The First Man in Rome (125 page)

"He might be right," said Scaurus Princeps Senatus, looking extremely satisfied and happy in spite of this fresh worry.

Marius laughed heartily. "No! He's posturing like one of those defenseless little animals plumed with fierce-looking eyes, Marcus Aemilius. There's a simple answer to this siege, believe me. We'll have them out of there without spilling one drop of Roman blood." He turned to Sulla. "Lucius Cornelius, find the city water company engineers, and have them cut off all water to the Capitoline Hill at once."

The Leader of the House shook his head in wonder. "So simple! But so obvious I for one would never have seen it. How long will we have to wait for Saturninus to surrender?"

"Not long. They've been engaged in thirsty work, you see. Tomorrow is my guess. I'm going to send enough men up there to ring the temple round, and I'm going to order them to taunt our fugitives remorselessly with their lack of water."

"Saturninus is a very desperate character," said Scaurus.

That was a judgment Marius disagreed with, and said so. "He's a politician, Marcus Aemilius, not a soldier. It's power he's come to understand, not force of arms, and he can't make a workable strategy for himself." The twisted side of Marius's face came round to frighten Scaurus, its drooping eye ironic, and the smile which pulled the good side of his face up was a terrible thing to see. "If
I
was in Saturninus's shoes, Marcus Aemilius, you'd have cause to worry! Because by now I'd be calling myself the King of Rome, and you would all be dead."

Scaurus Princeps Senatus stepped back a pace instinctively. "I know, Gaius Marius," he said. "I know!"

"Anyway," said Marius cheerfully, removing the awful side of his face from Scaurus's view, "luckily I'm not King Tarquinius, though my mother's family
is
from Tarquinia! A night in the same room as the Great God will bring Saturninus round."

Those in the rabble who had been caught and detained when it broke and fled were rounded up and put under heavy guard in the cells of the Lautumiae, where a scurrying group of censor's clerks sorted out the Roman citizens from the non-Romans; those who were not Romans were to be executed immediately, while the Romans would be summarily tried on the morrow, and flung down from the Tarpeian Rock of the Capitol straight after.

Sulla returned as Marius and Scaurus began to walk away from the lower Forum.

"I have a message from Lucius Valerius on the Quirinal,'' he said, looking considerably fresher for the day's events. "He says Glaucia is there inside Gaius Claudius's house all right, but they've barred the gates and refuse to come out."

Marius looked at Scaurus. "Well, Princeps Senatus, what will we do about that situation?"

"Like the lot in the company of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, why not leave matters lie overnight? Let Lucius Valerius guard the house in the meantime. After Saturninus surrenders, we can have the news shouted over Gaius Claudius's wall, and then see what happens."

"A good plan, Marcus Aemilius."

And Scaurus began to laugh. "All this amicable concourse with you, Gaius Marius, is not going to enhance my reputation among my friends the Good Men!" he spluttered, and caught at Marius's arm. "Nonetheless, Good Man, I am very glad we had you here today. What say you, Publius Rutilius?"

"I say—you could not have spoken truer words."

Lucius Appuleius Saturninus was the first of all those in the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus to surrender; Gaius Saufeius was the last. The Romans among them, some fifteen altogether, were detained on the rostra in full view of all who cared to come and see—not many, for the crowd stayed home. Under their eyes those among the rabble who were Roman citizens—almost all, for this was not a slave uprising—were tried in a specially convened treason court, and sentenced to die from the Tarpeian Rock.

Jutting out from the southwest side of the Capitol, the Tarpeian Rock was a basaltic overhang above a precipice only eighty feet in height; that it killed was due to the presence of an outcrop of needle-sharp rocks immediately below.

The traitors were led up the slope of the Clivus Capitolinus, past the steps of the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, to a spot on the Servian Walls in front of the temple of Ops. The overhang of the Tarpeian Rock projected out of the wall, and was clearly visible in profile from the lower part of the Forum Romanum, where crowds suddenly appeared to watch the partisans of Lucius Appuleius Saturninus go to their deaths—crowds with empty bellies, but no desire to demonstrate their displeasure on this day. They just wanted to see men thrown off the Tarpeian Rock, for it hadn't happened in a long time, and the gossip grapevine had told them there were almost a hundred to die. No eyes in that crowd rested upon Saturninus or Equitius with love or pity, though every element in it was the same who cheered them mightily during the tribunician elections. The gossip grapevine was saying there were grain fleets on the way from Asia, thanks to Gaius Marius. So it was Gaius Marius they cheered in a desultory way; what they really wanted to see, for this was a Roman holiday of sorts, was the bodies pitched from the Tarpeian Rock. Death at a decent distance, an acrobatic display, a novelty.

"We can't hold the trials of Saturninus and Equitius until feelings have died down a little," said Scaurus Princeps Senatus to Marius and Sulla as the three of them stood on the Senate Steps while the parade of flailing miniature men dropped into space off the end of the Tarpeian Rock.

Neither Marius nor Sulla mistook his meaning; it was not the Forum crowd which worried Scaurus, but the more impulsive and angry among his own kind, growling more fiercely now that the worst was over. Rancor had shifted from Saturninus's rabble to Saturninus himself, with special viciousness reserved for Lucius Equitius. The young senators and those not quite old enough to be senators were standing in a group on the edge of the Comitia with Caepio Junior and Metellus Piglet in their forefront, eyeing Saturninus and his companions on the rostra very hungrily.

"It will be worse when Glaucia surrenders and joins them," said Marius thoughtfully.

"What a paltry lot!" sniffed Scaurus. "You'd have thought at least some of them would have done the proper thing, and fallen on their swords! Even my slack-livered son did that!"

"I agree," said Marius. "However, here we are with fifteen of them—sixteen when Glaucia comes out—to try for treason, and some very resentful fellows down there who remind me of a pack of wolves eyeing a herd of deer.''

"We'll have to hold them somewhere for at least several days," said Scaurus, "only where? For the sake of Rome we cannot permit them to be lynched."

"Why not?" asked Sulla, contributing his first mite to the discussion.

"Trouble, Lucius Cornelius. We've avoided bloodshed in the Forum, but the crowd's going to appear in force to see that lot on the rostra tried for treason. Today they're entertained by the executions of men who don't matter. But can we be sure they won't turn nasty when we try Lucius Equitius, for instance?" asked Marius soberly. "It's a very difficult situation."

"Why
couldn't
they have fallen on their swords?" asked Scaurus fretfully. "Think of all the trouble they would have saved us! Suicide an admission of guilt, no trials, no strangler in the Career Tullianum—we don't dare throw
them
off the Tarpeian Rock!"

Sulla stood listening, his ears absorbing what was said, but his eyes resting thoughtfully upon Caepio Junior and Metellus Piglet. However, he said nothing.

"Well, the trial is something we'll worry about when the time comes," said Marius. "In the meantime, we have to find somewhere to put them where they'll be safe."

"The Lautumiae is out of the question," said Scaurus at once. "If for some reason—or at someone's instigation— a big crowd decides to rescue them, those cells will never withstand attack, not if every lictor we have is standing guard. It's not Saturninus I'm concerned about, but that ghastly creature Equitius. All it will take is for one silly woman to start weeping and wailing because the son of Tiberius Gracchus is going to die, and we could have trouble." He grunted. "And as if that weren't enough, look at our young bloods down there, slavering. They wouldn't mind lynching Saturninus in the least."

"Then I suggest," said Marius joyously, "that we shut them up inside the Curia Hostilia."

Scaurus Princeps Senatus looked stunned. "We can't do that, Gaius Marius!"

"Why not?"

“Imprison traitors in the
Senate House!
It's—it's—why, it's like offering our old gods a sacrifice of a turd!"

"They've already fouled the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, everything to do with the State religion is going to have to be purified anyway. The Curia has absolutely no windows, and the best doors in Rome. The alternative is for some of us to volunteer to hold them in our own homes— would you like Saturninus? Take him, and I'll take Equitius. I think Quintus Lutatius should have Glaucia," said Marius, grinning.

"The Curia Hostilia is an excellent idea," said Sulla, still looking thoughtfully at Caepio Junior and Metellus Piglet.

"Grrrr!" snarled Scaurus Princeps Senatus, not at Marius or Sulla, but at circumstances. Then he nodded decisively. "You are quite right, Gaius Marius. The Curia Hostilia it must be, I'm afraid."

"Good!" said Marius, clapped Sulla on the shoulder in a signal to move off, and added with a frightful lopsided grin, "While I see to the details, Marcus Aemilius, I'll leave it to you to explain to your fellow Good Men why we need to use our venerable meeting-house as a prison."

"Why, thank you!" said Scaurus.

"Think nothing of it."

When they were out of earshot of all who mattered, Marius glanced at Sulla curiously. "What are you up to?" he asked.

"I'm not sure I'm going to tell you," said Sulla.

"You'll be careful, please. I don't want you hauled up for treason."

"I'll be careful, Gaius Marius."

Saturninus and his confederates had surrendered on the eighth day of December; on the ninth, Gaius Marius reconvened the Centuriate Assembly and heard the declaration of candidates for the curule magistracies.

Lucius Cornelius Sulla didn't bother going out to the
saepta;
he was busy doing other things, including having long talks with Caepio Junior and Metellus Piglet, and squeezing in a visit to Aurelia, though he knew from Publius Rutilius Rufus that she was all right, and that Lucius Decumius had kept his tavern louts away from the Forum Romanum.

The tenth day of the month was the day upon which the new tribunes of the plebs entered office; but two of them, Saturninus and Equitius, were locked up in the Senate House. And everyone was worried that the crowd might reappear, for it seemed to be most interested in the doings of the tribunes of the plebs.

Though Marius would not permit his little army of three days before to come to the Forum Romanum clad in armor or girt with swords, he had the Basilica Porcia closed off to its normal complement of merchants and bankers, and kept it purely for the storage of arms and armor; on its ground floor at the Senate House end were the offices of the College of Tribunes of the Plebs, and here the eight who were not involved in the Saturninus business were to assemble at dawn, after which the inaugural meeting of the Plebeian Assembly would be conducted as quickly as possible, and with no reference to the missing two.

But dawn had not yet broken and the Forum Romanum was utterly deserted when Caepio Junior and Metellus Pius Piglet led their raiding party down the Argiletum toward the Curia Hostilia. They had gone the long way round to make sure no guard detected them, but when they spread out around the Curia, they discovered they had the whole area to themselves.

They carried long ladders which they propped against both sides of the building, reaching all the way up to the ancient fan-shaped tiles of the eaves, lichen-covered, brittle.

"Remember," said Caepio Junior to his troops, "that no sword must be raised, Lucius Cornelius says. We must abide by the letter of Gaius Marius's orders."

One by one they scaled the ladders until the entire party of fifty squatted along the edge of the roof, which was shallow in pitch, and not an uncomfortable place to roost. There in the darkness they waited until the pale light in the east grew from dove-grey to bright gold, and the first rays of the sun came stealing down from the Esquiline Hill to bathe the roof of the Senate House. Some people were beginning to arrive below, but the ladders had been drawn up onto the Curia's roof too, and no one noticed anything untoward because no one thought to look upward.

"Do it!"
cried Caepio Junior.

Racing time—for Lucius Cornelius had told them they would not have very long—the raiding party began ripping tiles off the oak frames between the far more massive cedar beams. Light flooded into the hall below, bouncing off fifteen white faces staring up, more startled than terrified. And when each man on the roof had a stack of tiles beside him, he began to hurl them down through the gap he had made, straight into those faces. Saturninus fell at once, as did Lucius Equitius. Some of the prisoners tried to shelter in the hall's farthest corners, but the young men on the roof very quickly became skilled at pitching their tiles in any direction accurately. The hall held no furniture of any kind, its users bringing their own stools with them, and the clerks a table or two from the Senate Offices next door on the Argiletum. So there was nothing to shield the prisoners below from the torrent of missiles, more effective as weapons than Sulla had suspected. Each tile broke upon impact with razor-sharp edges, and each weighed ten pounds.

By the time Marius and his legates—including Sulla— got there, it was all over; the raiding party was descending the ladders to the ground, where its members stood quietly, no one trying to escape.

"Shall I arrest them?" asked Sulla of Marius.

Marius jumped, so deep in thought had he been when the quick question came. "No!" he said. "They're not going anywhere." And he glanced at Sulla, a covert sideways look which asked a silent question. And got his answer with the ghost of a wink.