The First Man in Rome (86 page)

Marius poured out two cups of wine, looked at Copillus, and poured a third, which he handed to the prisoner. As he gave Sertorius his drink, he eyed his Sabine relative up and down gravely. "You look like Pluto's rooster," he said.

Sertorius took a sip of the wine and sighed blissfully. "Tusculan!" he said, then preened. "Pluto's rooster, eh? Well, better that than Proserpina's crow."

"What news do you have of the Germans?" Marius asked.

"In brief—I'll tell you more over dinner—very little. It's too early yet to be able to give you information about where they come from, or what drives them. Next time. I'll get back well ahead of any move they might make in the direction of Italy, never fear. But I can tell you where they all are at this very moment. The Teutones and the Tigurini, Marcomanni, and Cherusci are trying to cross the Rhenus into Germania, while the Cimbri are trying to cross the Pyrenees into Spain. I don't think either group will succeed," said Sulla, putting down his cup. "Oh, that wine was good!"

Marius called for his duty officer. "Send me three reliable men, would you?" he asked. "And see if you can find comfortable quarters for King Copillus here. He'll have to be locked up, unfortunately, but only until we can get him away to Rome."

"I wouldn't put him in Rome," said Sulla thoughtfully, when the duty officer had departed. "In fact, I'd be very quiet about where I did put him, anyway."

"Caepio? He wouldn't dare!" said Marius.

"He purloined the gold," said Sulla.

"All right, we'll put the King in Nersia," said Marius briskly.' 'Quintus Sertorius, has your mother got any friends who wouldn't mind housing the King for a year or two? I'll make sure the money's good."

"She'll find someone," said Sertorius confidently.

"What a piece of luck!'' crowed Marius.  “I never thought we'd get the evidence to send Caepio into well-deserved exile, but King Copillus is
it.
We'll keep it very quiet until we're all back in Rome after the Germans are beaten, then we'll arraign Caepio on charges of extortion
and
treason!"

"Treason?" asked Sulla, blinking. "Not with the friends he's got in the Centuries!"

"Ah," said Marius blandly, "but friends in the Centuries can't help him when he's tried in a special treason court manned only by knights."

"What are you up to, Gaius Marius?" Sulla demanded.

"I've got myself
two
tribunes of the plebs for next year!'' said Marius triumphantly.

"They mightn't get in," said Sertorius prosaically.

"They'll get in!" said Marius and Sulla in chorus.

Then all three laughed, and the prisoner continued to stand with great dignity, pretending he could understand their Latin, and waiting for whatever was to befall him next.

At which point Marius remembered his manners and shifted the conversation from Latin to Greek, drawing Copillus warmly into the group, and promising that his chains would soon be struck off.

3

"Do you know, Quintus Caecilius," said Marcus Aemilius Scaurus Princeps Senatus to Metellus Numidicus, "I am thoroughly enjoying my stint as the quaestor of Ostia? Here I am, fifty-five years old, bald as an egg, lines on my face so deep my barber can't give me a really clean shave anymore—and I'm feeling like a boy again! Oh, and the
ease
with which one solves the problems! At thirty, they loomed like insurmountable alps—I remember it well. At fifty-five, they're piddling little cobblestones."

Scaurus had come back to Rome for a special meetingof the Senate convened by the
praetor urbanus
Gaius Memmius to discuss a matter of some concern regarding Sardinia; the junior consul, Gaius Flavius Fimbria, was indisposed—-a common occurrence these days, it seemed to many.

"Did you hear the rumor?" asked Metellus Numidicus as the two of them strolled up the steps of the Curia Hostilia and passed inside; the herald had not yet summoned the House to convene, but most senators who arrived early didn't bother waiting outside—they went straight in and continued their talk until the meeting started with the convening magistrate offering a sacrifice and prayers.

"What rumor?" asked Scaurus a little inattentively; his mind these days tended to be absorbed with the grain supply.

"Lucius Cassius and Lucius Marcius have clubbed together and intend to put it to the Plebeian Assembly that Gaius Marius be allowed to stand for consul again—
in absentia,
no less!"

Scaurus stopped a few feet short of where his personal attendant had set up his stool in its customary front-rank position next to the stool of Metellus Numidicus, and with Metellus Dalmaticus Pontifex Maximus on his other side. His eyes rested on Numidicus's face, wide with shock.

"They wouldn't dare!" he said.

"Oh yes they would! Can you imagine it? A third term as consul is unprecedented—it's to make the man a long-term dictator! Why else on those rare occasions when Rome needed a dictator was the term of a dictator limited to six months, if not to make sure that the man holding the office got no inflated idea of his own supremacy? And now, here we are with this—this—
peasant
making up his own rules as he goes along!" Metellus Numidicus was spitting in rage.

Scaurus sank down onto his stool like an old man. "It's our own fault," he said slowly. "We haven't had the courage of our predecessors and rid ourselves of this noxious mushroom! Why is it that Tiberius Gracchus and Marcus Fulvius and Gaius Gracchus were eliminated, where Gaius Marius survives? He ought to have been cut down years ago!"

Metellus Numidicus shrugged. "He's a peasant. The Gracchi and Fulvius Flaccus were noblemen. Noxious mushroom is the right way to describe him—he pops up somewhere overnight, but by the time you arrive to weed him out, he's gone somewhere else."

"It has to stop!" cried Scaurus.  “
No
one
can be elected to the consulship
in absentia,
let alone twice running! That man has tampered in more ways with Rome's traditions of government than any man in the entire history of the Republic. I am beginning to believe that he wants to be King of Rome, not the First Man in Rome."

"I agree," said Metellus Numidicus, sitting down. "But how can we rid ourselves of him, I ask you? He's never here for long enough to assassinate!"

"Lucius Cassius and Lucius Marcius," said Scaurus in tones of wonder. "I don't understand! They're noblemen from the finest, oldest plebeian families! Can't someone appeal to their sense of fitness, of—of—decency?"

"Well, we all know about Lucius Marcius," said Metellus Numidicus. "Marius bought up all his debts; he's solvent for the first time in his rather revolting life. But Lucius Cassius is different. He's become morbidly sensitive about the People's opinion of incompetent generals like his late father, and morbidly aware of Marius's reputation among the People. I think he thinks that if he's seen helping Marius rid us of the Germans, he'll retrieve his family's reputation."

"Humph!" was all Scaurus said to this piece of theorizing.

Further discussion was impossible; the House convened, and Gaius Memmius—looking very haggard these days, and in consequence handsomer than ever—rose to speak.

"Conscript Fathers," he said, a short document in his hand, "I have received a letter from Gnaeus Pompeius Strabo in Sardinia. It was addressed to me rather than to our esteemed consul Gaius Flavius because, as urban praetor, it is my duty to supervise the law courts of Rome."

He paused to glare fiercely at the back ranks of senators, and contrived to appear almost ugly; the back ranks of senators got the message, and put on their most attentive expressions.

"To remind those of you at the back who hardly ever bother to honor this House with your presence, Gnaeus Pompeius Strabo is quaestor to the governor of Sardinia, who—to remind you!—is Titus Annius Albucius this year. Now do we all understand these complicated relationships, Conscript Fathers?" he asked, voice dripping sarcasm.

There was a general mumble, which Memmius took as assent.

"Good!" he said. "Then I shall read out Gnaeus Pompeius's letter to me. Are we all listening?"

Another mumble.

"Good!" Memmius unfurled the paper in his hand and held it out before him, then began to read with a clear, crisp diction no one afterward could have faulted.

"I write, Gaius Memmius, to request that I be allowed to prosecute Titus Annius Albucius, governor
propraetore
of our province of Sardinia, immediately upon our return to Rome at the end of the year. As the House is aware, one month ago Titus Annius reported that he had succeeded in stamping out brigandage in his province, and requested an ovation for his work. His request for an ovation was refused, and rightly so. Though some nests of these pernicious fellows were eradicated, the province is by no means free of brigands. But the reason I wish to prosecute the governor lies in his un-Roman conduct after he learned that his request for an ovation had been denied. Not only did he refer to the members of the Senate as a pack of unappreciative
irrumatores,
but he proceeded—at great expense—to celebrate a mock triumph through the streets of Carales! I regard his actions as threats to the Senate and People of Rome, and his triumph as treasonous. In fact, so strongly do I feel that I am adamant no one other than myself shall conduct the prosecution. Please answer me in good time."

Memmius laid the letter down amid a profound silence. "I would appreciate an opinion from the learned Leader of the House, Marcus Aemilius Scaurus," he said, and sat down.

His lined face grim, Scaurus walked to the middle of the floor. "How strange," he began, "that I was speaking of matters not unlike this just before the House convened. Of matters indicating the erosion of our time-honored systems of government and personal conduct in government. In recent years, this august body composed of Rome's greatest men has suffered the loss not only of its power, but of its dignity as Rome's senior arm in government. We—Rome's greatest men!—are no longer permitted to direct the path Rome treads. We—Rome's greatest men!—have become used to the People—fickle, untrained, greedy, thoughtless, part-time and good-time amateur politicians at best—have become used to the People grinding our faces into the mud! We—Rome's greatest men!—are held of no account! Our wisdom, our experience, the distinction of our families over the many generations since the founding of the Republic, all have ceased to matter. Only the People matter. And I say to you, Conscript Fathers, that the People are
not qualified
to govern Rome!"

He turned toward the open doors, and threw his voice in the direction of the well of the Comitia. "What segment of the People runs the Plebeian Assembly?" he bellowed. "The men of the Second and Third and even Fourth Classes—minor knights ambitious to run Rome like their businesses, shopkeepers and smallholding farmers, even
artisans
grown large enough to run 'multiple sculpturals,' as I saw one yard describe itself! And men who call themselves advocates, but who must hawk for clients among the bucolic and the imbecilic, and men who call themselves agents, but can never quite describe what they are agents for! Their private activities bore them, so they frequent the Comitia flattering themselves that they in their precious tribes can run Rome better than we in our Curiate exclusivity! Political cant dribbles off their tongues as noisome and lumpy as vomit, and they prate of entertaining this or that tribune of the plebs, and applaud when senatorial prerogatives are handed over to the knights! They are middlemen, these fellows! Neither great enough to belong to the First Class of the Centuries, nor lowly enough to mind their own business like the Fifth Class and the Head Count! I say to you again, Conscript Fathers, that the People are
not qualified
to govern Rome! Too much power has been accorded to them, and in their overweening arrogance—aided and abetted, I might add, by sundry members of this House when tribunes of the plebs!—they now presume to ignore our advice, our directives, and our persons!"

This, everyone recognized, was going to be one of Scaurus's more memorable speeches; his own secretary and several other scribes were busy scribbling his words down verbatim, and he was speaking slowly enough to make sure his words were properly recorded.

"It is high time," he went on sonorously, "that we of the Senate reversed this process. It is high time that we showed the People that
they
are the juniors in our joint governing venture!" He drew a breath, and spoke conversationally. "Of course the origins of this erosion of senatorial power are easy to pinpoint. This august body has admitted too many parvenus, too many noxious mushrooms, too many New Men into its senior magistracies. What does the Senate of Rome honestly mean to a man who had to wipe the pig-shit off his face before he came to Rome to try his political luck? What does the Senate of Rome mean to a man who is at best a half Latin from the Samnite borderlands—who rode into his first consulship on the skirts of a patrician woman he
bought!
And what does the Senate of Rome mean to a cross-eyed hybrid from the Celt-infested hills of northern Picenum?"

Naturally Scaurus was going to attack Marius, that was to be expected; but his approach was tangential enough to be refreshing, and the House felt itself properly rebuked. So the House listened on in a spirit of interest as well as duty.

"Our sons, Conscript Fathers," said Scaurus sadly, "are timid creatures, growing up in a political atmosphere which suffocates the Senate of Rome even as it breathes life into the People of Rome. How can we expect our sons to lead Rome in their turn, when the People cow them? I say to you—if you have not already begun, today you
must
begin to educate your sons to be strong for the Senate, and merciless to the People! Make them understand the natural superiority of the Senate! And make them prepared to fight to maintain that natural superiority!"