The First Man in Rome (88 page)

A more perceptive and intelligent man would have gently taxed Livia Drusa with these things, but Caepio Junior tended to put it all down to his own imagination, having too little imagination to understand he lacked it. Mentally acute enough to know there was something radically wrong, he was not mentally acute enough to make the correct assumptions. Certainly it never occurred to him that she didn't love him, though before they married he had been sure she positively disliked him. But that had been his imagination. For she could not have disliked him, when she had proven a model Roman wife. Therefore—she must love him.

His daughter, Servilia, was an object rather than a human creature to Caepio Junior, disappointed that he hadn't been dowered with a son. So now he sat down while Livia Drusa gave the baby a few rubs on the back, then handed her over to her Macedonian nursemaid.

"Did you know that your brother actually voted for Gaius Marius in the consular elections?" he asked.

Livia Drusa's eyes widened. "No. Are you sure?"

"He said so today, to Quintus Caecilius Metellus Numidicus. While I was there. Waffled on about being at Arausio. Oh, I wish my father's enemies would let that die a natural death!"

"Give it time, Quintus Servilius."

"It's getting worse," said Caepio Junior despondently.

"Are you in to dinner?"

"No, on my way out again, actually. Going to eat at Lucius Licinius Orator's house. Marcus Livius will be there too."

"Oh," said Livia Drusa flatly.

"Sorry, did mean to tell you this morning. Just forgot," said her husband, getting up. "You don't mind, do you?"

"No, of course not," said Livia Drusa tonelessly.

Of course she did mind, not because she craved her husband's company, but because a little forethought on his part might have saved both money and effort in the kitchen. They lived with Caepio the father, who was forever complaining about the size of the household bills, and forever blaming Livia Drusa for not being a more careful housekeeper. It never occurred to Caepio the father any more than it did to his son that neither of them bothered to apprise her of their movements, and so every day she was obliged to make sure a proper dinner was prepared, even if no one turned up to eat it, and it went back almost untouched to slide down the gullets of Caepio the father's ecstatic slaves.

"Domina,
shall I take the baby back to the nursery?" the Macedonian girl asked.

Livia Drusa started out of her reverie, nodded. "Yes," she said, not even giving the child a glance in passing as the maid carried her off. That she was breast-feeding her daughter was not out of any consideration for the welfare of baby Servilia; it was because she knew while ever she gave the baby her milk, she would not conceive again.

She didn't care for baby Servilia very much; every time she looked at the mite, she saw a miniature copy of the mite's father—short legs, a darkness so dark it was disquieting, a dense coat of black hair along spine, arms and legs, and a shock of coarse black head hair which grew low down on the forehead and the back of the neck like an animal's pelt. To Livia Drusa, little Servilia possessed no virtues whatsoever. She didn't even attempt to list the baby's assets, which were by no means contemptible, for she had a pair of black eyes so big and dark that they promised great beauty later on, and the tiniest rosebud of a mouth, still and secretive, another harbinger of beauty.

The eighteen months of her marriage had not reconciled Livia Drusa to her fate, though never once did she disobey her brother Drusus's orders; her courtesy and demeanor were perfect. Even in the midst of her frequent sexual encounters with Caepio Junior, she behaved impeccably. Luckily her high birth and status precluded an ardent response; Caepio Junior would have been appalled if she had moaned in ecstasy or thrown herself around in the bed as if she enjoyed herself in the manner of a mistress. All she was obliged to do, she did in the manner her wifehood dictated—flat on her back, no fancy hipwork, a suitable meed of warmth, and unassailable modesty. Oh, but it was difficult! More difficult than any other aspect of her life, for when her husband touched her she wanted to scream rape and violation, and vomit in his face.

There was no room in her to pity Caepio Junior, who in actual fact had never really done anything to deserve the passionate revulsion she felt for him. By now, he and her brother Drusus had merged indissolubly into a single vast and threatening presence capable of reducing her to far worse circumstances; hideously afraid of them, she moved on day by day toward death aware that she was never going to know what it was like to live.

Worst of all was her geographical exile. The Servilius Caepio house was on the Circus Maximus side of the Palatine, looked across to the Aventine, and had no houses below it, just a steep and rocky cliff. There were no more chances to stand on Drusus's loggia watching the balcony of the house underneath for a glimpse of her red-haired Odysseus.

And Caepio the father was a singularly unpleasant man who grew steadily more unpleasant as time went on; he didn't even have a wife to lighten Livia Drusa's burden, though so remote was he and so remote was her relationship with his son that she never found the courage to ask either of them whether the wife/mother was alive or dead. Of course Caepio the father's temper was tried more and more as time went on because of his part in the disaster at Arausio. First he had been stripped of his imperium, then the tribune of the plebs Lucius Cassius Longinus had succeeded in passing a law stripping his seat in the Senate from him, and now hardly a month went by without some enterprising would-be crowd pleaser trying to prosecute him on thinly veiled treason charges. Virtually confined to his house by the virulent hatred of the People and his own lively sense of self-preservation, Caepio the father spent a good deal of his time watching Livia Drusa—and criticizing her remorselessly.

However, she didn't help matters by doing some very silly things. One day her father-in-law's mania for watching her made her so angry that she marched out into the middle of the peristyle-garden where no one could overhear what she said, and began to talk to herself aloud. The moment the slaves began to gather beneath the colonnade and whisper debates as to what she might be doing, Caepio the father erupted out of his study with a face like flint.

Down the path he came and stood over her fiercely. "What do you think you're doing, girl?" he demanded.

Her big dark eyes opened guilessly wide. "I'm reciting the lay of King Odysseus," she said.

"Well, don't!" snarled her father-in-law. "You're making a spectacle of yourself! The servants are saying you've gone off your head! If you must recite Homer, then do it where people can
hear
it's Homer! Though why you'd want to beats me."

"It passes the time," she said.

"There are better ways to pass the time, girl. Set up your loom, or sing to your baby, or do whatever else women do. Go on, go on, go away!"

"I don't know what women do, Father," she said, getting to her feet. "What do women do?"

"Drive men insane!" he said, went back into his study and shut the door with a snap.

After that she went even further, for she took Caepio the father's advice and set up her loom. The only trouble was, she began to weave the first of a whole series of funeral dresses, and as she worked she talked very loudly to an imaginary King Odysseus, pretending that he hadbeen away for years and she was weaving funeral dresses to stave off the day when she must choose a new husband; every so often she would pause in her monologue and sit with head cocked to one side, as if she were listening to someone speak.

This time Caepio the father sent his son to find out what was the matter.

"I'm weaving my funeral dress," she said calmly, "and trying to find out when King Odysseus is coming home to rescue me. He will rescue me, you know. One day."

Caepio Junior gaped.
"Rescue
you? What are you talking about, Livia Drusa?"

"I never set foot outside this house," she said.

Flinging his hands up, Caepio Junior made a small sound of exasperation. “Well, what's to stop you going out if you want to, for Juno's sake?"

Her jaw dropped; she could think of nothing to say except "I don't have any money."

"You want money? I'll
give
you money, Livia Drusa! Just stop worrying my father!" cried Caepio Junior, goaded from two directions. "Go out whenever you want! Buy whatever you want!"

Face wreathed in smiles, she walked across the room and kissed her husband on the cheek. "Thank you," she said, and meant it so sincerely that she actually hugged him.

It had been as easy as that! All those years of enforced isolation were gone. For it had not occurred to Livia Drusa that in passing from the authority of her brother to the authority of her husband and his father, the rules might have changed a little.

4

When Lucius Appuleius Saturninus was elected a tribune of the plebs, his gratitude to Gaius Marius knew no bounds. Now he could vindicate himself! Nor was he completely without allies, as he soon discovered; one of the other tribunes of the plebs was a client of Marius's from Etruria, one Gaius Norbanus, who had considerable wealth but no senatorial clout because he had no senatorial background. And there was a MarcusBaebius, one of the ever-tribuning Baebius clan who were justly notorious for their bribe taking; he might be bought if it proved necessary.

Unfortunately the opposite end of the tribunes' bench was occupied by three formidably conservative opponents. On the very end of the bench was Lucius Aurelius Cotta, son of the dead consul Cotta, nephew of the ex-praetor Marcus Cotta, and half brother of Aurelia, the wife of young Gaius Julius Caesar. Next to him sat Lucius Antistius Reginus, of respectable but not spectacular background, and rumored to be a client of the consular Quintus Servilius Caepio, therefore faintly smeared with Caepio's odium. The third man was Titus Didius, a very efficient and quiet man whose family had originally hailed from Campania, and who had made himself a considerable reputation as a soldier.

Those in the middle of the bench were very humble tribunes of the plebs, and seemed to think that their chief role throughout the coming year was going to be keeping the opposite ends of the bench from tearing each other's throats out. For indeed there was no love lost between the men Scaurus would have apostrophized as demagogues and the men Scaurus commended for never losing sight of the fact that they were senators before they were tribunes of the plebs.

Not that Saturninus was worried. He had swept into office at the top of the college, followed closely by Gaius Norbanus, which gave the conservatives notice that the People had lost none of their affection for Gaius Marius—and that Marius had thought it worthwhile to spend a great deal of his money buying votes for Saturninus and Norbanus. It was necessary that Saturninus and Norbanus strike swiftly, for interest in the Plebeian Assembly waned dramatically after some three months of the year had gone by; this was partly due to boredom on the part of the People, and partly due to the fact that no tribune of the plebs could keep up the pace for longer than three months. The tribune of the plebs spent himself early, like Aesop's hare, while the old senatorial tortoise kept plodding on at the same rate.

"All they'll see is my dust," Saturninus said to Glaucia as the tenth day of the month of December drew near, the day upon which the new college would enter office.

"What's first?" asked Glaucia idly, a little put out that he, older than Saturninus, had not yet found the opportunity to seek election as a tribune of the plebs.

Saturninus grinned wolfishly. "A little agrarian law," he said, "to help my friend and benefactor Gaius Marius."

With great care in his planning and through the medium of a magnificent speech, Saturninus tabled for discussion a law to distribute the
ager Africanus insularum,
reserved in the public domain by Lucius Marcius Philippus one year before; it was now to be divided among Marius's Head Count soldiers at the end of their service in the legions, at the rate of a hundred
iugera
per man. Oh, how he enjoyed it! The howls of approbation from the People, the howls of outrage from the Senate, the fist that Lucius Cotta raised, the strong and candid speech Gaius Norbanus made in support of his measure.

"I never realized how interesting the tribunate of the plebs can be," he said after the
contio
meeting was dissolved, and he and Glaucia dined alone at Glaucia's house.

"Well, you certainly had the Policy Makers on the defensive," said Glaucia, grinning at the memory. "I thought Metellus Numidicus was going to rupture a blood vessel!"

"A pity he didn't." Saturninus lay back with a sigh of content, eyes roaming reflectively over the patterns sooty smoke from lamps and braziers had made on the ceiling, which was badly in need of new paint. "Odd how they think, isn't it? Even breathe the words 'agrarian bill' and they're up in arms, yelling about the Brothers Gracchi, horrified at the idea of giving something away for nothing to men without the wit to acquire anything. Even the Head Count doesn't approve of giving something away for nothing!"

"Well, it's a pretty novel concept to all right-thinking Romans, really," said Glaucia.

"And after they got over that, they started to yell about the huge size of the allotments—ten times the size of a smallholding in Campania, moaned the Policy Makers. You'd think they'd know without being told that an island in the African Lesser Syrtis isn't one tenth as fertile as the worst smallholding in Campania, nor the rainfall one tenth as reliable," said Saturninus.

"Yes, but the debate was really about so many thousands of new clients for Gaius Marius, wasn't it?" asked Glaucia. "That's where the shoe actually pinches, you know. Every retired veteran in a Head Count army is a potential client for his general—especially when his general has gone to the trouble of securing him a piece of land for his old age. He's
beholden
!
Only he doesn't see that it's the State that is his true benefactor, since the State has to find the land. He thanks his general. He thanks Gaius Marius. And that's what the Policy Makers are up in arms about.''

"Agreed. But fighting it isn't the answer, Gaius Servilius. The answer is to enact a general law covering all Head Count armies for all time—ten
iugera
of good land to every man who completes his time in the legions—say, fifteen years? Twenty, even? Given irrespective of how many generals the soldier serves under, or how many different campaigns he sees."

Glaucia laughed in genuine amusement. "That's too much like good sound common sense, Lucius Appuleius! And think of the knights a law like that would alienate. Less land for them to lease—not to mention our esteemed pastoralist senators!"

"If the land was in Italy, I'd see it," said Saturninus. "But the islands off the coast of Africa? I ask you, Gaius Servilius! Of what conceivable use are they to these dogs guarding their stinking old bones? Compared to the millions of
iugera
Gaius Marius gave away in the name of Rome along the Ubus and the Chelif and around Lake Tritonis— and all to exactly the same men currently screaming!—this is a pittance!"

Glaucia rolled his long-lashed grey-green eyes, lay flat on his back, flapped his hands like a stranded turtle his flippers, and started to laugh again. "I liked Scaurus's speech best, though. He's clever, that one. The rest of them don't matter much apart from their clout." He lifted his head and stared at Saturninus. "Are you prepared for tomorrow in the Senate?" he asked.

"I believe so," said Saturninus happily. "Lucius Appuleius returns to the Senate! And this time they can't throw me out before my term in office is finished! It would take the thirty-five tribes to do that, and they won't do that.

Whether the Policy Makers like it or not, I'm back inside their hallowed portals as angry as a wasp—and just as nasty."

He entered the Senate as if he owned it, with a sweeping obeisance to Scaurus Princeps Senatus, and flourishes of his right hand to each side of the House, which was almost full, a sure sign of a coming battle. The outcome, he decided, did not matter very much, for the arena in which the real conflict would be decided lay outside the Curia Hostilia's doors, down in the well of the Comitia; this was brazening-it-out day, the disgraced grain quaestor transmogrified into the tribune of the plebs, a bitter surprise indeed for the Policy Makers.

And for the Conscript Fathers of the Senate he took a new tack, one he fully intended to present later in the Plebeian Assembly; this would be a trial run.

"Rome's sphere of influence has not been limited to Italy for a very long time," he said. "All of us know the trouble King Jugurtha caused Rome. All of us are forever grateful to the esteemed senior consul, Gaius Marius, for settling the war in Africa so brilliantly—and so
finally.
But how can we in Rome today guarantee the generations to come that our provinces will be peaceful and their fruits ours to enjoy? We have a tradition concerning the customs of peoples not Roman, though they live in our provinces—they are free to pursue their religious practices, their trade practices, their political practices.
Provided
these pursuits do not hamper Rome, or offer a threat to Rome. But one of the less desirable side effects of our tradition of noninterference is ignorance. Not one of our provinces further from Italy than Italian Gaul and Sicily knows enough about Rome and Romans to favor co-operation over resistance. Had the people of Numidia known more about us, Jugurtha would never have managed to persuade them to follow him. Had the people of Mauretania known more about us, Jugurtha would never have managed to persuade King Bocchus to follow him."

He cleared his throat; the House was taking it well so far—but then, he hadn't reached his conclusion. Now he did. "Which brings me to the matter of the
ager Africanus insularum.
Strategically these islands are of little importance. In size they are modest. None of us here in this House will miss them. They contain no gold, no silver, no iron, no exotic spices. They are not particularly fertile when compared to the fabulous grainlands of the Bagradas River, where quite a few of us here in this House own properties, as do many knights of the First Class. So why
not
give them to Gaius Marius's Head Count soldiers upon their retirement? Do we really want close to forty thousand Head Count veterans frequenting the taverns and alleys of Rome? Jobless, aimless, penniless after they've spent their tiny shares of the army's booty? Isn't it better for them — and for Rome! — to settle them on the
ager Africanus insularum
?
For, Conscript Fathers, there is one job left that they in their retirement can do. They can bring Rome to the province of Africa! Our language, our customs, our gods, our very way of life! Through these brave and cheerful expatriate Roman soldiers, the peoples of Africa Province can come to understand Rome better, for these brave and cheerful expatriate Roman soldiers are
ordinary
— no richer, no brighter, no more privileged than many among the native peoples they will mingle with on a day-to-day basis. Some will marry local girls. All will fraternize. And the result will be less war, greater peace."

It was said persuasively, reasonably, without any of the grander periods and gestures of Asianic rhetoric, and as he warmed to his peroration Saturninus began to believe that he would make them, the pigheaded members of this elite body, see at last where the vision of men like Gaius Marius — and himself! — would lead their beloved Rome.

And when he moved back to his end of the tribunes' bench, he sensed nothing in the silence to gainsay his conviction. Until he realized that they were waiting. Waiting for one of the Policy Makers to point the way. Sheep. Sheep, sheep, sheep. Wretched woolly pea-brained sheep.

"May I?" asked Lucius Caecilius Metellus Dalmaticus Pontifex Maximus of the presiding magistrate, the junior consul, Gaius Flavius Fimbria.

"You have the floor, Lucius Caecilius," said Fimbria.

He took the floor, his anger, well concealed until that moment, breaking the bounds of control with the sudden flare of tinder. "Rome is exclusive!" he trumpeted, so loudly that some of the listeners jumped. "How dare any Roman elevated to membership of this House propose a program aimed at turning the rest of the world into imitation Romans?"

Dalmaticus's normal pose of superior aloofness had vanished; he swelled up, empurpled, the veins beneath his plump pink cheeks no darker than those selfsame cheeks. And he trembled, he vibrated almost as quickly as the wings of a moth, so angry was he. Fascinated, awed, every last man present in the House sat forward to listen to a Dalmaticus Pontifex Maximus no one had ever dreamed existed.

"Well, Conscript Fathers, we all know this particular Roman, don't we?" he brayed. "Lucius Appuleius Saturninus is a thief—an exploiter of food shortages—an effeminate vulgarity—a polluter of little boys who harbors filthy lusts for his sister and his young daughter—a puppet manipulated by the Arpinate dollmaster in Gaul-across-the-Alps—a cockroach out of Rome's vilest stew—a pimp—a pansy—a pornographer—the creature on the end of every
verpa
in town! What does he know of Rome, what does his peasant dollmaster from Arpinum know of Rome? Rome is exclusive! Rome cannot be tossed to the world like shit to sewers, like spit to gutters! Are we to endure the dilution of our race through hybrid unions with the raggle-taggle women of half a hundred nations? Are we in the future to journey to places far from Rome and have our Roman ears defiled by a bastard Latin argot? Let them speak Greek, I say! Let them worship Serapis of the Scrotum or Astarte of the Anus! What does that matter to us? But
we
are to give them
Quirinus
?
Who are the Quirites, the children of Quirinus?
We
are! For who is this Quirinus? Only a Roman can know! Quirinus is the spirit of the Roman citizenship; Quirinus is the god of the assembly of Roman men; Quirinus is the unconquered god because Rome has never been conquered—
and never will be conquered,
fellow Quirites!"

The whole House erupted into screaming cheers; while Dalmaticus Pontifex Maximus staggered to his stool and almost fell onto it, men wept, men stamped their feet, men clapped until their hands were numb, men turned to each other with the tears streaming down their faces, and embraced.

But so much emotion uncontained spent itself like sea foam on basaltic rock, and when the tears dried and the bodies ceased to shake, the men of the Senate of Rome found themselves with nothing more to give that day, and dragged their leaden feet home to live again in dreams that one magical moment when they actually saw the vision of faceless Quirinus rear up to throw his numinous toga over them as a father over his truehearted and unfailingly loyal sons.