Caesar's Women (106 page)

“I'll oppose it,” said Cato, wiping his eyes.

“If you do, Cato, you'll be dead very quickly,” said Gabinius. “Perhaps for the first time in her history, Rome has a tribune of the plebs without the scruples which caused the fall of the Brothers Gracchi, or the loneliness which led to the death of Sulpicius. I don't think anyone or anything can cow Clodius.”

“What next will he think of?'' asked Lucius Caesar, face white.

Next came a bill to restore full legality to Rome's colleges, sodalities, fraternities and clubs. Though it was not as popular with the crowd as the free grain, it was so well received that after this meeting Clodius was chaired on the shoulders of crossroads brethren, shouting themselves hoarse.

And after that Clodius announced that he would make it utterly impossible for a Marcus Calpurnius Bibulus to disrupt government ever again. The Aelian and Fufian laws were to be amended to permit meetings of People and Plebs and the passing of laws when a consul stayed home to watch the skies; to invalidate them, the consul would have to prove the occurrence of an unpropitious omen within the day on which the meeting took place. Business could not be suspended due to postponed elections. None of the changes were retroactive, nor did they protect the Senate and its deliberations, nor did they affect the courts.

“He's strengthening the Assemblies at the entire expense of the Senate,” said Cato drearily.

“Yes, but at least he hasn't helped Caesar,” said Ahenobarbus. “I'll bet that's a disappointment for the triumvirs!”

“Disappointment, nothing!” snapped Hortensius.

“Don't you recognize the Caesar stamp on legislation by now? It goes just far enough, but not further than custom and tradition allow. He's much smarter than Sulla, is Caesar. There are no impediments to a consul's staying home to watch the skies, simply ways around it when he does. And what does Caesar care about the supremacy of the Senate? The Senate isn't where Caesar's power lies, it never was and it never will be!”

“Where's Cicero?” demanded Metellus Scipio out of the blue. “I haven't seen him in the Forum since Clodius entered office.”

“Nor will you, I suspect,” said Lucius Caesar. “He's quite convinced he'll hear himself interdicted.”

“Which he well may be,” said Pompey.

“Do you condone his interdiction, Pompeius?” asked young Curio.

“I won't lift my shield to prevent it, be sure of that.”

“Why aren't you down there cheering, Curio?” asked Appius Claudius. “I thought you were very thick with my little brother.”

Curio sighed. “I think I must be growing up,” he said.

“You're likely to sprout like a bean very soon,” said Appius Claudius with a sour grin.

A remark which Curio understood at Clodius's next meeting when Clodius announced that he would modify the conditions under which Rome's censors functioned— Curio's father was censor.

No censor, said Clodius, would be able to strike a member of the Senate or a member of the First Class off the rolls without a full and proper hearing and the written consent of both censors. The example Clodius used was ominous for Cicero: he asserted that Mark Antony's stepfather, Lentulus Sura (who he took considerable trouble to point out had been illegally executed by Marcus Tullius Cicero with the consent of the Senate), had been struck off the senatorial rolls by the censor Lentulus Clodianus for reasons based in personal vengeance. There would be no more senatorial and equestrian purges! cried Clodius.

With four different laws under discussion throughout December, Clodius left his legislative program at that— and left Cicero on the brink of terror, tottering. Would he, or wouldn't he indict Cicero? Nobody knew, and Clodius wouldn't say.

Not since April had the city of Rome set eyes on the junior consul, Marcus Calpurnius Bibulus. But on the last day of December as the sun slid toward its little death, he emerged from his house and went to resign the office which had scarcely seen him either.

Caesar watched him and his escort of boni approach, his twelve lictors carrying the fasces for the first time in over eight months. How he had changed! Always a tiny fellow, he seemed to have shrunk and crabbed, walked as if something chewed at his bones. The face, pallid and sharp, bore no expression save a look of cold contempt in the silvery eyes as they rested momentarily on the senior consul, and widened; it was more than eight months since Bibulus had seen Caesar, and what he saw quite obviously dismayed him. He had shrunk. Caesar had grown.

“Everything Gaius Julius Caesar has done this year is null and void!” he cried to the gathering in the Comitia well, only to find its members staring at him in stony disapproval. He shuddered and said nothing more.

After the prayers and sacrifices Caesar stepped forward and swore the oath that he had acquitted himself of his duties as the senior consul to the best of his knowledge and abilities. He then gave his valediction, about which he had thought for days yet not known what to say. So let it be short and let it have nothing to do with this terrible consulship now ending.

“I am a patrician Roman of the gens Iulia, and my forefathers have served Rome since the time of King Numa Pompilius. I in my turn have served Rome: as flamen Dialis, as soldier, as pontifex, as tribune of the soldiers, as quaestor, as curule aedile, as judge, as Pontifex Maximus, as praetor urbanus, as proconsul in Further Spain, and as senior consul. Everything in suo anno. I have sat in the Senate of Rome for just over twenty-four years, and watched its power wane as inevitably as does the life force in an old, old man. For the Senate is an old, old man.

“The harvest comes and goes. Plenty one year, famine the next. So I have seen Rome's granaries full, and I have seen them empty. I have seen Rome's first true dictatorship. I have seen the tribunes of the plebs reduced to ciphers, and I have seen them run rampant. I have seen the Forum Romanum under a still cold moon, blanched and silent as the tomb. I have seen the Forum Romanum awash with blood. I have seen the rostra bristling with men's heads. I have seen the house of Jupiter Optimus Maximus fall in blazing ruins, I have seen it rise again. And I have seen the emergence of a new power, the landless, unendowed and impoverished troops who upon retirement must beseech their country for a pension, and all too often I have seen them denied that pension.

“I have lived in momentous times, for since I was born forty-one years ago Rome has undergone frightful upheavals. The provinces of Cilicia, Cyrenaica, Bithynia-Pontus and Syria have been added to her empire, and the provinces she already owned have been modified beyond recognition. In my time the Middle Sea has become Our Sea. Our Sea from end to end.

“Civil war has stalked up and down Italia, not once, but seven times. In my lifetime a Roman first led his troops against the city of Rome, his homeland, though Lucius Cornelius Sulla was not the last man so to march. Yet in my lifetime no foreign foe has set foot on Italian soil. A mighty king who fought Rome for twenty-five years went down to defeat and death. He cost Rome the lives of over one hundred thousand citizens. Even so, he did not cost Rome as many lives as her civil wars have. In my lifetime.

“I have seen men die bravely, I have seen them die gibbering, I have seen them die decimated, I have seen them die crucified. But ever and always I am most moved by the plight of excellent men and the blight of mediocre men.

“What Rome has been, is, and will be depends upon us who are Romans. Beloved of the Gods, we are the only people in the history of the world to understand that a force extends two ways—forward and backward, up and down, right and left. Thus Romans have enjoyed a kind of equality with their Gods no other people has. Because no other people understands. We must strive then to understand ourselves. To understand what our position in the world demands of us. To understand that internecine strife and faces turned obdurately to the past will bring us down.

“Today I pass from the summit of my life, the year of my consulship, into other things. Different heights, for nothing ever remains the same. I am Roman back to the beginning of Rome, and before I am done the world will know this Roman. I pray to Rome. I pray for Rome. I am a Roman.”

He twitched the edge of his purple-bordered toga over his head. “O almighty Jupiter Optimus Maximus—if you wish to be addressed by this name, otherwise I hail you by whatever name it is you wish to hear—you who are of whichever sex you prefer—you who are the spirit of Rome—I pray that you continue to fill Rome and all Romans with your vital forces, I pray that you and Rome become mightier yet, I pray that we always honor the terms of our contractual agreements with you, and I beg you in all legal ways to honor these same treaties. Long live Rome!”

No one moved. No one spoke. The faces were impassive.

Caesar stepped to the back of the rostra and graciously inclined his head to Bibulus.

“I do swear before Jupiter Optimus Maximus, Jupiter Feretrius, Sol Indiges, Tellus and Janus Clusivius that I, Marcus Calpurnius Bibulus, did my duty as junior consul of Rome by retiring to my house as the Sacred Books directed and there did watch the skies. I do swear that my colleague in the consulship, Gaius Julius Caesar, is nefas because he violated my edict—”

“Veto! Veto!” cried Clodius. “That is not the oath!”

“Then I will speak my piece unsworn!” Bibulus shouted.

“I veto your piece, Marcus Calpurnius Bibulus!” roared Clodius. “I veto you out of office without according you the opportunity to justify a whole year of utter inertia! Go home, Marcus Calpurnius Bibulus, and watch the skies! The sun has just set on the worst consul in the history of the Republic! And thank your stars that I do not legislate to strike your name from the fasti and replace it with the consulship of Julius and Caesar!”

Shabby, dismal, sour, thought Caesar, sickened, and turned to walk away without waiting for anyone to catch him up. Outside the Domus Publica he paid his lictors with extreme generosity, thanked them for their year of loyal service, then asked Fabius if he and the others would be willing to accompany him to Italian Gaul for his proconsulship. Fabius accepted on behalf of everyone.

Chance threw Pompey and Crassus together not so very far behind the tall figure of Caesar disappearing into the gloom of a low and misty dusk.

“Well, Marcus, we did better together when we were consuls than Caesar and Bibulus have, little though we liked each other,” said Pompey.

“He's been unlucky, inheriting Bibulus as colleague through every senior magistracy. You're right, we did do better, despite our differences. At least we ended our year amicably, neither of us altered as men. Whereas this year has changed Caesar greatly. He's less tolerant. More ruthless. Colder, and I hate to see that.”

“Who can blame him? Some were determined to tear him down.” Pompey strolled in silence for a little distance, then spoke again. “Did you understand his speech, Crassus?”

“I think so. On the surface, at any rate. Underneath, who knows? He layers everything to contain many meanings.”

“I confess I didn't understand it. It sounded—dark. As if he was warning us. And what was that about showing the world?”

Crassus turned his head and produced an astonishingly large and generous smile. “I have a peculiar feeling, Magnus, that one day you will find out.”

* * *

On the Ides of March the ladies of the Domus Publica held an afternoon dinner party. The six Vestal Virgins, Aurelia, Servilia, Calpurnia and Julia gathered in the dining room prepared to have a very pleasant time.

Acting as the hostess (Calpurnia would never have dreamed of usurping that role), Aurelia served every kind of delicacy she thought might appeal, including treats sticky with honey and laden with nuts for the children. After the meal was over Quinctilia, Junia and Cornelia Merula were sent outside to play in the peristyle, while the ladies drew their chairs together cozily and relaxed now that there were no avid little ears listening.

“Caesar has been on the Campus Martius now for over two months,” said Fabia, who looked tired and careworn.

“More importantly, Fabia, how is Terentia bearing up?” asked Servilia. “It's been several days since Cicero fled.”

“Oh well, she's sensible as always, though I do think she suffers more than she lets on.”

“Cicero was wrong to go,” said Julia. “I know Clodius passed the nonspecific law prohibiting the execution of Roman citizens without a trial, but my li— Magnus says it was a mistake for Cicero to go into exile voluntarily. He thinks that if Cicero had only stayed, Clodius wouldn't have drummed up the courage to pass a specific law naming Cicero. But with Cicero not there, it was easy. Magnus couldn't manage to talk Clodius out of it.”

Aurelia looked skeptical, but said nothing; Julia's opinion of Pompey and her own were rather too different to bear inspection by a besotted young woman.

“Fancy looting and burning his beautiful house!” said Arruntia.

“That's Clodius, especially with all those peculiar people he seems to have running after him these days,” said Popillia. “He's so—so crazy!”

Servilia spoke. “I hear Clodius is going to erect a temple in the spot where Cicero's house used to be.”

“With Clodius as High Priest, no doubt! Pah!” spat Fabia.

“Cicero's exile can't last,” said Julia positively. “Magnus is working for his pardon already.”

Stifling a sigh, Servilia let her gaze meet Aurelia's. They looked at each other in complete understanding, though neither of them was imprudent enough to smile the smile she wore inside.

“Why is Caesar still on the Campus Martius?'' asked Popillia, easing- the great tiara of wool off her brow and revealing that its pressure left a red mark on fragile skin.

“He'll be there for quite some time yet,” Aurelia answered. “He has to make sure his laws stay on the tablets.”

“Tata says Ahenobarbus and Memmius are flattened,” Calpurnia contributed, smoothing Felix's orange fur as he lay snoozing in her lap. She was remembering how kind Caesar had been, asking her to stay with him on the Campus Martius regularly. Though she was too well brought up and too aware what sort of man her husband was to be jealous, it still pleased her enormously that he had not invited Servilia to the Campus Martius once. All he had given Servilia was a silly pearl. Whereas Felix was alive; Felix could love back.