A Point of Law (25 page)

“Sallustius, I am sure that this is taking us someplace, but I can’t imagine where.”

“I would truly love to have your personal account of Catilina’s conspiracy. I believe you know things nobody else does.”

“You’ve asked me about it often enough.”

“Suppose I had something to trade? Something of great interest to you right now? Something of vital importance to your career and possibly to your continued existence? Might that not be worth your helpful cooperation?”

I considered this. It did not come unexpectedly. Collecting secrets was the breath of life to Sallustius. Trading them was his passion. He would not make such a proposition idly. I knew he must truly believe he had something worth my granting him an interview about that unhappy experience. He knew the value of information the way a slave trader knew the value of his human livestock.

“All right,” I said after due consideration. “If you truly know something I don’t know already, you shall have your interview. But it
will have to be after this business is settled and the elections are over.”

“That is understood,” he said, nodding and grinning like an ape. “You’ll have a few days between the election and the day you assume office.” Like everyone else, he knew that, barring death or conviction, I would be elected praetor.

“Done. What do you know?”

“Let’s find a quiet place to talk.”

We left the steps of the
balnea
and passed between the two temples into the Forum. A short walk brought us to the Temple of Saturn. On this day and at this hour it was deserted except for its slaves, who were busy decorating it for the upcoming Saturnalia celebrations. The archaic, blackened image of the god, holding his golden sickle, his legs wrapped in woolen bands, ignored us as we entered the dimness of his home.

“This is where it started, by the way,” I said.

“What started?”

“My involvement in Catilina’s conspiracy.”

“In the Temple of Saturn? But of course,” Sallustius said. “You were Treasury quaestor that year. How could I have forgotten?”

“That’s for later. What do you have for me?”

We walked past the ornate podium that held military standards. In some years they stood like a dense forest, topped with eagles, boars, bears, spread hands, and other emblems of military units great and small. That year it consisted mainly of empty sockets. So many units had been activated that the only standards left were those of obsolete organizations, the phalanxes and maniples of previous centuries. One section had been covered with a black cloth. There had stood the eagles lost by Crassus at Carrhae. The cloth would remain, an emblem of dishonor, until the eagles were taken back from the Parthians.

Beyond this podium was a broad, marble desk used by the Treasury quaestors and their staffs on days of official business. Ranged around it were wooden chairs with wicker seats. We pulled out two
chairs and sat, alone in the quiet dimness of the old temple. Only faint sounds of activity made their way through the open doors.

Sallustius arranged his toga, took his time getting comfortable, laced his fingers over his small but distinguished paunch, and began. “Does it ever strike you, Decius, how few the great families have become?”

“This is oblique, even for you. Get to the point.”

“Bear with me. I am a historian, and I take a long view of things. Like most of your class, you are a man of direct action and only take heed of what lies directly in front of you at the moment. You pay little attention to what stretches far behind and of what lies ahead.”

I sighed. This was going to take awhile. “I may be more perceptive than you think, but tell it as you like.”

“The great old patrician families, the Cornelii, the Fabii, and such, have been dying out generation by generation. They are infertile. More and more they rely on adoption. Or else they fall into poverty because patricians are barred from trade and business. Their only legitimate sources of income come from the land, which is no longer adequate. Public office is expensive, as you know all too well. The Senate takes its new members mainly from the wealthy
equites
now,” Sallustius began.

“You’re not telling me anything I don’t know.”

“Of course not. Everybody knows this. They just don’t take the trouble to extrapolate the consequences. Rome is a Republic, Decius, but it is far from being a democracy. Roman voters are profoundly conservative, and for centuries they have elected their leaders from a tiny clique of families. New Men like Cicero can be discounted. They have been too few to matter.

“The resulting order has been rough but relatively stable. There have been challenges—such as the upheaval of the Gracchi, the rebellion of Sertorius, Catilina’s abortive coup—but overall the order of things has been stable. But that order has been upset over the last three generations by a succession of military strongmen: Marius, Sulla, Pompey, and now Caesar have arisen to upset the order of things.

“It is our own fault, of course. We give our generals godlike powers within their theaters of war and their provinces. Then we expect them to come meekly home and behave like Republican statesmen. It is human nature to love power once one has tasted it, and few have tasted of power as deeply as Caesar or Pompey. Men hate to give power back to whoever bestowed it. They want to keep it for life, and they want to pass it on to their sons as if it were any other inheritance.

“Marius was a jumped-up peasant, he died mad and his children amounted to nothing. Sulla produced twin children late in life. He was old and dying and he knew it. He could have no important part in the upbringing of his son so he reluctantly but sensibly retired to private life after years of absolute power.”

“Considering Sulla’s proclivities,” I said, “it’s remarkable he produced any heirs at all.”

Sallustius shrugged off this non sequitur. “Pompey is another man of no family. His father came from nothing, and his sons are of no consequence. He has had a remarkable career, but it’s over, and he has no future did he but know it.

“Caesar is the man of the hour. His family is incredibly ancient—all the way back to Aeneas and the goddess Venus, if you care to believe his propaganda, but still the most ancient of all Roman families by any interpretation. He is a patrician, one of the few left in Roman politics. He is immensely popular with the commons. He is the most astoundingly successful general since Scipio Africanus. He is now rich beyond imagining. How old is Caius Julius?”

The sudden question took me a little aback. “About fifty, I think.”

“Exactly. Julius Caesar is fifty years old, and he has no heir. He has—what?—ten, perhaps fifteen vigorous years left to him? He has attained the years where men begin aging fast. If Calpurnia were to present him with a son tomorrow—a great unlikelihood since she is here in Rome, not pregnant, and he is in Gaul—he might live to see the boy perform his manhood ceremony, perhaps see him off to his first
military tribuneship. He will never live long enough to guide a son’s career to the higher realms of imperium.”

I shifted uncomfortably in my wicker-bottomed chair. “What’s all this talk of heirs have to do with anything? Only monarchs need to worry about passing their powers on to heirs.”

Sallustius nodded solemnly. “Exactly. Caesar’s probable heir is at the center of your problems.”

I was beginning to seriously doubt his sanity. “Are you talking about young what’s-his-name? Little Caius Octavius?”

He spread his hands in a gesture of satisfaction. “Who else? He’s about twelve years old and a precocious twelve at that. Already proven himself as a public speaker by delivering his grandmother’s eulogy. You missed that, Decius, but I can tell you that it went down
very
well with the commons. When Caesar comes home next year or the year after, he’s going to keep that boy close and teach him all he needs to know about being a Caesar. His real father is dead; his stepfather is an old man who will be more than amenable to the adoption.”

“Being Caesar’s heir, even were it to happen, won’t make him or anyone else a prince,” I said.

“You are behind the times, Decius. It will mean exactly that.” Sallustius said this flatly, without flourishes and without his customary insinuation. He said it like an historian adding a fact to a book. “What is a prince, anyway? A prince is a human being with a pedigree, like a champion racehorse. The pedigree of the Julii is the highest to be had. That family is surrounded by a unique aura that separates it even from the other patrician gens.”

I was persuaded but unconvinced. “Ancient is the word for them. How many great Caesars have their been? Not many in recent centuries. Caesar’s father was the first of that family to reach the consulship in ages.”

“But the commons have never lost their reverence for them. It was why they were happy to have Caesar as
Pontifex Maximus
when he was little more than a boy.”

“He bribed his way into that office!” I protested.

“Of course, but it pleased the people no end. They like knowing that a Julian is arbitrating between them and the gods. And,” Sallustius leaned forward for emphasis, “if they respect the Julian men, they absolutely adore the women. Why this should be I don’t know. It must be some religious impulse every Roman absorbs with his mother’s milk. You weren’t in Rome when Caesar’s daughter died, were you?”

“No, I was still in Gaul.”

“You’ve never seen such a spectacle. She died in childbirth, as so often happens to Julian women—” Realizing the thoughtlessness of his words, he stopped abruptly. Sallustius had forgotten he was talking to someone married to a Julian. “Forgive me, Decius, I did not—”

I waved it off. “Please continue.”

“Very well. When Julia died, Pompey did not have to feign his mourning. He truly loved the girl and was heartbroken. But you cannot imagine how the people reacted. I have never seen anything like it. They dared to bring her body here for cremation.” He pointed through the doorway. “Right in the middle of the Forum, where the kings were cremated in the old days. They put her ashes in a grave on the Campus Martius, among the heroes of Rome. No woman has ever before been so honored. The people were honoring neither Pompey, (her husband) nor Caesar (her father). It was purely for love of Julia. Although they barely knew her, she was the most beloved woman in all Rome.”

He leaned back again. “This boy, this Octavius, comes from that family. His grandmother was a Julia. The day will come when his ancestry will be important.”

“Before he gets my support, he’d better have a lot more to offer than he has now,” I grumbled, wondering where all this was leading.

“But will
your
support be of any value to him?” Sallustius asked.

“Eh? Explain yourself.”

“I know, Decius, that you are a man without personal vanity, and that your own ambitions are modest, limited to praetorian office.”

This was not quite accurate. I fully intended, someday, to be consul. I just wanted it to be in a year without turmoil, allowing me to busy myself with routine duties such as presiding over the Senate and making speeches nobody would have cause to remember. I certainly did not deceive myself into thinking I was a great leader of legions. In the severely limited range of my ambitions, Sallustius evaluated accurately what my family considered my political laziness.

“Nonetheless,” he went on, “you can hardly imagine a time when your opinion and support will not carry weight because of who you are: a Caecilius Metellus.”

“It goes without saying.” I was not as complacent as I was trying to sound. I had grave fears for the future of my family, but I did not want to give them voice in front of one of Rome’s less discreet persons.

“Your family’s constant trimming and fence-mending have earned it a great many enemies. They married a daughter to a son of Marcus Crassus, they married another to a son of Pompey, they married you to Caesar’s niece, all while opposing these men in the Senate and the assemblies. I realize that they have done all these things in order to
avoid
making powerful, implacable enemies, but the time is past for such tactics.” Sallustius asked, “You are familiar with the old saw about there being three categories of friends?”

I quoted: “My friend, my friend’s friend, my enemy’s enemy.”

“It is your family’s mistake that in holding to this course they have sought to be none of these things. It has made them
everybody’s
enemy.” I was about to protest, but he held up a hand. “Bear with me, please. You’ve been away from Rome too much in recent years, and the great men of your family seem to listen only to each other.

“I, on the other hand, listen to everybody. I go everywhere in Rome, from the lowest lupanar and drinking club to the houses of the greatest men. I even attend intellectual salons like those of your new friend Callista. And it may not seem likely to you, but I spend most of my time listening, not talking.”

“That
is
difficult to picture,” I acknowledged.

“That is because you are too easily swayed by personalities and surface appearances,” said Sallustius. “Unlike your elders, you make friends and enemies far too easily and often for the wrong reasons. For—what? twenty years?—Titus Milo has been one of your closest friends. For about as long, Clodius was your deadliest enemy. Why is that? The pair of them were never more than political gangsters with not an ounce of moral difference between them.”

“But I
like
Milo,” I explained. “I always have. Whereas I detested Clodius from the moment I laid eyes on him.”

“And that,” he said, with exaggerated patience, “is why you’re such a political imbecile.” Sallustius wasn’t the first to say this, so I took no offense. “Men like Caesar and Curio don’t allow such petty considerations to influence the clarity of their political aims.”

“I suspect that this is why the Senate will never appoint me dictator,” I said.

“Decius, I would hate to lose you. Aside from being a good prospect as a Caesarian, you are certainly one of the more interesting and unusual figures in our public life. But I fear you will not be among us for long if you fail to acknowledge the desperation of your peers. All of them: your family, the Claudians, both Marcelli and Pulchri, the Cornelians and Pompey, and the rest, they are all second- and third-raters. And they have been fighting and plotting and bleeding themselves white against
each other!
Now in Caesar, they are up against a man of the first class, and they have no idea what to do. They are all so jealous of each other that they will never agree on a policy. They have no man of comparable worth to rally behind. In their blind panic they will bring on a civil war they cannot win.”