The First Man in Rome (73 page)

Aquillius's eyes roved across the white-clad ranks. "I see several Conscript Fathers here today who bear the name of Porcius Cato. Now their grandfather was a New Man. But do we today think of these Porcii Catones as anything save pillars of this House, noble descendants of a man who in his own day had much the same effect on men with the name of Cornelius Scipio as Gaius Marius has today on men with the name of Caecilius Metellus?"

He shrugged, got down from the dais, and emulated Rutilius Rufus by striding down the floor of the House to a position near the open doors.

"It is Gaius Marius and no other who must retain supreme command against the Germans. No matter
where
the theater of war might be! Therefore it is not enough to invest Gaius Marius with a proconsular imperium limited to Gaul-across-the-Alps."

He turned to face the House, and thundered his words. "As is evident, Gaius Marius is not here to give his personal opinion, and time is galloping away as fast as a bolting horse. Gaius Marius must be consul. That is the only way we can give him the power he is going to need. He must be put up as a candidate for the coming consular elections— a candidate
in absentia
!
"

The House was growling, murmuring, but Manius Aquillius carried on, and carried their attention. "Can anyone here deny that the men of the Centuries are the finest flower of the People? So I say to you, let the men of the Centuries decide! By either electing Gaius Marius consul
in absentia,
or not electing him! For this decision of the supreme command is too big for this House to make. And it is also too big for the Assembly of the Plebs or even of the Whole People to make. I say to you, Conscript Fathers, that the decision of the supreme command against the Germans must be handed to that section of the Roman People who matter the most—the men of the First and the Second Classes of citizens, voting in their centuries in their own Assembly, the Comitia Centuriata!"

Oh, here is Ulysses! thought Rutilius Rufus. I would never have thought of this! Nor do I approve. But he's got the Scaurus faction by the balls just the same. No, it would never have worked to take the vexed question of Gaius Marius's imperium to the People in their tribes, have the whole thing conducted by the tribunes of the plebs in an atmosphere of shouting, yelling, even rioting crowds! To men like Scaurus, the Plebeian Assembly is an excuse for the rabble to run Rome. But the men of the First and Second Classes? Oh, they're a very different breed of Roman! Clever, clever Manius Aquillius!

First you do something unheard of, by proposing that a man be elected consul when he isn't even here to stand for office, and then you let the Scaurus faction know that you are willing to have the whole question decided by Rome's finest! If Rome's finest don't want Gaius Marius, then all they have to do is organize the First and Second Classes of the Centuries to vote for two other men. If they do want Gaius Marius, then all they have to do is vote for him and one other man. And I'd be willing to bet that the Third Class doesn't even get a chance to vote! Exclusivity is satisfied.

The real legal quibble is the
in absentia
proviso. Manius Aquillius will have to go to the Plebeian Assembly for that, though, because the Senate won't give it to him. Look at the tribunes of the plebs wriggling with glee on their bench! There won't be a veto among them—they'll take the
in absentia
dispensation to the Plebs, and the Plebs, dazzled by the vision of ten tribunes of the plebs in accord, will pass a special law enabling Gaius Marius to be elected consul
in absentia.
Of course Scaurus and Metellus Numidicus and the others will argue the binding power of the
lex Villia annalis,
which says that no man can stand a second time for the consulship until ten years have elapsed. And Scaurus and Metellus Numidicus and the others will lose.

This Manius Aquillius needs watching, thought Rutilius Rufus, turning in his chair to watch. Amazing! he thought. They can sit there for years as demure and tractable as a new little Vestal Virgin, and then all of a sudden the opportunity presents itself, and off comes the sheep's disguise, forth stands the wolf. You, Manius Aquillius, are a wolf.

5

Tidying up Africa was a pleasure, not only for Gaius Marius, but for Lucius Cornelius Sulla too. Military duties were exchanged for administrative, admittedly, yet neither man disliked the challenge of organizing a brand-new Africa Province, and two kingdoms around it.

Gauda was now King of Numidia; not much of a man himself, he had a good son in Prince Hiempsal—who would be king, Marius thought, fairly quickly. Reinstated as an official Friend and Ally of the Roman People, Bocchus of Mauretania found his realm enormously enlarged by the gift of most of western Numidia; where once the river Muluchath had been his eastern boundary, this now lay only fifty miles to the west of Cirta and Rusicade. Most of eastern Numidia went into a much bigger Africa Province to be governed by Rome, so that Marius could dower all the knights and landowners in his clientele with the rich coastal lands of the Lesser Syrtis, including the old and still powerful Punic town of Leptis Magna, as well as Lake Tritonis and the port of Tacape. For his own uses, Marius kept the big, fertile islands of the Lesser Syrtis; he had plans for them, particularly for Meninx and Cercina.

"When we get round to discharging the army," Marius said to Sulla, "there comes the problem of what to do with them. They're all Head Count, which means they have no farms or businesses to go back to. They'll be able to enlist in other armies, and I suspect a lot of them will want to do that, but some won't. However, the State owns their equipment, which means they won't be allowed to keep it, and that means the only armies they'll be able to enlist in will be Head Count armies. With Scaurus and Piggle-wiggle opposing financing of Head Count armies in the House, there's a distinct possibility Head Count armies of the future will be rare birds, at least after the Germans are dealt with—oh, Lucius Cornelius, wouldn't it be grand to be in that campaign? But they'll never agree to it, alas."

"I'd give my eyeteeth," said Sulla.

"You could spare them," said Marius.

"Go on with what you were saying about the men who will want their discharges," Sulla prompted.

"I think the State owes Head Count soldiers a little more than their share of the booty at the end of a campaign. I think the State should gift each man with a plot of land to settle on when he elects to retire. Make decent, modestly affluent citizens of them, in other words."

"A military version of the land settlements the Brothers Gracchi tried to introduce?" asked Sulla, frowning slightly.

"Precisely. You don't approve?"

"I was thinking of the opposition in the House."

"Well, I've been thinking that the opposition would be much less if the land involved wasn't
ager publicus
—in Rome's public domain. Start even talking about giving away the
ager publicus,
and you're asking for trouble. Too many powerful men are leasing it. No, what I plan to do is secure permission from the House—or the People, if the House won't do it—hopefully, it won't come to that—to settle Head Count soldiers on nice big plots of land on Cercina and Meninx, right here in the African Lesser Syrtis. Give each man, say, a hundred
iugera,
and he will do two things for Rome. First of all, he and his companions will form the nucleus of a trained body of men who can be called up for duty in the event of any future war in Africa. And secondly, he and his companions will bring Rome to the provinces—Rome's thoughts, customs, language, way of life."

But Sulla frowned. "I don't know, Gaius Marius—it seems wrong to me to want to do the second thing. Rome's thoughts, customs, language, way of life—those things belong to Rome. To graft them onto Punic Africa, with its Berbers and Moors beneath that again—well, to me it seems a betrayal of Rome."

Marius rolled his eyes toward the roof. "There is no doubt, Lucius Cornelius, that you are an aristocrat! Live a low life you might have done, but think low you don't." He reverted to the task at hand. "Have you got those lists of all the odds and ends of booty? The gods help us if we forget to itemize the last gold-headed nail—and in quintuplicate!"

"Treasury clerks, Gaius Marius, are the dregs of the Roman wine flagon," said Sulla, hunting through papers.

"Of anybody's wine flagon, Lucius Cornelius."

On the Ides of November a letter came to Utica from the consul Publius Rutilius Rufus. Marius had got into the habit of sharing these letters with Sulla, who enjoyed Rutilius Rufus's racy style even more than Marius did, being better with words than Marius was. However, Marius was alone when the letter was brought to his office, which fact pleased him; for he liked the opportunity to go through it first to familiarize himself with the text, and when Sulla sat listening to him mutter his way across the endless squiggles trying to divide them up into separate words, it tended to put him off.

But he had hardly begun to read it aloud to himself when he jumped, shivered, leaped to his feet.  “
Jupiter!''
he cried, and ran for Sulla's office.

He burst in, white-faced, brandishing the scroll. "Lucius Cornelius! A letter from Publius Rutilius!"

"What? What is it?"

"A hundred thousand Roman dead," Marius began, reading out important snatches of what he had already read himself. "Eighty thousand of the dead are soldiers... The Germans annihilated us.... That fool Caepio refused to join camps with Mallius Maximus ... insisted on staying twenty miles to the north ... Young Sextus Caesar was badly wounded, so was young Sertorius ... Only three of the twenty-four tribunes of the soldiers survived ... No centurions left ... The soldiers who did survive were the greenest, and have deserted ... A whole legion of propertied Marsi dead, and the nation of the Marsi has already lodged a protest with the Senate ... claiming huge damages, in court if necessary  ... The Samnites are furious too ..."

"Jupiter!" breathed Sulla, flopping back into his chair.

Marius read on to himself for a moment, murmuring a little too softly for Sulla to hear; then he made a most peculiar noise. Thinking Marius was about to have some sort of seizure, Sulla got quickly to his feet, but didn't have time to get around his desk before the reason came out.

"I—am—consul!" gasped Gaius Marius.

Sulla stopped in his tracks, face slack. "Jupiter!" he said again, could think of nothing else to say.

Marius began to read Rutilius Rufus's letter out loud to Sulla, for once beyond caring how much he stumbled as he sorted the squiggles into words.

"The day wasn't over before the People got the bit between their teeth. Manius Aquillius didn't even have time to resume his seat before all ten tribunes of the plebs were off their bench and streaming out the door toward the rostra, with what looked like half of Rome jammed into the Comitia well, and the other half filling the whole of the lower Forum. Of course the whole House followed the tribunes of the plebs, leaving Scaurus and our dear friend Piggle-wiggle shouting to nothing more than a couple of hundred capsized stools.

"The tribunes of the plebs convened the Plebeian Assembly, and within no time flat, two plebiscites were tabled. It always amazes me that we can manage to trot out something better phrased and drafted in the twinkling of an eye than we can after several months of everyone and his uncle having a go at it. Just goes to show that everyone and his uncle do little else than fragment good laws into bad.

"Cotta had told me that Caepio was on his way to Rome as fast as he could to get his version in first, but intended to keep his imperium by staying beyond the
pomerium
and having his son and his agents go to work on his behalf inside the city. That way, he thought he would be safe and snug with his imperium wrapped protectively around him until his version of events became the official version. I imagine he thought—and no doubt correctly—that he'd manage to have his governorship prorogued, and so retain his imperium and his tenure of Gaul-across-the-Alps for long enough to let the stench dissipate.

"But they got him, did the Plebs! They voted overwhelmingly to strip Caepio of his imperium at once. So when he does reach the outskirts of Rome, he's going to find himself as naked as Ulysses on the beach at Scheria. The second plebiscite, Gaius Marius, directed the electoral officer—me— to enter your name as a candidate for the consulship, despite your inability to be present in Rome for the elections."

"This is the work of Mars and Bellona, Gaius Marius!" said Sulla. "A gift from the gods of war."

"Mars? Bellona? No! This is the work of Fortune, Lucius Cornelius. Your friend and mine, Lucius Cornelius.
Fortune!'
'

He read on.

"The People having ordered me to get on with the elections, I had little choice but to do so.

"Incidentally, after the plebiscites were tabled, none other than Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus—feeling a proprietary interest because he regards himself as the founder of our province of Gaul-across-the-Alps, I imagine—tried to speak from the rostra against the plebiscite allowing you to stand for consul
in absentia.
Well, you know how choleric that family are—arrogant lot of bad-tempered so-and-sos, all of them!— and Gnaeus Domitius was literally spitting with rage. When the crowd got fed up with him and shouted him down, he tried to shout the crowd down! I think being Gnaeus Domitius he had a fair chance of succeeding too. But something gave way inside his head or his heart, for he keeled over right there on the rostra as dead as last week's roast duck. It rather put a damper on things, so the meeting broke up and the crowd went home. The important work was done, anyway.