The First Man in Rome (8 page)

"Not according to my sources," said Bomilcar uneasily. "I suspect they've made a deal which depends upon Albinus's being awarded Africa Province as his governorship. You're stuck here in Rome; Albinus hies himself off to Africa Province with a neat little army, a quick march across the border to Cirta, and—all hail King Massiva of Numidia! I imagine King Massiva of Numidia will be very willing to pay Albinus pretty much what he asks."

"I've got to get home!" the King cried.

"I know! But how, tell me how?"

"You don't think there's any chance I could sway Albinus? I've still got money on hand, I can get more!"

Bomilcar shook his head emphatically. "The new consul does not like you," he said. "You neglected to send him a gift on his birthday, which was last month. Massiva didn't neglect to send him a gift. In fact, he sent Albinus a gift when he was elected consul, then another for the birthday.''

"That's my agents, curse them!" Jugurtha bared his teeth. "They're beginning to think I'm going to lose, so they're not even trying." He chewed his lip, wet it with his tongue. "Am I going to lose?"

Bomilcar smiled. "You? Never!"

"I don't know.. . . Massiva! Do you realize I'd forgotten all about him? I thought he was in Cyrenaica with Ptolemy Apion." Jugurtha shrugged, visibly pulled himself together. "It might be a false rumor. Who exactly told you?"

"Metellus himself. He'd know. His ear's permanently to the ground these days, he's planning to run for consul next year. Not that he approves of the deal Albinus is making. If he did, he'd not have breathed a word of it to me. But you know Metellus—one of the upright virtuous Romans, not a bribe in mind. And he dislikes seeing kings camped on Rome's doorstep."

"Metellus can afford the luxury of virtuous uprightness!" said Jugurtha tartly. "What Caecilius Metellus isn't as rich as Croesus? They've carved up Spain and Asia between them. Well, they'll not carve up Numidia! Nor will Spurius Postumius Albinus, if I have anything to do with it." The King sat stiff in his chair. "Massiva is definitely here?"

"According to Metellus, yes."

"We must wait until we hear which consul is going out to govern Africa, and which to Macedonia."

Bomilcar snorted derisively. "Don't tell me you believe in the lots!"

"I don't know what I believe about the Romans," said the King somberly. "Maybe I think it's already decided, maybe I wonder if the drawing of the lots isn't that one time they're laughing at us, and actually have left it up to chance. So I will wait, Bomilcar. When I hear the result of the lots, I'll decide what to do."

With that, he turned his chair around again, and went back to his contemplation of the rain.

4

There had been three children in the old white stuccoed farmhouse near Arpinum: Gaius Marius was the eldest, then came his sister, Maria, and finally a second son, Marcus Marius. It was naturally expected that they would grow up to take a prominent place in the life of the district and its town, but no one dreamed any of the three would venture farther afield. They were rural nobility, old-fashioned bluff and hearty country squires, the Mariuses, seemingly destined forever to be important people only within their little domain of Arpinum. The idea that one of them would enter the Senate of Rome was unthinkable; Cato the Censor made sufficient stir because of his rustic origins, yet he had come from a place no farther afield than Tusculum, a mere fifteen miles from Rome's Servian Walls. So no Arpinate squire imagined that his son could become a Roman senator.

It wasn't a matter of money, for there was plenty of money; the Mariuses were most comfortably off. Arpinum was a rich locality many square miles in area, and most of its land was owned among three families—the Mariuses, the Gratidiuses, and the Tullius Ciceros. When an outsider was needed as wife or husband of a Marius or a Gratidius or a Tullius Cicero, feelers went out not to Rome but toPuteoli, where the Granius family lived; the Graniuses were a prosperous clan of seagoing merchants who had originally hailed from Arpinum.

Gaius Marius's bride had been arranged for him when he was still a little boy, and she waited patiently in the Granius household at Puteoli to grow up, for she was even younger than her betrothed. But when Gaius Marius fell in love, it was not with a woman. Or a man. He fell in love with the army—a natural, joyous, spontaneous recognition of the life's partner. Enrolled as a cadet on his seventeenth birthday and lamenting the fact that there were no important wars going on, he nonetheless managed to serve continuously in the ranks of the most junior officers of the consul's legions until, aged twenty-three, he was posted to the personal staff of Scipio Aemilianus before Numantia, in Spain.

It hadn't taken him long to befriend Publius Rutilius Rufus and Prince Jugurtha of Numidia, for they were all the same age, and all stood very high in the esteem of Scipio Aemilianus, who called them the Terrible Trio. None of the three was from the highest circles of Rome. Jugurtha was a complete outsider, Publius Rutilius Rufus's family hadn't been in the Senate more than a hundred years and had not so far managed to reach the consulship, and Gaius Marius was from a family of country squires. At this time, of course, none of the three was a bit interested in Roman politics; all they cared about was soldiering.

But Gaius Marius was a very special case. He was born to be a soldier, but more than that; he was born to lead soldiers.

"He just knows what to do and how to do it," said Scipio Aemilianus, with a sigh that might perhaps have been envy. Not that Scipio Aemilianus didn't know what to do and how to do it, but he had been listening to generals talk in the dining room since his early boyhood, and only he really knew the degree of innate spontaneity his own soldiering contained. Very little, was the truth. Scipio Aemilianus's great talent lay in his organization, not in his soldiering. He believed that if a campaign was thoroughly thrashed out in the planning room even before the first legionary was enlisted, soldiering had not much to do with the outcome.

Where Gaius Marius was a natural. At seventeen he had still been rather small and thin; a picky eater and a crochety child always, he had been pampered by his mother and secretly despised by his father. Then he lashed on his first pair of military boots and buckled the plates of a good plain bronze cuirass over his stout leather underdress. And grew in mind and body until he was bigger than everyone else physically, intellectually, in strength and courage and independence. At which point his mother began to reject him and his father swelled with pride in him.

In Gaius Marius's opinion there was no life like it, to be an integral part of the greatest military machine the world had ever known—the Roman legion. No route march was too arduous, no lesson in swordplay too long or too vicious, no humiliating task humiliating enough to stem the rising tide of his huge enthusiasm. He didn't care what they gave him to do, as long as he was soldiering.

It was at Numantia too that he met a seventeen-year-old cadet who had come from Rome to join Scipio Aemilianus's own select little band at Scipio Aemilianus's express request. This lad was Quintus Caecilius Metellus, the younger brother of that Caecilius Metellus who would, after a campaign against the tribesmen of the Dalmatian hills of Illyricum, adopt the last name of Dalmaticus and get himself appointed Pontifex Maximus, highest priest in the State religion.

Young Metellus was a typical Caecilius Metellus: a plodder, with no spark or flair for the work on hand, yet determined to do it and unshakably convinced he could do it superbly well. Though loyalty to his class prevented Scipio Aemilianus's saying so, perhaps the seventeen-year-old expert at everything irritated him, for not long after young Metellus arrived at Spanish Numantia, Scipio Aemilianus handed him over to the tender mercies of the Terrible Trio—Jugurtha, Rutilius Rufus, and Marius. Not old enough themselves to feel pity, they were as resentful as they were displeased at being given this self-opinionated millstone. And they took it out on young Metellus, not cruelly, just toughly.

While Numantia held out and Scipio Aemilianus was busy, the lad put up with his lot. Then Numantia fell. Was torn down, extirpated. And everyone from highest officer to merest ranker soldier was allowed to get drunk. The Terrible Trio got drunk. So did young Quintus Caecilius Metellus, for it happened to be his birthday; he turned eighteen. And the Terrible Trio thought it a great joke to throw the birthday boy into a pigsty.

He came out of the muck sober, spitting mad—and spitting spite. "You—you pathetic upstarts! Who do you think you are? Well, let me tell you! You're nothing but a greasy foreigner, Jugurtha! Not fit to lick a Roman's boots! And you're a jumped-up favor currier, Rutilius! As for you, Gaius Marius, you're nothing more than an Italian hayseed with no Greek! How dare you! How
dare
you! Don't you appreciate who I am? Don't you understand who my family is?
I
am a Caecilius Metellus, and we were kings in Etruria before Rome was ever thought of! For months I've suffered your insults, but no more! Treating
me
like an underling, as if
I
were the inferior! How dare you! How
dare
you!"

Jugurtha and Rutilius Rufus and Gaius Marius hung rocking gently on the pigsty fence, blinking like owls, faces slack. Then Publius Rutilius Rufus, who was that rare individual capable of scholarship as profound as his soldiering was practical, put a leg over the top of the fence and managed to balance himself astride it, a huge smile growing.

"Don't mistake me, I really do appreciate everything you're saying, Quintus Caecilius," he said, "but the trouble is that you've got a big fat pig turd on your head instead of a crown, O King of Etruria!" Out came a giggle. "Go and have a bath, then tell us again. We'll probably manage not to laugh."

Metellus reached up and brushed his head furiously, too enraged to take sensible advice, especially when it was tendered with such a smile. "Rutilius!" he spat. "What sort of name is that, to adorn the Senate rolls? Oscan nobodies, that's who you are!
Peasants!"

"Oh, come now!" said Rutilius Rufus gently. "My Etruscan is quite good enough to translate the meaning of 'Metellus' into Latin, you know." He twisted where he sat on the fence and looked at Jugurtha and Marius. "It means, freed from service as a mercenary," he said to them gravely.

That was too much. Young Metellus launched himself at Rutilius Rufus and brought him crashing down into the aromatic mire, where the two of them rolled and wrestled and thumped without enough traction to harm each other until Jugurtha and Marius decided it looked good in there, and dived in after them. Howling with laughter, they sat in the mud amid the more impudent pigs, which in the manner of impudent pigs couldn't resist investigating them thoroughly. When the Terrible Trio stopped sitting on Metellus and rubbing muck all over him, he floundered to his feet and escaped.

"You'll pay for this!" he said through his teeth.

"Oh, pull your head in!" said Jugurtha, and broke into fresh paroxysms of mirth.

But the wheel, thought Gaius Marius as he climbed out of his bath and picked up a towel to dry himself, turns full circle no matter what we do. Spite from the mouth of a half-grown sprig of a most noble house was no less true for being spiteful. Who were they in actual fact, the Terrible Trio of Numantia? Why, they were a greasy foreigner, a jumped-up favor currier, and an Italian hayseed with no Greek. That's who they were. Rome had taught them the truth of it, all right.

Jugurtha should have been acknowledged King of Numidia years ago, brought firmly yet kindly into the Roman fold of client-kings, kept there with sound advice and fair dealing. Instead, he had suffered the implacable enmity of the entire Caecilius Metellus faction, and was currently in Rome with his back against the wall, fighting a last-ditch stand against a group of Numidian would-be kings, forced to buy what his worth and his ability ought to have earned him free and aboveboard.

And dear little sandy-headed Publius Rutilius Rufus, the favorite pupil of Panaetius the philosopher, admired by the whole of the Scipionic Circle—writer, soldier, wit, politician of extraordinary excellence—had been cheated of his consulship in the same year Marius had barely managed a praetorship. Not only was Rutilius's background not good enough, he had also incurred the enmity of the Caecilius Metelluses, and that meant he—like Jugurtha—automatically became an enemy of Marcus Aemilius Scaurus, closely allied to the Caecilius Metelluses. and chief glory of their faction.

As for Gaius Marius—well, as Quintus Caecilius Metellus Piggle-wiggle would say, he had done better than any Italian hayseed with no Greek should. Why had he ever decided to go to Rome and try the political ladder anyway? Simple. Because Scipio Aemilianus (like most of the highest patricians, Scipio Aemilianus was no snob) thought he must. He was too good a man to waste filling a country squire's shoes, Scipio Aemilianus had said. Even more important, if he didn't become a praetor, he could never command an army of Rome.

So Marius had stood for election as a tribune of the soldiers, got in easily, then stood for election as a quaestor, was approved by the censors—and found himself, an Italian hayseed with no Greek, a member of the Senate of Rome. How amazing that had been! How stunned his family back in Arpinum! He'd done his share of time serving and managed to scramble a little way upward. Oddly enough, it had been Caecilius Metellus support which had then secured him election as a tribune of the plebs in the severely reactionary time which had followed immediately after the death of Gaius Gracchus. When Marius had first sought election to the College of Tribunes of the Plebs, he hadn't got in; the year he did get in, the Caecilius Metellus faction was convinced it owned him. Until he showed it otherwise by acting vigorously to preserve the freedom of the Plebeian Assembly, never more threatened with being overpowered by the Senate than after the death of Gaius Gracchus. Lucius Caecilius Metellus Dalmaticus tried to push a law through that would have curtailed the ability of the Plebeian Assembly to legislate, and Gaius Marius vetoed it. Nor could Gaius Marius be cajoled, coaxed, or coerced into withdrawing his veto.

But that veto had cost him dearly. After his year as a tribune of the plebs, he tried to run for one of the two plebeian aedile magistracies, only to be foiled by the Caecilius Metellus lobby. So he had campaigned strenuously for the praetorship, and encountered Caecilius Metellus opposition yet again. Led by Metellus Dalmaticus, they had employed the usual kind of defamation—he was impotent, he molested little boys, he ate excrement, he belonged to secret societies of Bacchic and Orphic vice, he accepted every kind of bribe, he slept with his sister and his mother. But they had also employed a more insidious form of defamation more effectively; they simply said that Gaius Marius was not a Roman, that Gaius Marius was an upcountry Italian nobody, and that Rome could produce more than enough true sons of Rome to make it unnecessary for any Roman to elect a Gaius Marius to the praetorship. It was a telling point.

Minor criticism though it was compared to the rest, the most galling calumny of all as far as Gaius Marius was concerned was the perpetual inference that he was unacceptably crass because he had no Greek. The slur wasn't true; he spoke very good Greek. However, his tutors had
been Asian Greeks—his pedagogue hailed from Lampsacus on the Hellespont, and his
grammaticus
from Amisus on the coast of Pontus—and they spoke a heavily accented Greek. Thus Gaius Marius had learned Greek with a twang to it that branded him improperly taught—as a common, underbred sort of fellow. He had been obliged to acknowledge himself defeated; if he said no Greek at all or if he said miles of Asian Greek, it came to the same thing. In consequence he ignored the slander by refusing to speak the language which indicated that a man was properly educated and cultured.

Never mind. He had scraped in last among the praetors, but he had scraped in nonetheless.
And
survived a trumped-up charge of bribery brought against him just after the election. Bribery! As if he could have! No, in those days he hadn't had the kind of money necessary to buy a magistracy. But luckily there were among the electors enough men who either knew firsthand of his soldierly valor, or had heard about it from those who did. The Roman electorate always had a soft spot for an excellent soldier, and it was that soft spot which won for him.

The Senate had posted him to Further Spain as its governor, thinking he'd be out of sight, out of mind, and perhaps handy. But since he was a quintessential Military Man, he thrived.

*     *     *

The Spaniards—especially the half-tamed tribes of the Lusitanian west and the Cantabrian northwest—excelled in a kind of warfare that didn't suit most Roman commanders any more than it suited the style of the Roman legions. Spaniards never deployed for battle in the traditional way, cared nothing for the universally accepted tenet that it was better to gamble everything you had on the off chance of winning a decisive battle than to incur the horrific costs of a prolonged war. The Spaniards already understood that they were fighting a prolonged war, a war which they had to continue so long as they desired to preserve their Celtiberian identity; as far as they were concerned, they were engaged in an ongoing struggle for social and cultural independence.