The First Man in Rome (94 page)
Gaius Marius got the letter at the beginning of November, and had just got it worked out so he could read it through with real enjoyment when Sulla turned up. That he was back for good he demonstrated by shaving off his now enormously long and drooping moustaches, and having his hair barbered. So while Sulla soaked blissfully in the bath, Marius read the letter out to him, and was ridiculously happy at having Sulla back to share such pleasures.
They settled in the general's private study, Marius having issued instructions that he was not to be disturbed, even by Manius Aquillius.
"Take off that wretched torc!" Marius said when the properly Roman, tunic-clad Sulla leaned forward and brought the great gold thing into view.
But Sulla shook his head, smiling and fingering the splendid dragon heads which formed the ends of the torc's almost complete circle. "No, I don't think I ever will, Gaius Marius. Barbaric, isn't it?"
"It's wrong on a Roman," grumbled Marius.
"The trouble is, it's become my good-luck talisman, so I can't take it off in case my luck goes with it." He settled himself on a couch with a sigh of voluptuous ease. "Oh, the bliss of reclining like a civilized man again! I've been carousing bolt upright at tables with my arse on hard wooden benches for so long that I'd begun to think I had only dreamed there were races lay down to eat. And how good it is to be
continent
again! Gauls and Germans alike, they do everything to excess—eat and drink until they spew all over each other, or else starve half to death because they went out to raid or do battle without thinking to pack a lunch. Ah, but they're fierce, Gaius Marius!
Brave!
I tell you, if they had one tenth of our organization and self-discipline, we couldn't hope to beat them."
"Luckily for us, they don't have as much as a hundredth of either, so we can beat them. At least I think that's what you're saying. Here, drink this. It's Falernian."
Sulla drank, deeply, yet slowly. "Wine, wine, wine! Nectar of the gods, balm for the sore heart, glue for the shredded spirit! How did I ever exist without it?" He laughed. "I don't care if I never see another horn of beer or tankard of mead in all the rest of my life! Wine is
civilized.
No belches, no farts, no distended belly—on beer, a man becomes a walking cistern."
"Where's Quintus Sertorius? All right, I hope?"
"He's on his way, but we traveled separately, and I wanted to brief you alone, Gaius Marius," said Sulla.
"Any way you want it, Lucius Cornelius, as long as I hear it," said Marius, watching him with affection.
"I hardly know where to start."
"At the beginning, then. Who are they? Where do they come from? How long has their migration been going on?"
Relishing his wine, Sulla closed his eyes. "They don't call themselves Germani, and they don't regard themselves as a single people. They are the Cimbri, the Teutones, the Marcomanni, the Cherusci, and the Tigurini. The original homeland of the Cimbri and the Teutones is a long, wide peninsula lying to the north of Germania, vaguely described by some of the Greek geographers, who called it the Cimbrian Chersonnese. It seems the half farthest north was the home of the Cimbri, and the half joining onto the mainland of Germania was the home of the Teutones. Though they regard themselves as separate peoples, it's very difficult to see any physical characteristics peculiar to either people, though the languages are somewhat different—they can understand each other, however.
"They weren't nomads, but they didn't grow crops, and didn't farm in our sense. It would seem that their winters were more wet than snowy, and that the soil produced wonderful grass all year round. So they lived with and off cattle, eked out by a little oats and rye. Beef eaters and milk drinkers, a few vegetables, a little hard black bread, and porridge.
"And then about the time that Gaius Gracchus died— almost twenty years ago, at any rate—they had a year of inundations. Too much snow on the mountains feeding their great rivers, too much rain from the skies, ferocious gales, and very high tides. The ocean Atlanticus covered the whole peninsula. And when the sea receded, they found the soil too saline to grow grass, and their wells brackish. So they built an army of wagons, gathered together the cattle and horses which had survived, and set off to find a new homeland."
Marius was stiff with interest and excitement, sitting very straight in his chair, his wine forgotten. "All of them? How many were there?" he asked.
"Not all of them, no. The old and the feeble were knocked on the head and buried in huge barrows. Only the warriors, the younger women, and the children migrated. As far as I can estimate, about six hundred thousand started to walk southeast down the valley of the great river we call the Albis."
"But I believe that part of the world is hardly peopled," said Marius, frowning. "Why didn't they stay along the Albis?"
Sulla shrugged. "Who knows, when they don't? They just seem to have given themselves into the hands of their gods, and waited for some sort of divine signal to tell them they had found a new homeland. Certainly they didn't seem to encounter much opposition as they walked, at least along the Albis. Eventually they came to the sources of the river, and saw high mountains for the first time in the memory of the race. The Cimbrian Chersonnese was flat and low-lying."
"Obviously, if the ocean could flood it," said Marius, and lifted a hand hastily. "No, I didn't mean that sarcastically, Lucius Cornelius! I'm not good with words, or very tactful." He got up to pour more wine into Sulla's cup. "I take it that the mountains affected them powerfully?"
"Indeed. Their gods were sky gods, but when they saw these towers tickling the underbellies of the clouds, they began to worship the gods they were sure lived beneath the towers, and shoved them up out of the ground. They've never really been very far from mountains since. In the fourth year they crossed an alpine watershed, and passed from the headwaters of the Albis to the headwaters of the Danubius, a river we know more about, of course. And they turned east to follow the Danubius toward the plains of the Getae and the Sarmatae."
"Was that where they were going, then?" Marius asked. "To the Euxine Sea?"
"It appears so," said Sulla. "However, they were blocked by the Boii from entering the basin of northern Dacia, and so were forced to keep following the course of the Danubius where it bends sharply south into Pannonia."
"The Boii are Celts, of course," said Marius thoughtfully. "Celt and German didn't mix, I take it."
"No, they certainly didn't. But the interesting thing is that nowhere have the Germans decided to stay put and fight for land. At the least sign of resistance from the local tribes, they've moved on. As they did away from the lands of the Boii. Then somewhere near the confluence of the Danubius with the Tisia and the Savus, they ran up against another wall of Celts, this time the Scordisci."
"Our very own enemies, the Scordisci!" Marius exclaimed, grinning. "Well, isn't it comforting to find out now that we and the Scordisci have a common enemy?"
One red-gold brow went up. "Considering that it happened about fifteen years ago and we knew nothing of it, it's hardly comforting," Sulla said dryly.
"I'm not saying anything right today, am I? Forgive me, Lucius Cornelius. You've been living it; I'm merely sitting here so excited at finding out at last that my tongue has developed a forest of thumbs," said Marius.
"It's all right, Gaius Marius, I do understand," said Sulla, smiling.
"Go on, go on!"
"Perhaps one of their greatest problems was that they had no leader worthy of the name. Nor any semblance of a—a—master plan, for want of a better phrase to describe it. I think they just waited for the day when some great king would give them permission to settle down on some of his vacant land."
"And of course great kings are not prone to do that," said Marius.
"No. Anyway, they turned back and began to travel west," Sulla went on, "only they left the Danubius. They followed the Savus first, then skewed a little north, and picked up the course of the Dravus, which they then tracked toward its sources. By this time they had been walking for over six years without staying for more than a few days anywhere."
"They don't travel on the wagons?" asked Marius.
"Rarely. They're harnessed to cattle, so they're not driven, just guided. If someone is ill or near term with a child, the wagon becomes a vehicle of transport, not otherwise," said Sulla. He sighed. "And of course we all know what happened next. They entered Noricum, and the lands of the Taurisci."
"Who appealed to Rome, and Rome sent Carbo to deal with the invaders, and Carbo lost his army," said Marius.
"And, as always, the Germans turned away from trouble," said Sulla. "Instead of invading Italian Gaul, they walked right into the high mountains, and came back to the Danubius a little to the east of its confluence with the Aenus. The Boii weren't going to let them go east, so they headed west along the Danubius, through the lands of the Marcomanni. For reasons I haven't been able to fathom, a large segment of the Marcomanni joined the Cimbri and the Teutones in this seventh year of the migration."
"What about the thunderstorm?" Marius asked. "You know, the one which interrupted the battle between the Germans and Carbo, and saved at least some of Carbo's men. There were those who believed the Germans took the storm as a sign of divine wrath, and that that was what saved us from invasion."
"I doubt it," said Sulla tranquilly. "Oh, I'm sure when the storm broke, the Cimbri—it was the Cimbri who fought Carbo; they were closest to his position—fled in terror, but I don't believe it deflected them from Italian Gaul. The real answer seems simply to be that they never liked waging war to win territory for themselves."
"How fascinating! And here we see them as slavering hordes of barbarians just thirsting for Italy." Marius looked at Sulla keenly. "And what happened next?"
"Well, they followed the Danubius right to its sources this time. In the eighth year they were joined by a group of real Germans, the Cherusci, who came down from their lands around the Visurgis River, and in the ninth year by a people of Helvetia called the Tigurini, who seem to have lived to the east of Lake Lemanna, and are definitely Celts. As are, I believe, the Marcomanni. However, both the Marcomanni and the Tigurini are very Germanic Celts."
"They don't dislike the Germans, you mean?"
"Far less than they dislike their fellow Celts!" Sulla grinned. "The Marcomanni had been warring with the Boii for centuries, and the Tigurini with the Helvetii. So 1 suppose when the German wagons rolled through, they thought it might be a pleasant change to head for parts unknown. By the time the migration crossed through the Jura into Gallia Comata, there were well over eight hundred thousand participants."
"Who all descended upon the poor Aedui and Ambarri," said Marius. "And stayed there."
"For over three years." Sulla nodded. "The Aedui and Ambarri were softer people, you see.
Romanized,
Gaius Marius! Teeth pulled by Gnaeus Domitius so that our province of Gaul-across-the-Alps would be safe—er.
And theGermans were developing a taste for our fine white bread. Something to spread their butter on! And sop up their beef juice with. And mix into their awful blood puddings."
"You speak feelingly, Lucius Cornelius."
"I do, I do!" Smile fading, Sulla studied the surface of his wine reflectively, then looked up at Marius, his light eyes gleaming. "They've elected themselves an overall king," he said abruptly.
"Oho!" said Marius softly.
"His name is Boiorix, and he's Cimbric. The Cimbri are the most numerous people."
"It's a Celtic name, though," said Marius. "Boiorix—Boii. A very formidable nation. There are colonies of Boii all over the place—Dacia, Thrace, Long-haired Gaul, Italian Gaul, Helvetia. Who knows? Maybe a long time ago they planted a colony among the Cimbri. After all, if this Boiorix says he's Cimbric, then he's Cimbric. They can't be so primitive that they have no genealogical lore."
"Actually they have very little genealogical lore," said Sulla, propping himself on his elbow. "Not because they're particularly primitive, but because their whole structure is different from ours. Different from any people scattered around the Middle Sea, for that matter. They're not farmers, and when men don't own land and farm down the generations, they don't develop a sense of
place.
That means they don't develop a sense of family either. Tribal life— group life, if you prefer—is more important. They tend to eat as a community, which for them is more sensible. When houses are huts for sleeping and have no kitchens, or home is on wheels and has no kitchen, it's easier to kill whole beasts, spit them, roast them whole, and feed the tribe as a single group.
"Their genealogical lore relates to the tribe, or even to the collection of individual tribes which make up the people as a whole. They have heroes they sing about, but they embroider their doings out of all proportion to what must have been actual fact—a chieftain only two generations back behaves like Perseus or Hercules, he's become so shadowy as a man. Their concept of place is shadowy too. And the position—chief or thane or priest or shaman—takes precedence over the identity of the individual man filling it. The individual man
becomes
the position! He moves apart from his family, and his family doesn't rise with him. And when he dies, the position goes to someone the tribe selects without regard to what we would call family entitlements. Their ideas about family are very different from ours, Gaius Marius." Sulla lifted himself off his elbow to pour more wine.
"You've actually been living with them!" gasped Marius.
"Oh, I had to!" Sipping enough from his cup to diminish the level of the wine, Sulla added water. "I'm not used to it," he said, sounding surprised. "Never mind, my head will return, no doubt." He frowned. "I managed to infiltrate the Cimbri while they were still trying to fight their way across the Pyrenees. It would have been November of last year, the moment I returned from seeing you."