The October Horse (43 page)

Trying Times, Thankless Tasks

From SEXTILIS (AUGUST) until the end of

DECEMBER of 46 B.C.

[October 308.jpg]

The Domus Publica had changed for the better on its exterior. Its ground floor was built of tufa blocks and had the old, rectangular windows, then Ahenobarbus Pontifex Maximus had added an opus incertum upper story faced with bricks and having arched windows. Caesar Pontifex Maximus added a temple pediment over the main entrance and gave the entire outside of the ugly building a more uniform look by facing it in polished marble. Inside it maintained its venerable beauty, for Caesar, Pontifex Maximus now for seventeen years, permitted no neglect.

Time, he thought, having finally returned from Sardinia, to start giving receptions, to suggest to Calpurnia that she host the Bona Dea celebrations in November; if Caesar Dictator was to be stranded in Rome for many months, he may as well create a splash.

His own quarters were on the ground floor; a bedroom and study, and, where his mother used to live, two offices for his chief secretary, Gaius Faberius. Who greeted him with slightly overdone pleasure, and wouldn't meet his eyes.

“Are you so offended that I didn't take you to Africa? I'd thought to give you a rest from travel, Faberius,” Caesar said.

Faberius jumped, shook his head. “No, Caesar, of course I wasn't offended! I was able to get a great deal of work done in your absence, and see something of my family.”

“How are they?”

“Very happy to move to the Aventine. The Clivus Orbius has gone sadly downhill.”

“Orbian hill—downhill. Good pun,” said Caesar, and left it at that. But with a mental note to find out what was worrying this oldest among his secretaries.

When he entered his wife's quarters upstairs he wished he had not, for Calpurnia had guests: Cato's widow, Marcia, and Cato's daughter, Porcia. Why did women choose peculiar friends? Still, it was too late to retreat now. Best to brazen it out. Calpurnia, he noticed, was growing into her beauty. At eighteen she had been a pleasant-looking girl, shy and quiet, and he knew perfectly well that her conduct during the years of his absence had been irreproachable. Now in her late twenties, she had a better figure, a great deal more composure, and was arranging her hair in a new, highly flattering style. His advent didn't fluster her in the least, despite the vexation that being caught with these two women must have caused her.

“Caesar,” she said, rising and coming to kiss him lightly.

“Is that the same cat I gave you?” he asked, pointing to a rotund ball of reddish fur on a couch.

“Yes, that's Felix. He's getting old, but his health is good.”

Caesar had advanced to take Marcia's hand and smile at Porcia in a friendly way.

“Ladies, a sad meeting. I would have given much to ensure a happier one.”

“I know,” said Marcia, blinking away tears. “Was he—was he well before—?”

“Very well, and much loved by all of Utica. So much so that the people of that city have given him a new cognomen—Uticensis. He was very brave,” said Caesar, making no attempt to sit.

“Naturally he was brave! He was Cato!” said Porcia in that same loud, harsh voice her father had owned.

How like him she was! A pity that she was the girl, young Marcus the boy. Though she would never have begged a pardon—would be fleeing to Spain, or dead.

“Are you living with Philippus?” he asked Marcia.

“For the time being,” she said, and sighed. “He wants me to marry again, but I don't wish to.”

“If you don't wish to, you shouldn't. I'll speak to him.”

“Oh yes, by all means do that!” Porcia snarled. “You're the King of Rome, whatever you say must be obeyed!”

“No, I am not the King of Rome, nor do I want to be,” Caesar said quietly. “It was meant kindly, Porcia. How are you faring?”

“Since Marcus Brutus bought all Bibulus's property, I live in Bibulus's house with Bibulus's youngest son.”

“I'm very glad that Brutus was so generous.” Taking in the sight of several more cats, Caesar used them as an excuse to bolt. “You're lucky, Calpurnia. These creatures make my eyes water and my skin itch. Ave, ladies.”

And he escaped.

•      •      •

Faberius had put his important correspondence on his desk; frowning, he noted one scroll whose tag bore a date in May. Vatia Isauricus's seal. Before he opened it, he knew it held bad news.

•      •      •

Syria is without a governor, Caesar. Your young cousin Sextus Julius Caesar is dead.

Did you by any chance meet a Quintus Caecilius Bassus when you passed through Antioch last year? In case you did not, I had better explain who he is. A Roman knight of the Eighteen, who took up residence in Tyre and went into the purple-dye business after serving with Pompeius Magnus during his eastern campaigns. He speaks fluent Median and Persian, and it is now being bandied about that he has friends at the court of the King of the Parthians. Certainly he is enormously rich, and not all his income is from Tyrian purple.

When you imposed those heavy penalties on Antioch and the cities of the Phoenician coast for so strongly supporting the Republicans, Bassus was gravely affected. He went to Antioch and looked up some old friends among the military tribunes of the Syrian legion, all men who had served with Pompeius Magnus. The next thing, governor Sextus Caesar was informed that you were dead in Africa Province and the Syrian legion was restive. He called the legion to an assembly intending to calm its men down, but they murdered him and hailed Bassus as their new commander.

Bassus then proclaimed himself the new governor of Syria, so all your clients and adherents in northern Syria fled at once to Cilicia. As I happened to be in Tarsus visiting Quintus Philippus, I was able to act swiftly, sent a letter to Marcus Lepidus in Rome, and asked him to send Syria a governor as quickly as possible. According to his reply, he has dispatched Quintus Cornificius, who should answer well. Cornificius and Vatinius fought a brilliant campaign in Illyricum last year.

However, Bassus has entrenched himself formidably. He marched to Antioch, which shut its gates and refused to let him in. So our friend the purple merchant marched down the road to Apameia: in return for many trade favors, it declared for Bassus, who entered it and has set himself up there, calling Apameia the capital of Syria.

He has worked a great deal of mischief, Caesar, and he is definitely in league with the Parthians. He's made an alliance with the new king of the Skenite Arabs, one Alchaudonius—who, incidentally, was one of the Arabs with Abgarus when he led Marcus Crassus into the Parthian trap at Carrhae. Alchaudonius and Bassus are very busy recruiting troops for a new Syrian army. I imagine that the Parthians are going to invade, and that Bassus's Syrian army will join them to move against Rome in Cilicia and Asia Province.

This means that both Quintus Philippus and I are also recruiting, and have sent warning to the client-kings.

Southern Syria is quiet. Your friend Antipater is making sure the Jews stay out of Bassus's plans, and has sent to Queen Cleopatra in Egypt for men, armaments and food supplies against the day when the Parthians invade. The rebuilding and fortification of Jerusalem's walls may turn out to be more vital than even you envisioned.

There have been Parthian raids up and down the Euphrates, though the territory of the Skenite Arabs has not suffered. You may have thought that the eastern end of Our Sea was pacified, but I doubt that Rome will ever be able to say that about any part of her world. There's always someone lusting to take things off her.

•      •      •

Poor young Sextus Caesar, the grandson of his uncle, Sextus. That branch of the family—the elder branch—had had none of Caesar's fabled luck. The patrician Julii Caesares used three first names—Sextus, Gaius and Lucius. If a Julius Caesar had three sons, the first was Sextus, the second Gaius, and the third Lucius. His own father was the second son, not the first, and only the marriage of his father's elder sister to the fabulously wealthy New Man Gaius Marius had given his father the money to stay in the Senate and ascend the cursus honorum, the ladder to the senior magistracies. His father's younger sister had married Sulla, so Caesar could rightly say that both Marius and Sulla were his uncles. Very handy through the years!

His father's elder brother, Sextus, had died first, of a lung inflammation during a bitter winter campaign of the Italian civil war. Lungs! Suddenly Caesar remembered where he had previously seen the stigmata he had noticed in young Gaius Octavius. Uncle Sextus! He'd had the same look about him: the same narrow rib cage, small chest. There had not been a moment to ask Hapd'efan'e, and now he could offer the priest-physician more information. Uncle Sextus had suffered from the wheezes, used to go to the Fields of Fire behind Puteoli once a year to inhale the sulphur fumes that belched out of the earth amid splutters of lava and licks of flame. He remembered his father saying that the wheezes cropped up from time to time in a Julius Caesar, that it was a family trait. A family trait young Gaius Octavius had inherited? Was that why the lad didn't attend the youths' drills and exercises on the Campus Martius regularly?

Caesar summoned Hapd'efan'e.

“Has Trogus given you a nice room, Hapd'efan'e?” he asked.

“Yes, Caesar. A beautiful guest suite that overlooks the big peristyle. I have the space to store my medicaments and my instruments, and Trogus has found me a lad for my apprentice. I like this house and I like the Forum Romanum—they are old.”

“Tell me about the wheezes.”

“Ah!” said the priest-physician, dark eyes widening. “You mean a wheezing noise when a patient breathes?”

“Yes.”

“But on expiration, not on inspiration.”

Caesar wheezed experimentally. “Breathing out, definitely.”

“Yes, I know of it. When the air is still and reasonably dry and the season is neither blossoms nor harvest, the patient is quite well unless some painful emotion troubles him. But when the air is full of pollen or little bits of straw or dust, or is too humid, the patient is distressed when he breathes. If he is not removed from the irritation, he goes into a fully fledged attack of wheezing, coughs until he retches, goes blue in the face as he struggles for every breath. Sometimes he dies.”

“My Uncle Sextus had it, and did die, but apparently of a lung inflammation due to exposure to extreme cold. Our family physician called it dyspnoea, as I remember,” said Caesar.

“No, it is not dyspnoea. That is a constant struggle for breath, rather than episodic,” said Hapd'efan'e firmly.

“Can this episodic non-dyspnoea run in families?”

“Oh, yes. The Greek name for it is asthma.”

“How best to treat it, Hapd'efan'e?”

“Certainly not the way the Greeks do, Caesar! They advocate bloodletting, laxatives, hot fomentations, a potion of hydromel mixed with hyssop, and lozenges made from galbanum and turpentine resin. The last two may help a little, I admit. But in our medical lore, it is said that asthmatics are suffused with sensitive feelings, that they take things to heart when others do not. We treat an attack with inhalation of sulphur fumes, but work more on avoiding attacks. We advise the patient to stay away from dust, tiny particles of grass or straw, animal hair or fur, pollen, heavy sea vapors,” said Hapd'efan'e.

“Is it present for life?”

“In some cases, Caesar, yes, but not always. Children who suffer from it sometimes grow out of it. A harmonious home life and general tranquillity are helpful.”

“My thanks, Hapd'efan'e.”

One of his worries about young Gaius Octavius had just been elucidated, though finding a solution would be hugely difficult. The boy shouldn't be let near horses or mules—yes, that had been true of Uncle Sextus as well! Military training was going to be almost impossible, yet it was absolutely obligatory for a man with aspirations to be consul. All very well for Brutus! His family was so powerful, so ancestor-rich, and his fortune so vast that no colleague or peer would ever be indelicate enough to refer to Brutus's lack of martial spirit. Whereas Octavius lacked imposing ancestors on his father's side, and bore his father's name. The patrician Julian blood was distaff blood, not manifest in his name. Poor fellow! His road to the consulship would prove hard, perhaps insuperable. If he lived to get that far.

Caesar got up to pace, bitterly disappointed. There didn't seem to be enough of a chance that Gaius Octavius would survive to warrant making the lad Caesar's heir. Back to Marcus Antonius—what a hideous prospect!

•      •      •

Lucius Marcius Philippus had extended an invitation to dinner at his spacious house on the Palatine to “celebrate your return to Rome” said the gracefully written note.

Cursing the waste of time but aware that family obligations insisted they attend, Caesar and Calpurnia arrived at the ninth hour of daylight to find themselves the only guests. Equipped with a dining room able to hold six couches, Philippus usually filled all six, but not today. Some warning alarm sounded; Caesar doffed his toga, made sure his thin layer of hair covered his scalp—he grew it long forward from the crown—and let the servant offer him a bowl of water to wash his feet. Naturally he was put in the locus consularis, the place of honor on Philippus's own couch, with young Gaius Octavius at its far end from Caesar; Philippus took the middle position. His elder son wasn't present—was that the reason for his sense that something was wrong? Caesar wondered. Was he here to be informed that Philippus was divorcing his wife for adultery with his son? No, no, of course not! That wasn't the kind of news passed on at a dinner party with the wife sitting there. Marcia wasn't present either; just Atia and her daughter, Octavia, joined Calpurnia on the three chairs opposite the only occupied couch.

Calpurnia looked delicious in an artfully draped lapis blue gown that echoed the color of her eyes; she was wearing the new sleeves, cut open from the shoulder and pinched together at intervals down the outer arm with little jeweled buttons. Atia had chosen a lavender blue that suited her fair beauty, and the young girl was exquisitely garbed in pale pink. How like her brother she was! The same masses of waving golden hair, his oval face, high cheekbones and nose with the sliding upward tilt. Her eyes alone were different, a clear aquamarine.