The First Man in Rome (67 page)

At the very end of June the consul Gnaeus Mallius Maximus left on the long march north and west, his two sons on his personal staff, and all twenty-four of the elected tribunes of the soldiers for that year distributed among seven of his ten legions. Sextus Julius Caesar, Marcus Livius Drusus, and Quintus Servilius Caepio Junior marched with him, as did Quintus Sertorius, taken on as a junior military tribune. Of the three Italian Allied legions, the one sent by the Marsi was the best trained and most soldierly legion of all ten; it was commanded by a twenty-five-year-old Marsic nobleman's son named Quintus Poppaedius Silo—under supervision by a Roman legate, of course.

Because Mallius Maximus insisted upon lugging enough State-purchased grain to feed his entire force for two months, his baggage train was huge and his progress painfully slow; by the end of the first sixteen days he hadn't even reached the Adriatic at Fanum Fortunae. Talking very hard and passionately, the legate Aurelius then managed to persuade him to leave his baggage train in the escort of one legion, and push on with his nine others, his cavalry, and light baggage only. It had proven very difficult to convince Mallius Maximus that his troops were not going to starve before they got to the Rhodanus, and that sooner or later the heavy baggage would arrive safely.

Having a much shorter march over level ground, Quintus Servilius Caepio reached the huge river Rhodanus ahead of Mallius Maximus. He took only seven of his eight legions with him—the eighth he shipped to Nearer Spain—and no cavalry, having disbanded it the previous year as an unnecessary expense. Despite his orders and the urging of legates, Caepio had refused to move from Narbo until an expected overseas communication from Smyrna came. Nor was he in a good mood; when he could be deflected from complaining about the disgraceful tardiness of this contact between Smyrna and Narbo, he complained about the in-sensitivity of the Senate in thinking that he would yield supreme command of the Grand Army to a mushroom like Mallius Maximus. But in the end, he was obliged to march without his letter, leaving explicit instructions behind in Narbo that it was to be forwarded as soon as it came.

Even so, Caepio still beat Mallius Maximus to their targetdestination comfortably. At Nemausus, a small trading town on the western outskirts of the vast salt marshes around the delta of the Rhodanus, he was met by the Senate's courier, who gave him the Senate's new orders.

It had never occurred to Caepio that his letter would fail to move the Conscript Fathers, especially when none other than Scaurus read it out to the House. So when he opened the cylinder and scanned the Senate's brief reply, he was outraged. Impossible! Intolerable! He, a patrician Servilius, tugging his forelock at the whim of Mallius Maximus the New Man? Never!

Roman intelligence reported that the Germans were now on their way south, rolling along through the lands of the Celtic Allobroges, inveterate Roman-haters caught in a cleft stick; Rome was the enemy they knew, the Germans the enemy they didn't know. And the Druidic confraternity had been telling every tribe in Gaul for two years now that there wasn't room for the Germans to settle anywhere in Gaul. Certainly the Allobroges were not about to yield enough of their lands to make a new homeland for a people far more numerous than they were themselves. And they were close enough to the Aedui and the Ambarri to know well what a shambles the Germans had made out of the lands of these intimidated tribes. So the Allobroges retreated into the towering foothills of their beloved Alps, and concentrated upon harrying the Germans as much as they could.

The Germans breached the Roman province of Gaul-across-the-Alps to the north of the trading post of Vienne late in June, and surged on, unopposed. The whole mass, over three quarters of a million strong, traveled down the eastern bank of the mighty river, for its plains were wider and safer, less exposed to the fierce highland tribes of central Gaul and the Cebenna.

Learning of this, Caepio deliberately turned off the Via Domitia at Nemausus, and instead of crossing the delta marshes on the long causeway Ahenobarbus had built, he marched his army northward on the western bank, thus keeping the river between himself and the path of the Germans. It was the middle of the month Sextilis.

From Nemausus he had sent a courier hotfoot to Rome with another letter for Scaurus, declaring that he would not take orders from Mallius Maximus, and that was final. After this stand, the only route he could take with honor was west of the river.

On the eastern bank of the Rhodanus, some forty miles north of the place where the Via Domitia crossed the river on a long causeway terminating near Arelate, was a Roman trading town of some importance; its name was Arausio. And on the western bank ten miles north of Arausio, Caepio put his army of forty thousand foot soldiers and fifteen thousand noncombatants into a strong camp. And waited for Mallius Maximus to appear on the opposite bank—and waited for the Senate to reply to his latest letter.

Mallius Maximus arrived ahead of the Senate's reply, at the end of Sextilis. He put his fifty-five thousand infantry and his thirty thousand noncombatants into a heavily fortified camp right on the edge of the river five miles north of Arausio, thus making the river serve as part of his defenses as well as his water source.

The ground just to the north of the camp was ideal for a battle, thought Mallius Maximus, envisioning the river as his greatest protection. This was his first mistake. His second mistake was to detach his five thousand cavalry from his camp, and send them to act as his advance guard thirty miles further north. And his third mistake was to appoint his most able legate, Aurelius, to command the horse, thereby depriving himself of Aurelius's counsel. All the mistakes were part of Mallius Maximus's grand strategy; he intended to use Aurelius and the cavalry as a brake on the German advance—not by offering battle, but by offering the Germans their first sight of Roman resistance. For Mallius Maximus wanted to treat, not fight, hoping to turn the Germans peacefully back into central Gaul, well away from southward progress through the Roman province. All the earlier battles fought between the Germans and Rome had been forced on the Germans by Rome, and only after the Germans had indicated they were willing to turn back peacefully from Roman territory. So Mallius Maximus had high hopes for his grand strategy, and they were not without foundation.

However, his first task was to get Caepio from the west bank of the river to the east bank. Still smarting from the insulting, insensitive letter from Caepio that Scaurus had read out in the House, Mallius Maximus dictated a curt and undisguised direct order to Caepio: get yourself and your army across the river and inside my camp
at once.
He gave it to a team of oarsmen in a boat, thus ensuring quick delivery.

Caepio used the same boat to send Mallius Maximus his answer. Which said with equal curtness that he, a patrician Servilius, would not take orders from any pretentious mushroom of a tradesman, and would stay right where he was, on the western bank.

Said Mallius Maximus's next directive:

As your supreme commander in the field, I repeat my order to transfer yourself and your army across the river without an hour's delay. Please regard this, my second such order, as my last. Should you persist in defying me, I shall institute legal proceedings against you in Rome. The charge will be high treason, and your own high-flown actions will have convicted you.

Caepio responded with an equally litigious reply:

I do not admit that you are the supreme commander in the field. By all means institute treason proceedings against me. I will certainly be instituting treason proceedings against you. Since we both know who will win, I demand that you turn the supreme command over to me forthwith.

Mallius Maximus replied with even greater hauteur. And so it went until midway through September, when six senators arrived from Rome, utterly exhausted by the speed and discomfort of their trip. Rutilius Rufus, the consul in Rome, had pushed successfully to send this embassage, but Scaurus and Metellus Numidicus had managed to pull the embassage's teeth by refusing to allow the inclusion of any senator of consular status or real political clout. The most senior of the six senators was a mere praetor of moderately noble background, none other than Rutilius Rufus's brother-in-law, Marcus Aurelius Cotta. Scant hours after the embassage arrived at Mallius Maximus's camp, Cotta at least understood the gravity of the situation.

So Cotta went to work with great energy and a passion normally alien to him, concentrating upon Caepio. Who remained obdurate. A visit to the cavalry camp thirty miles to the north sent him back to the fray with redoubled determination, for the legate Aurelius had led him under cover to a high hill, from which he was able to see the leading edge of the German advance.

Cotta looked, and turned white. "You ought to be inside Gnaeus Mallius's camp," he said.

"If a fight was what we wanted, yes," said Aurelius, his calm unimpaired, for he had been looking at the German advance for days, and had grown used to the sight.  “Gnaeus Mallius thinks we can repeat earlier successes, which have always been diplomatic. When the Germans have fought, it's only been because we pushed them to it. I have absolutely no intention of starting anything—and that will mean, I'm sure, that they won't start anything either. I have a team of competent interpreters here, and I've been indoctrinating them for days as to what I want to say when the Germans send their chiefs to parley, as I'm sure they will, once they realize that there's a Roman army of huge size waiting for them."

"But surely they know that now!" said Cotta.

"I doubt it," said Aurelius, unperturbed. "They don't move in a military fashion, you know. If they've heard of scouts, they certainly haven't bothered to employ them so far. They just—roll on! Taking, it seems to Gnaeus Mallius and me, whatever comes to them when it comes."

Cotta turned his horse. "I must get back to Gnaeus Mallius as soon as possible, cousin. Somehow we've
got
to get that stiff-necked imbecile Caepio across the river, or we may as well not even have his army in the vicinity."

"I agree," said Aurelius. "However, Marcus Aurelius of the Cottae, if feasible I would like you to return to me here the moment I send you word that a German delegation has arrived to parley.
With
your five colleagues! The Germans will be impressed that the Senate has sent six representatives all the way from Rome to treat with them." He smiled wryly. "We certainly won't let them know that the Senate has sent six representatives all the way from Rome to treat with our own fools of generals!"

The stiff-necked imbecile Quintus Servilius Caepio was—rather inexplicably—in a much better mood and more prone to listen to Cotta when he had himself rowed across the Rhodanus the next day.

"Why the sudden lightheartedness, Quintus Servilius?" asked Cotta, puzzled.

"I've just had a letter from Smyrna," said Caepio. "A letter I should have had months ago." But instead of going on to explain what any letter from Smyrna might contain to make him so much happier, Caepio got down to business. "All right," he said, "I'll come across to the east bank tomorrow." He pointed to his map with an ivory wand topped by a gold eagle he had taken to carrying to indicate the high degree of his imperium; he still had not consented to see Mallius Maximus in person. "Here is where I'll cross."

' 'Wouldn't it be more prudent to cross south of Arausio?'' asked Cotta dubiously.

"Certainly not!" said Caepio. "If I cross to the north, I'll be closer to the Germans."

True to his word, Caepio struck camp at dawn the next day, and marched north to a ford twenty miles above Mallius Maximus's fortress, a scant ten miles south of the place where Aurelius was encamped with his cavalry.

Cotta and his five senatorial companions rode north too, intending to be in Aurelius's camp when the German chieftains arrived to treat. En route they encountered Caepio on the east bank, most of his army across the river. But the sight that met their eyes struck fresh dismay into their hearts, for all too obviously Caepio was preparing to dig a heavily fortified camp right where he was.

"Oh, Quintus Servilius, Quintus Servilius, you
can't
stay here!" cried Cotta as they sat their horses on a knoll above the new campsite, where scurrying figures dug trenches and piled excavated earth up into ramparts.

"Why not?" asked Caepio, raising his brows.

"Because twenty miles to the south of you is a camp already made—and made large enough to accommodate your legions as well as the ten at present inside it!
There
is where you belong, Quintus Servilius! Not here, too far away from Aurelius to the north of you and Gnaeus Mallius to the south of you to be of any help to either—or they to you! Please, Quintus Servilius, I beg of you! Pitch an ordinary marching camp here tonight, then head south to Gnaeus Mallius in the morning," said Cotta, putting every ounce of urgency he could into his plea.

"I
said
I'd cross the river," Caepio announced, "but I did not give any sort of undertaking as to what I'd do when I did cross the river! I have seven legions, all trained to the top of their bent, and all experienced soldiers. Not only that, but they're men of property—
true
Roman soldiers! Do you seriously think that I would consent to share a camp with the rabble of Rome and the Latin countryside—sharecroppers and laborers, men who can't read or write? Marcus Cotta, I would sooner be dead!"

"You might well be," said Cotta dryly.

"Not my army, and not me," said Caepio, adamant. "I'm twenty miles to the north of Gnaeus Mallius and his loathsome rabble. Which means that I shall encounter the Germans first. And I shall beat them, Marcus Cotta! A solid million barbarians couldn't defeat seven legions of
true
Roman soldiers! Let that—that
tradesman
Mallius have one iota of the credit? No! Quintus Servilius Caepio will hold his second triumph through the streets of Rome as the sole victor! Mallius will have to stand there looking on."