Caesar's Women (101 page)

“I understand.”

“Very well then, Aristarchus. When Balbus informs me that the transaction is complete, you will have your decrees, and King Ptolemy can forget at last that the previous King of Egypt ever made a will leaving Egypt to Rome.”

“Ye gods!” said Crassus when Caesar informed him of these events some days later. “How much do I get?”

“A thousand talents.”

“Silver, or gold?”

“Gold.”

“And Magnus?''

“The same.”

“Leaving four for you, and two more to come next year?”

Caesar threw back his head and laughed. “Abandon all hope of the two thousand payable next year, Marcus! Once Aristarchus gets back to Alexandria, that's the end of it. How can we collect without going to war? No, I thought six thousand was a fair price for Auletes to pay for security, and Aristarchus knows it.”

“Four thousand gold talents will equip ten legions.”

“Especially with Balbus doing the equipping. I intend to make him my praefectus fabrum again. As soon as word comes from Gades that the Egyptian money has been deposited there, he'll start for Italian Gaul. Both Lucius Piso and Marcus Crassus—not to mention poor Brutus—will suddenly be earning money from armaments.”

“But ten legions, Gaius?”

“No, no, only two extra to begin with. I'll invest the bulk of the money. This will be a self-funding exercise from start to finish, Marcus. It has to be. He who controls the purse strings controls the enterprise. My time has come, and do you think for one moment that anyone other than I will control this enterprise? The Senate?”

Caesar got to his feet and lifted his arms toward the ceiling, fists clenched; Crassus suddenly saw how thick the muscles were in those deceptively slender limbs, and felt the hair rise on the back of his neck. The power in the man!

“The Senate is a nothing! The boni are nothing! Pompeius Magnus is nothing! I am going to go as far as I have to go to become the First Man in Rome for as long as I live! And after I die, I will be called the greatest Roman who ever lived! Nothing and no one will stop me! I swear it by my ancestors, all the way back to Goddess Venus!”

The arms came down, the fire and the power died. Caesar sat in his chair and looked at his old friend ruefully. “Oh, Marcus,” he said, “all I have to do is get through the rest of this year!”

His mouth was dry. Crassus swallowed. “You will,” he said.

Publius Vatinius convoked the Plebeian Assembly and announced to the Plebs that he would legislate to remove the slur of being a surveyor from Gaius Julius Caesar.

“Why are we wasting a man like Gaius Caesar on a job which might be suited to the talents of our stargazer Bibulus, but is infinitely beneath a governor and general of Gaius Caesar's caliber? He showed us in Spain what he can do, but that is minute. I want to see him given the chance to sink his teeth into a task worthy of his metal! There's more to governing than making war, and more to generaling than sitting in a command tent. Italian Gaul has not received a decent governor in a decade and more, with the result that the Delmatae, the Liburni, the Iapudes and all the other tribes of Illyricum have made eastern Italian Gaul a very dangerous place for Romans to live in. Not to mention that the administration of Italian Gaul is a disgrace. The assizes are not held on time if they're held at all, and the Latin Rights colonies across the Padus are foundering.

“I am asking you to give Gaius Caesar the province of Italian Gaul together with Illyricum as of the moment this bill becomes ratified!” cried Vatinius, shrunken legs hidden by his toga, face so ruddy that the tumor on his forehead disappeared. “I further ask that Gaius Caesar be confirmed by this body as proconsul in Italian Gaul and Illyricum until March five years hence! And that the Senate be stripped of any authority to alter one single disposition we make in this Assembly! The Senate has abrogated its right to dole out proconsular provinces because it can find no better job for a man like Gaius Caesar than to survey Italia's traveling livestock routes! Let the stargazer survey mounds of manure, but let Gaius Caesar survey a better prospect!”

Vatinius's bill had gone before the Plebs and it stayed with the Plebs, contio after contio; Pompey spoke in favor, Crassus spoke in favor, Lucius Cotta spoke in favor—and Lucius Piso spoke in favor.

“I can't manage to persuade one of our craven tribunes to interpose a veto,” said Cato to Bibulus, trembling with anger. “Not even Metellus Scipio, do you believe that? All they answer is that they like living! Like living! Oh, if only I was still a tribune of the plebs! I'd show them!”

“And you'd be dead, Marcus. The people want it, why I don't know. Except that I think he's their long-odds bet. Pompeius was a proven quantity. Caesar is a gamble. The knights think he's lucky, the superstitious lot!”

“The worst of it is that you're still stuck with the traveling stock routes. Vatinius was very careful to point out that one of you would be doing that necessary job.”

“And I will do it,” Bibulus said loftily.

“We have to stop him somehow! Is Vettius progressing?”

Bibulus sighed. “Not as well as I'd hoped. I wish you were more of a natural schemer, Cato, but you aren't. It was a good idea, but Vettius isn't the most promising material to work with.”

“I'll talk to him tomorrow.”

“No, don't!” cried Bibulus, alarmed. “Leave him to me.”

“Pompeius is to speak in the House, I note. Advocating that the House give Caesar everything he wants. Pah!”

“He won't get the extra legion he wants, so much is sure.”

“Why do I think he will?”

Bibulus smiled sourly. “Caesar's luck?” he asked.

“Yes, I don't like that attitude. It makes him look blessed.”

Pompey did speak in favor of Vatinius's bills to give Caesar a magnificent proconsular command, but only to increase the endowment.

“It has been drawn to my attention,” said the Great Man to the senators, “that due to the death of our esteemed consular Quintus Metellus Celer, the province of Gaul-across-the-Alps has not been given a new governor. Gaius Pomptinus continues to hold it in this body's name, apparently to the satisfaction of this body, though not with the approval of Gaius Caesar, or me, or any other proven commander of troops. It pleased you to award a thanksgiving to Pomptinus over our protests, but I say to you now that Pomptinus is not competent to govern Further Gaul. Gaius Caesar is a man of enormous energy and efficiency, as his governorship of Further Spain showed you. What would be a task too big for most men is not big enough for him, any more than it would be for me. I move that this House award Gaius Caesar the governorship of the further Gallic province as well as the nearer, together with its legion. There are many advantages. One governor for these two provinces will be able to move his troops around as they are needed, without his being obliged to distinguish between forces in the two provinces. For three years Further Gaul has been in a state of unrest, and one legion to control those turbulent tribes is ridiculous. But by combining the two provinces under the one governor, Rome will be spared the cost of more legions.”

Cato's hand was waving; Caesar, in the chair, smiled broadly and acknowledged him. “Marcus Porcius Cato, you have the floor.”

“Is that how confident you are, Caesar?” roared Cato. “That you think you can invite me to speak with impunity? Well, it may be so, but at least my protest against this carving up of an empire will go down on our permanent record! How loyally and splendidly the new son-in-law speaks up for his new father-in-law! Is this what Rome has been reduced to, the buying and selling of daughters? Is this how we are to align ourselves politically, by buying or selling a daughter? The father-in-law in this infamous alliance has already used his minion with the wen to secure for himself a proconsulship I and the rest of Rome's true patriots strove with might and main to deny him! Now the son-in-law wants to contribute another province to tata! One man, one province! That is what the mos maiorum says. Conscript Fathers, don't you see the danger? Don't you understand that if you accede to Pompeius's request, you are putting the tyrant in his citadel with your own hands? Don't do it! Don't do it!”

Pompey had listened looking bored, Caesar with that annoying expression of mild amusement.

“It makes no difference to me,” Pompey said. “I put forward the suggestion for the best of motives. If the Senate of Rome is to retain its traditional right to distribute our provinces to their governors, then it had better do so. You can ignore me, Conscript Fathers. Feel free! But if you do, Publius Vatinius will take the matter to the Plebs, and the Plebs will award Further Gaul to Gaius Caesar. All I'm saying is that you do the job rather than let the Plebs do it. If you award Further Gaul to Gaius Caesar, then you control the award. You can renew the commission each New Year's Day or not, as you please. But if the matter goes to the Plebs, Gaius Caesar's command of Further Gaul will be for five years. Is that what you want? Every time the People or the Plebs passes a law in what used to be the sphere of the Senate, another bit of senatorial power has been nibbled away. I don't care! You decide.”

This was the sort of speech Pompey gave best, plain and unvarnished and the better for being so. The House thought about what he had said, and admitted the truth of it by voting to award the senior consul the province of Further Gaul for one year, from next New Year's Day to the following one, to be renewed or not at the Senate's pleasure.

“You fools!” Cato shrieked after the division was over. “You unmitigated fools! A few moments ago he had three legions, now you've given him four! Four legions, three of which are veteran! And what is this Caesar villain going to do with them? Use them to pacify his provinces in the plural? No! He'll use them to march on Italia, to march on Rome, to make himself King of Rome!”

It was not an unexpected speech, nor for Cato a particularly wounding one; no man present, even among the ranks of the boni, actually believed Cato.

But Caesar lost his temper, an indication of the tremendous tensions he had been living under for months, released now because he had what he needed.

He rose to his feet, face flinty, nostrils distended, eyes flashing. “You can yell all you like, Cato!” he thundered. “You can yell until the sky falls in and Rome disappears beneath the waters! Yes, all of you can squeal, bleat, yell, whine, grizzle, criticize, carp, complain! But I don't care! I have what I wanted, and I got it in your teeth! Now sit down and shut up, all of you pathetic little men! I have what I wanted. And if you make me, I will use it to crush your heads!”

They sat down and they shut up, simmering.

Whether that protest against what Caesar saw as injustice was the cause, or whether the cause was an accumulation of many insults including a marriage, from that day onward the popularity of the senior consul and his allies began to wane. Public opinion, angry enough at Bibulus's watching the skies to have given Caesar the two Gauls, now swung away until it hovered approvingly before Cato and Bibulus, who were quick to seize the advantage.

They also managed to buy young Curio, who had been released from his promise to Clodius and thirsted to make life difficult for Caesar. At every opportunity he was back on the rostra or on Castor's platform, satirizing Caesar and his suspect past unmercifully—and in an irresistibly entertaining way. Bibulus too entered the fray by posting witty anecdotes, epigrams, notes and edicts upon (thus adding insult to injury) Caesar's bulletin board in the lower Forum.

The laws went through nonetheless; the second land act, the various acts which together made up the leges Vatiniae endowing Caesar with his provinces, and many more inconspicuous but useful measures Caesar had been itching for years to implement. King Ptolemy XI Theos Philopator Philadelphus called Auletes was confirmed in his tenure of the Egyptian throne, and made Friend and Ally of the Roman People. Four thousand talents remained in Balbus's bank in Gades, Pompey and Crassus having been paid, and Balbus, together with Titus Labienus, hurried north to Italian Gaul to commence work. Balbus would procure armaments and equipment (where possible from Lucius Piso and Marcus Crassus), while Labienus started to enlist the third legion for Italian Gaul.

His sights set upon a war to the northeast and along the basin of the Danubius, Caesar regarded Further Gaul as a nuisance. He had not recalled Pomptinus, though he detested the man, preferring to deal with troubles along the Rhodanus River by diplomatic means. King Ariovistus of the German Suebi was a new force in Further Gaul; he now held complete sway over the area between Lake Lemanna and the banks of the Rhenus River, which divided Further Gaul from Germania. The Sequani had originally invited Ariovistus to cross into their territory with the promise that he would receive one third of Sequani land. But the Suebi kept pouring across the great river in such numbers that Ariovistus was soon demanding two thirds of the Sequani lands. The domino effect had spread the disturbances to the Aedui, who had been titled Friend and Ally of the Roman People for years. Then the Helvetii, a sept of the great tribe Tigurini, began to issue out of their mountain fastnesses to seek more clement living at a lower altitude in Further Gaul itself.

War threatened, so much so that Pomptinus established a more or less permanent camp not far from Lake Lemanna, and settled down with his one legion to watch events.

Caesar's discerning eye picked Ariovistus as the key to the situation, so in the name of the Senate he began to parley with the German King's representatives, his object a treaty which would keep what was Rome's Rome's, contain Ariovistus, and calm the huge Gallic tribes the German incursion was provoking. That in doing so he was infringing the treaties Rome already had with the Aedui worried him not one bit. More important to establish a status quo spelling the least danger possible to Rome.

The result was a senatorial decree calling King Ariovistus a Friend and Ally of the Roman People; it was accompanied by lavish gifts from Caesar personally to the leader of the Suebi, and it had the desired effect. Tacitly confirmed in his present position, Ariovistus could sit back with a sigh of relief, his Gallic outpost a fact acknowledged by the Senate of Rome.