Some years earlier, after Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus and Marcus Licinius Crassus had completed their year in office together as consuls for the second time, they looked forward to very special proconsular governorships. Caesar’s legate Gaius Trebonius had been a tribune of the plebs while they were still consuls, and had carried a law which gave them enviable provinces for a full five-year term; on their mettle because Caesar was proving the effectiveness of that five-year term in Gaul, Pompey took Syria and Crassus the two Spains.
Then Julia, never fully well after her miscarriage, began to fail in health even more. Pompey couldn’t take her with him to Syria; custom and tradition forbade it. So Pompey, genuinely in love with his young wife, revised his plans. He still functioned as curator of Rome’s grain supply, which gave him an excellent excuse to remain in close proximity to Rome. If he governed a stable province. Syria was not that. Newest of Rome’s territorial possessions, it bordered the Kingdom of the Parthians, a mighty empire under the rule of King Orodes, who cast wary glances at the Roman presence in Syria. Particularly if Pompey the Great was to be its governor, for Pompey the Great was a famous conqueror. Word traveled, and word had it that Rome was toying with the idea of adding the Kingdom of the Parthians to her own empire. King Orodes was a worried man. He was also a prudent and careful man.
Thanks to Julia, Pompey asked Crassus to switch provinces with him: Pompey would take both the Spains, Crassus could have Syria. A proposition Crassus agreed to eagerly. Thus it was arranged. Pompey was able to stay in the vicinity of Rome with Julia because he could send his legates Afranius and Petreius to govern Nearer and Further Spain, while Crassus set off for Syria determined to conquer the Parthians.
When news of his defeat and death at the hands of the Parthians reached Rome it created a furor, not least because the news came from the only noble survivor, Crassus’s quaestor, a remarkable young man named Gaius Cassius Longinus.
Though he sent an official dispatch to the Senate, Cassius also sent a more candid account of events to Servilia, his fond friend and prospective mother-in-law. Knowing that this candid account would cause Caesar great anguish, Servilia took pleasure in transmitting it to him in Gaul. Hah! Suffer, Caesar! I do.
I arrived in Antioch just before King Artavasdes of Armenia arrived on a State visit to the governor, Marcus Crassus. Preparations were well in hand for the coming expedition against the Parthians— or so Crassus seemed to think. A conviction I confess I didn’t share once I had seen for myself what Crassus had gotten together. Seven legions, all under-strength at eight cohorts per legion instead of the proper ten, and a mass of cavalry I didn’t feel would ever learn to work together well. Publius Crassus had brought a thousand Aeduan horse troopers with him from Gaul, a gift from Caesar for his bosom friend Crassus that Caesar would have done better to withhold; they didn’t get on with the Galatian horsemen, and they were very homesick.
Then there was Abgarus, King of the Skenite Arabs. I don’t know why, but I mistrusted him and misliked him from the moment I met him. Crassus, however, thought him wonderful, and would hear nothing against him. It appears Abgarus is a client of Artavasdes of Armenia, and was offered to Crassus as a guide and adviser for the expedition. Along with four thousand light-armed Skenite Arab troops.
Crassus’s plan was to march for Mesopotamia and strike first at Seleuceia-on-Tigris, the site of the Parthian winter court; since his campaign was to be a winter one, he expected King Orodes of the Parthians to be in residence there, and expected to capture Orodes and all his sons before they could scatter to organize resistance throughout the Parthian empire.
But King Artavasdes of Armenia and his client Abgarus of the Skenite Arabs deplored this strategy. No one, they said, could beat an army of Parthian cataphracti and Parthian horse archers on flat ground. Those mail-clad warriors on their gigantic mail-clad Median horses could not fight in the mountains effectively, said Artavasdes and Abgarus. Nor did high and rugged terrain suit the horse archers, who ran out of arrows quickly, and needed to be able to gallop across level ground to fire those fabled Parthian shots. Therefore, said Artavasdes and Abgarus, Crassus should march for the Median mountains, not for Mesopotamia. If, fighting alongside the whole Armenian army, he struck at the Parthian heartlands below the Caspian Sea and at the King’s summer capital of Ecbatana, Crassus couldn’t lose, said Artavasdes and Abgarus.
I thought this was a good plan—and said so—but Crassus refused to consider it. He foresaw no difficulties in beating the cataphracti and horse archers on flat ground. Frankly, I decided that Crassus didn’t want an alliance with Artavasdes because he would have had to share the spoils. You know Marcus Crassus, Servilia— the world does not hold enough money to satiate his lust for it. He didn’t mind Abgarus, not a paramount king and therefore not entitled to a major share of the spoils. Whereas King Artavasdes would be entitled to half of everything. Quite justifiably.
Be that as it may, Crassus said an emphatic no. The flat terrain of Mesopotamia was more suited to the maneuvers of a Roman army, he maintained; he didn’t want his men mutinying as the troops of Lucullus had done when they saw Mount Ararat in the distance and realized that Lucullus expected them to climb over it. Added to which, a mountain campaign in far-off Media would have to be a summer one. His army, said Crassus, would be ready to march early in April, the beginning of winter. He thought that asking the troops to delay until Sextilis would reduce their enthusiasm. In my view, specious arguments. I saw no evidence of enthusiasm among Crassus’s troops at any time for any reason.
Greatly displeased, King Artavasdes quit Antioch to go home; he had hoped, of course, to usurp the Parthian kingdom for himself through an alliance with Rome. But having been rejected, he decided to throw in his lot with the Parthians. He left Abgarus in Antioch to spy; from the time Artavasdes vanished, everything Crassus did was reported to the enemy.
Then in March an embassage arrived from King Orodes of the Parthians. The chief ambassador was a very old man named Vagises. They look so odd, Parthian nobles, with their necks throttled by coiled golden collars from chin down to shoulders; their round, brimless, pearl-encrusted hats like inverted bowls on their heads; their false beards held on by golden wires around their ears; their gold tissue finery sparkling with fabulous jewels and pearls. I think all Crassus saw was the gold, the jewels and the pearls. How much more there must be in Babylonia!
Vagises asked Crassus to abide by the treaties both Sulla and Pompeius Magnus had negotiated with the Parthians: that everything west of the Euphrates should be in the dominion of Rome, and everything east of the Euphrates in the dominion of the Parthians.
Crassus actually laughed in their faces! “My dear Vagises,” he said through stifled guffaws, “tell King Orodes that I will indeed think about those treaties—after I’ve conquered Seleuceia-on-Tigris and Babylonia!”
Vagises said nothing for a moment. Then he held out his right hand, and showed its palm to Crassus. “Hair will grow here, Marcus Crassus, before you set foot in Seleuceia-on-Tigris!” he shrilled. My hackles rose. The way he said it was so eerie that it rang like a prophecy.
You perceive that Marcus Crassus was not endearing himself to any of these eastern kings, who are very touchy fellows. If any but a Roman proconsul had laughed, the joker would have parted with his head on the instant. Some of us tried to reason with him, but the trouble was that he had Publius there, his own son, who adored him and thought his father could do no wrong. Publius was Crassus’s echo, and he listened to his echo, not to the voices of reason.
At the beginning of April we marched northeast from Antioch. The army was morose, and consequently slow. The Aeduan horse troopers had been unhappy enough in the fertile valley of the Orontes, but once we got into the poorer pasture around Cyrrhus, they began to behave as if someone had drugged them. Nor were the three thousand Galatians optimistic. In fact, our progress was more like a funeral procession than a march into everlasting glory. Crassus himself traveled apart from the army, in a litter because the road was too rough for a carriage. To give him his due, I doubt that he was entirely well. Publius Crassus fussed about him perpetually. It is not easy for a man of sixty-three to campaign, especially one who has not been to war for almost twenty years.
Abgarus of the Skenite Arabs was not with us. He had gone ahead a month earlier. We were to meet him on the east bank of the Euphrates at Zeugma, which we reached at the end of the month. As this proves, a very leisurely march. At the beginning of winter the Euphrates is about as low and placid as it gets. I have never seen such a river! So wide and deep and strong! However, we should have had no difficulty crossing it on the bridge of pontoons the engineers put together, I must say, swiftly and efficiently.
But it was not to be, like so much else on this doomed expedition. Violent storms came roaring out of nowhere. Afraid that the river would rise, Crassus refused to postpone the crossing. So the soldiers crawled on all fours while the pontoons bucked and pitched, the lightning flashed thick as hawsers in a dozen places at once, the thunder set the horses screaming and bolting, and the air became suffused with a sulfurous yellow glow, along with a sweet strange scent I associate with the sea. It was horrifying. Nor did the storms let up. One after another for days. Rain so hard that the ground dissolved into soup, while the river kept rising higher and the crossing continued nonetheless.
You never saw a more disorganized force than ours was when everyone and everything were finally on the east bank. Nothing was dry, including the wheat and other food supplies in the baggage train. The ropes and springs in the artillery were swollen and flaccid, the charcoal for the smiths was useless, the tents may as well have been made from bridal fabric, and our precious store of fortification timber was split and cracked. Imagine if you can four thousand horses (Crassus refused to allow his troopers two mounts each), two thousand mules and several thousand oxen reduced to wild-eyed terror. It took two nundinae to calm them down, sixteen precious days which should have seen us well along the way to Mesopotamia. The legionaries were in little better condition than the animals. The expedition, they were saying among themselves, was cursed. Just as Crassus himself was cursed. They were all going to die.
But Abgarus arrived with his four thousand light-armed infantry and horse. We held a council of war. Censorinus, Vargunteius, Megabocchus and Octavius, four of Crassus’s five legates, wanted to follow the course of the Euphrates all the way. It was safer, there was grazing for the animals, and we’d pick up a bit more food as we went. I agreed with them, and was told for my pains that it was not the place of a mere quaestor to advise his seniors.
Abgarus was against hugging the Euphrates. In case you do not know, it takes a great bend westward below Zeugma, which would admittedly have added many, many miles to the march. From the confluence of the Bilechas and the Euphrates on downward into Mesopotamia its course is fairly straight and in the right direction, southeast.
Therefore, said Abgarus, we could save at least four or five days of marching if we headed due east from Zeugma across the desert until we came to the Bilechas River. A sharp turn south would then take us down the Bilechas to the Euphrates, and we’d be right where we wanted to be, at Nicephorium. With him as our guide, said Abgarus winningly, we couldn’t get lost, and the march through the desert was short enough to survive comfortably.
Well, Crassus agreed with Abgarus, and Publius Crassus agreed with tata. We would take the short cut across the desert. Again the four legates tried to persuade Crassus not to, but he wouldn’t be budged. He’d fortified Carrhae and Sinnaca, he said, and these forts were all the protection he needed—though he didn’t believe he needed any protection at all. Quite so, said friend King Abgarus. There would be no Parthians this far north.
But of course there were. Abgarus had made sure of that. Seleuceia-on-Tigris knew every move we made, and King Orodes was a better strategist by far than poor, money-mad Marcus Crassus.
I imagine, dearest Rome-bound Servilia, that you do not know a great deal about the Kingdom of the Parthians, so I should tell you that it is a vast conglomeration of regions. Parthia itself is to the east of the Caspian Sea, which is why we say the King of the Parthians, and not the King of Parthia. Under the sway of King Orodes are Media, Media Atropatene, Persia, Gedrosia, Carmania, Bactria, Margiana, Sogdiana, Susiana, Elymais and Mesopotamia. More land than is contained in the Roman provinces.
Each of these regions is ruled by a satrap who bears the title of the Surenas. Most of them are the sons, nephews, cousins, brothers or uncles of the King. The King never goes to Parthia itself; he reigns in summer from Ecbatana in the softer mountains of Media, visits Susa in the spring or the autumn, and reigns during winter from Seleuceia-on-Tigris in Mesopotamia. That he devotes his time to these most western regions of his huge kingdom is probably due to Rome. He fears us, whereas he does not fear the Indians or the Sericans, both great nations. He garrisons Bactria to keep the Massagetae at bay, as they are tribes, not a nation.
It so happens that the Surenas of Mesopotamia is an extremely able satrap, and to him Orodes entrusted his campaign against Crassus. King Orodes himself journeyed north to meet with King Artavasdes of Armenia in the Armenian capital, Artaxata, taking enough troops with him to ensure that he was made very welcome in Artaxata. His son Pacorus went with him. The Pahlavi Surenas (for so he is properly called) remained in Mesopotamia to marshal a separate army to deal with us. He had ten thousand horse archers and two thousand mail-clad cataphracti. No foot at all.
An interesting man, the Pahlavi Surenas. Barely thirty years old—my own age—and a nephew of the King, he is said to be very, very beautiful in a most exquisite and effeminate way. He has no congress with women, preferring boys between thirteen and fifteen. Once they are too grown for his taste, he drafts them into his army or his bureaucracy as esteemed officers. This is acceptable Parthian conduct.
What worried him as he assembled his men was a fact well known to Crassus and the rest of us—a fact which, Abgarus assured us, would see us win comfortably. Namely that the Parthian horse archer runs out of arrows very quickly. Thus, despite his skill at shooting over his horse’s rump as he flees the field, he is soon useless.
The Pahlavi Surenas devised a scheme to rectify this. He marshaled enormous camel trains and loaded the camels’ panniers with spare arrows. He then got together some thousands of slaves and trained them in the art of getting fresh arrows to the archers in the midst of battle. So that when he set out north from Seleuceia-on-Tigris to intercept us with his horse archers and his cataphracti, he also took thousands of camels loaded with spare arrows, and thousands of slaves to feed the arrows to the archers in an endless chain.
How can I possibly know all this? I hear you ask. I will come to that in due time, but here I will simply say that I learned of it from a fascinating prince at the Jewish court, Antipater, whose spies and sources of information are absolutely everywhere.
There is a crossroads on the Bilechas where the caravan route from Palmyra and Nicephorium meets the caravan route to the upper Euphrates at Samosata and the one which goes through Carrhae to Edessa and Amida. It was for this junction that the army set out to march across the desert.
We had thirty-five thousand Roman foot, one thousand Aeduan horse and three thousand Galatian horse. They were terrified before they so much as started into the wilderness, and grew more terrified with each day that passed. All I had to do to ascertain this was to ride among them and listen with half an ear: Crassus was cursed, they were all going to die. Mutiny was never a risk, for mutinous troops are, to say the least, energetic. Our men were devoid of hope.
They simply shuffled on to meet their doom like captives going to the slave markets. The Aeduan cavalry were worst. Never in their lives had they seen a waterless waste, a dun drear landscape without shelter or beauty. They turned their eyes inward and ceased to care about anything.
Two days out, heading southeast for the Bilechas, we began to see small bands of Parthians, usually horse archers, sometimes cataphracti. Not that they bothered us. They would ride in fairly close, then spur off again. I know now that they were liaising with Abgarus and reporting back about us to the Pahlavi Surenas, who was camped outside Nicephorium, at the confluence of the Bilechas and the Euphrates.
On the fourth day before the Ides of June we reached the Bilechas, where I begged Marcus Crassus to build a strongly fortified camp and put the troops into it for long enough to enable the legates and tribunes to try to put some stiffening into them. But Crassus wouldn’t hear of it. He was fretful because we’d been on the march so long already; he wanted to reach the canals where the Euphrates and the Tigris almost marry before summer clamped down, and he was beginning to wonder if he was going to succeed. So he ordered the troops to take a quick meal and march on down the Bilechas. It was still early in the afternoon.
Suddenly I became aware that King Abgarus and his four thousand men had literally disappeared. Gone! Some Galatian scouts came galloping up, shouting that the countryside was swarming with Parthians, but they had barely managed to attract anyone’s attention when a storm of arrows came thrumming from every direction and the soldiers began falling like leaves, like stones—I have never seen anything as fast or as vicious as that hail of arrows.
Crassus didn’t do anything. He simply let it happen.
“It’ll be over in a moment,” he shouted from beneath a shelter of shields; “they’ll run out of arrows.”
They did not run out of arrows. There were Roman soldiers fleeing all over the place, and falling. Falling. Finally Crassus had the buglers blow “form square,” but it was far too late. The cataphracti moved in for the kill, huge men on huge horses dark with chain mail. I discovered that when they advance at a trot—they are too big and ponderous to move at a canter—they jingle like a million coins in a thousand purses. I wonder did Crassus find it music to his ears? The earth shakes as they pound along. The dust rises in a huge column, and they turn and tread it up around them so that they come out of it rather than ride ahead of it.
Publius Crassus gathered the Aeduan cavalry, who seemed suddenly to come to their senses. Perhaps a battle was the only familiar thing they had to cling to. The Galatians followed, and four thousand of our horsemen charged into the cataphracti like bulls with pepper up their nostrils. The cataphracti broke and fled, Publius Crassus and his horsemen behind them, into the dust fog. During this respite, Crassus managed to form his square. Then we waited for the Aeduans and the Galatians to reappear, praying to every God we knew. But it was the cataphracti who returned. They had Publius Crassus’s head on a spear. Instead of attacking our square, they trotted back and forth along its sides brandishing that awful head. Publius Crassus seemed to look at us; we could see his eyes flash, and his face was quite unmarred.
His father was devastated—there are no words to tell that story. But it seemed to give him something I had not seen him display since the campaign began. Up and down the square he went, cheering the men on, encouraging them to hold fast, telling them that his own son had purchased the precious moments they had needed with his life, but that the grief was Crassus’s alone.
“Stand!” he cried, over and over. “Stand!”
We stood, hideously thinned by the never-ending rain of arrows, until darkness fell and the Parthians drew off. They do not seem to fight at night.
Having built no camp, we had nothing to keep us there. Crassus elected to retreat at once to Carrhae, about forty miles away to the north. By dawn we began to arrive, straggling, perhaps half the infantry and a handful of horse troopers. Futile! Impossible. Carrhae owned a small fortress, but nothing capable of protecting so many men, so much disorder.
I daresay that Carrhae has stood there at the junction of the caravan routes to Edessa and Amida for two thousand years, and I daresay it hasn’t changed in those two thousand years. A pathetic little collection of beehive-shaped mud brick houses in the midst of a stony, desolate wilderness—dirty sheep, dirty goats, dirty women, dirty children, dirty river—great wheels of dried dung the only source of warmth in the bitter cold, the only glory the night skies.
The prefect Coponius was in command of the garrison, a scant cohort strong. As we dribbled in, more and more, he was horrified. We had no food because the Parthians had captured our baggage train; most of the men and horses were wounded. We couldn’t stay in Carrhae, so much was obvious.
Crassus held a council, and it was decided to retreat at nightfall to Sinnaca, as far away again northeast in the direction of Amida. It was much better fortified and had at least several granaries. The wrong direction entirely! I wanted to yell. But Coponius had brought a man of Carrhae to the council with him. Andromachus. And Andromachus swore huge oaths that the Parthians were lying in wait between Carrhae and Edessa, Carrhae and Samosata, Carrhae and anywhere along the Euphrates. Andromachus then offered to guide us to Sinnaca, and from there to Amida. Bent over with grief for Publius, Crassus accepted the offer. Oh, he was cursed! Whatever decision he made was the wrong one. Andromachus was the local Parthian spy.
I knew. I knew, I knew, I knew. As the day dragged on I became ever more firmly convinced that to go to Sinnaca under the guidance of Andromachus was to die. So I called my own council. Invited Crassus. He didn’t come. The others did—Censorinus, Megabocchus, Octavius, Vargunteius, Coponius, Egnatius. Plus a disgustingly dirty, tattered group of local soothsayers and magi; Coponius had been in this unspeakable anus of the world for long enough to have gathered them to him as flies gather on a putrescent carcass. I told those who came that they could do whatever they liked, but that as soon as night fell I was riding southwest for Syria, not northeast for Sinnaca. If the Parthians were lying in wait, I’d take my chances. But, I said, I refused to believe they were. No more Skenite guides for me!
Coponius demurred. So did the others. It was not fit or proper for the General’s legates, tribunes and prefects to abandon him. Nor for the General’s quaestor to abandon him. The only one who agreed with me was the prefect Egnatius.
No, they said, they would stand by Marcus Crassus.
I lost my temper—a Cassian flaw, I admit. “Then stay to die!” I shouted. “Those who would rather live had better find a horse in a hurry, because I’m riding for Syria and trusting to none but my own star!”
The soothsayers squawked and fluttered. “No, Gaius Cassius!” wheezed the most ancient of them, hung with amulets and rodent backbones and horrible agate eyes. “Go, yes, but not yet! The Moon is still in Scorpio! Wait for it to enter Sagittarius!”
I looked at them. Couldn’t help laughing. “Thank you for the advice,” I said, “but this is desert. I’d far rather have the Scorpion than the Archer!”
About five hundred of us rode off at a gallop and spent the night between a walk, a trot, a canter and another gallop. By dawn we reached Europus, which the locals call Carchemish. There were no Parthians lying in wait, and the Euphrates was calm enough to boat across, horses and all. We didn’t stop until we reached Antioch.
Later I learned that the Pahlavi Surenas got everyone who elected to stay with the General. At dawn on the second day before the Ides, as we rode into Europus, Crassus and the army were wandering in circles, getting not one mile closer to Sinnaca, thanks to Andromachus. The Parthians attacked again. It was a rout. A debacle. In a disastrous series of retreats and attempted stands, the Parthians cut them down. Those legates who remained with Crassus died—Censorinus, Vargunteius, Megabocchus, Octavius, Coponius.
The Pahlavi Surenas had his orders. Marcus Crassus was captured alive. He was to be saved to stand before King Orodes. How it happened no one knows, even Antipater, but shortly after Crassus was taken into custody a fight broke out. Marcus Crassus died.
Seven silver Eagles passed into the hands of the Pahlavi Surenas at Carrhae. We will never see them again. They have gone with King Orodes to Ecbatana.
Thus did I find myself the most senior Roman in Syria, and in charge of a province on the verge of panic. Everyone was convinced the Parthians were coming, and there was no army. I spent the next two months fortifying Antioch to withstand anything, and organized a system of watches, lookouts and beacons which would give the entire populace of the Orontes Valley time to take shelter inside the city. Then—would you believe it?—soldiers started to trickle in. Not everyone had died at Carrhae. I collected about ten thousand of them, all told. Enough to make two good legions. And according to my invaluable informant Antipater, ten thousand more who survived the first fight further down the Bilechas were rounded up by the Pahlavi Surenas and sent to the frontier of Bactria beyond the Caspian Sea, where they are to be used to keep the Massagetae from raiding. Arrows do wound, but few men die of them.
By November I felt secure enough to tour my province. Well, it is mine. The Senate has made no move to relieve me. At the age of thirty, Gaius Cassius Longinus is governor of Syria. An extraordinary responsibility, but not one which is beyond my talents.
I went to Damascus first, and then to Tyre. Because Tyrian purple is so beautiful, we tend to think that Tyre must be too. But it is a ghastly place. Stinking to the point of constant nausea with dead shellfish. There are huge hills of boiled-down murex remains all around the landward side of Tyre, taller than the buildings, which seem to kiss the sky. How the Tyrians live there on that island of festering death and fabulous incomes I do not know. However, Fortune favors the governor of Syria. I was housed in the villa of the chief ethnarch, Demetrius, a luxurious residence on the seaward side of the city, where the breezes blow down the length of Our Sea and the rotting shellfish are but a memory.
Here I met the man whose name I have already mentioned: Antipater. About forty-eight years old, and very powerful in the Kingdom of the Jews. Religiously he says he is a Jew, but by blood he is an Idumaean, apparently not quite the same thing as a Judaean. He offended the synod, which is the governing religious body, by marrying a Nabataean princess named Cypros. Since the Jews count citizenship in the mother’s line, it means Antipater’s three sons and daughter are not Jews. All of which in essence means that Antipater, a very ambitious man, cannot become King of the Jews. Nor can his sons. However, nothing will part Antipater from Cypros, who travels everywhere with him. A devoted couple. Their three sons, still adolescent, are formidable for their age. The eldest, Phasael, is impressive enough, but the second boy, Herod, is extraordinary. You might call him a perfect fusion of tortuous cunning and ferocious ruthlessness. I want to govern Syria again ten years from now just to see how Herod has turned out.
Antipater regaled me with the Parthian side of poor Marcus Crassus’s fatal expedition, and then gave me more interesting news still. The Pahlavi Surenas of Mesopotamia, having done so brilliantly on the Bilechas, was summoned to the summer court at Ecbatana. Do not, if you are a subject of the King of the Parthians, fare better than your king. Orodes was delighted at the defeat of Crassus, but not at all pleased at the innovative generalship of the Pahlavi Surenas, his blood nephew. Orodes put the Pahlavi Surenas to death. In Rome, you triumph following a victory. In Ecbatana, you lose your head following a victory.
By the time I met Antipater in Tyre, I had two good legions under arms, but no campaign whereby to blood them. That changed very rapidly. The Jews were stirring now that the Parthian menace was gone. Though Aristobulus and his son Antigonus were returned to Rome by Gabinius after their revolt, another son of Aristobulus’s named Alexander decided the time was right to throw Hyrcanus off the Jewish throne Gabinius had put him on. Thanks to Antipater’s work, I add. Well, all Syria knew the governor was a mere quaestor. What an opportunity. Two other high-ranking Jews, Malichus and Peitholaus, conspired to help Alexander.
So I marched for Hierosolyma, or Jerusalem if you like that name better. Though I didn’t get that far before I met the rebel Jewish army, over thirty thousand strong. The battle took place where the Jordanus River emerges from Lake Gennesarus. Yes, I was outnumbered badly, but Peitholaus, who was in command, had simply herded together an untrained mob of upcountry Galilaeans, put pots on their heads and swords in their hands, and told them to go out and beat two trained, disciplined (and, after Carrhae, chastened) Roman legions. I trounced them, and my troops have regained much of their confidence. They hailed me imperator on the field, though I doubt the Senate will award a mere quaestor a triumph. Antipater advised me to put Peitholaus to death. I followed his advice. Antipater is no Skenite traitor, though it seems many of the Jews would not agree with my evaluation. They want to rule their own little corner of the world without Rome looking over their shoulders. It is Antipater, however, who is the realist. Rome will not be going away.
Not many of the Galilaeans perished. I sent thirty thousand of them to the slave markets in Antioch, and have thus made my first personal profit from commanding an army. Tertulla is going to marry a much richer man!
Antipater is a good man. Sensible, subtle and very keen both to please Rome and keep the Jews from killing each other. They seem to suffer enormous internecine conflicts unless an outsider comes along to take their minds off their troubles, like Romans or (in the old days) Egyptians.
Hyrcanus still has his throne and his high priesthood. The surviving rebels, Malichus and Alexander, came to heel without a murmur.
And now I come to the last few pages in the book of Marcus Crassus’s remarkable career. He died after Carrhae in that place, yes, but he had yet to make a journey. The Pahlavi Surenas cut off his head and his right hand, and sent them in the midst of an outlandish parade from Carrhae to Artaxata, the capital of Armenia far to the north amid the towering snowy mountains where the Araxes flows down to the Caspian Sea. Here King Orodes and King Artavasdes, having met, decided to be brothers rather than enemies, and to seal their pact with a marriage. Pacorus, the son of Orodes, married Laodice, the daughter of Artavasdes. Some things are the same as in Rome.
While the festivities were going on in Ataxata, the outlandish parade wended its way north. The Parthians had captured and kept alive a centurion named Gaius Paccianus because he bore a striking physical resemblance to Marcus Crassus—tall, yet so thickset that he seemed short, with that same bovine look to him. They dressed Paccianus in Crassus’s toga praetexta, and before him they put capering clowns dressed as lictors bearing bundles of rods tied together with Roman entrails, adorned with money purses and the heads of his legates. Behind the mock Marcus Crassus pranced dancing girls and whores, musicians singing filthy songs, and some men displaying pornographic books found in the baggage of the tribune Roscius. Crassus’s head and hand came next and, bringing up the rear, our seven Eagles.
Apparently King Artavasdes of Armenia is a fanatical lover of Greek drama. Orodes also speaks Greek, so several of the most famous Greek plays were staged as part of the entertainment celebrating the wedding of Pacorus and Laodice. The evening on which the parade arrived in Artaxata saw a performance of The Bacchae of Euripides. Well, you know that play. The part of Queen Agave was portrayed by a locally famous actor, Jason of Tralles. But Jason of Tralles is more famous for his hatred of Romans than even for his brilliant interpretation of female roles.
In the last scene, Agave comes in bearing the head of her son, King Pentheus, upon a platter, having torn his head off herself in a Bacchic frenzy.
When the time came, in walked Queen Agave. On her platter she bore the head of Marcus Crassus. Jason of Tralles put the platter down, pulled off his mask, and picked up Crassus’s head, an easy thing to do because, like so many bald men, Crassus had grown the hair on the back of his head very long so he could comb it forward. Grinning triumphantly, the actor swung the head back and forth as if it were a lamp.
“Blessed is the prey I bear, new shorn from the trunk!” he cried out.
“Who slew him?” chanted the Chorus.
“Mine was that honor!” shrieked Pomaxarthres, a senior officer in the army of the Pahlavi Surenas.
They say the scene went down very well.
The head and the right hand were displayed, and as far as I know are still displayed, on the battlements of Artaxata’s walls. Crassus’s body was left exactly where it had fallen near Carrhae, to be picked clean by the vultures.
Oh, Marcus! That it should have come to this. Could you not see where it would all end, and how? Ateius Capito cursed you. The Jews cursed you. Your own army believed those curses, and you did nothing to disabuse them. Fifteen thousand good Roman soldiers are dead, ten thousand more sentenced to life on an alien frontier, my Aeduan cavalry are gone, most of the Galatians are gone, and Syria is being governed by an enterprising, insufferably arrogant and conceited young man whose contemptuous words about you are the words which will follow you for all time. The Parthians may have assassinated your person, but Gaius Cassius has assassinated your character. I know which fate I would prefer.
Your wonderful older son is dead. He too is vulture fodder. In the desert it is not necessary to burn and bury. Old King Mithridates tied Manius Aquillius backward on an ass, then tipped molten gold down his gullet to cure his avarice. Was that what Orodes and Artavasdes planned for you? But you cheated them of that; you died cleanly before they could do it. A poor, hapless centurion, Paccianus, probably suffered that fate in your place. And your eye sockets gaze sightlessly over a vista of endless, freezingly cold mountains toward the icy infinity of the Caucasus.
Caesar sat, remembering, for a long time. How pleased Crassus had been that the Pontifex Maximus had installed a bell he was too stingy to pay for himself. How competently and placidly he had walled Spartacus in through a time of snows. How difficult it had been to persuade him and Pompey to embrace publicly on the rostra when their first joint consulship ended. How easily he had issued the instructions which had saved Caesar from the hands of the moneylenders and permanent exile. How pleasant the many, many hours they had spent together over the years between Spartacus and Gaul. How desperately Crassus had hungered for a great military campaign and a triumph at the end of it.
The dear sight of that big, bland, impassive face at Luca.
All gone. Picked clean by the vultures. Not burned, not entombed. Caesar stiffened. Had anyone thought of it? He pulled paper toward him, dipped his reed pen in the inkwell and wrote to his friend Messala Rufus in Rome to buy the shades of those who had lost their heads a passage to the proper place.
I am, he thought, screwing up his eyes, become an authority on severed heads.
*
Luckily Lucius Cornelius Balbus Major was with Caesar when he received Pompey’s answer to his letter proposing two marriages and requesting legislation to enable him to stand for the consulship in absentia.
“I am so alone,” Caesar said to Balbus, but without self-pity. Then he shrugged. “Still, it happens as one grows older.”
“Until,” said Balbus gently, “one retires to enjoy the fruits of one’s labors, and has time to lie back among friends.”
The perceptive eyes began to twinkle, the generous mouth to curl up at its dented corners. “What an awful prospect! I do not intend to retire, Balbus.”
“Don’t you think there will ever come a time when there is nothing left to do?”
“Not for this Roman, if any Roman. When Gaul and my second consulship are over, I must avenge Marcus Crassus. I’m still reeling from that shock, let alone this.” Caesar tapped Pompey’s letter.
“And the death of Publius Clodius?”
The twinkle vanished, the mouth set. “The death of Publius Clodius was inevitable. His tampering with the mos maiorum could not be allowed to continue. Young Curio put it best in his letter to me—odd, the disparate people Clodius’s activities managed to throw into the same camp. He said that Clodius was going to hand a congress of Roman men over to a parcel of non-Romans.”
Balbus, a non-Roman Roman citizen, did not blink. “They say that young Curio is extremely distressed financially.”
“Do they?” Caesar looked thoughtful. “Do we need him?”
“At the moment, no. But that might change.”
“What do you make of Pompeius in the light of his reply?”
“What do you make of him, Caesar?”
“I’m not sure, but I do know that I made a mistake in trying to woo him with more marriages. He’s grown very particular in his choice of wives, so much is sure. The daughter of an Octavius and an Ancharia isn’t good enough, or so I read it between his lines. Maybe I ought to have said straight out what I imagined he would see for himself without such bluntness—that as soon as the younger Octavia was of marriageable age, I would be happy to slip the first Octavia out from under him and substitute the second girl. Though the first would have suited him very well. Not a Julian, no, but brought up by a Julian. It shows, Balbus.”
“I doubt that an air of aristocracy operates as profoundly upon Pompeius as a pedigree,” said Balbus with the ghost of a smile.
“I wonder whom he has in mind.”
“That’s really why I’ve come to Ravenna, Caesar. A little bird perched on my shoulder and chirruped that the boni are dangling the widow of Publius Crassus under his nose.”
Caesar sat up straight. “Cacat!” He relaxed, shook his head. “Metellus Scipio would never do it, Balbus. Besides, I know the young woman. She’s no Julia. I doubt she’d permit the likes of Pompeius to touch the hem of her robe, let alone lift it.”
“One of the problems,” said Balbus deliberately, “to do with your rise into Rome’s firmament, despite all that the boni have tried to do to prevent it, is that the boni have grown desperate enough to contemplate using Pompeius in much the same way that you use him. And how else can they bind him except through a marriage so stellar that he wouldn’t dare offend them? To dower him with Cornelia Metella is literally to admit him into their ranks. Pompeius would see Cornelia Metella as confirmation from the boni that he is indeed the First Man in Rome.”
“So you think it’s possible.”
“Oh, yes. The young woman is a cool person, Caesar. If she saw herself as an absolute necessity, she’d go to the sacrifice as willingly as Iphigenia at Aulis.”
“Though for far different reasons.”
“Yes and no. I doubt any man will ever satisfy Cornelia Metella in the way that her own father does, and Metellus Scipio bears some resemblance to Agamemnon. Cornelia Metella is in love with her own aristocracy, to the extent that she would refuse to believe a Pompeius from Picenum could detract from it.”
“Then,” said Caesar with decision, “I won’t move from this side of the Alps to the far side in a hurry this year. I’ll have to monitor events in Rome too thoroughly.” He clenched his teeth. “Oh, where has my luck gone? In a family famous for breeding more girls than boys, it can’t produce a girl when I need one.”
“It isn’t your luck carries you through, Caesar,” said Balbus firmly. “You’ll survive.”
“I take it Cicero is coming to Ravenna?”
“Very shortly.”
“Good. Young Caelius has potential he ought not to waste on the likes of Milo.”
“Who can’t be allowed to become consul.”
“He belongs to Cato and Bibulus.”
But when Balbus withdrew, Caesar’s thoughts did not dwell upon events in Rome. They drifted to Syria and to the loss of seven silver Eagles no doubt displayed at this moment with great ostentation in the halls of the Parthian palace at Ecbatana. They would have to be wrested from Orodes, and that meant war with Orodes. Probably also war with Artavasdes of Armenia. Ever since he’d read Gaius Cassius’s letter, a part of Caesar’s mind had stayed in the East, wrestling with the concept of a strategy capable of conquering a mighty empire and two mighty armies. Lucullus had shown that it could be done at Tigranocerta. Then had undone everything. Or rather, had allowed Publius Clodius to undo it. At least that was one good piece of news. Clodius was dead. And there will never be a Clodius in any army of mine. I will need Decimus Brutus, Gaius Trebonius, Gaius Fabius and Titus Sextius. Splendid men all. They know how my mind works, they’re able to lead and to obey. But not Titus Labienus. I do not want him for the Parthian campaign. He can finish his time in Gaul, but after that I am finished with him.
Knitting up a structure for Gaul of the Long-hairs had proven an extremely difficult business, though Caesar knew how to do it. And one of the linchpins was to forge a good relationship with sufficient Gallic leaders to ensure two things: the first, that the Gauls themselves would feel they had a powerful say in their future; and the second, that the chosen Gallic leaders were absolutely committed to Rome. Not the Acco or Vercingetorix kind, but the Commius and Vertico kind, convinced that the best chance for the preservation of Gallic customs and traditions lay in sheltering behind the Roman shield. Oh, Commius wanted to be High King of the Belgae, yes, but that was permissible. In it were planted the seeds of Belgic fusion into one people rather than many peoples. Rome dealt well with client kings; there were a dozen within the fold.
But Titus Labienus was not a deep thinker, nor political. And he had conceived a hatred for Commius based on the fact that Commius had preferred not to use Labienus as his conduit to Caesar.
Aware of this, Caesar had always been careful to keep a distance between Labienus and King Commius of the Atrebates. Though until Hirtius had come in a hurry from Further Gaul yesterday, he hadn’t realized the reason behind Labienus’s request that Gaius Volusenus Quadratus, a military tribune senior enough for a prefecture, be seconded to duty with him over the winter.
“Another one who hates Commius,” said Hirtius, looking worn out from his journey. “They hatched a plot.”
“Volusenus hates Commius? Why?” asked Caesar, frowning.
“It happened during the second expedition to Britannia, I gather. The usual thing. They both fancied the same woman.”
“Who spurned Volusenus in favor of Commius.”
“Exactly. Well, why should she not? She was a Briton, and already under Commius’s protection. I remember her. Pretty girl.”
“Sometimes,” said Caesar wearily, “I wish we just went off somewhere and budded. Women are a complication we men do not need to suffer.”
“I suspect,” said Hirtius, smiling, “that women often feel the same way.”
“Which philosophical discussion is not getting us any closer to the truth about Volusenus and Labienus. What sort of plot did they hatch?”
“The report came to me from Labienus that Commius was preaching sedition.”
“Is that all? Did Labienus give details?”
“Only that Commius was going about among the Menapii, the Nervii and the Eburones stirring up a new revolt.”
“Among three tribes reduced to skeletons?”
“And that he was thick with Ambiorix.”
“A convenient name to use. But I would have thought Commius would deem Ambiorix more a threat to his cherished high kingship than an ally willing to put him there.”
“I agree. Which is why I began to smell rotting fish. A long acquaintance with Commius has convinced me that he knows very well who can assist him onto his throne—you.”
“What else?”
“Had Labienus said no more, I might not have stirred out of Samarobriva,” said Hirtius. “It was the last part of his typically curt letter which made me decide to seek more information about this so-called plot from Labienus himself.”
“What did he say?”
“That I was not to worry. That he would deal with Commius.”
“Ah!” Caesar sat forward and linked his hands between his knees. “So you went to see Labienus?”
“Too late, Caesar. The deed was done. Labienus summoned Commius to a parley. Instead of going himself, he deputed Volusenus to go on his behalf. With a guard of hand-picked centurions from among Labienus’s cronies. Commius—who cannot have suspected any foul play— appeared with a few friends, no troops. I imagine he wasn’t pleased to discover Volusenus there, though what the truth of the matter is I can have no idea. All I know is what Labienus told me with a mixture of pride in his own cleverness at thinking of the scheme, and chagrin that it went amiss.”
“Are you trying to say,” asked Caesar incredulously, “that Labienus intended to assassinate Commius?”
“Oh, yes,” said Hirtius simply. “He made no secret of it. According to Labienus, you’re an absolute fool for trusting Commius. Labienus knows he’s plotting sedition.”
“Without proof which would stand up to close examination?”
“He could produce none when I pressed the matter, certainly. Just kept insisting he was right and you were wrong. You know the man, Caesar. He’s a force of nature!”
“What happened?”
“Volusenus had instructed one of the centurions to do the killing, while the other centurions were to concentrate on making sure none of the Atrebatans escaped. The signal for the centurion to strike was the moment in which Volusenus extended his hand to shake Commius’s.”
“Jupiter! What are we, adherents of Mithridates? That’s the sort of ploy an eastern king would use! Ohhh… Go on.”
“Volusenus extended his hand, Commius extended his. The centurion whipped his sword from behind his back and swung it. Either his eye was out or he misliked the task. He caught Commius across the brow, a glancing blow which didn’t even break the bone or render him unconscious. Volusenus drew his sword, but Commius was gone, gushing blood. The Atrebatans formed up around their king and extricated themselves without anyone else’s so much as being wounded.”
“If I hadn’t heard it from you, Hirtius, I would never have believed it,” said Caesar slowly.
“Believe it, Caesar, believe it!”
“So Rome has lost a very valuable ally.”
“I would think so.” Hirtius produced a slender scroll. “I received this from Commius. It was waiting when I returned to Samarobriva. I haven’t opened it because it is intended for you. Rather than write to you, I came in person.”
Caesar took the scroll, broke its seal and spread it.
I have been betrayed, and I have every reason to think that it was your doing, Caesar. You don’t keep men working for you who disobey orders or act on their own initiative to this extent. I had thought you honorable, so I write this with a grief as painful as my head. You can keep your high kingship. I will throw in my lot with my own people, who are above this kind of assassination. We kill each other, yes, but not without honor. You have none. I have made a vow. That never again as long as I live will I come into the presence of a Roman voluntarily.
“The world at the moment seems to be an endless torment of severed heads,” said Caesar, white about the lips, “but I tell you, Aulus Hirtius, that it would give me great pleasure to lop the head off Labienus’s shoulders! A fraction of an inch at a time. But not before I had him flogged just enough.”
“What do you intend to do in actuality?”
“Nothing whatsoever.”
Hirtius looked shocked. “Nothing?”
“Nothing.”
“But—but—you can at least say what happened in your next dispatch to the Senate!” cried Hirtius. “It may not be the kind of punishment you would prefer to dish out to Labienus, but it will certainly kill any hopes he might have of a public career.”
The expression on Caesar’s face as he turned his head and tucked his chin in was derisive, angrily amused. “I can’t do that, Hirtius! Look at the trouble Cato made for me over the so-called German ambassadors! Were I to breathe a word of this to the Senate or any other persons who would leak it to Cato, my name would stink to the farthest reaches of the sky. Not Labienus’s. Those senatorial dogs wouldn’t waste an expirated breath in baying for Labienus’s hide. They’d be too busy fixing their teeth in mine.”
“You’re right, of course,” said Hirtius, sighing. “Which means that Labienus will get away with it.”
“For the moment,” said Caesar tranquilly. “His time will come, Hirtius. When next I see him, he’ll know exactly where he stands in my estimation. And where his career is going to go if I have any say in the matter. As soon as his usefulness in Gaul is over, I’ll divorce him more thoroughly than Sulla did his poor dying wife.”
“And Commius? Perhaps if I worked very hard, Caesar, I could persuade him to meet with you privately. It wouldn’t take long to make him see your side of it.”
Caesar shook his head. “No, Hirtius. It wouldn’t work. My relationship with Commius was based on complete mutual trust, and that is gone. From this time forward each of us would look askance at the other. He took a vow never again voluntarily to come into the presence of a Roman. The Gauls take such vows quite as seriously as we do. I’ve lost Commius.”
*
Lingering in Ravenna was not a hardship. Caesar kept a villa there because he also kept a school for gladiators there; the climate was considered the best in all Italia and was ague-free, which made Ravenna a wonderful place for hard physical training.
Keeping gladiators was a profitable hobby, one Caesar found so absorbing he had several thousand, though most of them were billeted in a school near Capua. Ravenna was reserved for the cream of them, the ones Caesar had plans for after they finished their time in the sawdust ring.
His agents bought or acquired through the military courts none but the most promising fellows, and the five or six years these men spent exhibition-fighting were good years if Caesar was their owner. They were mainly deserters from the legions (offered a choice between disenfranchisement and life as a gladiator), though some were convicted murderers, and a few volunteered their services. These last Caesar would never accept, saying that a free Roman with a taste for battle should enlist in the legions.
They were well housed, well fed and not overworked, as indeed was true of most gladiatorial schools, which were not prisons. The men came and went as they pleased unless they were booked for a bout, before which they were expected to stay in school, remain sober and train industriously; no man who owned gladiators wanted to see his expensive investment killed or maimed in the ring.
Gladiatorial combat was an extremely popular spectator sport, though it was not a circus activity; it required a smaller venue like a town marketplace. Traditionally a rich man who had suffered a bereavement celebrated the memory of the dead relative with funeral games, and funeral games consisted of gladiatorial combat. He hired his sawdust soldiers from one of the many gladiatorial schools, usually between four and forty pairs, for whom he paid very heavily. They came to the town, they fought, they departed back to school. And at the end of six years or thirty bouts they retired, having completed their sentence. Their citizenship was secure, they had saved some money, and the really good ones had become public idols whose names were known all over Italia.
One of the reasons the sport interested Caesar lay in the fate of these men once they had served their time. To Caesar, men with the kind of skills these men had acquired were wasted once they drifted to Rome or some other city and there hired themselves out as bodyguards or bouncers. He preferred to woo them for his legions, but not as rankers. A good gladiator who hadn’t suffered too many blows to the head made an excellent instructor in military training camp, and some made splendid centurions. It also amused him to send deserters from the legions back to the legions as officers.
Thus the school in Ravenna, where he kept his best men; the majority lived in the school he owned near Capua. The Capuan school of course had not seen him since he assumed his governorships, for the governor of a province could not set foot in Italia proper while ever he commanded an army.
There were other reasons too why Ravenna saw Caesar for longer than any other place in Illyricum or Italian Gaul. It was close to the Rubicon River, the boundary between Italian Gaul and Italia proper, and the roads between it and Rome, two hundred miles away, were excellent. Which meant fast travel for the couriers who rode back and forth constantly, and comfortable travel for the many people who came from Rome to see Caesar in person, since he could not go to see them.
After the death of Clodius he followed events in Rome with some anxiety, absolutely sure that Pompey was aiming at the dictatorship. For this reason had he written to Pompey with his marriage and other proposals, though afterward he wished he had not; rejection left a sour taste in the mouth. Pompey had grown so great that he didn’t think it necessary to please anyone save himself, even Caesar. Who perhaps was becoming a trifle too famous these days for Pompey’s comfort. Yet when Pompey’s Law of the Ten Tribunes of the Plebs gave Caesar permission to stand for the consulship in absentia, he wondered if his misgivings about Pompey were simply the imaginings of a man forced to obtain all his news at second hand. Oh, for the chance to spend a month in Rome! But one drip of one hour was impossible. A governor with eleven legions under his command, Caesar was forbidden to cross the river Rubicon into Italia.
Would Pompey succeed in being appointed Dictator? Rome and the Senate in the persons of men like Bibulus and Cato were resisting it strenuously, but sitting in Ravenna at a distance from the convulsions which wracked Rome every day, it wasn’t difficult to see whose was the hand behind the violence. Pompey’s. Yearning to be Dictator. Trying to force the Senate’s hand.
Then when the news came that Pompey had been made consul without a colleague, Caesar burst out laughing. As brilliant as it was unconstitutional! The boni had tied Pompey’s hands even as they put the reins of government into them. And Pompey had been naive enough to fall for it. Yet another unconstitutional extraordinary command! While failing to see that in accepting it, he had shown all of Rome—and especially Caesar—that he did not have the sinew or the gall to keep grinding on until he was offered a perfectly constitutional command: the dictatorship.
You’ll always be a country boy, Pompeius Magnus! Not quite up to every trick in town. They outfoxed you so deftly that you don’t even see what they’ve done. You’re sitting there on the Campus Martius congratulating yourself that you’re the winner. But you are not. Bibulus and Cato are the winners. They exposed your bluff and you backed down. How Sulla would laugh!