The First Man in Rome (100 page)

They then proceeded to let all the ordinary contracts—and did very well, I consider. Tenders were plentiful, bidding was brisk, and I doubt there'll be much chicanery.

They had moved with almost unheard-of speed to this point because what they really wanted to do, of course, was review the roll of senators and the roll of knights. Not two days after the contracts were all finished—I swear they've done eighteen months of work in less than one month!—Piggle-wiggle called a
contio
of the Assembly of the People to read out the censors' findings on the moral plenitude or turpitude of the Conscript Fathers of the Senate. However, someone must have told Saturninus and Glaucia ahead of time that their names were going to be missing, because when the Assembly met, it was stuffed with hired gladiators and other bully-boys not normally to be found attending meetings of the Comitia.

And no sooner did Piggle-wiggle announce that he and the Billy Goat were removing Lucius Appuleius Saturninus and Gaius Servilius Glaucia from the roll of senators, than the place erupted. The gladiators charged the rostra and hauled poor Piggle-wiggle down off it, then passed him from man to man slapping him viciously across the face with their huge and horny open hands. It was a novel technique—no clubs or billets of wood, just open hands. On the theory I suppose that hands cannot kill unless bunched into fists. Minimal violence, I heard it being called. How pathetic. It all happened so quickly and was so well organized that Piggle-wiggle had been passed all the way to the start of the Clivus Argentarius before Scaurus, Ahenobarbus, and a few other Good Men managed to pick him up and race him to asylum within the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus. There they found his face twice its normal size, both eyes closed, his lips split in a dozen places, his nose spurting like a fountain, his ears mangled, and his brows cut. He looked for all the world like an old-time Greek boxer at the Olympic games.

How do you like the word they're attaching to the archconservative faction, by the way?
Boni
—the Good Men. Scaurus is going round claiming to have invented it after Saturninus began calling the archconservatives the Policy Makers. But he ought to remember that there are plenty of us old enough to know that both Gaius Gracchus
and
Lucius Opimius called the men of their factions the
boni.
Now back to my story!

After he learned Cousin Numidicus was safe, Cousin Caprarius managed to restore order in the Comitia. He had his heralds blow their trumpets, then shouted out that he didn't agree with his senior colleague's findings, therefore Saturninus and Glaucia would remain on the senatorial rolls. You'd have to say Piggle-wiggle lost the engagement, but I don't like friend Saturninus's methods of fighting. He simply says he had nothing to do with the violence, but that he's grateful the People are so vehemently on his side.

You might be pardoned for thinking that was the end of it. But no! The censors then began their financial assessment of the knights, having had a handsome new tribunal built near the Pool of Curtius—a wooden structure, admittedly, but designed for their purpose, with a flight of steps up each side so those being interviewed are kept orderly—up one side, across the front of the censors' desk, and down the other side. Well done. You know the routine—each knight or would-be knight must furnish documentary evidence of his tribe, his birthplace, his citizenship, his military service, his property and capital, and his income.

Though it takes several weeks to discover whether in truth these applicants do have an income of at least 400,000 sesterces a year, the show always draws a good crowd on its first couple of days. As it did when Piggle-wiggle and the Billy Goat began to go through the equestrian rolls. He did look a sight, poor Piggle-wiggle! His bruises were more bilious-yellow than black, and the cuts had become a network of congested dark lines. Though his eyes had opened enough to see. He must have wished they hadn't, when he saw what he saw in the afternoon of that first day on the new tribunal!

None other than Lucius Equitius, the self-proclaimed bastard son of Tiberius Gracchus! The fellow strolled up the steps when his turn came, and stood in front of Numidicus, not Caprarius. Piggle-wiggle just froze as he took in the sight of Equitius attended by a small army of scribes and clerks, all loaded down with account books and documents. Then he turned to his own secretary and said the tribunal was closing for the day, so please to dismiss this creature standing in front of him.

"You've got time to see me," said Equitius.

"All right then, what do you want?" he asked ominously.

"I want to be enrolled as a knight," said Equitius.

"Not in this censors'
lustrum,
you're not!" snarled our Good Man Piggle-wiggle.

I must say Equitius was patient. He said, rolling his eyes toward the crowd standing around the base of the tribunal—and it then became apparent that the gladiators and bully-boys were back—"You can't turn me down, Quintus Caecidius. I fulfill all the criteria."

"You do not!" said Numidicus. "You are disqualified on the most basic ground of all—you are not a Roman citizen."

"But I am, esteemed censor," said Equitius in a voice everyone could hear. "I became a Roman citizen on the death of my master, who bestowed it upon me in his will, along with all his property, and his name. That I have gone back to my mother's name is immaterial. I have the proof of my manumission and adoption. Not only that, but I have served in the legions for ten years—and as a Roman citizen legionary, not an auxiliary."

"I will not enroll you as a knight, and when we commence the census of the Roman citizens, I will not enroll you as a Roman citizen," said Numidicus.

"But I am entitled," said Equitius, very clearly. "I am a Roman citizen—my tribe is Suburana—1 served my ten years in the legions—I am a moral and respectable man—I own four insulae, ten taverns, a hundred
iugera
of land at Lanuvium, a thousand
iugera
of land at Firmum Picenum, a market porticus in Firmum Picenum—and I have an income of over four million sesterces a year, so I also qualify for the Senate." And he snapped his fingers at his head clerk, who snapped his fingers at the minions, all of whom stepped forward holding out huge collections of papers. "I have proof, Quintus Caecilius."

"I don't care how many bits of paper you produce, you vulgar lowborn mushroom—and I don't care who you bring forward to witness for you, you sucking bag of greed!" cried Piggle-wiggle. "I will not enroll you as a citizen of Rome, let alone as a member of the
Ordo Equester! I
piss on you, pimp! Now be off!"

Equitius turned to face the crowd, spread his arms wide—he was wearing a toga—and spoke. "Do you hear that?" he asked. "I, Lucius Equitius, son of Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus, am denied my citizenship as well as my knight's status!"

Piggle-wiggle got to his feet so fast and moved so fast that Equitius didn't even see him coming; the next thing, our valiant censor landed a right on Equitius's jaw, and down Equitius went on his arse, sitting gaping up with his brains rattling round in their bone-box. Then Piggle-wiggle followed the punch with a kick that sent Equitius slithering off the edge of the tribunal into the crowd.

"I piss on the lot of you!" he roared, shaking his fists at the spectators and gladiators. "Be off with you, and take that non-Roman turd with you!"

So it happened all over again, only this time the gladiators didn't touch Piggle-wiggle's face. They dragged him off the tribunal and took to his body with fists, nails, teeth, and boots. In the end it was Saturninus and Glaucia—I forgot to tell you that they were lurking in the background—who stepped forward and pulled Numidicus out of the ranks of his attackers. I imagine it was no part of their plan to have Numidicus dead. Then Saturninus climbed up on the tribunal and quietened everyone enough for Caprarius to make himself heard.

"I do not agree with my colleague, and I will take it upon myself to admit Lucius Equitius into the ranks of the
Ordo Equester
!
"
he yelled, white-faced, poor fellow. I don't think he ever saw so much violence on any of his military campaigns.

"Enter Lucius Equitius's name!" roared Saturninus.

And Caprarius entered the name in the rolls.

"Home, everyone!" said Saturninus.

And everyone promptly went home, carrying Lucius Equitius on their shoulders.

Piggle-wiggle was a mess. Lucky not to be dead, is my opinion. Oh, he was angry! And went at Cousin Billy Goat like a shrew for giving in yet again. Poor old Billy Goat was just about in tears, and quite incapable of defending his actions.

"Maggots! Maggots, the lot of them!" Piggle-wiggle kept saying, over and over, while we all tried to bind up his ribs—he had several broken ones—and discover what other injuries his toga was hiding. And yes, it was all very foolish, but ye gods, Gaius Marius, one has to admire Piggle-wiggle's courage!

Marius looked up from the letter, frowning. "I wonder exactly what Saturninus is up to?" he asked.

But Sulla's mind was dwelling upon a far less important point. "Plautus!" he said suddenly.

"What?"

"The
boni,
the Good Men! Gaius Gracchus, Lucius Opimius, and our own Scaurus claim to have invented
boni
to describe their factions, but
Plautus
applied
boni
to plutocrats and other patrons a hundred years ago! I remember hearing it in a production of Plautus's
Captivi
—put on while Scaurus was curule aedile, by Thespis! I was just old enough to be a playgoer."

Marius was staring. "Lucius Cornelius, stop worrying about who coined pointless words, and pay attention to what really matters! Mention theater to you, and everything else is forgotten."

"Oooops, sorry!" said Sulla impenitently.

Marius resumed reading.

We now move from the Forum Romanum to Sicily, where all sorts of things have been happening, none of them good, some of them blackly amusing, and some downright incredible.

As you know, but I shall refresh your memory anyway because I loathe ragged stories, the end of last year's campaigning season saw Lucius Licinius Lucullus sit down in front of the slave stronghold of Triocala, to starve the rebels out. He'd thrown terror into them by having a herald retell the tale of the Enemy stronghold which sent the Romans a message saying they had food enough to last for ten years, and the Romans sent the reply back that in that case, they'd take the place in the eleventh year.

In fact, Lucullus did a magnificent job. He hemmed in Triocala with a forest of siege ramps, towers, shelter sheds, rams, catapults, and barricades, and he filled in a huge chasm which lay like a natural defense in front of the walls. Then he built an equally magnificent camp for his men, so strongly fortified that even if the slaves could have got out of Triocala, they couldn't have got into Lucullus's camp. And he settled down to wait the winter out, his men extremely comfortable, and he himself sure that his command would be prorogued.

Then in January came the news that Gaius Servilius Augur was the new governor, and with the official dispatch came a letter from our dear Metellus Numidicus Piggle-wiggle, which filled in the nasty details, the scandalous way in which the deed had been done by Ahenobarbus and his arse-boy the Augur.

You don't know Lucullus all that well, Gaius Marius. But I do. Like so many of his kind, he presents a cool, calm, detached, and insufferably haughty face to the world. You know, "I am Lucius Licinius Lucullus, a noble Roman of most ancient and prestigious family, and if you're very lucky, I might deign to notice you from time to time." But underneath the facade is a very different man—thin-skinned, fanatically conscious of slights, filled with passion, awesome in rage. So when Lucullus got the news, he took it on the surface with exactly the degree of calm and composed resignation you might expect. Then he proceeded to tear out every last piece of artillery, the siege ramp, the siege tower, the tortoise, the shelter sheds, the rubble-filled defile, the walled-in mountain shelves, everything. And he burned the lot he could burn, and carried every bucketload of rubble, fill, earth, whatever, far away from Triocala in a thousand different directions. After which he demolished his own camp, and destroyed the materials it contained too.