Caesar (62 page)

No more litters. Cicero hired a carriage in Beneventum and continued into western Campania at an accelerated pace. He found Pompey in residence at Pompeii, where Cicero had a snug little villa himself, and sought information from one of the few men he thought might actually know what really was going on.“ I received two letters yesterday in Trebula,” he said to Pompey, frowning in puzzlement. “One was from Balbus, and one from none other than Caesar himself. So sweet and friendly... Anything either of them could do for me, it would be an honor to witness my well-deserved triumph, did I need a trifling loan? What's the man doing that for, if he's marching on Rome? Why is he courting me? He knows very well I've never been a partisan.”

“Well, actually,” said Pompey uneasily, “Gaius Marcellus rather took the bit between his teeth. Did things he wasn't officially authorized to do. Though I didn't know it at the time, Cicero, I swear I didn't. You've heard he gave me a sword, and that I took it?”

“Yes, Dolabella told me.”

“Trouble is, I assumed the Senate had sent him with the sword. But the Senate hadn't. So here I am betwixt Scylla and Charybdis, more or less committed to defending the State, taking over command of two legions which have fought for Caesar for years, and starting to recruit all over Campania, Samnium, Lucania and Apulia. But it isn't really legal, Cicero. The Senate didn't commission me, nor is there a Senatus Consultum Ultimum in effect. Yet I know civil war is upon us.” Cicero's heart sank. “Are you sure, Gnaeus Pompeius? Are you really sure? Have you consulted anyone other than rabid boars like Cato and the Marcelli? Have you talked to Atticus, any of the other important knights? Have you sat in the Senate?”

“How can I sit in the Senate when I'm recruiting troops?” snarled Pompey. “And I did see Atticus a few days ago. Well, quite a few days ago, actually, though it seems like yesterday.”

“Magnus, are you sure civil war can't be averted?”

“Absolutely,” said Pompey very positively. “There will be civil war, it's certain. That's why I'm glad to be out of Rome for a while. Easier to think things through. Because we can't let Italia suffer yet again, Cicero. This war against Caesar cannot be let happen on Italian soil. It must be fought abroad. Greece, I think, or Macedonia. East of Italia, anyway. The whole of the East is in my clientele; I can drum up support everywhere from Actium to Antioch. And I can bring my Spanish legions directly from Spain without landing them on Italian soil. Caesar has nine legions left, plus about twenty-two cohorts of recruits freshly levied from across the Padus. I have seven legions in the Spains, two legions in Capua, and however many cohorts I can recruit now. There are two legions in Macedonia, three in Syria, one in Cilicia and one in Asia Province. I can also demand troops from Deiotarus of Galatia and Ariobarzanes of Cappadocia. If necessary, I'll also demand an army from Egypt and bring the African legion over too. Whichever way you look at it, I ought to have upward of sixteen Roman legions, ten thousand foreign auxiliaries, and— oh, six or seven thousand horse.” Cicero sat and stared at him, heart sinking. “Magnus, you can't remove legions from Syria with the Parthians threatening!”

“My sources say there is no threat, Cicero. Orodes is having trouble at home. He shouldn't have executed the Surenas and then Pacorus. Pacorus was his own son.”

“But—but oughtn't you be trying to conciliate with Caesar first? I know from Balbus's letter that he's working desperately to avert a confrontation.”

“Pah!” spat Pompey, sneering. “You know nothing about it, Cicero! Balbus went to great lengths to make sure I didn't leave for Campania at dawn on the Nones, assured me that Caesar had sent Aulus Hirtius especially to see me. So I wait, and I wait, and then I discover that Hirtius turned round and went back to Caesar in Ravenna without so much as trying to keep his appointment with me! That's how much Caesar wants peace, Cicero! It's all a big front, this Balbus-instigated lobbying! I tell you straight that Caesar is bent on civil war. Nothing will deflect him. And I have made up my mind. I will not fight a civil war on Italian soil; I will fight him in Greece or Macedonia.” But, thought Cicero, scribbling a letter to Atticus in Rome, it isn't Caesar bent on civil war—or at least, not Caesar alone. Magnus is absolutely set on it, and thinks that all will be forgiven and forgotten if he makes sure Italia doesn't have to suffer the civil war on her own soil. He's found his way out.

The day was the tenth one of December when Cicero learned how Pompey felt about civil war; on the same day in Rome, Mark Antony took office as a tribune of the plebs. And proceeded to demonstrate that he was as able a speaker as his grandfather the Orator, not to mention quick-witted. He spoke tellingly of the offering of the sword and the illegality of the junior consul's actions in such a stentorian voice that even Cato understood he could not be shouted down or drowned out.“ Furthermore,” he thundered, “I am authorized by Gaius Julius Caesar to say that Gaius Caesar will be happy to give up the two provinces of Gaul on the far side of the Alps together with six of his legions, if this House permits him to keep Italian Gaul, Illyricum and two legions.”

“That's only eight legions, Marcus Antonius,” said Marcellus Major. “What happened to the other legion and those twenty-two cohorts of recruits?”

“The ninth legion, which for the moment we will call the Fourteenth, will vanish, Gaius Marcellus. Caesar doesn't hand over an under-strength army, and at the moment all his legions are well under strength. One legion and the twenty-two cohorts of new men will be incorporated into the other eight legions.” A logical answer, but an answer to an irrelevant question. Gaius Marcellus Major and the two consuls-elect had no intention of putting Antony's proposal to a vote. The House was, besides, barely up to quorum number, so many senators were absent; some had already left Rome for Campania, others were desperately trying to squirrel away assets or collect enough cash to be comfortable in an exile long enough to cover the period of the civil war. Which now seemed to be taken for granted, though it was also becoming generally known that there were no extra legions in Italian Gaul, and that Caesar sat quietly in Ravenna while the Thirteenth Legion enjoyed a furlough on the nearest beaches. Antony, Quintus Cassius, the consortium of bankers and all of Caesar's most important adherents inside Rome fought valiantly to keep Caesar's options open, constantly assuring everyone from the Senate to the plutocrats that Caesar would be happy to hand over six of his legions and both the further Gauls provided he could keep Italian Gaul, Illyricum and two legions. But on the day following Curio's arrival in Ravenna, Antony and Balbus both received curt letters from Caesar which said that he could no longer entirely ignore the possibility that he would need his army to protect his person and his dignitas from the boni and Pompey the Great. He had therefore, he said, sent secretly to Fabius in Bibracte to ship him two of the four legions there, and sent with equal secrecy to Trebonius on the Mosa to ship three of his four legions at once to Narbo, where they were to go under the command of Lucius Caesar and prevent Pompey's Spanish legions from marching toward Italia.“ He's ready,” said Antony to Balbus, not without satisfaction. Little Balbus was less plump these days, so great had been the strain; he eyed Antony apprehensively with those big, brown, mournful eyes, and pursed his full lips together. “Surely we will prevail, Marcus Antonius,” he said. “We must prevail!”

“With the Marcelli in the saddle and Cato squawking from the front benches, Balbus, we don't stand a chance. The Senate—at least that part of it which can still pluck up the courage to attend meetings—will only go on saying that Caesar is Rome's servant, not Rome's master.”

“In which case, what does that make Pompeius?”

“Clearly Rome's master,” said Antony. “But who runs whom, do you think? Pompeius or the boni?”

“Each is sure he runs the other, Marcus Antonius.”

December continued to run away with frightening rapidity—attendance in the Senate dwindled even more; quite a number of houses on the Palatine and the Carinae were shut up fast, their knockers removed from their doors; and many of Rome's biggest companies, brokerages, banks and contractors were using the bitter experience accumulated during other civil wars to shore up their fortifications until they were capable of resisting whatever was to come. For it was coming. Pompey and the boni would not permit that it did not. Nor would Caesar bend until he touched the ground. On the twenty-first of December, Mark Antony gave a brilliant speech in the House. It was superbly structured and rhetorically thrilling, and detailed with scrupulous chronology the entire sum of Pompey's transgressions against the mos maiorum from the time, aged twenty-two, when he had illegally enlisted his father's veterans and marched with three legions to assist Sulla in that civil war; it ended with the consulship without a colleague, and appended an epilogue concerning the acceptance of illegally tendered swords. The peroration was devoted to a mercilessly witty analysis of the characters of the twenty-two wolves who had succeeded in cowing the three hundred and seventy senatorial sheep. Pompey shared his copy of the speech with Cicero; on the twenty-fifth day of December they encountered each other in Formiae, where both had villas. But it was to Cicero's villa that they repaired, therein to spend many hours talking.“ I am obdurate,” said Pompey after Cicero had exhausted himself finding reasons why conciliation with Caesar was still possible. “There can be absolutely no concessions made to Caesar. The man does not want a peaceful settlement, I don't care what Balbus, Oppius and the rest say! I don't even care what Atticus says!”

“I wish Atticus were here,” said Cicero, blinking wearily.“ Then why isn't he? Am I not good enough company?”

“He has a quartan ague, Magnus.”

“Oh.” Though his throat hurt and that wretched inflammation of the eyes threatened to return, Cicero resolved to plod on. Hadn't old Scaurus once single-handedly turned around the entire Senate united against him? And Scaurus wasn't the greatest orator in the annals of Rome! That honor belonged to Marcus Tullius Cicero. The trouble was, reflected the greatest orator of all time, that ever since his illness at Neapolis, Pompey had grown overweeningly confident. No, he hadn't been there to witness it, but everyone had told him about it, first in letters, then in person. Besides, he could see for himself some of the same smugness Pompey used to own in abundance when he was seventeen years old, had still owned when he marched to help Sulla conquer. Spain and Quintus Sertorius had beaten it out of him, even though he ended in winning that tortuous war. Nor had it ever re-emerged until now. Perhaps, thought Cicero, in this cataclysmic confrontation with another military master, Caesar, he thought to relive that youth, to entrench himself for all time as the greatest man Rome produced. Only—was he? No, he surely couldn't lose (and had decided that for himself, else he wouldn't be so determined on civil war) because he was busy making sure he outnumbered Caesar at least two to one. And would forever after be hailed as the savior of his country because he refused to fight on his country's soil. That was self-evident too.“ Magnus, what's the harm in making a tiny concession to him? What if he were to agree to keep one legion and Illyricum?”

“No concessions,” said Pompey firmly.“ But surely somewhere along the way we've all lost the plot? Didn't this start over refusing Caesar the right to stand for the consulship in absentia? So that he could keep his imperium and avoid being tried for treason? Wouldn't it be more sensible to let him do that? Take everything from him except Illyricum—take all his legions! Just let him keep his imperium intact and stand for the consulship in absentia!”

“No concessions!” snapped Pompey.“ In one way Caesar's agents are right, Magnus. You've had many concessions greater than that. Why not Caesar?”

“Because, you fool, even if Caesar were reduced to a privatus—no provinces, no army, no imperium, no anything!—he'd still have designs on the State! He'd still overthrow it!”

Ignoring the reference to foolishness, Cicero tried again. And again. But always the answer was the same. Caesar would never willingly give up his imperium, he would elect to keep his army and his provinces. There would be civil war. Toward the end of the day they abandoned the major issue and concentrated instead on the draft of Mark Antony's speech.“ A distorted tissue of half truths” was Pompey's final verdict. He sniffed, flicked the paper contemptuously. “What do you think Caesar will do if he succeeds in overthrowing the State, when a tawdry, penniless minion like Antonius dares to say such things?” With the result that a profoundly glad Cicero saw his guest off the premises, then almost resolved to get drunk. What stopped him was a horrible thought: Jupiter, he owed Caesar millions! Millions which would now have to be found and repaid. For it was the height of bad form to owe money to a political opponent.

THE RUBICON

from JANUARY 1 until APRIL 5 of 49 B.C.

ROME

At dawn on the first day of the new year, Gaius Scribonius Curio arrived at his house on the Palatine, where he was greeted ecstatically by his wife.“ Enough, woman!” he said, hugging the breath out of her, so glad was he to see her. “Where's my son?”

“You're just in time to see me give him his first meal of the day,” Fulvia said, took him by the hand and led him to the nursery, where she lifted the snoozing baby Curio from his cradle and held him up proudly. “Isn't he beautiful? Oh, I always wanted to have a red-haired baby! He's your image, and won't he be naughty? Urchins always are.”

“I haven't seen any urchin in him. He's absolutely placid.”

“That's because his world is ordered and his mother transmits no anxieties to him.” Fulvia nodded dismissal to the nursery maid and slipped her robe off her shoulders and arms. For a moment she stood displaying those engorged breasts, milk beading their nipples: to Curio, the most wonderful sight he had ever seen—and all because of him. His loins ached with want of her, but he moved to a chair as she sat down in another and held the baby, still half asleep, to one breast. The reflex initiated, baby Curio began to suck with long, audible gulps, his tiny hands curled contentedly against his mother's brown skin.“ I wouldn't care,” he said in a gruff voice, “if I were to die tomorrow, Fulvia, having known this. All those years of Clodius, and I never realized what a true mother you are. No wet nurses, just you. How efficient you are. How much motherhood is a part of living for you, neither a nuisance nor a universe.” She looked surprised. “Babies are lovely, Curio. They're the ultimate expression of what exists between a husband and wife. They need little in one way, lots in another. It gives me pleasure to do the natural things with them and for them. When they drink my milk, I'm exalted. It's my milk, Curio! I make it!” She grinned wickedly. “However, I'm perfectly happy to let the nursery maid change the diapers and let the laundry maid wash them.”