The First Man in Rome (114 page)

"They make a great deal of noise out of Rome versus Italy, don't they?" Silo asked Drusus, never having heard Rome debate this subject before.

"They do indeed," said Drusus grimly. "It's an attitude only time will change. I live in hope, Quintus Poppaedius."

"And yet you don't like Gaius Marius."

"I detest the man. But I voted for him," said Drusus.

"It's only four years since we fought at Arausio," said Silo reflectively. "Yes, I daresay you're right, and it will change. Before Arausio, I very much doubt Gaius Marius would have had any chance to include Italian troops among his colonists."

"It was thanks to Arausio the Italian debt slaves were freed," said Drusus.

"I'm glad to think we didn't die for nothing. And yet— look at Sicily. The Italian slaves there weren't freed. They died instead."

"I writhe in shame over Sicily," said Drusus, flushing. "Two corrupt, self-seeking senior Roman magistrates did that. Two miserable
mentulae
!
Like them you may not, Quintus Poppaedius, but grant that a Metellus Numidicus or an Aemilius Scaurus would not soil the hem of his toga on a grain swindle."

"Yes, I'll grant you that," said Silo. "However, Marcus Livius, they still believe that to be a Roman is to belong to the most exclusive club on earth—and that no Italian deserves to belong by adoption."

"Adoption?"

"Well, isn't that really what the bestowal of the Roman citizenship is? An adoption into the family of Rome?"

Drusus sighed. "You're quite right. All that changes is the name. Granting him the citizenship can't make a Roman out of an Italian—or a Greek. And as time goes on, the Senate at least sets its heart more and more adamantly against creating artificial Romans."

"Then perhaps," said Silo, "it will be up to us Italians to
make
ourselves artificial Romans—with or without the approval of the Senate."

A second land bill followed the first, this one to deal with all the new public lands Rome had acquired during the course of the German wars. It was by far the more important of the two, for these were virtually virgin lands, unexploited by large-scale farmers and graziers, and potentially rich in other things than beasts and crops—minerals, gems, stone. They were all tracts in western Gaul-across-the-Alps, around Narbo, Tolosa, Carcasso, and in central Gaul-across-the-Alps, plus an area in Nearer Spain which had rebelled while the Cimbri were making things difficult at the foot of the Pyrenees.

There were many Roman knights and Roman companies anxious to expand into Gaul-across-the-Alps, and they had looked to the defeat of the Germans for an opportunity— and looked to their various patrons in the Senate to secure them access to the new
ager publicus Galliae.
Now to find that most of it was to go to Head Count soldiers roused them to heights of fury hitherto seen only during the worst days of the Gracchi.

And as the Senate hardened, so too did the First Class knights, once Marius's greatest advocates—now, feeling cheated of the chance to be absentee landlords in Further Gaul, his obdurate enemies. The agents of Metellus Numidicus and Catulus Caesar circulated everywhere, whispering, whispering...

"He gives away what belongs to the State as if he owned both the land and the State" was one whisper, soon a cry.

"He plots to own the State—why else would he be consul now that the war with the Germans is over?"

"Rome has never subsidized her soldiers with land!"

"The Italians are receiving more than they deserve!"

"Land taken from enemies of Rome belongs exclusively to Romans, not to Latins and Italians as well!"

"He's starting on the
ager publicus
abroad, but before we know it he'll be giving away the
ager publicus
of Italy— and he'll give it to Italians!"

"He's calling himself the Third Founder of Rome, but what he wants to call himself is King of Rome!"

And on, and on, and on. The more Marius roared from the rostra and in the Senate that Rome needed to seed her provinces with colonies of ordinary Romans, that veteran soldiers would form useful garrisons, that Roman lands abroad were better held by many little men than a handful of big men, the bitterer the opposition became. It stockpiled rather than dwindled from too much use, grew daily stronger, more strenuous. Until slowly, subtly, almost without volition, the public attitude toward the second agrarian law of Saturninus began to change. Many of the policy makers among the People—and there were policy makers among the habitual Forum frequenters, as well as among the most influential knights—began to doubt that Marius was right. For never had they seen such opposition.

"There can't be so much smoke without at least some fire," they began to say, between themselves and to those who listened to them because they were policy makers.

"This isn't just another silly Senate squabble—it's too implacable."

"When a man like Quintus Caecilius Metellus Numidicus—who has been censor as well as consul, and don't we all remember how brave he was while he was censor?— keeps increasing the number of his supporters, he must have some right on his side."

"I heard yesterday that a knight whose support Gaius Marius desperately needs has spurned him publicly! The land at Tolosa he was personally promised by Gaius Marius is now going to be given to the Head Count veterans."

"Someone was telling me that he personally overheard Gaius Marius saying he intends to give the citizenship to every single Italian man."

"This is Gaius Marius's sixth consulship—and his fifth in a row. He was heard to say at dinner the other day that he would never
not
be consul! He's going to run every single year until he dies."

"He really wants to be King of Rome!"

Thus did the whispering campaign of Metellus Numidicus and Catulus Caesar begin to pay dividends. And suddenly even Glaucia and Saturninus started to fear that the second land bill was doomed to fail.

"I've
got
to have that land!" cried Marius in despair to his wife, who had been waiting patiently for days in the hope that he would eventually discuss matters with her. Not because she had either fresh ideas to offer or positive things to say, but because she knew herself to be the only real friend he had near him. Sulla had been sent back to Italian Gaul after the triumph, and Sertorius had journeyed to Nearer Spain to see his German wife and child.

"Gaius Marius, is it really so essential?" Julia asked. "Will it honestly matter if your soldiers don't receive their land? Roman soldiers never have received land—there's no precedent for it. They can't say you haven't tried."

"You don't understand," he said impatiently. "It isn't to do with the soldiers anymore, it has to do with my
dignitas,
my position in public life. If the bill doesn't pass, I'm no longer the First Man in Rome."

"Can't Lucius Appuleius help?"

"He's trying, the gods know he's trying! But instead of gaining ground, we're losing it. I feel like Achilles in the river, unable to get out of the flood because the bank keeps giving way. I claw myself upward a little, then go down twice as far. The rumors are incredible, Julia! And there's no combating them, because they're never overt. If I were guilty of one tenth of the things they're saying about me, I'd have been pushing a boulder uphill in Tartarus long ago."

"Yes, well, slander campaigns are impossible to deal with," Julia said comfortably. "Sooner or later the rumors become so bizarre that everyone wakes up with a start. That's what's going to happen in this case too. They've killed you, but they're going to keep on stabbing until the whole of Rome is sick to death of it all. People are horribly naive and gullible, but even the most naive and gullible have a saturation point somewhere. The bill will go through, Gaius Marius—I am sure of it. Just don't hurry it too much, wait for opinion to swing back your way."

"Oh, yes, it may well go through, just as you say, Julia. But what's to stop the House's overturning it the moment Lucius Appuleius is out of office, and I don't have an equally capable tribune of the plebs to fight the House?" Marius groaned.

"I see."

"Do you?"

"Certainly. I'm a Julian of the Caesars, husband, which means I grew up surrounded by political discussions, even if my sex precluded a public career." She chewed her lip. "It is a problem, isn't it? Agrarian laws can't be implemented overnight—they take forever. Years and years. Finding the land, surveying it, parceling it up, finding the men whose names have been drawn to settle it, commissions and commissioners, adequate staff—it's interminable."

Marius grinned. "You've been talking to Gaius Julius!"

"I have indeed. In fact, I'm quite an expert." She patted the vacant end of her couch. "Come, my love, sit down!"

"I can't, Julia."

"Is there no way to protect this legislation?"

Marius stopped his pacing, turned and looked at her from beneath his brows. "Actually there is. ..."

"Tell me," she prompted gently.

"Gaius Servilius Glaucia thought of it, but Lucius Appuleius is mad for it, so I have the two of them clambering up my back trying to bend me over, and I'm not sure. ..."

"Is it so novel?" she asked, aware of Glaucia's reputation.

"Novel enough."

"Please, Gaius Marius, tell me!"

It would be a relief to tell someone who didn't have any axe to grind save Marius's, he thought tiredly. "I'm a Military Man, Julia, and I like a Military Man's solutions," he said. "In the army everyone knows that when I issue an order, it's the best order possible under the circumstances. So everyone jumps to obey without questioning it, because they know me, and they trust me. Well, this lot in Rome know me too, and they ought to trust me! But do they? No!  They're so set on seeing their own ideas implemented that they don't even listen to anyone else's ideas, even if they're better ideas. I go to the Senate knowing before ever I reach the awful place that I'm going to have to do my work in an atmosphere of hatred and heckling which exhausts me before I start! I'm too old and too set in my ways to be bothered with them, Julia! They're all idiots, and they're going to kill the Republic if they go on trying to pretend things haven't changed since Scipio Africanus was a boy! My soldier settlements make such good sense!"

"They do," Julia said, hiding her consternation. He was looking worn these days, older than his years instead of younger, and he was putting on weight for the first time in his life—all that sitting around in meetings rather than striding around in the open air—and his hair was suddenly greying and thinning. Warmaking was clearly more beneficial to a man's body than lawmaking. "Gaius Marius, make an end to it and tell me!" she insisted.

"This second bill contains an additional clause Glaucia invented specially for it," said Marius, beginning to pace again, his words tumbling out. "An oath to uphold the law in perpetuity is demanded from every senator within five days of the bill's passing into law."

She couldn't help herself; Julia gasped, lifted her hands to her cheeks; looked at Marius in dismay, and said the strongest word her vocabulary contained,
"Ecastor!"

"Shocking, isn't it?"

"Gaius Marius, Gaius Marius, they'll never forgive you if you include it in the bill!"

"Do you think I don't know that?" he cried, hands reaching like claws for the ceiling. "But what else can I do? I've
got
to have this land!"

She licked her lips. "You'll be in the House for many years to come," she said. "Can't you just go on fighting to see the law upheld?"

"Go on fighting? When do I ever stop?" he asked. "I'm tired of fighting, Julia!"

She blew a bubble of derision aimed at jollying him. "Oh, pooh!
Gaius Marius
tired of fighting? You've been fighting all your life!"

"But not the same kind of fighting as now," he tried to explain. "This is dirty. There are no rules. And you don't even know who—let alone where!—your enemies are. Give me a battlefield for an arena anytime! At least what happens on it is quick and clean—and the best man usually wins. But the Senate of Rome is a brothel stuffed with the lowest forms of life and the lowest forms of conduct. I spend my days
crawling
in its slime! Well, Julia, let me tell you, I'd rather
bathe
in battlefield blood! And if anyone is naive enough to think that political intrigue doesn't ruin more lives than any war, then he deserves everything politics will dish out to him!"

Julia got up and went to him, forced him to stop the pacing, and took both his hands. "I hate to say it, my dear love, but the political forum isn't the right arena for a man as direct as you."

"If I didn't know it until now, I certainly do know that now," he said gloomily. "I suppose it will have to be Glaucia's wretched special-oath clause. But as Publius Rutilius keeps asking me, where are all these new-style laws going to lead us? Are we really replacing bad with good? Or are we merely replacing bad with worse?"

"Only time will tell," she said calmly. "Whatever else happens, Gaius Marius, never forget that there are always huge crises in government, that people are always going around proclaiming in tones of horror that this or that new law will mean the end of the Republic, that Rome isn't Rome any more—I know from my reading that Scipio Africanus was saying it of Cato the Censor! And probably some early Julius Caesar was saying it of Brutus when he killed his sons in the beginning of things. The Republic is indestructible, and they all know it, even as they're yelling it's doomed. So don't you lose sight of that fact."

Her good sense was placating him at last; Julia noted in satisfaction that the red tinge was dying out of his eyes, and his skin was losing its mottled choler. Time to change the subject a little, she decided.

"By the way, my brother Gaius Julius would like to see you tomorrow, so I've taken the opportunity to invite him and Aurelia to dinner, if that's acceptable."

Marius groaned. "Of course! That's right! I'd forgotten! He's off to Cercina to settle my first colony of veterans there, isn't he?" Down went his head into his hands, snatched from Julia's clasp.
"Isn't
he? Ye gods, my memory! What's happening to me, Julia?"