelligent women,” said Caesar, “but they’re few and far between. Don’t worry, we’ll find Atia someone who does appreciate her qualities.”
Aunt Julia rose. “It will be dark soon, Caesar—I know you prefer to be called that, even by your mother. But it still comes hard to me! I must go.”
“I’ll ask Lucius Decumius’s boys to find you a litter and escort you,” said Caesar.
“I have a litter,” said Aunt Julia. “Mucia isn’t allowed to go out on foot, so we traveled between the Quirinal and the Subura in extreme comfort—or we would have had we not shared the conveyance with Julia Antonia, who nearly washed us away. We also have some stout fellows to escort us.”
“And I came by litter too,” said Ju—Ju.
“Degenerate!” sniffed Aurelia. “You’d all do better to walk.”
“I’d love to walk,” said Mucia Tertia softly, “but husbands don’t see things the way you do, Aurelia. Gnaeus Pompeius thinks it unseemly for me to walk.”
Caesar’s ears pricked. Aha! Some faint discontent! She was feeling constricted, too hedged about. But he said nothing, simply waited and chatted to everyone while a servant ran up to the crossroads square to summon the litters.
“You don’t look well, Aunt Julia” was the last subject he broached, and leaving it until he was handing her into her side of the roomy conveyance Pompey had provided for Mucia Tertia.
“I’m growing old, Caesar,” she said in a whisper, giving his hand a squeeze. “Fifty-seven. But there’s nothing the matter except that my bones ache when the weather’s cold. I’m beginning to dread winters.”
“Are you warm enough up there on the outer Quirinal?” he asked sharply. “Your house is exposed to the north wind. Shall I have your cellar fitted with a hypocausis?”
“Save your money, Caesar. If I need it, I can afford to install a furnace myself,” she said, and shut the curtains.
“She isn’t well, you know,” he said to his mother as they went back into the apartment.
Aurelia thought about that, then gave measured judgement. “She’d be well enough, Caesar, if she had more to live for. But husband and son are both dead. She has no one except us and Mucia Tertia. And we are not enough.”
The reception room was ablaze with the little flames of lamps and the shutters had been closed against the chill wind percolating down the light well. It looked warm and cheery, and there on the floor with Cinnilla was Caesar’s daughter, almost six years old. An exquisite child, fine—boned and graceful, so fair she had a silver look.
When she saw her father her great blue eyes sparkled; she held out her arms. “Tata, tata!” she cried. “Pick me up!”
He picked her up, pressed his lips against her pale pink cheek. “And how’s my princess today?”
And while he listened with every sign of fascination to a litany of small and girlish doings, Aurelia and Cinnilla watched them both. Cinnilla’s thoughts got no further than the fact that she loved them, but Aurelia’s dwelt upon that word, princess. She is exactly that, a princess. Caesar will go far, and one day he will be very rich. The suitors will be unnumbered. But he won’t be as kind to her as my mother and stepfather/uncle were to me. He will give her to the man he needs the most no matter how she feels about it. So I must train her to accept her fate, to go to it gracefully and in good spirits.
*
On the twenty-fourth day of December, Marcus Crassus finally celebrated his ovation. Since there had been an undeniable Samnite element in Spartacus’s army, he had won two concessions from the Senate: instead of going afoot he was allowed to ride a horse; and instead of wearing the lesser crown of myrtle he was allowed to wear the triumphator’s crown of laurel. A good crowd turned out to cheer him and his army, marched up from Capua for the occasion, though there were broad winks and many digs in the ribs at sight of the spoils, a poor collection. The whole of Rome knew Marcus Crassus’s besetting sin.
The numbers who attended Pompey’s triumph on the last day of December were much greater, however. Somehow Pompey had managed to endear himself to the people of Rome, perhaps because of his relative youth, his golden beauty, that fancied resemblance to Alexander the Great, and a certain happy cast to his features. For the love they felt forPompey was not of the same kind as the love they had used to feel for Gaius Marius, who continued (despite all Sulla’s efforts) to remain the favorite person in living memory.
At about the same time that the curule elections were being held in Rome early in December, Metellus Pius finally crossed the Alps into Italian Gaul with his army, which he proceeded to disband before settling its troops in the wide rich lands to the north of the Padus River. Whether because he had sensed something in Pompey toward the end of their period together in Spain that had caused him to suspect that Pompey would not be content with a return to obscurity, the Piglet had remained obdurately aloof from the troubles in Rome. When written to in appeal by Catulus, Hortensius and the other prestigious Caecilii Metelli, he had refused to discuss matters which, he maintained, his long absence in Spain disqualified him from commenting upon. And when he did reach Rome at the end of January he celebrated a modest triumph with those troops who had accompanied him to Rome for the occasion, and took his seat in a Senate supervised by Pompey and Crassus as if nothing whatsoever was amiss. It was an attitude which spared him much pain, though it also meant he never did receive as much credit for the defeat of Quintus Sertorius as he deserved.
The lex Pompeia Licinia de tribunicia potestate was tabled in the House early in January under the aegis of Pompey, who held the fasces as senior consul. The popularity of this law, restoring as it did full powers to the tribunate of the plebs, flattened senatorial opposition. All those whom Pompey and Crassus had thought to hear roaring against it in the House contented themselves with a few bleats; the senatus consultum recommending to the Assembly of the People that the law be passed was obtained by a near unanimous vote. Some had quibbled that it should by rights have gone to the Centuriate Assembly for ratification, but Caesar, Hortensius and Cicero all asserted firmly that only a tribal assembly could ratify measures involving the tribes. Within the three stipulated market days, the lex Pompeia Licinia passed into law. Once more the tribunes of the plebs could veto laws and magistrates, bring forward plebiscites having the force of law in their Plebeian Assembly without the senatorial blessing of a senatus consultum, and even prosecute for treason, extortion and other gubernatorial transgressions.
Caesar was speaking in the House on a regular basis now; since he was always worth listening to—witty, interesting, brief, pungent—he soon gathered a following, and was asked with ever increasing frequency to publish his speeches, considered every bit as good as Cicero’s. Even Cicero had been heard to say that Caesar was the best orator in Rome—after himself, that is.
Anxious to utilize some of his newly restored powers, the tribune of the plebs Plautius announced in the Senate that he was going to legislate in the Plebeian Assembly to give back their citizenships and rights to those condemned with Lepidus and with Quintus Sertorius. Caesar rose at once to speak in favor of the law, and pleaded with very moving eloquence to extend this measure to include all those proscribed by Sulla. Yet when the Senate refused to grant the extension and endorsed the Plautian law only in respect of those outlawed for following Lepidus and Sertorius, Caesar looked strangely cheerful, not at all put out.
“The House turned you down, Caesar,” said Marcus Crassus, puzzled, “yet here I find you positively purring!”
“My dear Crassus, I knew perfectly well they’d never sanction a pardon for Sulla’s proscribed!” said Caesar, smiling. “It would mean too many important men who got fat off the proscriptions must give everything back. No, no! However, it looked very much as if the Catulus rump was going to succeed in blocking pardons for the Lepidans and Sertorians, so I made that measure look modest enough to seem inviting by harping on Sulla’s proscribed. If you want something done and you think it’s going to be opposed, Marcus Crassus, always go much further than what you want. The opposition becomes so incensed by the additions that it quite loses sight of the fact that it originally opposed the lesser measure.”
Crassus grinned. “You’re a politician to the core, Caesar. I hope some of your opponents don’t study your methods too closely, or you’ll find life harder than it is.”
“I love politics,” said Caesar simply.
“You love everything you do, so you jump in boots and all. That’s your secret. Well, that and the size of your mind.”
“Don’t flatter me, Crassus, my head is quite large enough,” said Caesar, who loved to pun on the fact that “head” meant what resided on a man’s shoulders—and also meant what resided between a man’s legs.
“Too big, if you ask me,” said Crassus, laughing. “You’d better be a little more discreet in your dealings with other men’s wives, at least for the time being. I hear our new censors are going to examine the sentorial rolls the way a sedulous nursemaid looks for nits.”
*
There were censors for the first time since Sulla had cut that office from the list of magistracies; an unlikely, peculiar pair in Gnaeus Cornelius Lentulus Clodianus and Lucius Gellius Poplicola. Everyone knew they were Pompey’s hirelings, but when Pompey had mooted their names in the House, the more appropriate men who had planned to run for censor—Catulus and Metellus Pius, Vatia Isauricus and Curio—all withdrew, leaving the field clear for Clodianus and Gellius.
Crassus’s prediction was right. It was normal censorial practice to let all the State contracts first, but after letting the sacred contracts for feeding the Capitoline geese and chickens and other religious matters, Clodianus and Gellius proceeded to the senatorial rolls. Their findings were read out at a special contio they called from the rostra in the lower Forum Romanum, and created a huge stir. No less than sixty-four senators were expelled, most of them for being under suspicion of having taken bribes (or given out bribes) when on jury duty. Many of the jurors at the trial of Statius Albius Oppianicus were expelled, and the successful prosecutor of Oppianicus, his stepson Cluentius, was demoted by being transferred from his rural tribe to urban Esquilina. But more sensational by far were the expulsions of one of last year’s quaestors, Quintus Curius, last year’s senior consul, Publius Cornelius Lentulus Sura, and Gaius Antonius Hybrida, the Monster of Lake Orchomenus.
It was not impossible for an expelled senator to re-enter the House, but he could not expect to do it through the offices of the censors who had expelled him; he had to stand for election as either a quaestor or a tribune of the plebs. A wearisome business for Lentulus Sura, who had already been consul! And not one he contemplated immediately, for Lentulus Sura was in love, and didn’t care very much about the Senate. Shortly after his expulsion he married the feckless Julia Antonia. Caesar had been right. Julia Antonia was a poor picker of husbands, and Lentulus Sura a worse choice than Marcus Antonius the Man of Chalk.
The Senate finished with, Clodianus and Gellius went back to contract letting, this time civilian rather than sacred. These mostly concerned the farming of provincial taxes and tithes, though they also covered the erection or restoration of numerous State—owned buildings and public facilities, from the refurbishment of latrines to circus bleachers, bridge making, basilicae. Again there was a huge stir; the censors announced that they were abandoning the system of taxation Sulla had brought in to relieve Asia Province.
Lucullus and Marcus Cotta had pursued their war against King Mithridates to what seemed a successful conclusion, though the laurels definitely belonged to Lucullus. The year of the Pompey and Crassus consulship saw Mithridates obliged to flee to the court of his son-in-law Tigranes of Armenia (where Tigranes refused to see him), and Lucullus just about in full possession of Pontus as well as Cappadocia and Bithynia; only Tigranes remained to be dealt with. His hands free to bury themselves in some much-needed administrative work, Lucullus promptly began to see to the tangled financial affairs of Asia Province, which he had been governing in tandem with Cilicia for three years. And cracked down on the tax^ ^farming publicani so hard that on two occasions he exercised his right within his province to execute and had several of these men beheaded, as had Marcus Aemilius Scaurus some years earlier.
The squeals of outrage in Rome were enormous, especially when Lucullus’s reforms made it even more difficult for the tax—farmers to operate at a maximum profit than had Sulla’s. A member of the arch—conservative senatorial rump, Lucullus had never been popular in high business circles, which meant that men like Crassus and Atticus loathed him. Perhaps because alone among the current crop of generals Lucullus bade fair to eclipsing him, Pompey too disliked Lucullus.
It was therefore no surprise when Pompey’s pair of tame censors announced that Sulla’s system in Asia Province was to be abandoned; things would go back to the way they had been in the old pre-Sullan days.
But all of this made no difference to Lucullus, who ignored the censorial directives. While ever he was governor of Asia Province, he said, he would continue with Sulla’s system, which was a model and ought to be implemented in every one of Rome’s provinces. The hastily shaped companies which had marshaled men to go out to Asia Province faltered, voices were raised in Forum and Senate, and all the most powerful knights thundered that Lucullus must be dismissed as governor.
Still Lucullus continued to ignore directives from Rome, and to ignore his precarious position. More important to him by far was the tidying up which always followed in the wake of big wars; by the time he left his two provinces they would be proper.
Though he was not by nature or inclination attracted to arch—conservative senators like Catulus and Lucullus, Caesar nonetheless had cause to be grateful to Lucullus; he had received a letter from Queen Oradaltis of Bithynia.
My daughter has come home, Caesar. I’m sure you know that Lucius Licinius Lucullus has had great success in his war against King Mithridates, and that for a year now he has been campaigning in Pontus itself. Among the many fortresses the King maintained, Cabeira had always been thought to be his strongest. But this year it fell to Lucullus, who found all sorts of horrible things—the dungeons were full of political prisoners and potentially dangerous relatives who had been tortured, or used as specimens by the King in his constant experimentations with poison. I will not dwell upon such hideous matters, I am too happy.
Among the women Lucullus found in residence was Nysa. She had been there for nearly twenty years, and has come home to me a woman of more than sixty. However, Mithridates had treated her well according to his lights—she was held to be no different from the small collection of minor wives and concubines he kept in Cabeira. He also kept some of his sisters there whom he didn’t wish to see marry or have any opportunity to bear children, so my poor girl had plenty of spinsterly company. For that matter, the King has so many wives and concubines that those in Cabeira had also been living like spinsters for years! A colony of old maids.
When Lucullus opened up their prison he was very kind to all the women he found, and took exquisite care that there should be no masculine offense offered to them. The way Nysa tells it, he behaved as did Alexander the Great toward the mother, wives and other harem members of the third King Darius. I believe Lucullus sent the Pontic women to his ally in Cimmeria, the son of Mithridates called Machares.
Nysa he freed completely the moment he discovered who she was. But more than that, Caesar. He loaded her down with gold and presents and sent her back to me under an escort of troops sworn to honor her. Can you imagine this aged, never very beautiful woman’s pleasure at journeying through the countryside as free as any bird?
Oh, and to see her again! I knew nothing until she walked through the front door of my villa in Rheba, glowing like a young girl. She was so happy to see me! My last wish has come true, I have my daughter back.
She came just in time. My dear old dog, Sulla, died of antiquity a month before her advent, and I despaired. The servants tried desperately to persuade me to get another dog, but you know how it is. You think of all the special wonders and laughable antics that beloved pet has owned, his place in your family life, and it seems such a betrayal to bury him, then hurry some other creature into his basket. I’m not saying it’s wrong to do so, but a little time has to go by before the new pet takes on characteristics special to him, and I very much fear I would have been dead before any new pet became a person in his own right.
No need for dying now! Nysa wept to find her father gone, of course, but we have settled down here together in such harmony and delight—we both handline fish from the jetty and stroll through the village for our constitutional. Lucullus did invite us to live in the palace at Nicomedia, but we have decided to remain where we are. And we have a dear little pup named Lucullus.
Please, Caesar, try to find the time to journey to the east again! I would so much like you to meet Nysa, and I miss you dreadfully.