At the end of October, Caesar arrived in Placentia with his army, secure in the knowledge that he was now Dictator. The governor of Italian Gaul, Marcus Crassus Junior, met him there.
“All’s well, save for Gaius Antonius’s fiasco in Illyricum,” said Crassus, and sighed. “I wish I could say that was a freak mischance, but I can’t. Why on earth he chose to base himself on an island, I don’t know. And the local people were so supportive! They adore you, therefore any legate of yours has to be worthwhile. Would you believe that a group of them built a raft and tried to help fend Octavius’s fleet off? They hadn’t anything beyond spears and stones—no ballistae, no catapultae. All day they took what Octavius threw at them. When night came, they committed suicide rather than fall into enemy hands.”
Caesar and his legates listened grimly.
“I wish,” said Caesar savagely, “that we Romans didn’t hold the family in such reverence! I knew Gaius Antonius would manage to stuff up whatever command I gave him! The pity of it is that wherever I sent him, things would have gone the same way. Well, I can bear losing him. Curio is a tragedy.”
“We’ve lost Africa, certainly,” said Trebonius.
“And will have to do without Africa until Pompeius is beaten.”
“His navy is going to be a nuisance, I predict,” said Fabius.
“Yes,” said Caesar, tight-lipped. “It’s time Rome admitted that the best ships are all built at the eastern end of Our Sea. Where Pompeius is obtaining his fleets, while we’re at the mercy of Italians and Spaniards. I took every ship Ahenobarbus left behind at Massilia, but the Massiliotes don’t build much better than the shipyards in Narbo, Genua and Pisae. Or Novum Carthago.”
“The Liburnians of Illyricum build a beautiful little galley,” said Crassus. “Very fast.”
“I know. Unfortunately they’ve done it in the past to equip pirates; it’s not a well-organized industry.” Caesar shrugged. “Well, we shall see. At least we’re aware of our deficiencies.” He looked at Marcus Crassus enquiringly. “What of preparations to give all Italian Gauls the full citizenship?”
“Just about done, Caesar. I appreciate your sending me Lucius Rubrius. He conducted a brilliant census.”
“Will I be able to legislate it when I’m next in Rome?”
“Give us another month, and yes.”
“That’s excellent, Crassus. I’ve put my Lucius Roscius onto the Roman end, which means I ought to be able to have the whole matter finished by the end of the year. They’ve waited since the Italian War for their citizenships, and it’s twenty years since I first gave them my word that I’d enfranchise them. Yes, high time.”
*
There were eight legions encamped around Placentia—the new Sixth, the Seventh, Eighth, Ninth, Tenth, Eleventh, Twelfth and Thirteenth. The bulk of Caesar’s Gallic army. The men of the Seventh, Eighth, Ninth and Tenth had been under the Eagles now for ten years, and were at the peak of their fighting ability; in age they were between twenty-seven and twenty-eight, and had been enlisted in Italian Gaul. The Eleventh and Twelfth were a little younger, and the Thirteenth, whose men were only twenty-one years old, was a mere baby by comparison. The Sixth, recruited earlier in this year and still unblooded, was a legion of shavelings looking very forward to some real fighting. As Caesar had remarked to Gaius Trebonius, his was an army composed of Italian Gauls, many of whom were from the far side of the Padus. Well, shortly these men could no longer be dismissed as non-citizens by certain senatorial fools.
Recruitment was flourishing as Italian Gaul across the Padus realized that its forty-year battle to attain the full citizenship was over, and Caesar was its hero. He wanted twelve legions to take east to fight Pompey; Mamurra, Ventidius and their staff had labored to achieve Caesar’s figure, and informed him when he reached Placentia that there would indeed be a Fifteenth, Sixteenth, Seventeenth and Eighteenth by the time he was ready to ship them to Brundisium.
Serene in the knowledge that his veteran troops belonged to him completely, Caesar went about the business of a governor. He paid a special visit to his colony at Novum Comum, where Marcus Marcellus had ordered a citizen flogged two years before, and personally paid the man compensation at a public meeting in the town marketplace. From there he visited the people of Marius’s old colony at Eporedia, dropped in to see how things were at the big and thriving town of Cremona, and toyed with the idea of going further east along the foothills of the Alps to give out the news of impending citizenship. This was a great coup, for it meant that the large population still disenfranchised in Italian Gaul would, when citizens, come into his clientship.
A courier came from Gaius Trebonius in Placentia, demanding that Caesar return there immediately.
“Trouble,” said Trebonius curtly when Caesar arrived.
“What kind of trouble?”
“The Ninth is disaffected.”
For the first time in their long association, Trebonius saw the General bereft of words, stunned.
“It can’t be,” he said slowly. “Not my boys!”
“I’m afraid it is.”
“Why?”
“I’d rather they told you. There’s a deputation coming here this afternoon.”
It consisted of the Ninth’s senior centurions, and was led by the chief centurion of the Seventh Cohort, one Quintus Carfulenus. A Picentine, not an Italian Gaul. Perhaps, thought Caesar, face flinty, Carfulenus was in the clientele of Pompey. If so, he gave no sign of it.
The General received the men, ten in all, clad in full armor and seated in his curule chair; on his head he wore a chaplet of oak leaves to remind them—but how could the Ninth forget?—that he too was no mean soldier in the front line.
“What is this?” he asked.
“We’re fed up,” said Carfulenus.
Caesar looked not at Carfulenus but at his primipilus centurion, Sextus Cloatius, and his pilus prior centurion, Lucius Aponius. Two good men, yet very ill at ease; Carfulenus, a hard-bitten man of forty, was ten years their senior in age. Not satisfactory, thought Caesar, seeing an unsuspected problem for the first time. He would have to order his legates to examine the pecking order in their legions’ centurions. Quintus Carfulenus, a senior man yet eleven grades junior to Cloatius and Aponius, was the dominant influence in this legion, under the command of Sulpicius Rufus.
Behind Caesar’s set face and cold eyes a turmoil seethed; of grief, awful anger, incredulity. He had never believed this could happen to him— never believed for one moment that any of his beloved boys would cease to love him, plot to bring him down. Not a humbling experience, to find that his confidence had been misplaced; rather a disillusionment of huge proportions, in the wake of which roared an iron determination to reverse the process, to make the Ninth his again, to strike Carfulenus and any who genuinely felt as he did down to the dust. Literally, dust. Dead.
“What are you fed up with, Carfulenus?” he asked.
“This war. Or better say, this non-war. No fighting worth a lead denarius. I mean, that’s what soldiering is all about. The fighting. The plunder. But so far all we’ve done is march until we drop, freeze in wet tents, and go hungry.”
“You’ve done that for years in Gallia Comata.”
“Why, that’s exactly the point, General. We’ve done it for years in Gallia Comata. And that war’s over. Been over for near two years. But where’s the triumph, eh? When are we going to march in your triumph? When are we going to be discharged to a nice little plot of good land with our share of the spoils in our own purses and our legion savings accounts cashed in?”
“Do you doubt my word that you’ll march in my triumph?”
Carfulenus drew a breath; he was truculent and on his guard, but not quite sure of himself. “Yes, General, we do.”
“And what leads you to that conclusion?”
“We think you’re deliberately stalling, General. We think you’re trying to wriggle out of paying us our due. That you’re going to take us to the other end of the world and leave us there. This civil war is a farce. We don’t believe it’s real.”
Caesar stretched his legs out and looked at his feet, no expression on his face. Then the unsettling eyes came up and stared into the eyes of Carfulenus, who moved uncomfortably; they shifted to Cloatius, who looked agonized, then to Aponius, clearly wishing he was somewhere else, and slowly, horribly, at each of the other seven men.
“What are you going to do if I tell you that you’re marching for Brundisium within a few days?”
“Simple,” said Carfulenus, gaining assurance. “We won’t go to Brundisium. The Ninth won’t march a step. We want to be paid out and discharged here in Placentia, and we’d like our land around Verona. Though I want my piece in Picenum.”
“Thank you for your time, Carfulenus, Cloatius, Aponius, Munatius, Considius, Apicius, Scaptius, Vettius, Minicius, Pusio,” said Caesar, demonstrating that he knew the name of every member of the delegation. He didn’t rise; he nodded. “You may go.”
Trebonius and Sulpicius, who had witnessed this extraordinary interview, stood without a word to say, sensing the gathering of some terrible storm but unable to divine the form it was going to take. Odd, that such control, such lack of emotion, could give off emanations of impending doom. Caesar was angry, yes. But he was also shattered. And that never happened to Caesar. How would he cope with it? What might he do?
“Trebonius, summon the Ninth to an assembly on, the parade ground at dawn tomorrow. Have the First Cohort of every other legion present as well. I want my whole army to participate in this affair, even if only as onlookers,” said Caesar. He looked at Sulpicius. “Rufus, there’s something very wrong with a legion whose two most senior centurions are dominated by a man of lower rank. Take the military tribunes who are liked by the rankers and start investigating who in the Ninth among the centurions has the gumption and the natural authority to fulfill the proper roles of primipilus and pilus prior. Cloatius and Aponius are nothings.”
It became Trebonius’s turn again. “Gaius, the legates in command of my other legions will have to undertake the same sort of investigation. Look for troublemakers. Look for centurions who are dominating more senior men. I want the army swept from top to tail.”
At dawn the five thousand-odd men of the Ninth Legion were joined on the parade ground by the six hundred men of the First Cohort of seven other legions, a total of four thousand two hundred extra men. To speak to ten thousand men was feasible, particularly for Caesar, who had worked out his technique while campaigning in Further Spain as propraetor thirteen years ago. Specially chosen clerks with stentorian voices were positioned at intervals through the assembled soldiers. Those close enough to hear Caesar repeated what he said three words behind him; the next wave repeated what they heard, and so on through the crowd. Few speakers could do it, for the shouted repeats formed a colossal echo and made it extremely difficult to keep going against what had already been said. By making his mind tune the echoes out, Caesar could do it.
The Ninth was apprehensive yet determined. When Caesar mounted the dais in full armor he scanned the faces, which didn’t blur with distance; his eyes, thank the Gods, were still keen both near and far. A thought popped into his head having nothing to do with legionary discontent: what were Pompeius’s eyes like these days? Sulla’s eyes had gone, and made him mighty touchy. Things happened to eyes in middle age—look at Cicero.
Though he had often wept at assemblies, today there were no tears. The General stood with feet apart and hands by his sides, his corona civica on his head, the scarlet cloak of his high estate attached to the shoulders of his beautifully worked silver cuirass. No helmet. His legates stood to either side of him on the dais, his military tribunes in two groups on either side below the dais.
“I am here to rectify a disgrace,” he cried in the high, carrying voice he had found went further than his naturally deep tones. “One of my legions is mutinous. You see it here in its entirety, representatives of my other legions. The Ninth.”
No one murmured in surprise; word got round, even when men were quartered in different camps.
“The Ninth! Veterans of the whole war in Gallia Comata, a legion whose standards groan with the weight of awards for valor, whose Eagle has been wreathed with laurel a dozen times, whose men I have always called my boys. But the Ninth has mutinied. Its men are no longer my boys. They are rabble, stirred and turned against me by demagogues in the guise of centurions. Centurions! What would those two magnificent centurions Titus Pullo and Lucius Vorenus call these shabby men who have replaced them at the head of the Ninth?” Caesar’s right hand went out, pointed close by. “See them, men of the Ninth? Titus Pullo and Lucius Vorenus! Gone to the honorable duty of training other centurions here in Placentia, but present today to weep at their old legion’s dishonor. See their tears? They weep for you! But I cannot. I am too filled with contempt, too consumed by anger. The Ninth has broken my perfect record; I can no longer say no legion of mine has ever mutinied.”
He didn’t move. The hands remained by his sides.
“Representatives of my other legions, I have called you together to witness what I will do to the men of the Ninth. They have informed me that they will not move from Placentia, that they wish to be discharged here and now, paid out and paid up, including their share of the spoils of a nine-year war. Well, they can have their discharge—but it will not be an honorable one! Their share of the spoils of that nine-year war will be divided up among my faithful legions. They will have no land, and I will strip every last one of them of his citizenship! I am the Dictator of Rome. My imperium outranks the imperium of the consuls, of the governors. But I am no Sulla. I will not abuse the power inherent in the dictatorship. What I do here today is not an abuse of that power. It is the just and rational decision of a commander-in-chief whose soldiers have mutinied.
“I tolerate much. I don’t care if my legionaries stink of perfume and ram each other up the arse, provided they fight like wildcats and remain utterly loyal to me! But the men of the Ninth are disloyal. The men of the Ninth have accused me of deliberately cheating them of their entitlements. Accused me! Gaius Julius Caesar! Their commander-in-chief for ten long years! My word isn’t good enough for the Ninth! The Ninth has mutinied!”
His voice swelled; he roared, something he never did in a soldier assembly. “I WILL NOT TOLERATE MUTINY! Do you hear me? I WILL NOT TOLERATE MUTINY! Mutiny is the worst crime soldiers can commit! Mutiny is high treason! And I will treat the mutiny of the Ninth as high treason! I will strip its men of their rights, their entitlements, and their citizenships! And I will decimate!”
He waited then until the last of the echoing voices died away. No one made a sound, save for Pullo and Vorenus, weeping. Every eye was riveted on Caesar.
“How could you?” he cried then to the Ninth. “Oh, you have no idea how profoundly I have thanked all of our Gods that Quintus Cicero is not here today! But this isn’t his legion—these men can’t be the same men who held off fifty thousand Nervii for over thirty days, who all bore wounds, who all sickened, who all watched their food and baggage go up in flames—AND WHO SOLDIERED ON! No, these aren’t the same men! These men are puling, avaricious, mean, unworthy! I won’t call men like these my boys! I don’t want them!”
Both hands went out. “How could you? How could you believe the men who whispered among you? What have I ever done to deserve this? When you were hungry, did I eat better? When you were cold, did I sleep warm? When you were afraid, did I deride you? When you needed me, wasn’t I there? When I gave you my word, did I ever go back on it? What have I done? What have I done?” The hands shook, clenched. “Who are these men among you, that you believe them before you believe me? What laurels are on their brows that I have not worn? Are they the champions of Mars? Are they greater men than I? Have they served you better than I? Have they enriched you more than I? No, you haven’t had your share of the triumphal spoils yet—nor has any other among my legions! But you’ve had much from me despite that—cash bonuses I found out of my own purse! I doubled your pay! Is your pay in arrears? No, it is not! Haven’t I compensated you for the lack of booty a civil war forbids? What have I done?”
The hands fell. “The answer is, Ninth, that I have done nothing to merit a mutiny, even were mutiny an accepted prerogative. But mutiny is not an accepted prerogative. Mutiny is high treason, were I the stingiest, crudest commander-in-chief in the entire history of Rome! You have spat on me. I do not dignify you by spitting back. I simply call you unworthy to be my boys!”
A voice rang out: Sextus Cloatius, tears streaming down his face. “Caesar, Caesar, don’t!” he wailed, walking out of the front rank and up to the dais. “I can bear the discharge. I can bear the loss of money. I can bear being decimated if the lot falls on me. But I can’t bear not to be one of your boys!”
Out they came, all of the ten men who had formed the Ninth’s deputation, weeping, begging forgiveness, offering to die if only Caesar would call them his boys, accord them the old respect. The grief spread; the rankers sobbed and moaned. Genuine, heartfelt.
They’re such children! thought Caesar, listening. Swayed by fair words out of foul mouths. Gulled like Apulians in congress with charlatans. Children. Brave, hard, sometimes cruel. But not men in the true sense of that word. Children.
He let them have their tears.
“Very well,” he said then, “I won’t discharge you. I won’t deem you all guilty of high treason. But there are terms. I want the one hundred and twenty ringleaders in this mutiny. They will all be discharged, they will all forfeit their citizenship. And I will decimate them, which means twelve of them will die in the traditional way. Produce them now.”
Eighty of them constituted Carfulenus’s entire century, the first of the Seventh Cohort; the other forty included Carfulenus’s centurion friends. And Cloatius and Aponius.
The lots to choose the twelve men who would die had been rigged; Sulpicius Rufus had made his own enquiries as to the true ringleaders. One of whom, the centurion Marcus Pusio, was not among the one hundred and twenty men the Ninth indicated.
“Is there any innocent man here?” asked Caesar.
“Yes!” cried a voice from the depths of the Ninth. “His centurion, Marcus Pusio, nominated him. But Pusio is guilty!”
“Step out, soldier,” said Caesar.
The innocent man stepped out.
“Pusio, take his place.”
Carfulenus, Pusio, Apicius and Scaptius drew death lots; the other eight doomed men were all rankers, but heavily implicated. The sentences were carried out immediately. In each decury of the nominated men, the nine whom the lots let live were given cudgels and ordered to beat the owner of the death lot until he was unrecognizable pulp.
“Good,” said Caesar when it was over. But it wasn’t good. He could never again say that his troops were innocent of mutiny. “Rufus, have you a revised list of centurion seniority for me?”
“Yes, Caesar.”
“Then restructure your legion accordingly. I’ve lost over twenty of the Ninth’s centurions today.”
“I’m glad we didn’t have to lose the whole Ninth,” said Gaius Fabius, sighing. “What an awful business!”
“One really bad man,” said Trebonius, sad face sadder. “If it hadn’t been for Carfulenus, I doubt it would have happened.”
“Perhaps so,” said Caesar, voice hard, “but it did happen. I will never forgive the Ninth.”
“Caesar, they’re not all bad!” said Fabius, perturbed.
“No, they’re simply children. Yet why do people expect that children must be forgiven? They’re not animals, they’re members of the gens humana. Therefore they ought to be able to think for themselves. I will never forgive the Ninth. As they will discover when this civil war is over and I do discharge them. They won’t get land in Italia or Italian Gaul. They can go to a colony near Narbo.” He nodded dismissal.
Fabius and Trebonius walked to their own quarters together, very quiet at first.
Finally, from Fabius: “Trebonius, is it my imagination, or is Caesar changing?”
“Hardening, you mean?”
“I’m not sure that’s the right word. Perhaps… yes, more conscious of his specialness. Does that make sense?”
“Definitely.”
“Why?”
“Oh, the march of events,” said Trebonius. “They’d have broken a lesser man. What’s held him together is that he’s never doubted himself. But the mutiny of the Ninth has fractured something in him. He never dreamed of it. He didn’t think it could ever, ever happen to him. In many ways, I think a worse Rubicon for Caesar than that piddling river.”
“He still believes in himself.”
“He’ll still believe in himself while he’s dying,” said Gaius Trebonius. “It’s just that today tarnished his idea of himself. Caesar wants perfection. Nothing must diminish him.”
“He asks with increasing frequency why no one will believe he can win this war,” said Fabius, frowning.
“Because he’s getting angrier at the foolishness of other people. Imagine, Fabius, what it must be like to know that there is no one in your league! Caesar knows. He can do anything! He’s proven it too many times to enumerate. All he really wants is to be acknowledged for what he is. Yet it doesn’t happen. He gets opposition, not recognition. This is a war to prove to other people what you and I—and Caesar—already know. He’s turned fifty, and he’s still battling for what he considers his due. Little wonder, I think, that he’s growing thin-skinned.”
*
At the beginning of November the eight legions gathered at Placentia marched for Brundisium, with almost two months to complete that five-hundred-and-fifty-mile journey; once they reached the Adriatic coast they were to proceed down its length, rather than cross the Apennines to skirt the vicinity of Rome. The pace was set at twenty miles a day, which meant that every second or third day was one of rest. To Caesar’s legions, a glorious holiday, especially at this autumnal time of year.
From Ariminum, which welcomed him just as enthusiastically at the end of this year as it had at its beginning, Caesar turned to take the Via Flaminia to Rome. Up and over the lovely mountains of the homeland, their little fortified towns sitting atop this crag and that, the grass richly yellowed for nutritious grazing, the great forests of fir, larch, pitch-pine and pine stretching to the heights of the peaks, enough building timber for centuries to come. The careful husbanding which saw virtue in pure beauty, the natural affinity all Italians seemed to have for visual harmony. For Caesar, a kind of healing, that journey, taken at something less than his usual headlong pace; he stopped in every town of any size to enquire how things were, what was needed, where Rome’s omissions lay. Speaking to the duumvirs of the smallest municipia as if they mattered to him quite as much as the Senate of Rome. Truth was, he reflected, they mattered more. Like all great cities, Rome was to some extent an artificial growth; as with all such excrescences, it sucked vitality unto itself, and often at the expense of the less numerous and less powerful places doomed to feed it. The cuckoo in the Italian nest. Owning the numbers, Rome owned the clout. Owning the numbers, its politicians favored it. Owning the numbers, it overshadowed all else.
Which it did, he had to admit, approaching it from the north; that other visit at the beginning of April had been a dim and nightmarish business, so much so that he hadn’t noticed the city herself. Not as he did now, looking at the seven hills asprawl with orange-tiled roofs, glitters of gold from gilded temple eaves, tall cypresses, umbelliferous pines, arched aqueducts, the deep blue and strongly flowing width of Father Tiber with the grassy plains of Martius and Vaticanus on either bank.
They came out to meet him in thousands upon thousands, faces beaming, hands throwing flowers like a heady carpet for Toes to walk upon—would he have entered riding any but Toes? They cheered him, they blew him kisses, they held up their babies and small children for him to smile at, they shouted love and encouragement. And he, clad in his finest silver armor, his Civic Crown of oak leaves upon his head, rode at a slow walk behind the twenty-four crimson-clad lictors who belonged to the Dictator and carried the axes in their bundles of rods. Smiling, waving, vindicated at last. Weep, Pompeius! Weep, Cato! Weep, Bibulus! Never once for any of you, this ecstasy. What matters the Senate, what matters the Eighteen? These people are Rome, and these people still love me. They outnumber you as the stars do a cluster of lanterns. And they belong to me.
He rode into the city through the Fontinalis Gate alongside the Arx of the Capitol and down the Hill of the Bankers to the fire-blackened ruins of the Basilica Porcia, the Curia Hostilia and the Senate offices; good then to find that Paullus had used that huge bribe to better effect than he had his consulship by finishing the Basilica Aemilia. And his own Basilica Julia on the opposite side of the lower Forum, where the Basilicae Opimia and Sempronia had been, was growing from nothing. It would cast the Basilica Aemilia in the shade. So would the Curia Julia, the new home of the Senate, once he had seen the architects and commenced. Yes, he would put that temple pediment on the Domus Publica, make it more appealing from the Sacra Via, and clothe its facade all the way around with marble.
But his first visit was to the Regia, tiny temple of the Pontifex Maximus; there he entered alone, saw to his satisfaction that the hallowed place was clean and free from vermin, its altar unstained, its twin laurel trees thriving. A brief prayer to Ops, then it was out and across to his home, the Domus Publica. Not a formal occasion; he went in through his own entrance and closed its door upon the sighing, satiated crowd.
As Dictator he could wear armor within the pomerium, have his lictors bear the axes; when he disappeared within the Domus Publica they nodded genially to the people and walked to their own College behind the inn on the corner of the Clivus Orbius.
But the formalities were not over for Caesar, who had not set foot inside the Domus Publica on that hasty visit in April; he had now as Pontifex Maximus to greet his charges, the Vestal Virgins. Who waited for him in the great temple common to both sides of that divided house. Oh, where had the time gone? The Chief Vestal had been little more than a child when he had departed for Gaul—how Mater had railed at her liking for food! Quinctilia, now twenty-two and Chief Vestal. No thinner, but, he saw now with relief, a jolly young woman whose good sense and practical disposition shone out of her round, homely face. Beside her, Junia, not much younger, quite pretty. And there was his blackbird, Cornelia Merula, a tall and fine young lady of eighteen. Behind them, three little girls, all new since his time here. The three adult Vestals were clad in full regalia, white robes, white veils perched upon the mandatory seven sausages of wool, their bulla medallions upon their breasts. For the children, white robes but no veils; they wore wreaths of flowers instead.
“Welcome, Caesar,” said Quinctilia, smiling.
“How good it is to be home!” he said, longing to embrace her, knowing he could not. “Junia and Cornelia, grown up too!”
They smiled, nodded.
“And who are the little ones?”
“Licinia Terentia, daughter of Marcus Varro Lucullus.”
Yes, she had that look—long face, grey eyes, brown hair.
“Claudia, daughter of the Censor’s eldest son.”
Dark and pretty, very Claudian.
“Caecilia Metella, of the Caprarian Metelli.”
A stormy one, fierce and proud.
“Fabia, Arruntia and Popillia, all gone!” he marveled. “I have been away too long.”
“We have kept Vesta’s hearth burning,” said Quinctilia.
“And Rome is safe because of you.”
Smiling, he dismissed them and turned then to enter his own half of the great house. An ordeal without Aurelia.
It was indeed a reunion full of tears, but these were tears that had to be shed. They had all come to see him who belonged to the days in the Subura—Eutychus, Cardixa and Burgundus. How old they were! Seventies? Eighties? Did it matter? They were so glad to see him! Oh, all those sons of Cardixa and Burgundus! Some of them were grizzled! But no one was allowed to remove the scarlet cloak, the cuirass and the skirt of pteryges save Burgundus; Caesar had to fight to remove the sash of his imperium himself.
Then finally he was free to find his wife, who had not come to him. That was her nature, to wait. Patient as Penelope weaving her shroud. He found her in Aurelia’s old sitting room, though it bore no sign of his mother anymore. Barefoot, he moved as quietly as one of her cats; she didn’t see him. Sitting in a chair with fat orange Felix in her lap. Had he ever realized she was lovely? It didn’t seem so, from this distance. Dark hair, long and graceful neck, fine cheekbones, beautiful breasts.
“Calpurnia,” he said.
She turned at once, dark eyes wide. “Domine,” she said.
“Caesar, not domine.” He bent to kiss her, the perfectly correct salutation for a wife of scant months not seen for many years: affectionate, appreciative, promising more. He sat down in a chair close to her, where he could see her face. Smiling, he pushed a strand of hair off her brow; the dozing cat, sensing a foreign presence, opened one yellow eye and rolled onto its back, all four feet in the air.
“He likes you,” she said, surprise in her voice.
“So he should. I rescued him from a watery grave.”
“You never told me that.”
“Didn’t I? Some fellow was about to toss him into Father Tiber.”
“Then he and I are grateful, Caesar.”
Later that night, his head comfortably cushioned between her breasts, Caesar sighed and stretched. “I am very glad, wife,” he said, “that Pompeius refused to let me marry that battle-axe of a daughter of his. I’m fifty-one, a little old for tantrums and power tactics in my home as well as my public life. You suit me well.”
If perhaps in the very depths of her that wounded Calpurnia, yet she was able to see both the sense of it and the lack of malice in it. Marriage was a business, no less so in her own case than it would have been in the case of the strapping, pugnacious Pompeia Magna. Circumstances had conspired to keep her Caesar’s wife, stave off the advent of Pompeia Magna. Which had delighted her at the time. Those nundinae between her father’s informing her that Caesar wished to divorce her in order to marry Pompey’s daughter and the news that Pompey had turned Caesar’s offer down had been fraught with anxiety, with terrible misgivings. All Lucius Calpurnius Piso, her father, had seen was the huge endowment Caesar was willing to give Calpurnia in order to be free of her; all Calpurnia had seen was another marriage which her father would, of course, arrange. Even had love not formed a part of Calpurnia’s attachment to Caesar, she would have hated it—the moving, the loss of her cats, the adjusting to a completely different kind of life. The cloistered style of the Domus Publica suited her, for it had its freedoms too. And when Caesar did visit, it was a visitation from some god who knew so perfectly how to please, how to make love comfortable. Her husband was the First Man in Rome.
*
Publius Servilius Vatia Isauricus was a quiet man. Loyalty ran in the family; his father, a great plebeian aristocrat, had cleaved to Sulla and remained one of Sulla’s greatest supporters until that difficult, contrary man died. But because the father too had been a quiet man, he adjusted to life in a post-Sullan Rome with grace and some style, did not lose the massive clout which an old name and a huge fortune brought with it. Probably seeing something of Sulla in Caesar, the father before his death had liked him; the son simply carried on the family tradition. He had been a praetor in the year Appius Claudius Censor and Ahenobarbus were consuls, and had soothed boni fears by prosecuting one of Caesar’s legates. Not an aberration but a deliberate ploy; Gaius Messius was not important to Caesar.
In the years since he was always to be found on Caesar’s side of any senatorial division, nor could he be intimidated. No surprise then that when Pompey and the bulk of the Senate fled, Vatia Isauricus remained in Rome. Caesar, it was clear, mattered more to him than the alliances his marriage to Servilia’s eldest daughter, Junia, might have predicated. Though when Cicero blabbed all over Rome that Junia’s portrait was one of those in the baggage of a lowbred scoundrel, Vatia Isauricus did not divorce her. A loyal man remains loyal in all respects.
The day after Caesar arrived in Rome, Mark Antony sent word that he was waiting on the Campus Martius in Pompey’s villa, and Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, who had secured the dictatorship for Caesar, waited in the Domus Publica for an interview. But it was Vatia Isauricus whom Caesar saw first.
“I can’t stay long, alas,” said Caesar.
“That I expected. You’ll have to get your army to the other side of the Adriatic before the equinoctial gales.”
“And lead it myself. What do you think of Quintus Fufius Calenus?”
“You had him as a legate. Don’t you know?”
“In that respect, a good man. But this campaign against Pompeius necessitates that I restructure my high command—I won’t have Trebonius, Fabius, Decimus Brutus or Marcus Crassus, yet I do have more legions than ever. What I need from you is an assessment of Calenus’s ability to handle high command rather than a legion.”
“Aside from his role in the regrettable affair of Milo and Clodius, I think him ideal for your purpose. Besides, in all fairness to poor Calenus, he accepted a ride in Milo’s carriage without any knowledge of what Milo was planning. If anything, Milo’s selecting him is a very good reference. Calenus is probably unimpeachable.”
“Ah!” Caesar settled back in his chair and gazed at Vatia Isauricus intently. “Do you want the job of running Rome in my absence?” he asked.
Vatia Isauricus blinked. “You want me to act as your Master of the Horse?”
“No, no! I don’t intend to remain Dictator, Vatia.”
“You don’t? Then why did Lepidus organize it?”
“To give me dictatorial clout for long enough to start things moving again. Really, just until I can have myself and one other man of my choice elected consul for the coming year. I’d like you as my consular colleague.”
That was very evidently good news; Vatia Isauricus beamed. “Caesar, a great honor!” He frowned, not in anxiety but in thought. “Will you do as Sulla did and nominate two candidates only for the consular elections?” he asked.
“Oh, no! I don’t mind how many men want to run against us.”
“Well, you’ll get no opposition from the Senate, but the men of the Eighteen are terrified of what you might do to the economy. The election results might not be what you want.”
Which statement provoked a laugh. “I assure you, Vatia, that the knights of the Eighteen will scramble to vote for us. Before I hold elections, I intend to bring a lex data before the Popular Assembly to regulate the economy. It will quieten all those fears that I intend a general cancellation of debts, not to mention other, equally irresponsible acts. What Rome needs is proper legislation to restore faith in business circles and enable people on both sides of the debt fence to cope. My lex data will do that in the most sensible and moderate way. But the man I leave behind to govern Rome has to be a sensible and moderate man. That’s why I want you as my colleague. With you, I know Rome will be safe.”
“I won’t destroy your faith in me, Caesar.”
Next came Lepidus, a very different sort of man.
“In two years, Lepidus, I expect you’ll be consul,” said Caesar pleasantly, eyes never leaving that handsome and vaguely disquieting face; a man of great hauteur, riddled with weaknesses.
Lepidus’s face changed, twisted in disappointment. “Not any sooner than two years, Caesar?” he asked.
“Under the lex Annalis, it can’t possibly be sooner. I do not intend that Rome’s mos maiorum be disturbed any more than is necessary. Though I follow in Sulla’s footsteps, I am no Sulla.”
“So you keep saying,” said Lepidus bitterly.
“You have a very old patrician name and high ambitions to enhance it,” said Caesar coolly. “You’ve chosen the winning side, and you’ll prosper, that I promise you. But patience, my dear Lepidus, is a virtue. Practise it.”
“I can practise it as well as the next man, Caesar. It’s my purse is impatient.”
“A revealing statement which doesn’t augur well for Rome under your authority. However, I’ll make a bargain with you.”
“What?” asked Lepidus warily.
“Keep me informed of everything, and I’ll have Balbus pop a little something in your hungry purse regularly.”
“How much?”
“That depends on the accuracy of the information, Lepidus. Be warned! I don’t want the facts warped to suit your own ends. I want exact transcriptions of the truth. Yours won’t be my only sources of information, and I am no fool.”
Mollified yet disappointed, Lepidus departed.
Which left Mark Antony.
“Am I to be your Master of the Horse?” was Antony’s first question, asked eagerly.
“I won’t be Dictator long enough to need one, Antonius.”
“Oh, what a pity! I’d make a terrific Master of the Horse.”
“I’m sure you would, if your conduct in Italia these past months is anything to go by. Though I must protest strongly against lions, litters, mistresses and mummers. Luckily next year you won’t have any chance to behave like the New Dionysus.”
The heavy, pouting face lowered. “Why?”
“Because, Antonius, you’re going with me. Italia will be stable without you because Italia will have a praetor peregrinus, Marcus Caelius. I need you as a member of my high command.”
The red-brown eyes lit up. “Now that’s more like it!”
And that, Caesar reflected, was one man he had managed to please. A pity the Lepiduses of this world were choosier.
*
Caesar’s lex data found immediate favor with the knights of the eighteen senior Centuries—and with many, many thousands more of lower status in Rome’s commercial sphere. Its scope was wider than merely the city; it provided for Italia as well. Property, loans and debts were regulated through a series of provisos which favored neither creditors nor debtors. Those creditors who classified their debts as hopeless were directed to take land as settlement, but the value of the land was to be assessed by impartial arbitrators supervised by the urban praetor. If the interest payments on loans were up to date, the debtors received a deduction from the capital sum owed of two years’ interest at twelve percent. No one was allowed to have more than sixty thousand sesterces in cash. The ceiling on all new loans was to be ten percent simple interest. And, most enormous relief of all, Caesar’s lex data contained a clause which severely punished any slave who sought to inform on his master. As Sulla had encouraged slave informers and paid them well with money and freedom, this clause told Rome’s businessmen that Caesar was no Sulla. There would be no proscriptions.
Overnight the world of commerce began to right itself, for debtors used Caesar’s law as much as creditors, and both kinds of man vowed the law was an excellent one. Sensible and moderate. Atticus, who had been saying ever since the Rubicon that Caesar was no radical, preened himself, said “I told you so!” to everyone, and blandly accepted congratulations on his perspicacity.
Little wonder then that when the elections were held for all ranks of magistrates—the curule men in the Centuries, the quaestors and tribunes of the soldiers in the People’s tribes, and the tribunes of the plebs and plebeian aediles in the tribal Plebs—Caesar’s candidates, discreetly indicated, were all returned. The consular elections saw several candidates other than merely Caesar and Vatia Isauricus, but Caesar was returned as senior consul and Vatia as his junior. The Eighteen’s way of saying thank you, thank you, thank you!
Vacancies in the priestly colleges were filled and a belated Latin Festival held on the Alban Mount. Things happened. But then, men were remembering, didn’t things always happen when Caesar was in government? And this time he had no Bibulus to retard his progress.
Because he would not assume the consulship until the first day of the New Year, Caesar retained his dictatorship until then. Under its auspices he legislated the full citizenship for every man of Italian Gaul; the old, bitterly resented wrong was gone.
He restored the right to stand for public office to the sons and grandsons of Sulla’s proscribed, then brought home those exiles whom he chose to repatriate as improperly banished. With the result that Aulus Gabinius was once more a Roman citizen in good standing, whereas Titus Annius Milo and Gaius Verres, among others, were not.
By way of thanks to the People, he gave an extra free grain dole to every Roman citizen man, paying for it out of a special treasure stored in the temple of Ops. The Treasury was still very full, but he would have to borrow another large sum from it to fund his campaign in Macedonia against Pompey.
*
On the tenth day of this sojourn in Rome, he finally had the leisure to summon a full meeting of the Senate, which he had convened on two earlier days in such a hurry that he left the senators quite winded; many of them had forgotten what Caesar in a hurry was like.
“I leave tomorrow,” he said from the curule dais in Pompey’s curia, a deliberate choice of venue; it amused him to stand below that hubristic statue of the man who was no longer the First Man in Rome. There were those who had pressed him to remove it; he had firmly declined, saying that Pompeius Magnus should witness the doings of Caesar Dictator.
“You will note that I have instituted no laws to remove their citizen status from that group of men who wait for me across the Adriatic. I do not regard them as traitors because they have chosen to oppose my occupation of the consuls’ chair, nor because they sought to destroy my dignitas. What I have to do is show them that they are wrong, misguided, blind to Rome’s welfare. Without, I sincerely hope, much if any bloodshed. There is no merit in shedding the blood of fellow citizens, as my conduct so far in this difference of opinion has conclusively shown. What I find hardest to forgive in them is that they abandoned their country to chaos, that they left it in no condition to continue. That it is now in good condition is due to me. Therefore the reckoning must be paid. Not to me, but to Rome.
“I have given Enemy of the People status to only one man, King Juba of Numidia, for the foul murder of Gaius Scribonius Curio. And I have given Friend and Ally status to Kings Bocchus and Bogud of Mauretania.
“How long I will be away I do not know, but I go secure in the knowledge that Rome and Italia, and their provinces in the West, will prosper under proper and sensible government. I also go with the intention of returning to Rome and Italia their provinces in the East. Our Sea must be united.”
Even the fence-sitters were there that day: Caesar’s uncle Lucius Aurelius Cotta, his father-in-law Lucius Calpurnius Piso, and his nephew-in-law Lucius Marcius Philippus. Looking very stern and above such things as internecine strife. Excusable in Cotta, still rather crippled by two strokes, and excusable perhaps in Philippus, constitutionally incapable of taking sides in anything. But Lucius Piso, so tall, so dark and so ferocious looking that Cicero had once had a fine old time describing him as a barbarian, was irritating. A complete self-server whose daughter was far too nice to deserve him as a father.
Lucius Piso cleared his throat.
“You wish to speak?” asked Caesar.
“I do.”
“Then speak.”
Piso rose to his feet. “Before committing us to a war, Gaius Caesar, might it not be politic to approach Gnaeus Pompeius and ask for peace negotiations?”
Vatia Isauricus answered, and tartly. “Oh, Lucius Piso!” he said, making a rude noise with his lips. “Don’t you think it’s a little late for that? Pompeius has been living high in the palace at Thessalonica for months, with plenty of time to sue for peace. He doesn’t want peace. Even if he did, Cato and Bibulus wouldn’t permit it. Sit down and shut up!”
“I loved it!” chuckled Philippus over dinner that afternoon. ” ‘Sit down and shut up!’ So delicately put!”
“Well,” said Caesar, grinning, “I suppose he thought it was time he said something. Whereas you, you reprobate, sail on as serenely as Ptolemy Philopator’s barge.”
“I like the metaphor. I’d also love to see that barge.”
“The biggest ship ever built.”
“Sixty men to an oar, they say.”
“Rubbish!” said Caesar, snorting. “With that many men on an oar, it would act like a ballista.”
Young Gaius Octavius, grey eyes wide, sat listening raptly.
“And what do you say, young Octavius?” asked Caesar.
“That a country which can build a ship that big and cover it in gold must be very, very rich.”
“Of that there is no doubt,” said Caesar, assessing the boy coolly. Fourteen now. There had been some changes associated with puberty, though the beauty had not diminished. He was beginning to have an Alexandrine look to him, and wore his luxuriantly waving golden hair long enough to cover the tips of those jutting ears. More worrying to Caesar, sensitive on that subject, was a certain—not precisely effeminacy, more a lack of the adolescent version of masculinity. To his surprise, he found that he cared about the future of this lad, didn’t want to see him set off in a direction which would make his public career painfully difficult. No time now to speak privately with young Gaius Octavius, but somewhere in his crowded schedule he would have to make that time a fact.
*
His last call in Rome was upon Servilia, whom he found alone in her sitting room.
“I like those two white ribbons in your hair,” he said, easing himself into a chair after kissing her lips like a friend.
“I had hoped to see you somewhat sooner,” she said.
“Time, Servilia, is my enemy. But clearly not yours. You don’t look a day older.”
“I’m well serviced.”
“So I hear. Lucius Pontius Aquila.”
She stiffened. “How do you know that?”
“My informants constitute a positive ocean.”
“They must, to have prised that little item out of hiding!”
“You must miss him now he’s gone to help Pompeius.”
“There are always replacements.”
“I daresay. I hear that Brutus has also gone to help the good Pompeius.”
Her small, secretive mouth turned down at its corners. “Hah! I don’t understand it in him. Pompeius murdered his father.”
“That was a long time ago. Perhaps his uncle Cato means more to him than an old deed.”
“Your fault! If you hadn’t broken off his engagement to Julia, he’d be in your camp.”
“As are two of your three sons-in-law, Lepidus and Vatia Isauricus. But with Gaius Cassius and Brutus on the other side, you can’t very well lose, can you?”
She shrugged, disliking this cold conversation. He was not going to resume their affair; his every look and movement showed it. And, setting eyes on him again for the first time in almost ten years, she found herself impaled again on his power. Yes, power. That had always been the great attraction. After Caesar, all other men were insulsus. Even Pontius Aquila, a scratch for an itch, no more. Immeasurably older, yet not one day older, that was Caesar. Graven with lines speaking of action, life in hard climes, obstacles conquered. The body as fit and workmanlike as ever. As no doubt was that part of him she couldn’t see, would never see again.
“Whatever happened to that silly woman who wrote to me from Gaul?” she asked harshly.
His face closed. “She died.”
“And her son?”
“He disappeared.”
“You don’t have much of that luck with women, do you?”
“Since I have so much of it in other, more important areas, Servilia, I don’t find that surprising. Goddess Fortuna is a very jealous mistress. I propitiate her.”
“One day she’ll desert you.”
“Oh, no. Never.”
“You have enemies. They might kill you.”
“I will die,” said Caesar, getting to his feet, “when I am quite ready.”