The First Man in Rome (92 page)

Scaurus rolled about in paroxysms of laughter the moment the verdict came in—much to the disgust of Metellus Numidicus, who couldn't see the funny side at all.

"Really, Marcus Aemilius, you are the
limit
!
It's an outrage!" he bleated. "That bad-tempered and dirty-livered
pipinna
as Pontifex Maximus? After my dear brother, Dalmaticus? And versus you? Or me?" He pounded his fist against one of the Volscian ship's beaks which had given the rostra its name. "Oh, if there is any time when I
detest
Romans, it's when their perverted sense of the ridiculous overcomes their normal sense of fitness! I can forgive the passage of a Saturninus law easier than I can forgive this! At least in a Saturninus law, people's deep-rooted opinions are involved. But this—this farce? Sheer irresponsibility! I feel like joining Quintus Servilius in his exile, I'm so ashamed."

But the greater the fury Metellus Numidicus worked himself into, the harder Scaurus laughed. Finally, clutching his sides and looking at Metellus Numidicus through a curtain of tears, he managed to gasp, "Oh, stop behaving like an old Vestal confronted by a pair of hairy balls and a stiff prick! It is hilarious! And we deserve everything he's dished out to us!" Off he went again into a fresh convulsion; emitting a noise like a squeezed kitten, Metellus Numidicus stalked off.

Said Gaius Marius in a rare letter to Publius Rutilius Rufus, which its recipient got in September:

I know I ought to write more often, old friend, but the trouble is, I'm not a comfortable correspondent. Now your letters are like a piece of cork thrown to a drowning man, full of yourself as you are—no frills, no fringes, no formality. There! I managed a little bit of style, but at what price you wouldn't believe.

No doubt you've been going to the Senate to endure our Piggle-wiggle oink-oinking against the cost to the State of keeping up a Head Count army through a second year of inertia on the far side of the Alps? And how am I going to get myself elected to a fourth term as consul, for the third time in a row? That of course is what I have to do. Otherwise—I lose everything I stand to gain. Because next year, Publius Rutilius, is going to be the year of the Germans. I know it in my bones. Yes, I admit I have no real basis yet for this feeling, but when Lucius Cornelius and Quintus Sertorius return, I am sure that is what they're going to say. I haven't heard from either of them since they came last year to bring me King Copillus. And though I'm glad my two tribunes of the plebs managed to convict Quintus Servilius Caepio, I'm still rather sorry I didn't have the chance to do the job myself, with Copillus testifying. Never mind. Quintus Servilius got his just reward. A pity however that Rome will never lay eyes on the Gold of Tolosa. It would have paid for many a Head Count army.

Life goes on here much as always. The Via Domitia is now in mint condition all the way from Nemausus to Ocelum, which will make it a great deal easier for legions on the march in the future. It had been let go to ruin. Parts of it had not been touched since our new Pontifex Maximus's
tata
was through here nearly twenty years ago. Floods and frosts and the runoff from sudden cloudbursts had taken an awful toll. Of course it's not like building a new road. Once the stones are fitted into place in the roadbed, the base is there forever. But you can't expect men to march and wagons to roll and hooves to trot safely across the ups and downs of outsized cobbles, now can you? The top surface of sand and gravel and quarry dust has to be kept as smooth as an egg, and watered until it packs down like concrete. Take it from me, the Via Domitia at the moment is a credit to my men.

We also built a new causeway across the Rhodanus marshes all the way from Nemausus to Arelate, by the way. And we've just about finished digging a new ship canal from the sea to Arelate, to bypass the swamps and mud flats and sandbars of the natural waterway. All the big Greek fish in Massilia are groveling with their noses pressed against my arse in thanks—slimy gang of hypocrites they are! Gratitude hasn't caused any price cuts in whatever they sell my army, I note!

In case you should come to hear of it and the story gets distorted—as stories about me and mine always seem to—I will tell you what happened with Gaius Lusius. You remember, my sister-in-law's sister's boy? Came to me as a tribune of the soldiers. Only it turned out that wasn't what he wanted to be of the soldiers. My provost marshal came to me two weeks ago with what he thought was going to be a very bad piece of personal news. Gaius Lusius had been found dead down in the rankers' barracks, split from gizzard to breadbasket by the neatest bit of sword work any commander could ask for from a ranker. The guilty soldier had given himself up—nice young chap too—finest type, his centurion told me. Turns out Lusius was a pansy and took a fancy to this soldier. And he kept on pestering, wouldn't let up. Then it became a joke in the century, with everyone mincing around flapping their hands and fluttering their eyelashes. The poor young ranker couldn't win. Result—murder. Anyway, I had to court-martial the soldier, and I must say it gave me great pleasure to acquit him with praise, a promotion, and a purse full of money. There. Did it again, got in a bit of literary style.

The business turned out well for me too. I was able to prove that Lusius wasn't a blood relation, first off. And in close second place, it was a chance for me to show the rankers that their general sees justice done as justice should be done, no favoritism for members of the family. I suppose there must be jobs a pansy can do, but the legions are no place for him, that's definite, eh, Publius Rutilius? Can you imagine what we'd have done to Lusius at Numantia? He wouldn't have got off with a nice clean death; he'd have been singing soprano. Though you grow up eventually. I'll never forget what a shock I got listening to some of the things that were said about Scipio Aemilianus at his funeral! Well, he never put the hard word on me, so I still don't know. Odd fellow, but—I think these stories get around when men don't sire children.

And that's about it. Oh, except I made a few changes in the
pilum
this year, and I expect my new version will become standard issue. If you've got any spare cash, go out and buy some shares in one of the new factories bound to spring up to make them. Or found a factory yourself—as long as you own the building, the censors can't accuse you of unsenatorial practices, can they, now?

Anyway, what I did was change the design of the junction between the iron shaft and the wooden shaft. The
pilum
is such an efficient piece of work compared to the old
hasta-
type
spear, but there's no doubt they're a lot more expensive to make—little properly barbed head instead of big leafy head, long iron shaft, and then a wooden shaft shaped to suit the throwing action instead of the old
hasta
broom handle. I've noticed over the years that the Enemy love to get their fingers on a
pilum,
so they deliberately provoke our green troops into throwing when there's no chance of hitting anything other than an Enemy shield. Then they either keep the
pilum
for another day, or they throw it back at us.

What I did was work out a way of joining the iron shaft to the wooden shaft with a weak pin. The minute the
pilum
hits anything, the shafts break apart where they join, so the Enemy can't throw them back at us, or make off with them. What's more, if we retain the field at the end of a battle, the armorers can go round and pick up all the broken bits, and fix them together again. Saves us money because it saves us losing them, and saves us lives because they can't be thrown back at us by the Enemy.

And that's definitely all the news. Write soon.

Publius Rutilius Rufus laid the letter down with a smile. Not too grammatical, not too graceful, not at all stylish. But then, that was Gaius Marius. He too was like his letters. This obsession about the consulship was worrying, however. On the one hand he could understand why Marius wanted to remain consul until the Germans were defeated— Marius knew no one else could defeat the Germans. On the other hand, Rutilius Rufus was too much a Roman of his class to approve, even taking the Germans into account. Was a Rome so altered by Marian political innovations it was no longer the Rome of Romulus really worth it? Rutilius Rufus wished he knew. It was very difficult to love a man the way he loved Marius, yet live with the trail of blasted traditions he left in his wake. The
pilum,
for Juno's sake! Could he leave
nothing
the way he found it?

Still, Publius Rutilius Rufus sat down and replied to the letter at once. Because he did love Gaius Marius.

This being a rather sluggish kind of summer, I'm afraid I haven't a great deal to report, dear Gaius Marius. Nothing of moment, anyway. Your esteemed colleague Lucius Aurelius Orestes, the junior consul, isn't well, but then, he wasn't well when he was elected. I don't understand why he stood, except I suppose he felt he deserved the office. It remains to be seen whether the office has deserved him. Somehow I doubt the latter.

A couple of juicy scandals are about all the news, but I know you'll enjoy them as much as I did. Interestingly enough, both involve your tribune of the plebs, Lucius Appuleius Saturninus. An extraordinary fellow, you know. A mass of contradictions. Such a pity, I always think, that Scaurus singled him out like that. Saturninus entered the Senate, I am sure, with the avowed intention of becoming the first Appuleius to sit in the consul's chair. Now he burns to tear the Senate down to the point where the consuls are no more effective than a wax mask. Yes, yes, I can hear you saying I'm being unduly pessimistic, and I'm exaggerating, and my view of things is warped by my love of the old ways. But I'm right, all the same! You will excuse me, I hope, that I refer to everyone by
cognomen
only. This is going to be a long letter, and I'll save a few words that way.

Saturninus has been vindicated. What do you think about that? An amazing business, and one which has redounded very much to the credit of our venerated Princeps Senatus, Scaurus. You must admit he's a far finer man than his boon companion, Piggle-wiggle. But then, that's the difference between an Aemilius and a Caecilius.

You know—I know you know because I told you— that Scaurus has continued in his role as curator of the grain supply, and spends his time shuttling between Ostia and Rome, making life thoroughly miserable for the grain lords, who can get away with nothing. We have only one person to thank for the remarkable stability of grain prices these last two harvests, in spite of the shortages. Scaurus!

Yes, yes, I'll cease the panegyric and get on with the story. It seems that when Scaurus was down in Ostia about two months ago, he ran into a grain-buying agent normally stationed in Sicily. There's no need to fill you in on the slave revolt there, since you get the Senate's dispatches regularly, except to say that I do think we sent the right man to Sicily as governor this year. He might be a pokered-up aristocrat with a mouth like a cat's arsehole, but Lucius Licinius Lucullus is as punctilious over matters like his reports to the House as he is in tidying up his battlefields.

Would you believe, incidentally, that an idiot praetor—one of the more dubiously antecedented (isn't that a good phrase?) plebeian Servilians who managed to buy himself election as an augur on the strength of his patron Ahenobarbus's money and now calls himself Gaius Servilius Augur, if you please!—actually had the gall the other day to stand up in the House and accuse Lucullus of deliberately prolonging the war in Sicily to ensure that his command is prorogued into next year?

On what grounds did he make this astonishing charge? I hear you ask. Why, because after Lucullus defeated the slave army so decisively, he didn't rush off to storm Triocala, leaving thirty-five thousand dead slaves on the field and all the pockets of servile resistance in the area of Heracleia Minoa to grow into fresh sores in our Roman hide! Lucullus did the job properly. Having defeated the slaves in battle, he then took a week to dispose of the dead, and flush out those pockets of servile resistance, before he moved on to Triocala, where the slaves who survived the battle had gone to earth. But Servilius the Augur says Lucullus should have flown like the birds of the sky straight to Triocala from the battle, for—alleges Servilius the Augur—the slaves who did go to earth in Triocala were in such a state of panic that they would have surrendered to him immediately! Where, as things turned out in the real world, by the time that Lucullus did get to Triocala, the slaves had got over their panic and decided to keep on fighting. Now from whom does Servilius the Augur get his information, you ask? Why, from his auguries, naturally! How else could he know what sort of state of mind a crowd of rebel slaves shut inside an impregnable fortress were in? And did you ever find Lucullus sufficiently devious to fight a huge battle, then work out a plan whereby he ensured that his term as governor was prorogued? What a mountain of rubbish! Lucullus did as his nature dictated—he tidied up alpha before he proceeded to start beta.