Caesar's Women (107 page)

Perfectly aware what Calpurnia was thinking, Servilia made sure her own face remained enigmatic. I am far older and far wiser, I know the pain in parting. My farewells are said. I won't see him for years. But that poor little sow will never matter to him the way I do. Oh, Caesar, why? Does dignitas mean so much?

Cardixa marched in unceremoniously. “He's gone,” she said baldly, huge fists on huge hips.

The room stilled.

“Why?” asked Calpurnia, paling.

“Word from Further Gaul. The Helvetii are emigrating. He's off to Genava with Burgundus, and traveling like the wind.”

“I didn't say goodbye!” cried Julia, tears spilling over. “He will be away so long! What if I never see him again? The danger!”

“Caesar,” said Aurelia, poking one misshapen finger into fat Felix's side, “is like him. A hundred lives.”

Fabia turned her head to where the three little white-clad girls giggled and chased each other outside. “He promised to let them come and say farewell. Oh, they'll cry so!”

“Why shouldn't they cry?” asked Servilia. “Like us, they're Caesar's women. Doomed to stay behind and wait for our lord and master to come home.”

“Yes, that is the way of things,” said Aurelia steadily, and rose to lift the flagon of sweet wine. “As the senior among Caesar's women, I propose that tomorrow we all go to dig in Bona Dea's garden.”

FINIS

Caesar's Women marks the arrival of copious documentation from the ancient sources, which means that I am now writing about a period very much better known to non-scholars than the periods covered by the earlier books in this series.

Only the richness of the ancient sources has permitted me to dwell more fully in this volume upon the role of Roman women in noble Roman life, as most of the memorable events of the 60s B.C. took place inside the city of Rome. This is therefore a novel about women as well as politics and war, and I am grateful for the opportunity to say more about women than in the other books, particularly because the books yet to come must return to men's doings in far-flung places. Even so, little is really known about Rome's noblewomen, though the assumptions I have made all rest upon thorough research. Many of the actual incidents are attested, including Servilia's pearl and her love letter to Caesar on that fateful December 5 in the Senate—though all we know about the contents of the letter is that they disgusted Cato when he read it.

Some readers may be disappointed in my depiction of Cicero, but I am glued to the period rather than to modern assessments of Cicero's worth; the fact remains that in his own time the attitude of his contemporaries was not nearly as flattering to him as later attitudes have been.

It has not been my habit to use this Note as a forum for scholarly dissertation, nor to defend my interpretation of events. However, I have committed one cardinal sin which does necessitate some little discussion here: namely, the fact that I have chosen to place the trial of Gaius Rabirius after December 5 of 63 B.C. And this despite the personal testimony of Cicero in a letter to Atticus (II-I) written from Rome in June of 60 B.C. There Cicero lists the speeches he made while consul, as Atticus has asked for them (presumably to publish them).

Cicero lists his speech in defense of Gaius Rabirius as the fourth of the year, seemingly well before the conspiracy of Catilina came to light. And on that evidence, apparently, the later historians and biographers—Plutarch, Suetonius, Cassius Dio et alii—all put Rabirius before Catilina, a placement which reduces the Rabirius affair to a trite, silly sort of thing. The only near contemporary, Sallust, makes absolutely no mention of Rabirius. Did we have some letters of Cicero's spontaneously written during his consulship, that would be the clincher. But we do not. The reference in Atticus II-I is almost three years later, and written when it looked as if Caesar would arrive in time to stand for election as consul. Also written when Publius Clodius was badgering Cicero with threats of prosecution for the execution of Roman citizens without trial.

I wish I could say I always believe Cicero, but I do not. Particularly when he's writing in reflection on events which affected him (and his dignitas) very nearly. Like all politicians and lawyers since the world began—and presumably until it ends—he was a past master at the art of manipulating the facts to make himself look good. No matter how many times one reads the pro Rabirio perduellionis, it is impossible to pinpoint concrete evidence as to what was happening, let alone when. This is further complicated by two facts: the first, that there are lacunae in the surviving speech, and the second, that it is quite unclear how many hearings did actually occur.

Nor, despite Cicero's protests elsewhere, was the pro Rabirio a great speech; if read after the Catilinarian orations, it suffers badly. For Cicero to have ended the year's collection of consular speeches with the pro Rabirio would have reminded all of Rome that the trial of Rabirius was, for Cicero, a hideous hint that no man who had executed citizens without trial was safe from retribution at law. When the letter to Atticus was written in June of 60 B.C., Cicero was beginning to live in fear of Publius Clodius and prosecution. The speeches of Cicero's year in office would look far better if they ended with the four orations delivered against Catilina. Memories were short. No one knew that more surely than Cicero, who banked on it every time he defended a villain. All his writings after his year as consul show a man determined to demonstrate that his actions against Catilina had saved the Republic, that he was indeed pater patriae. Thus I do not find it impossible to think that Cicero “rearranged” the speeches of 63 B.C. to bury Rabirius in relative obscurity and thereby attempt to ensure that Rabirius did not mar the brilliance of his fight against Catilina, nor highlight the executions which took place on December 5.

There are those who despise the “novelization of history,” but as a technique of historical exploration and deduction it has something to recommend it—provided that the writer is thoroughly steeped in the history of the period concerned. I cannot possibly lay claim to the in-depth knowledge of a Greenidge on Roman law of Cicero's time, nor a Lily Ross Taylor on Roman Republican voting Assemblies, nor many other modern authorities on this or that aspect of the late Roman Republic. However, I have done my research: thirteen years of it before I began The First Man in Rome, and continually since (which sometimes leads to my wishing I could rewrite the earlier books!). I work in the correct way, from the ancient sources to the modern scholars, and I make up my own mind from my own work whilst not dismissing opinion and advice from modern Academe.

The novelist works entirely from a simple premise: to have the story make sense to its readers. This is by no means as easy as it sounds. The characters, all historical, have to be true both to history and psychology. Caesar, for example, does not come across in any of the ancient sources as a creature of whim, despite his flaunting borders on his long sleeves as a young man. He comes across as a man who always had very good reason for his actions. To place the trial of Rabirius before Catilina smacks of, if not caprice, at least pure naughtiness on Caesar's part. It also endows him with clairvoyance if, as many modern scholars argue, he “ran” the trial of Rabirius to warn Cicero whereabouts a Senatus Consultum Ultimum might take him and the Senate. Caesar was a genius, yes, but not endowed with that kind of prescience. He waited on events, then he acted.

The trouble with looking back on history is that we do so with the advantage of hindsight. Our interpretations of historical events tend to become warped by our knowledge of what happens next—a knowledge that the people inside the moment cannot possibly have owned. Modern politics indicates that those engaged in it blunder blindly from one decision to another, even after copious advice and some soul-searching. Great statesmen are capable of forethought, but not even the greatest is capable of seeing the future in the way that a clairvoyant purports to. Indeed, the average politician sees no further than the next election, and that must have been particularly true of politicians during the late Roman Republic. They lived in an action-packed atmosphere, they had only one short year in which to make their magisterial mark, they were subject to reprisals out of the blue from political enemies, and the absence of political parties or anything resembling a caucus mechanism predicated against even short-term planning. Individuals tried to plan, but often their own adherents were averse to what was seen as usurpation of other men's rights and ideas.

It was the lowering of the red flag on the Janiculum first chewed at me. This was followed closely by the fact that there are strong indications in the ancient sources that Rabirius's trial (or, as I believe it was, appeal) before the Centuries was going to result in damnation, despite his pathetic appearance and reverenced old age. Why should the lowering of the red flag have caused the Assembly to break up so very precipitately, and why would the Centuries damn a broken old man for something which had happened thirty-seven years earlier? Why, why, why? And how was I going to make the trial believable for a readership which extends from formidable Roman scholars all the way to those who know absolutely nothing about Republican Rome?

The red flag incident haunted me. For instance, the ancient sources say that Metellus Celer journeyed to the top of the Janiculum and personally ordered the red flag lowered. One of the things I do is time things—pace them out or travel them out. Even in a taxi in modern Rome it's quite a hike from the vicinity of the Piazza del Popoli to a spot beyond the Hilton Hotel! Celer would either have had to avail himself of a ferry ride, or cut back within the Servian Walls to the Pons Aemilia (the Pons Fabricius was still being rebuilt), take the Via Aurelia and then the branch road to the fortress atop the Janiculum. One imagines it was a journey he could not have made in less than two hours, even well horsed. This is the kind of logistical problem I am faced with all the time in writing an historical novel, and it's astonishing whereabouts such problems can lead me. If the lowering of the red flag was all Celer's idea, did he then have to return to the saepta before sounding the alarm, or could he legally depute someone else to watch for the moment in which the red flag came down? How easy would it have been to see the red flag at all if the sun was sliding into the western sky? Did Celer simply pretend the red flag had come down? Or if the ploy was prearranged between him and Caesar, why should he have needed to make the journey at all? Why not have rigged up a signal system to someone on the lookout from the Janiculum? And, since red flags have been associated with danger from time immemorial, why didn't the Romans raise a red flag whenever danger threatened? Why lower it?

All of which pales into insignificance when one considers the result of lowering that red flag. The vote, apparently so close to a conclusion, was abandoned immediately; the Centuries fled home to arm against the invader. Now mos maiorum notwithstanding, Republican Romans seem to have been a very independent-minded lot. Tempers flared and fists flew readily, but panic was not a common reaction even when things became very violent. Prior to October 21, the entire populace (save for Cicero) believed Italy was at peace, and it was well into November before most men could be prevailed upon to take real credence in an armed uprising to the north of Rome.

There is one solution which answers these vexed questions about the red flag with a minimum of illogicality: that its descent provoked instantaneous panic because at the time of the trial of Rabirius, Catilina was known to be in Etruria with an army. A good proportion of those at the saepta depositing their votes would have well remembered Lepidus and the battle beneath the Quirinal, if not the advent of Sulla in 82 B.C. Many must surely have been expecting Catilina to attempt an assault on Rome. Though there were armies in the field against him, he seems generally to have been accepted as a superior military tactician to commanders like Antonius Hybrida. It has never been a great difficulty for one army to slip past another and attack the most vulnerable target. Due to the absence of legions inside the home territory, Rome herself was always very vulnerable. And those who lived in Rome were well aware of it.

If one accepts that the red flag was lowered because of the presence of Catilina in Etruria with an army, then time telescopes. The trial of Rabirius must have occurred after Catilina joined Manlius and the Sullan rebels, presumably near Faesulae. Of course one might argue that Manlius alone represented sufficient threat, though with Catilina still in Rome (he left on or after November 8) it requires an assumption that Manlius had the clout to march without Catilina. A debatable assumption, to say the least. The date on which Catilina joined Manlius would have been about November 14 to November 18 (the latter being the postulated date Catilina and Manlius were declared public enemies).

The emphasis now shifts from Celer and the red flag to Caesar and Labienus. The other end of the telescoped time scale is December 9, the last day of Labienus's tribunate of the plebs. There are approximately sixteen days intervening between the middle of November and the apprehension of the Allobroges on the Mulvian Bridge. These were days during which the Senatus Consultum Ultimum was in force, Catilina and Manlius were officially outlawed, and Rome existed in something of a dilemma as to who exactly within the city was on Catilina's side. Names were bruited, but no proof was available; the conspirators inside Rome were sitting it out. Possibly the trial of Rabirius happened during those sixteen-odd days rather than after December 5 and the execution of the five conspirators.

That I have preferred December 6 to December 9— four days altogether—lies in my interpretation of Caesar's character. On December 5 he had spoken in the House to telling effect, advocating a very harsh brand of clemency for the conspirators. One of them was his relative by marriage, the husband of Lucius Caesar's sister. Amicitia therefore existed, despite the fact that some years earlier Caesar had sued the brother of Julia Antonia's first husband; that had been a civil suit, not a criminal charge. In the case of Lentulus Sura, Caesar could not have done anything else than advocate clemency (and though all the ancient sources say every consular recommended the death penalty, one cannot suppose Lucius Caesar did aught else than abstain). It was Cato who turned the tide, and Cato was chief among a mere handful of men (who included Cicero!) able to provoke Caesar into losing his temper. We have examples of how swiftly and with what devastating consequences Caesar could exercise his temper. We also know that Caesar could act with a speed which left his contemporaries breathless. Four days may not have been enough for others, but was that true of Caesar?

Finally, if one looks at the pro Rabirio perduellionis from the standpoint that it all happened between December 6 and December 9, the only impressive objection is the ponderous pace of Roman litigation. But if the format described in Livy for the trial of Horatius be accepted, then the trial itself before the two judges would have been a very brief affair, and Rabirius's appeal to the Centuries would have gone on immediately after.

We do know that there was a huge backlash among the People, even in the First Class, because Roman citizens had been officially executed by the Senate without standing trial and without being proclaimed at law as public enemies. Would not the time immediately after those executions have been the only time the Centuries (traditionally adamantly against damning men they were trying for perduellio) might have been moved to damn an old man for killing Romans without a trial thirty-seven years before? To me, the fact that the Centuries were prepared to damn Rabirius is the clinching argument that the trial occurred just after the summary execution of the five conspirators.