Roman Africa Province wasn’t unduly large, just extremely rich. After Gaius Marius had defeated King Jugurtha of Numidia sixty years earlier it had been augmented by some Numidian lands, but Rome preferred client-kings to governors, so King Hiempsal was allowed to retain most of his country. He had reigned for over forty years, and was succeeded by his eldest son, Juba. Africa Province itself owned one asset which made it necessary for Rome to govern it: the Bagradas River, a large stream of many and strong tributaries that permitted the cultivation of wheat on a grand scale. At the time that Cato and his Ten Thousand arrived there, its grain crop had become as important as Sicily’s, and the owners of its huge grain farms were members of the Senate or the Eighteen, who were the most powerful knight-businessmen. The province also possessed another quality obligating Rome to govern it directly: it occupied a northward bulge in the African coast right below Sicily and the instep of the Italian foot, therefore it was a perfect jumping-off point for an invasion of Sicily and Italy. In olden days, Carthage had done just that several times.
After Caesar crossed the Rubicon and gained largely peaceful control of Italy, the anti-Caesarean Senate fled their homeland in the train of Pompey the Great, appointed their commander-in-chief. Unwilling to devastate the Italian countryside in yet another civil war, Pompey had resolved to fight Caesar abroad, and chose Greece/Macedonia as his theater.
However, it was equally important to own the grain-producing provinces, particularly Sicily and Africa. Thus before it fled, the Republican Senate had dispatched Cato to hold Sicily, while Publius Attius Varus, governor of Africa Province, held that place in the name of the Republican Senate and People of Rome. Caesar sent his brilliant ex-tribune of the plebs, Gaius Scribonius Curio, to wrest both Sicily and Africa off the Republicans; he had to feed not only Rome, but also most of Italy, long incapable of feeding themselves. Sicily fell to Curio very quickly, for Cato was not a general of troops, simply a brave soldier. When he escaped to Africa, Curio and his army followed. But Attius Varus was not about to be cowed either by a couch general like Cato or a fledgling general like Curio. First he made Africa intolerable for Cato, who departed to Pompey in Macedonia, and then, aided by King Juba, Attius Varus led the overconfident Curio into an ambush. Curio and his army died.
So it fell out that Caesar controlled one wheat province, Sicily, while the Republicans controlled the other, Africa. Which gave Caesar ample grain in good years but insufficient in lean years—and there had been a succession of lean years due to a series of droughts from one end of Our Sea to the other. Complicated by the presence of Republican fleets in the Tuscan Sea, ready to pounce on Caesar’s grain convoys; a situation bound to grow worse now that Republican resistance in the East was no more and Gnaeus Pompey had relocated his navy to the grain sea-lanes.
Having gathered in Africa Province after Pharsalus, the Republicans were well aware that Caesar had to come after them. While ever they could field an army, Caesar’s mastery of the world remained debatable. Because he was Caesar, they expected him sooner rather than later; when Cato had started out from Cyrenaica, the general consensus had been June, as this date would give Caesar time to deal with King Pharnaces in Anatolia first. So when the Ten Thousand finished its march, Cato was amazed to find the Republican army at slothful ease, and no sign of Caesar.
* * *
Had the late Gaius Marius laid eyes on the governor’s palace in Utica in this present year, he would have found it very little changed from the place he had occupied six decades ago. Its walls were plastered and painted dull red inside; apart from a largish audience chamber it was a warren of smallish rooms, though there were two nice suites in an annex for visiting grain plutocrats or front bench senators off on a sight-seeing trip to the East. Now it seethed with so many Republican Great Names that it threatened to burst at the seams, and its stuffy interior thrummed with the sounds of all these Republican Great Names at outs and at odds with each other.
A young and bashful tribune of the soldiers led Cato to the governor’s office, where Publius Attius Varus sat at his walnut desk surrounded by paper-shuffling underlings.
“I hear you’ve survived a remarkable journey, Cato,” Varus said, not getting up to shake hands because he detested Cato. A nod, and the minions rose to file out of the room.
“I could ill afford not to survive!” Cato shouted, back in shouting mode at mere sight of this churl. “We need soldiers.”
“Yes, true.”
A martial man of good—but not quite good enough—family, Varus counted himself a client of Pompey the Great’s, but more than duty to his patron had pushed him on to the Republican side; he was a passionate Caesar-hater, and proud of it. Now he coughed, looked disdainful. “I’m very much afraid, Cato, that I can offer you no accommodation. Anyone who hasn’t been at least a tribune of the plebs is dossing down in a corridor—ex-praetors like you rate a cupboard.”
“I don’t expect you to house me, Publius Varus. One of my men is searching for a small house at this very moment.”
Recollections of Cato’s standard of accommodation caused Varus to shudder; in Thessalonica, a three-roomed mud-brick hovel with three servants—one for himself, one for Statyllus, and one for Athenodorus Cordylion. “Good. Wine?” he asked.
“Not for me!” Cato barked. “I have taken a vow not to drink a drop until Caesar is dead.”
“A noble sacrifice,” said Varus.
The awkward visitor sat mum, his hair and beard a mess because he had not paused to bathe before reporting in. Oh, what did one say to such a man?
“I hear that all you’ve eaten for the past four months is meat, Cato.”
“We managed to eat bread a part of the time.”
“Indeed?”
“I have just said so.”
“I also hear that there were scorpions and gigantic spiders.”
“Yes.”
“Did many die from their bites?”
“No.”
“Are all of your men fully recovered from their wounds?”
“Yes.”
“And—ah—did you get caught in any sandstorms?”
“No.”
“It must have been a nightmare when you ran out of water.”
“I did not run out of water.”
“Were you attacked by savages?”
“No.”
“Did you manage to transport the men’s armaments?”
“Yes.”
“You must have missed the cut and thrust of politics.”
“There are no politics in civil wars.”
“You missed noble company, then.”
“No.”
Attius Varus gave up. “Well, Cato, it’s good to see you, and I trust you’ll find suitable housing. Now that you’re here and our troop tally is complete, I shall call a council for the second hour of daylight tomorrow. We have yet,” he continued as he escorted Cato out, “to decide who is going to be commander-in-chief.”
What Cato might have replied was not voiced, for Varus spotted Sextus Pompey leaning against the outer doorway deep in talk with the sentries, and squawked.
“Sextus Pompeius! Cato didn’t say you were here too!”
“That doesn’t surprise me, Varus. Nevertheless, I am here.”
“You walked from Cyrenaica?”
“Under the aegis of Marcus Cato, a pleasant stroll.”
“Come in, come in! May I offer you some wine?”
“You certainly may,” said Sextus with a wink for Cato as he disappeared arm in arm with Varus.
Lucius Gratidius was lurking in the small square just outside the palace gates, chewing a straw and ogling the women busy doing their washing in the fountain. As he still wore nothing save a bedraggled tunic, no one on guard duty had realized that this skinny hulk was the pilus prior centurion of Pompey the Great’s First Legion.
“Found you quite a comfortable place,” he said, straightening as Cato walked out to stand blinking in the sun. “Nine rooms and a bath. With a scrubwoman, a cook and two manservants thrown in, the price is five hundred sesterces a month.”
To a Roman of Rome, a pittance, even were he as frugal as Cato. “An excellent bargain, Gratidius. Has Statyllus turned up yet?”
“No, but he will,” Gratidius said cheerfully, directing Cato down a mean street. “He just wanted to make sure that Athenodorus Cordylion is going to rest easy. Lonely for a philosopher, I dare-say, to have his ashes buried so far from any other philosopher’s. You were right not to let Statyllus carry them to Utica. Not enough wood for a decent pyre, too many bone bits, too much marrow left.”
“I hadn’t quite looked at it that way,” said Cato.
The apartment was the ground floor of a seven-story building right on the harbor front, its windows looking out over a forest of masts, tangles of silver-grey jetties and wharves, and that ethereally blue sea. Five hundred sesterces a month were indeed a bargain, Cato decided when he discovered that the two male slaves were obedient fellows pleased to fill him a warm bath. And, when Statyllus turned up in time for the late afternoon meal, he couldn’t help but give a little smile. Statyllus’s escort was none other than Sextus Pompey, who declined to share their bread, oil, cheese and salad, but ensconced himself in a chair and proceeded to give Cato the gleanings of his few hours with Varus.
“I thought you’d like to know that Marcus Favonius is safe,” he started out. “He encountered Caesar at Amphipolis and asked for pardon. Caesar gave it to him gladly, it seems. Pharsalus must have done something to his mind, Cato, because he wept and told Caesar that all he wanted was to return to his estates in Italy and live a quiet, peaceful life.”
Oh, Favonius, Favonius! Well, I could see this coming. While I lingered with the wounded in Dyrrachium, you had to endure those interminable quarrels between Pompeius’s couch generals, ably assisted by that barbarian Labienus. Your letters told me all, but it doesn’t surprise me that I’ve had no letter from you since Pharsalus. How you would dread informing me that you’ve abandoned the Republican cause. May you enjoy that quiet peace, dearest Marcus Favonius. I do not blame you. No, I cannot blame you.
“And,” Sextus was rattling on, “my informant—who shall be nameless—told me that things are even worse in Utica than they were in Dyrrachium and Thessalonica. Even idiots like Lucius Caesar Junior and Marcus Octavius, who’ve never even been tribunes of the plebs, are saying that they deserve legatal status in our army. As for the really Big Names—ugh! Labienus, Metellus Scipio, Afranius and Governor Varus all think they should occupy the command tent.”
“I had hoped that would be decided before I got here,” Cato said, voice harsh, face expressionless.
“No, it’s to be decided tomorrow.”
“And what of your brother, Gnaeus?”
“Off applying a rod to tata-in-law Libo’s arse somewhere on the south shore of Sicily. I predict,” Sextus added with a grin, “that we won’t see him until the command argument is settled.”
“Sensible man” was Cato’s comment. “And you, Sextus?”
“Oh, I’ll stick to my stepmother’s tata like a burr to a fleece. Metellus Scipio may not be bright or talented, but I do think my father would say I should serve with him.”
“Yes, he would.” The fine grey eyes lifted to look at Sextus sternly.
“What of Caesar?” he asked.
A frown appeared. “That’s the great mystery, Cato. As far as anyone knows, he’s still in Egypt, though apparently not in Alexandria. There are all kinds of rumors, but the truth is that no one has heard a peep from Caesar since a letter written from Alexandria in November reached Rome a month later.”
“I don’t believe it,” Cato said, mouth tight. “The man is a prolific correspondent, and now, above all other times in his life, he needs to be at the center of things. Caesar, silent? Caesar, not in touch? He must be dead. Oh, what a twist of fortune! To have Caesar die of some plague or peasant’s spear in a backwater like Egypt! I feel—cheated.”
“Definitely not dead, is what rumor says. In fact, rumor says that he’s cruising down the river Nilus on a golden barge feet deep in flowers, with the Queen of Egypt by his side, enough harps to drown ten elephants trumpeting, dancing girls in skimpy veils, and baths full of ass’s milk.”
“Are you poking fun at me, Sextus Pompeius?”
“I, poke fun at you, Marcus Cato? Never!”
“Then it’s a trick. But it makes sense of the inertia here in Utica. That autocratic piece of excrement, Varus, was not about to tell me anything, so I thank you for all this news. No, Caesar’s silence has to be a trick.” His lip curled. “What of the eminent consular and advocate, Marcus Tullius Cicero?”
“Stuck in Brundisium on the horns of his latest dilemma. He was welcomed back to Italy by Vatinius, but then Marcus Antonius returned with the bulk of Caesar’s army, and ordered Cicero to leave. Cicero produced Dolabella’s letter, and Antonius apologized. But you know the poor old mouse—too timid to venture any farther into Italy than Brundisium. His wife refuses to have a thing to do with him.” Sextus giggled. “She’s ugly enough to do duty as a fountain spout.”
A glare from Cato sobered him. “And Rome?” Cato asked.
Sextus whistled. “Cato, it’s a circus! The government is limping along on ten tribunes of the plebs because no one has managed to hold elections for the aediles, praetors or consuls. Dolabella got himself adopted into the Plebs and is now a tribune of the plebs. His debts are enormous, so he’s trying to push a general cancellation of debts through the Plebeian Assembly. Every time he tries, that prime pair of Caesareans Pollio and Trebellius veto him, so he’s copied Publius Clodius and organized street gangs to terrorize high and low alike,” Sextus said, face animated. “As Caesar the Dictator is absent in Egypt, the head of state is his Master of the Horse, Antonius. Who is behaving shockingly—wine, women, avarice, malice and corruption.”
“Pah!” Cato spat, eyes blazing. “Marcus Antonius is a rabid boar, a vulture—oh, this is wonderful news!” he cried, grinning savagely. “Caesar has finally overreached himself, to put a drunken brute like Antonius in control. Master of the Horse! Arse of the horse, more like!”
“You’re underestimating Marcus Antonius,” Sextus said, very seriously. “Cato, he’s up to something. Caesar’s veterans are camped around Capua, but they’re restless and muttering about marching on Rome to get their ‘rights’—whatever ‘rights’ might be. My stepmother—who sends you love, by the way—says it’s Antonius working on the legions for his own ends.”
“His own ends? Not Caesar’s ends?”
“Cornelia Metella says Antonius has developed high ambitions, means to step into Caesar’s shoes.”
“How is she?”
“Well.” Sextus’s face puckered, was disciplined. “She built a beautiful marble tomb in the grounds of her Alban Hills villa after Caesar sent her my father’s ashes. It seems he met our freedman Philip, who cremated the body on the beach at Pelusium. Caesar himself had the head cremated. The ashes came with a soft and graceful letter—Cornelia Metella’s words—promising that she will be allowed to keep all her property and money. So she has it to show Antonius if and when he calls to tell her that everything is confiscate.”
“I am at once astonished and deeply perturbed, Sextus,” Cato said. “What is Caesar about? I need to know!”
Seventeen men gathered in the governor’s audience chamber at the second hour of day on the morrow.
Oh, thought Cato, heart sinking, I am back in my old arena, but I have lost the taste for it. Perhaps it is a fault in my character that I abhor all high commands, but if it is a fault, then it has led me to a philosophy that sits inexorably upon my Soul. I know the precise parameters of what I must do. Men may sneer at so much self-denial, but self-indulgence is far worse, and what are high commands except a form of self-indulgence? Here we are, thirteen men in Roman togas, about to tear each other into shreds for the sake of an empty shell called a command tent. A metaphor, even! How many commanders actually inhabit a tent—or if they do, keep it austere and simple? Only Caesar. How I hate to admit that!
The four other men present were Numidians. One of them was clearly King Juba himself, for he was dressed from head to foot in Tyrian purple and wore the white ribbon of the diadem tied around his curled and flowing locks. Beard curled too, entwined with golden threads. Like two of the other three, he seemed about forty years of age; the fourth Numidian was a mere youth.
“Who are these—persons?” Cato demanded of Varus in his loudest and most obnoxious tones.
“Marcus Cato, lower your voice, please! This is King Juba of Numidia, Prince Masinissa and his son Arabion, and Prince Saburra,” Varus said, embarrassed and indignant.
“Eject them, Governor! Immediately! This is a convocation of Roman men!”
Varus fought to keep his temper. “Numidia is our ally in the war against Caesar, Marcus Cato, and entitled to be present.”
“Entitled to be present at a war council, perhaps, but not entitled to watch thirteen Roman noblemen make utter fools of themselves arguing about purely Roman matters!” Cato roared.
“The meeting hasn’t started yet, Cato, but you’re already out of order!” Varus articulated through his teeth.
“I repeat, this is a Roman convocation, Governor! Kindly send these foreigners outside!”
“I’m sorry, I can’t do that.”
“Then I remain here under protest, and will have nothing to say!” Cato bellowed.
While the four Numidians glowered at him, he retired to the back of the room behind Lucius Julius Caesar Junior, a pokered-up sprig of the Julian tree whose father was Caesar’s cousin, right-hand man and staunchest supporter. Curious, thought Cato, eyes boring into Lucius Junior’s back, that the son is a Republican.
“He doesn’t get on with his tata,” Sextus whispered, sidling up to Cato. “Outclassed, but without the sense to acknowledge that he will never be his tata’s bootlace.”
“Shouldn’t you be somewhere closer to the front?”
“At my tender age? Not likely!”
“I note a streak of levity in you, Sextus Pompeius, that ought to be eliminated,” Cato said in his normal loud voice.
“I am aware of it, Marcus Cato, which is why I spend so much of my time with you,” Sextus answered, equally loudly.
“Silence at the back! The meeting will come to order!”
“Order? Order? What do you mean, Varus? I can see at least one priest and one augur in this assembly! Since when has a legal convocation of Roman men met to discuss public business without first saying the prayers and taking the auspices?” Cato yelled. “Is this what our beloved Republic has descended to, that men like Quintus Caecilius Metellus Pius Scipio Nasica can stand here and not object to an illegal meeting? I cannot compel you to expel foreigners, Varus, but I forbid you to start proceedings without first honoring Jupiter Optimus Maximus and Quirinus!”
“If you would only wait, Cato, you’d see that I was about to call upon our good Metellus Scipio to say the prayers, and ask our good Faustus Sulla to take the auspices,” Varus said, making a quick recovery that fooled no one except the Numidians.
Oh, has there ever been a meeting more doomed to fail than this one? Sextus Pompey asked of himself, thoroughly enjoying the spectacle of Cato making making mincemeat out of at least ten Romans and four Numidians. I am right, he has changed a great deal since I met him in Paraetonium, but today I catch a glimpse of what he must have been like in the House on one of those mad occasions when he went tooth and claw for everyone from Caesar to my father. You cannot shout him down and you cannot ignore him.
But, having made his protest and seen to it that the religious formalities were observed, Cato was true to his word and remained at the back in silence.
Competition for the command tent revolved around Labienus, Afranius, Metellus Scipio and none other than the governor, Varus. That so much dissension occurred was due to the fact that the nonconsular Labienus had the best battle record by far, whereas the consular and ex-governor of Syria, Metellus Scipio, had both the legal entitlement and the blood. That Afranius even entered the fray involved his commitment to Labienus, for he bolstered the claims of Caesar’s ex-second-in-command as a fellow Military Man—and consular. Alas, like Labienus, he had no ancestors worth speaking of. The surprise candidate was Attius Varus, who took the line that he was the legal governor of his province, that the war was going to happen in his province, and that he outranked all others in his province.
To Cato, it was a manifestation of luck that the height of feelings made it impossible for some of the debaters to express themselves adequately in Greek, the latter a language that didn’t permit insults to roll like thunder off the tongue the way Latin did. So the argument quickly lapsed into Latin. The Numidians lost the verbal track at once, which didn’t please Juba, a subtle and crafty man who secretly detested all Romans, but had worked out that his chances of expanding his kingdom west into Mauretania were far better with this lot than they would have been with Caesar, no Juba-lover. Whenever Juba thought about that famous day in a Roman court when Caesar, disgusted at the lies, had lost his temper and pulled the royal beard, that selfsame beard smarted all over again.
Numidian resentments were fanned thanks to the fact that Varus had not imported any chairs; everyone was expected to stand, no matter how long the argument raged. An offended request for a chair to ease the royal feet was denied; apparently Romans in their congresses felt quite at home standing. Though I must co-operate with these Romans on the field, thought Juba, I also have to undermine Roman authority in their so-called African province. How enormously rich Numidia would be if I ruled the lands of the Bagradas River!
Four short spring hours of forty-five minutes each saw the argument still raging, a decision no closer, and acrimony growing with every drip of the water clock.
Finally, “There is no contest!” Varus cried, shaping up to Labienus truculently. “It was your tactics lost Pharsalus, so I spit on your contention that you’re our best general! If you are, then what hope do we have of beating Caesar? It’s time for new blood in the command tent—Attius Varus blood! I repeat, this is my province, legally bestowed on me by Rome’s true Senate, and a governor in his province is the highest-ranking man.”
“Arrant nonsense, Varus!” Metellus Scipio snapped. “I am the governor of Syria until I cross Rome’s pomerium into the city, and that isn’t likely to happen until after Caesar is defeated. What is more, the Senate gave me imperium maius! Your imperium is common old propraetore! You’re small-fry, Varus.”
“I may not have unlimited imperium, Scipio, but at least I can find better things to do with my time than wallow in little boys and pornography!”
Metellus Scipio howled and sprang at Varus while Labienus and Afranius folded their arms and watched the scuffle. A tall, well-built man once described as having a face like a haughty camel, Metellus Scipio gave a better account of himself than the younger Attius Varus had expected.
Cato shouldered Lucius Caesar Junior aside and strode to the center of the room to wrench the two men apart.
“I have had enough! ENOUGH! Scipio, go over there and stand absolutely still. Varus, come over here and stand absolutely still. Labienus, Afranius, unfold your arms and try to look who you are instead of a pair of barbered dancing girls trolling for arse outside the Basilica Aemilia.”
He took a turn around the floor, hair and beard disheveled from clutching at them in despair. “Very well,” he said, facing his audience. “It is clear to me that this could go on all day, all tomorrow, all next month and all next year, without a decision being reached. Therefore I am making the decision, right this moment. Quintus Caecilius Metellus Pius Scipio Nasica,” he said, using Metellus Scipio’s awesome full name, “you will occupy the command tent as supreme leader. I appoint you for two reasons, both valid under the mos maiorum. The first is that you are a consular with existing imperium maius, which—as you well know, Varus—overrides all other imperium. The second is that your name is Scipio. Be it superstition or fact, soldiers believe that Rome can’t win a victory in Africa without a Scipio in the command tent. To tempt Fortuna now is stupid. However, Metellus Scipio, you are no better a general of troops than I am, so you will not interfere with Titus Labienus on the battlefield, is that fully understood? Your position is titular, and titular only. Labienus will be in military command, with Afranius as his second man.”
“What about me?” Varus gasped, winded. “Whereabouts do I fit in your grand scheme, Cato?”
“Where you rightly belong, Publius Attius Varus. As governor of this province. Your duty is to ensure the peace, order and good government of its people, see that our army is properly supplied, and act as liaison between Rome and Numidia. It’s obvious that you’re thick with Juba and his minions, so make yourself useful in that area.”
“You have no right!” Varus shouted, fists clenched. “Who are you, Cato? You’re an ex-praetor who couldn’t get himself elected consul, and very little else! In fact, did you not own a voice box made of brass, you’d be an utter nonentity!”
“I do not dispute that,” said Cato, unoffended.
“I dispute your taking the decision even more than Varus!” Labienus snarled with teeth bared. “I’m fed up with doing the military dirty work minus a paludamentum!”
“Scarlet doesn’t suit your complexion, Labienus,” Sextus Pompey said, butting in cheekily. “Come, gentlemen, Cato is in the right of it. Someone had to take the decision, and, whether you admit it or not, Cato is the proper person because he doesn’t want the command tent.”
“If you don’t want the command tent, Cato, what do you want?” Varus demanded.
“To be prefect of Utica,” said Cato, voice quite moderate. “A job I can do well. However, Varus, you’ll have to find me a suitable house. My rented apartment is too small.”
Sextus whooped shrilly, laughed. “Good for you, Cato!”
“Quin taces!” snapped Lucius Manlius Torquatus, a Varus supporter. “Sew your mouth up, young Pompeius! Who are you, to applaud the actions of the great-grandson of a slave?”
“Don’t answer him, Sextus,” Cato growled.
“What is going on?” Juba demanded, in Greek. “Is it decided?”
“It is decided, King—except for you,” Cato said in Greek. “Your function is to supply our army with additional troops, but until Caesar arrives and you can be of some personal use, I suggest that you return to your own domains.”
For a moment Juba didn’t answer, one ear cocked to hear what Varus whispered into it. “I approve of your dispositions, Marcus Cato, though not of the manner in which you made them,” he said then, very regally. “However, I will not return to my kingdom. I have a palace in Carthage, and will live there.”
“As far as I’m concerned, King, you can sit on your thumb and let your legs hang down, but I warn you—mind your own Numidian business, stay out of Roman affairs. Infringe that order, and I will send you packing,” said Cato.
Thwarted and morose, his authority truncated, Publius Attius Varus concluded that the best way to deal with Cato was to give him whatever he asked for, and avoid being in the same room with him. So Cato was shifted to a fine residence on the main city square, adjacent to the waterfront, but not a part of it. The house’s owner, an absentee grain plutocrat, had sided with Caesar and therefore was not in a position to object. It came complete with a staff and a steward aptly named Prognanthes, for he was too tall, had a gigantic lower jaw and an overhanging brow. Cato hired his own clerical help (at Varus’s expense), but accepted the services of the house owner’s agent, one Butas, when Varus sent him around.
That done, Cato called the Three Hundred together. This was Utica’s group of most powerful businessmen, all Romans.
“Those of you with metal shops will cease to make cauldrons, pots, gates and ploughshares,” he announced. “From now on, it’s swords, daggers, the metal parts of javelins, helmets and some sort of mail shirt. All you can produce will be bought and paid for by me, as the Governor’s deputy. Those in the building trade will commence work at once on silos and new warehouses—Utica is going to ensure the welfare of our army in every way. Stonemasons, I want our fortifications and walls strengthened to withstand a worse siege than Scipio Aemilianus inflicted upon old Carthage. Dock contractors will concentrate upon food and war supplies—to waste time on perfume, purple-dyes, fabrics, furniture and the like is hereby forbidden. Any ship with a cargo I deem superfluous to the war effort will be turned away. And, lastly, men between seventeen and thirty will be drafted to form a citizen militia, properly armed and trained. My centurion, Lucius Gratidius, will commence training in Utica’s parade ground tomorrow at dawn.” His eyes roamed the stunned faces. “Any questions?”
Since apparently they had none, he dismissed them.
“It was evident,” he said to Sextus Pompey (who had resolved not to abandon Cato’s company while ever Caesar was somewhere else) “that, like most people, they welcomed firm direction.”
“A pity, then, that you keep maintaining you have no talent for generaling troops,” Sextus said rather sadly. “My father always said that good generaling was mostly preparation for the battle, not the battle itself.”
“Believe me, Sextus, I cannot general troops!” Cato barked. “It is a special gift from the gods, profligately dowered upon men like Gaius Marius and Caesar, who look at a situation and seem to understand in the tiniest moment where the enemy’s weak points are, what the lie of the land will do, and whereabouts their own troops are likely to falter. Give me a good legate and a good centurion, and I will do what I am told to do. But think of what to do, I cannot.”
“Your degree of self-knowledge is merciless,” Sextus said. He leaned forward, hazel eyes sparkling eagerly. “But tell me, dear Cato, do I have the gift of command? My heart says that I do, but after listening to all those fools squabble about talents the biggest moron can see they do not own, am I wrong?”
“No, Sextus, you’re not wrong. Go with your heart.”
* * *
Within the space of two nundinae Utica fell into a new, more martial routine and seemed not to resent it, but on that second nundinae Lucius Gratidius appeared, looking worried.
“There’s something going on, Marcus Cato,” he said.
“What?”
“Morale isn’t nearly as high as it should be—my young men are gloomy, keep telling me that all this effort will go for naught. Though I can discover no truth in it, they insist that Utica is secretly Caesarean in sympathies, and that these Caesareans are going to destroy everything.” He looked grimmer. “Today I found out that our Numidian friend, King Juba, is so convinced of this nonsense that he’s going to attack Utica and raze it to the ground to punish it. But I think it’s Juba responsible for the rumors.”
“Ahah!” Cato exclaimed, getting to his feet. “I agree with you entirely, Gratidius. It’s Juba plotting, not nonexistent Caesareans. He’s making trouble to force Metellus Scipio into giving him a co-command. He wants to lord it over Romans. Well, I’ll soon scotch his ambitions! The cheek of him!”
Off went Cato in a temper and a hurry to the royal palace at Carthage where once Prince Gauda, a claimant to the Numidian throne, had moped and whined while Jugurtha warred against Gaius Marius. The premises were far grander than the governor’s palace in Utica, Cato noted as he emerged from his two-mule gig, his purple-bordered toga praetexta folded immaculately. Preceded by six lictors in crimson tunics and bearing the axes in their fasces as the signal of his imperium, Cato marched up to the portico, gave the guards a curt nod, and swept inside as if he owned the place.
It works every single time, he thought: one look at lictors bearing the axes and the purple border on the toga behind them, and even the walls of Ilium would crumble.
Inside was spacious and deserted. Cato instructed his six lictors to remain in the vestibule, then marched onward into the depths of a house designed to envelop its denizens in a degree of luxury that he found nauseating. The invasion of Juba’s privacy was not an issue; Juba had tampered with Rome’s mos maiorum, he was a criminal.
The first person Cato encountered was the King, lying on a couch in a beautiful room with a splashing fountain and a vast window looking onto a courtyard, the sun streaming in delightfully. Walking across the mosaic floor in front of Juba in a demure parade were perhaps two dozen scantily clad women.
“This,” barked Cato, “is a disgraceful sight!”
The King seemed to have a convulsion, stiffening and jerking as he levered himself off the couch to face the invader in shaking outrage, while the women shrieked and blundered, squalling, into any corner, there to huddle and hide their faces.
“Get out of here, you—you pervert!” Juba roared.
“No, you get out of here, you Numidian backstabber!” roared Cato at a volume that diminished the King’s to a comparative whisper. “Get out, get out, get out! Quit Africa Province this very day, do you hear me? What do I care about your disgusting polygamy or your women, poor creatures devoid of any freedom? I am a monogamous Roman with a wife who manages her own business, can read and write, and is expected to conduct herself virtuously without the need for eunuchs and imprisonment! I spit on your women, and I spit on you!” Cato illustrated his point by spitting, not like a man getting rid of phlegm, but like a furious cat.
“Guards! Guards!” Juba yelled.
They piled into the room, the three Numidian princes hard on their heels. Masinissa, Saburra and young Arabion stood stunned at the sight of Cato with a dozen spears pressed against chest, back, sides. Spears Cato took absolutely no notice of, nor retreated an inch.
“Kill me, Juba, and you’ll reap havoc! I am Marcus Porcius Cato, senator and propraetore commander of Utica! Do you think that you can intimidate me, when I have stood up to men like Caesar and Pompeius Magnus? Look well at this face, and know that it belongs to one who cannot be deflected from his course, who cannot be corrupted or suborned! How much are you paying Varus, that he stomachs the likes of you in his province? Well, Varus may do as his purse dictates, but don’t even think of producing your moneybags to bribe me! Get out of Africa Province today, Juba, or I swear by Sol Indiges, Tellus and Liber Pater that I will go to our army, mobilize it in one hour, and give every last one of you the death of a slave—crucifixion!”
He pushed the spears aside contemptuously, turned on his heel and walked out.
By evening, King Juba and his entourage were on their way to Numidia. When appealed to, Governor Attius Varus had shivered and said that when Cato was in that sort of mood, the only thing to do was as one had been told.
The departure of Juba marked the end of Utica’s attack of nerves; the city settled down to worship the ground Cato walked on, though had he known that, he would have assembled the entire populace and served it a diatribe on impiety.
For himself, he was happy. The civilian job suited him, he knew it was one he could do superbly well.
But where is Caesar? he asked himself as he strolled down to the harbor to watch the ceaseless comings and goings. When will he appear? Still no word of his whereabouts, and the crisis in Rome grows more dangerous every day. Which means that when he does pop into existence, he will have to deal with affairs in Rome as soon as he’s evicted Pharnaces from Anatolia. His arrival is still months off; by the time he reaches Africa, we will be stale. Is that his trick? No one knows better than Caesar how divided our high command is. So it is up to me to keep all those stiff-necked fools from one another’s throats for at least the next six months. While simultaneously damping down the savagery of barbarian Labienus, and depressing the intentions of our cunning King Juba. Not to mention a governor whose main ambition may well be to act as lord high chamberlain for a Numidian foreigner.
In the midst of these cheerless musings, he became aware that a young man was walking toward him with a hesitant smile on his face. Eyes narrowed (he was finding it hard to see at a distance since the march), he studied the familiar form until recognition burst on him like a bolt of lightning. Marcus! His only son.
“What are you doing here instead of skulking in Rome?” he asked, ignoring the outstretched arms.
The face, so like Cato’s own, yet lacking its set planes of grim determination, twisted and crumpled.
“I thought, Father, that it was time I joined the Republican effort instead of skulking in Rome,” young Cato said.
“A right act, Marcus, but I know you. What exactly provoked this tardy decision?”
“Marcus Antonius is threatening to confiscate our property.”
“And my wife? You left her to Antonius’s tender mercies?”
“It was Marcia insisted I come.”
“Your sister?”
“Porcia is still living in Bibulus’s house.”
“My own sister?”
“Aunt Porcia’s convinced that Antonius is about to confiscate Ahenobarbus’s property, so she’s bought a little house on the Aventine just in case. Ahenobarbus invested her dowry splendidly, she says—it’s been accruing interest for thirty years. She sends her love. So do Marcia and Porcia.”
How ironic, thought Cato, that the more able and intelligent of my two children should be the girl. My martial and fearless Porcia is soldiering on. What did Marcia say in that last letter I read? That Porcia is in love with Brutus. Well, I tried to match them for marriage, but Servilia wouldn’t have it. Her dear precious emasculated son, marry his cousin, Cato’s daughter? Hah! Servilia would kill him first.
“Marcia begs that you write to her,” young Cato said.
His father’s answer was oblique. “You’d best come home with me, boy, I have room for you. Do you still clerk well?”
“Yes, Father, I still clerk well.” So much for the hope that once his father saw him again, he might be forgiven for his flaws. His failings. Impossible. Cato had no flaws, no failings. Cato never swerved from the path of the righteous. How terrible it is to be the son of a man without weaknesses.