Caesar's Women (16 page)

Caesar paused, but no one interrupted, even Piso, face red at the insult tossed his way as if no moment. “I do not need to labor one point,” he said evenly, “because I can see no merit in laboring it. Namely, that there have been provincial governors appointed by this body who have actively connived with pirates to allow them port facilities, food, even vintage wines on stretches of coast that otherwise would have been closed to pirate tenancy. It all came out during the trial of Gaius Verres, and those of you sitting here today who either engaged in this practice or let others engage in it know well who you are. And if the fate of my poor uncle Marcus Aurelius Cotta is anything to go by, be warned that the passage of time is no guarantee that crimes, real or imagined, will not one day be put to your accounts.

“Nor am I about to labor another point so obvious that it is very old, very tired, very threadbare. Namely, that so far Rome—and by Rome I mean both the Senate and the People!—has not even touched the problem of piracy, let alone begun to scotch it. There is absolutely no way one man in one piddling little spot, be that spot Crete or the Baleares or Lycia, can hope to terminate the activities of pirates. Strike at one place, and all that happens is that the pirates pick up their gear and sail off somewhere else. Has Metellus in Crete actually succeeded in cutting off a pirate head? Lasthenes and Panares are but two of the heads this monster Hydra owns, and theirs are still on their shoulders, still sailing the seas around Crete.

“What it needs,” cried Caesar, his voice swelling, “is not just the will to succeed, not just the wish to succeed, not just the ambition to succeed! What it needs is an all-out effort in every place at one and the same moment, an operation masterminded by one hand, one mind, one will. And hand and mind and will must belong to a man whose prowess at organization is so well known, so well tested, that we, the Senate as well as the People of Rome, can give the task to him with confidence that for once our money and our manpower and our materiel will not be wasted!”

He drew in a breath. “Aulus Gabinius suggested a man. A man who is a consular and whose career says that he can do the job as it must be done. But I will go one better than Aulus Gabinius, and name that man! I propose that this body give command against the pirates with unlimited imperium in all respects to Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus!”

“Three cheers for Caesar!” Gabinius shouted, leaping onto the tribunician bench with both arms above his head. “I say it too! Give the command in the war against piracy to our greatest general, Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus!”

All outraged attention swung from Caesar to Gabinius, with Piso in the lead; off the curule dais he jumped, grabbed wildly at Gabinius, hauled him down. But Piso's body temporarily gave Gabinius the cover he needed, so he ducked under one flailing fist, tucked his toga around his thighs for the second time in two days, and bolted for the doors with half the Senate in pursuit.

Caesar picked his way between upended stools to where Cicero sat pensively with his chin propped up on one palm; he turned the stool next to Cicero the right way up, and sat down too.

“Masterly,” said Cicero.

“Nice of Gabinius to divert their wrath from my head to his,” said Caesar, sighing and stretching his legs out.

“It's harder to lynch you. There's a barrier built into their minds because you're a patrician Julian. As for Gabinius, he's—how did Hortensius put it?—a fellating minion. Add as understood, Picentine and Pompeian. Therefore he may be lynched with impunity. Besides, he was closer to Piso than you, and he didn't win that,” Cicero ended, pointing to the chaplet of oak leaves Caesar wore. “I think there will be many times when half of Rome may want to lynch you, Caesar, but it would be an interesting group succeeded. Definitely not led by the likes of Piso.”

Sounds of shouting and violence outside rose in volume; the next thing Piso flew back into the chamber with various members of the professional Plebs behind him. Catulus in his wake dodged around the back of one of the open doors, and Hortensius around the other. Piso fell under a tackle and was dragged outside again, head bleeding.

“I say, it looks as if they're in earnest,” Cicero observed with clinical interest. “Piso might be lynched.”

“I hope he is,” said Caesar, not moving.

Cicero giggled. “Well, if you won't stir to help, I fail to see why I should.”

“Oh, Gabinius will talk them out of it, that will make him look wonderful. Besides, it's quieter up here.”

“Which is why I transferred my carcass up here.”

“I take it,” said Caesar, “that you're in favor of Magnus's getting this gigantic command?”

“Definitely. He's a good man, even if he isn't one of the boni. There's no one else has a hope. Of doing it, I mean.”

“There is, you know. But they wouldn't give the job to me anyway, and I really do think Magnus can do it.”

“Conceit!” cried Cicero, astonished.

“There is a difference between truth and conceit.”

“But do you know it?”

“Of course.”

They fell silent for a while, then as the noise began to die away both men rose, descended to the floor of the chamber, and sallied out into the portico.

There it became clear that victory had gone to the Pompeians; Piso sat bleeding on a step being tended by Catulus, but of Quintus Hortensius there was no sign.

“You!” cried Catulus bitterly as Caesar ranged alongside him. “What a traitor to your class you are, Caesar! Just as I told you all those years ago when you came begging to serve in my army against Lepidus! You haven't changed. You'll never change, never! Always on the side of these ill-born demagogues who are determined to destroy the supremacy of the Senate!”

“At your age, Catulus, I would have thought you'd come to see that it's you ultraconservative sticks with your mouths puckered up like a cat's anus will do that,” said Caesar dispassionately. “I believe in Rome, and in the Senate. But you do it no good by opposing changes that your own incompetence have made necessary.”

“I will defend Rome and the Senate against the likes of Pompeius until the day I die!”

“Which, looking at you, may not be so far off.”

Cicero, who had gone to hear what Gabinius on the rostra was saying, returned to the bottom of the steps. “Another meeting of the Plebs the day after tomorrow!” he called, waving farewell.

“There's another one who will destroy us,” said Catulus, lip curling contemptuously. “An upstart New Man with the gift of the gab and a head too big to fit through these doors!”

When the Plebeian Assembly met, Pompey was standing on the rostra next to Gabinius, who now proposed his lex Gabinia de piratis persequendis with a name attached to the man: Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus. Everybody's choice, so much was clear from all the cheering. Though he was a mediocre speaker, Pompey had something in its way more valuable, which was a fresh and open, honest and engaging look about him, from the wide blue eyes to the wide frank smile. And that quality, reflected Caesar, watching and listening from the Senate steps, I do not have. Though I do not think I covet it. His style, not mine. Mine works equally well with the people.

Today's opposition to the lex Gabinia de piratis persequendis was going to be more formal, though possibly no less violent; the three conservative tribunes of the plebs were very much in evidence on the rostra, Trebellius standing a little in front of Roscius Otho and Globulus to proclaim that he was their leader.

But before Gabinius went into the details of his bill, he called upon Pompey to speak, and none of the senatorial rump from Trebellius to Catulus to Piso tried to stop him; the whole crowd was on his side. It was very well done of its kind. Pompey began by protesting that he had been under arms in Rome's service since his boyhood, and he was profoundly weary of being called upon to serve Rome yet again with yet another of these special commands. He went on to enumerate his campaigns (more campaigns than he had years, he sighed wistfully), then explained that the jealousy and hatred increased each time he did it again, saved Rome. And oh, he didn't want yet more jealousy, yet more hatred! Let him be what he most wanted to be—a family man, a country squire, a private gentleman. Find someone else, he beseeched Gabinius and the crowd, both hands outstretched.

Naturally no one took this seriously, though everyone did approve heartily of Pompey's modesty and self-deprecation. Lucius Trebellius asked leave of Gabinius, the College president, to speak, and was refused. When he tried anyway, the crowd drowned his words with boos, jeers, catcalls. So as Gabinius proceeded, he produced the one weapon Gabinius could not ignore.

“I interpose my veto against the lex Gabinia de piratis persequendis!” cried Lucius Trebellius in ringing tones.

Silence fell.

“Withdraw your veto, Trebellius,” said Gabinius.

“I will not. I veto your boss's law!”

“Don't force me to take measures, Trebellius.”

“What measures can you take short of throwing me from the Tarpeian Rock, Gabinius? And that cannot change my veto. I will be dead, but your law will not be passed,” said Trebellius.

This was the true test of strength, for the days had gone when meetings could degenerate into violence with impunity for the man convoking the meeting, when an irate Plebs could physically intimidate tribunes into withdrawing their vetoes while the man in charge of the Plebs remained an innocent bystander. Gabinius knew that if a riot broke out during this proper meeting of the Plebs, he would be held accountable at law. Therefore he solved his problem in a constitutional way none could impeach.

“I can ask this Assembly to legislate you out of your office, Trebellius,” answered Gabinius. “Withdraw your veto!”

“I refuse to withdraw my veto, Aulus Gabinius.”

There were thirty-five tribes of Roman citizen men. All the voting procedures in the Assemblies were arrived at through the tribes, which meant that at the end of several thousand men's voting, only thirty-five actual votes were recorded. In elections all the tribes voted simultaneously, but when passing laws the tribes voted one after the other, and what Gabinius was seeking was a law to depose Lucius Trebellius. Therefore Gabinius called the thirty-five tribes to vote consecutively, and one after the other they voted to depose Trebellius. Eighteen was the majority, so eighteen votes were all Gabinius needed. In solemn quiet and perfect order, the ballot proceeded inexorably: Suburana, Sergia, Palatina, Quirina, Horatia, Aniensis, Menenia, Oufentina, Maecia, Pomptina, Stellatina, Clustumina, Tromentina, Voltinia, Papiria, Fabia … The seventeenth tribe to vote was Cornelia, and the vote was the same. Deposition.

“Well, Lucius Trebellius?” asked Gabinius, turning to his colleague with a big smile. “Seventeen tribes in succession have voted against you. Do I call upon the men of Camilla to make it eighteen and a majority, or will you withdraw your veto?”

Trebellius licked his lips, looked desperately at Catulus, Hortensius, Piso, then at the remote and aloof Pontifex Maximus, Metellus Pius, who ought to have honored his membership in the boni, but since his return from Spain four years ago was a changed man—a quiet man— a resigned man. Despite all of which, it was to Metellus Pius that Trebellius addressed his appeal.

“Pontifex Maximus, what ought I to do?” he cried.

“The Plebs have shown their wishes in the matter, Lucius Trebellius,” said Metellus Pius in a clear, carrying voice which did not stammer once. “Withdraw your veto. The Plebs have instructed you to withdraw your veto.”

“I withdraw my veto,” Trebellius said, turned on his heel and retreated to the back of the rostra platform.

But having outlined his bill, Gabinius now seemed in no hurry to pass it. He asked Catulus to speak, then Hortensius.

“Clever little fellow, isn't he?” asked Cicero, a trifle put out that no one was asking him to speak. “Listen to Hortensius! In the Senate the day before yesterday, he said he'd die before any more special commands with unlimited imperium would pass! Today he's still against special commands with unlimited imperium, but if Rome insists on creating this animal, then Pompeius and no one else should have its leash put into his hand. That certainly tells us which way the Forum wind is blowing, doesn't it?”

It certainly did. Pompey concluded the meeting by shedding a few tears and announcing that if Rome insisted, then he supposed he would have to shoulder this new burden, lethal though the exhaustion it produced would be. After which Gabinius dismissed the meeting, the vote as yet untaken. However, the tribune of the plebs Roscius Otho had the last word. Angry, frustrated, longing to kill the whole Plebs, he stepped to the front of the rostra and thrust his clenched right fist upward, then very slowly extended its medicus finger to its full length, and waggled it.

“Shove it up your arse, Plebs!” laughed Cicero, appreciating this futile gesture enormously.

“So you're happy to allow the Plebs a day to consider, eh?” he asked Gabinius when the College came down from the rostra.

“I'll do everything exactly as it ought to be done.”

“How many bills?”

“One general, then one awarding the command to Gnaeus Pompeius, and a third detailing the terms of his command.”

Cicero tucked his arm through Gabinius's and began to walk. “I loved that little bit at the end of Catulus's speech, didn't you? You know, when Catulus asked the Plebs what would happen if Magnus was killed, with whom would the Plebs replace him?”

Gabinius doubled up with laughter. “And they all cried with one voice, 'You, Catulus! You and no one but you!' ”

“Poor Catulus! The veteran of an hour-long rout fought in the shade of the Quirinal.”

“He got the point,” said Gabinius.

“He got shafted,” said Cicero. “That's the trouble with being a rump. You contain the posterior fundamental orifice.”

* * *

In the end Pompey got more than Gabinius had originally asked for: his imperium was maius on sea and for fifty miles inland from every coast, which meant his authority overrode the authority of every provincial governor and those with special commands like Metellus Little Goat in Crete and Lucullus in his war against the two kings. No one could gainsay him without revocation of the act in the Plebeian Assembly. He was to have five hundred ships at Rome's expense and as many more as he wanted in levies from coastal cities and states; he was to have one hundred and twenty thousand Roman troops and as many more as he considered necessary in levies from the provinces; he was to have five thousand horse troopers; he was to have twenty-four legates with propraetorian status, all of his own choice, and two quaestors; he was to have one hundred and forty-four million sesterces from the Treasury at once, and more when he wanted more. In short, the Plebs awarded him a command the like of which had never been seen.