Caesar's Women (82 page)

“Minicius!” Pompey bellowed.

“Yes, Gnaeus Pompeius?” asked the innkeeper, appearing with great alacrity.

“Fetch us writing materials.”

“However,” said Caesar as he completed his short letter, “I think it would be better if Marcus Crassus presented my petition to stand in absentia for the consulship. I'll send this to him by messenger.”

“Why can't I present your petition?” Pompey asked, annoyed that Caesar preferred to use Crassus.

“Because I don't want the boni to realize that we've come to any kind of agreement,” said Caesar patiently. “You will already have set them wondering by dashing out of the House announcing that you were off to see me on the Campus Martius. Don't underestimate them, Magnus, please. They can tell a radish from a ruby. The bond between you and me must be kept secret for some time to, come.”

“Yes, I do see that,” said Pompey, a little mollified. “I just don't want you becoming more committed to Crassus than you are to me. I don't mind if you help him with the tax-farmers and bribery laws aimed at the knights, but it's far more important to get land for my soldiers and ratify my settlement of the East.”

“Quite so,” said Caesar serenely. “Send Flavius to the Plebs, Magnus. It will throw dust in many pairs of eyes.”

At which moment Balbus and Burgundus arrived. Pompey greeted the Gadetanian banker with great joy, while Caesar concentrated on a very tired looking Burgundus. His mother would say he had been inconsiderate, expecting a man as old as Burgundus to labor at an oar twelve hours a day for twelve days.

“I'll be off,” said Pompey.

Caesar escorted the Great Man to the inn door. “Lie low and make it look as if you're still fighting your own war unaided.”

“Crassus won't like it that you sent for me.”

“He probably won't even know. Was he in the House?”

“No,” said Pompey, grinning. “He says it's too deleterious to his health. Listening to Cato gives him a headache.”

When the Senate convened an hour after dawn on the fourth day of June, Marcus Crassus applied to speak. Gracious consent was accorded him by Lucius Afranius, who accepted Caesar's petition to stand for the consulship in absentia.

“It's a very reasonable request,” said Crassus at the end of a workmanlike oration, “which this House ought to approve. Every last one of you is well aware that not the slightest hint of improper conduct in his province is attached to Gaius Caesar, and improper conduct was the cause of our consular Marcus Cicero's law. Here is a man who did everything correctly, including solving a vexed problem Further Spain had suffered for years: Gaius Caesar brought in the best and fairest debt legislation I have ever seen, and not one individual, debtor or creditor, has complained.”

“Surely that doesn't surprise you, Marcus Crassus,” Bibulus drawled. “If anyone knows how to deal with debt, it's Gaius Caesar. He probably owed money in Spain too.”

“Then you might well have to apply to him for information, Marcus Bibulus,” said Crassus, unruffled as ever. “If you manage to get yourself elected consul, you'll be up to your eyebrows in debt from bribing the voters.” He cleared his throat and waited for a reply; not receiving one, he continued. “I repeat, this is a very reasonable request which the House ought to approve.”

Afranius called for other consular speakers, who all indicated that they agreed with Crassus. Not many of the incumbent praetors fancied adding anything until Metellus Nepos rose.

“Why,” he asked, “should this House accord any favors to a notorious homosexual? Has everyone forgotten how our gorgeous Gaius Caesar lost his virginity? Face down on a couch in the palace of King Nicomedes, a royal penis stuck up his arse! Do what you like, Conscript Fathers, but if you want to grant a pansy like Gaius Caesar the privilege of becoming consul without showing his pretty face inside Rome, you may count me out! I'll do no special favors to a man with a well-poked anus!”

The silence was complete; no one so much as drew a breath.

“Retract that, Quintus Nepos!” Afranius snapped.

“Shove it up your own arse, son of Aulus!” cried Nepos, and strode out of the Curia Hostilia.

“Scribes, you will delete Quintus Nepos's remarks,” Afranius directed, red-faced at the insults thrown his way. “It has not escaped me that the manners and conduct of members of the Senate of Rome have undergone a marked deterioration over the years I've belonged to what used to be an august and respectable body. I hereby ban Quintus Nepos from attendance at meetings of the Senate while I hold the fasces. Now who else has anything to say?”

“I do, Lucius Afranius,” said Cato.

“Then speak, Marcus Porcius Cato.”

It seemed to take Cato an eternity to get himself settled; he shifted, fiddled, cleared his respiratory passages with some deep-breathing exercises, smoothed his hair, adjusted his toga. Finally he opened his mouth to bark words.

“Conscript Fathers, the state of morals in Rome is a tragedy. We, the men who stand above all others because we are members of Rome's most senior governing body, are not fulfilling our duty as custodians of Roman morals. How many men here are guilty of adultery? How many wives of men here are guilty of adultery? How many children of men here are guilty of adultery? How many parents of men here are guilty of adultery? My great-grandfather the Censor—the best man Rome has ever produced—held absolute opinions on morality, as he did about everything. He never paid more than five thousand sesterces for a slave. He never pilfered the affections of a Roman woman, nor lay with her. After his wife Licinia died, he contented himself with the services of a slave, as is fitting for a man in his seventies. But when his own son and daughter-in-law complained that the slave had set herself up as queen of the household, he put the girl away and married again. But he would not choose a bride from among his peers, for he deemed himself too aged to be an adequate husband for a Roman noblewoman. So he married the daughter of his freedman Salonius. I am descended from that stock, and proud to say it. Cato the Censor was a moral man, an upright man, an adornment to this State. He used to love thunderstorms because his wife would cling to him in terror, and thus he could permit himself to embrace her in front of the servants and the free members of his household. Because, as we all know, a decent and moral Roman husband ought not to indulge his senses in places and at times not suited to private activities. I have modeled my own life and conduct on my great-grandfather, who when it came time to die forbade the expenditure of large sums of money on his obsequies. He went to a modest pyre and his ashes into a plain glazed jar. His tomb is even plainer, yet it sits on the side of the Via Appia always adorned with flowers brought by some admiring citizen. But what if Cato the Censor were to walk the streets of modern Rome? What would those clear eyes see? What would those perceptive ears hear? What would that formidable and lucid intellect think? I shudder to speak of it, Conscript Fathers, but I fear I must. I do not think he could bear to live in this cesspool we call Rome. Women sit in the gutters so drunk they vomit. Men lurk in alleyways to rob and murder. Children of both sexes prostitute themselves outside Venus Erucina's. I have even seen what appeared to be respectable men lift their tunics and squat to defaecate in the street when a public latrine is in full sight! Privacy for bodily functions and modesty in conduct are deemed old-fashioned, ridiculous, laughable. Cato the Censor would weep. Then he would go home and hang himself. Oh, how often I have had to resist the temptation to do the same!”

“Don't, Cato, don't resist it a moment longer!” cried Crassus.

Cato ground on without seeming to notice. “Rome is a stew. But what else can one expect when the men sitting in this House have plundered the wives of other men, or think no more of the sanctity of their flesh than to yield unmentionable orifices to unmentionable acts? Cato the Censor would weep. And look at me, Conscript Fathers! See how I weep? How can a state be strong, how can it contemplate ruling the world, when the men who rule it are degenerate, decadent, filthy running sores? We must stop all this interest in extraneous irrelevancies like the Asian publicani and devote one whole year to weeding Rome's moral garden!—to putting decency back as our highest priority!—to enacting laws which make it impossible for men to violate other men, for patrician delinquents to boast openly of incestuous relationships, for governors of our provinces to sexually exploit children! Women who commit adultery ought to be executed, as they were in the old days. Women who drink wine ought to be executed, as they were in the old days. Women who appear at public meetings in the Forum to barrack and shout coarse insults ought to be executed—though not as they were in the old days, because in the old days no woman would have dreamed of doing that! Women bear and mother children, they have no other use! But where are the laws we need to enforce a proper moral standard? They do not exist, Conscript Fathers! Yet if Rome is to survive they must come into existence!”

“You'd think,” Cicero whispered to Pompey, “that he was talking to the inhabitants of Plato's ideal Republic, not to men who have to wallow in Romulus's shit.”

“He's going to filibuster until after the sun sets,” Pompey said grimly. “What utter rubbish he's prating! Men are men and women are women. They got up to the same tricks under the first consuls that they do under Celer and Afranius today.”

“Mind you,” roared Cato, “the present scandalous conditions are a direct result of too much exposure to eastern laxity! Since we extended our reach down Our Sea to places like Anatolia and Syria, we Romans have fallen into disgustingly dirty habits imported from those sinks of iniquity! For every cherry or orange brought back to increase our beloved homeland's fruitfulness, there are ten thousand evils. It is a wrong act to conquer the world, and I make no bones about saying so. Let Rome continue to be what Rome always was in the old days, a contained and moral place filled with hardworking citizens who minded their own business and cared not a rush what happened in Campania or Etruria, let alone Anatolia or Syria! Every Roman then was happy and content. The change came when greedy and ambitious men lifted themselves above the level set for all men—we must control Campania, we must impose our rule on Etruria, every Italian must become Roman, and all roads must lead to Rome! The worm began to eat—enough money was no longer enough, and power was more intoxicating than wine. Look at the number of State-funded funerals we endure these days! How often in the old days did the State disburse its precious moneys to bury men well able to pay for their own funerals? How often does the State do so today? Sometimes it feels as if we endure one State funeral per nundinum! I was urban quaestor, I know how much public money is wasted on fribbles like funerals and feasts! Why should the State contribute to public banquets so that the Head Count can gorge itself on eels and oysters, take home the leftovers in a sack? I can tell you why! In order that some ambitious man can buy himself the consulship! 'Oh, but!' he cries. 'Oh, but the Head Count can't give me votes! I am a Roman patriot, I simply like to give pleasure to those who cannot afford pleasure!' No, the Head Count can't give him votes! But all the merchants who provide the food and drink can and do give him votes! Look at Gaius Caesar's flowers when he was curule aedile! Not to mention sufficient refreshments to fill two hundred thousand undeserving bellies! Try to add up, if you can, the number of fish and flower vendors who owe Gaius Caesar their first vote! But it is legal, our bribery laws cannot touch him.…”

At which point Pompey got up and walked out, starting a mass exodus of senators. When the sun went down only four men remained to listen to one of Cato's best filibusters: Bibulus, Gaius Piso, Ahenobarbus and the hapless consul with the fasces, Lucius Afranius.

Both Pompey and Crassus sent letters to Caesar on the Campus Martius, where he had taken up residence at the inn of Minicius. Very tired because—despite his massive size and strength—he was no longer young enough to row with impunity for days on end, Burgundus sat quietly in a corner of Caesar's private parlor watching his beloved master converse softly with Balbus, who had elected to keep him company rather than enter Rome without him.

The letters arrived carried by the same messenger, and took very little time to read. Caesar looked up at Balbus.

“Well, it seems I am not to stand for consul in absentia,” he said calmly. “The House appeared willing to grant me the favor, but Cato talked out any possibility of a vote. Crassus is on his way to see me now. Pompeius won't come. He thinks he's being watched, and he's probably right.”

“Oh, Caesar!” Balbus's eyes filled, but what he might have said after this was never uttered; Crassus erupted into the room breathing fire.

“The sanctimonious, puffed-up prig! I detest Pompeius Magnus and I despise idiots like Cicero, but Cato I could kill! What a leader the rump has inherited in him! Catulus would imitate his father and suffocate from fresh plaster fumes if he knew! Who said incorruptibility and honesty are the virtues which matter most? I'd rather deal with the shiftiest, slimiest usurer in the world than piss in Cato's general direction! He's a bigger upstart than any New Man who ever strolled down the Via Flaminia sucking a straw! Mentula! Verpa! Cunnus! Pah!”

To all of this Caesar listened fascinated, a delighted smile spreading from ear to ear. “My dear Marcus, I never thought I'd have to say it to you, but calm down! Why suffer a stroke over the likes of Cato? He won't win, for all his much-extolled integrity.”

“Caesar, he's already won! You can't be consul in the New Year now, and what's going to happen to Rome? If she doesn't get a consul strong enough to squash slugs like Cato and Bibulus, I despair! There won't be any Rome! And how am I going to protect my standing with the Eighteen if you're not senior consul?”

“It's all right, Marcus, truly. I'll be senior consul in the New Year, even if I'm saddled with Bibulus for my colleague.”

The rage vanished; Crassus stared at Caesar slack-jawed. “You mean you'll give up your triumph?” he squawked.