The Grass Crown (110 page)

Young Marius was now twenty-one years of age, and finding his feet as a man. Very fair and very handsome, he was also a fine physical specimen; too restless to settle himself to any mental task, he sought release in hunting, something King Hiempsal did not enjoy. However, his junior wife Salammbo did. The African plains teemed with wildlife—elephants and lions, ostrich and gazelle, antelope and bear, panther and gnu—and Young Marius spent his days out learning how to hunt animals he had never seen before. With Princess Salammbo as his guide and preceptress.

Perhaps thinking the public nature of these expeditions and the number of people involved in staffing them were sufficient protection to ensure the virtue of his junior wife, King Hiempsal saw no harm in sending Salammbo out with Young Marius; perhaps too he was grateful to have this overactive creature off his hands for days at a time. Himself closeted with Marius (who had markedly improved in his thinking since coming to Icosium), talking over old times, learning the stories of those campaigns in Numidia and Africa against Jugurtha, Hiempsal took copious notes for the archives of his family, and made bold to dream of an era when one of his sons or grandsons might actually be deemed grand enough to marry a Roman noblewoman. He had no illusions, Hiempsal; call himself royal he might, rule a big rich land he might, but in the eyes of the Roman nobility, he and his were less than the dust.

Of course the secret was not kept. One of the King’s minions reported to him that the days Salammbo spent with Young Marius were innocent enough, but the nights an entirely different matter. This revelation threw the King into a panic; on the one hand he could not ignore the unchastity of his wife, but on the other hand he could not do what he would normally have done—execute the cuckolder. So he salvaged what dignity he could out of the affair by informing Gaius Marius that the situation was too delicate to allow the fugitives to stay any longer, and asking Marius to sail as soon as his ship was properly provisioned.

“Young fool!” said Marius as they walked down to the harbor. “Weren’t there enough ordinary women available? Did you have to pilfer one of Hiempsal’s wives?”

Young Marius grinned, tried to look contrite, and failed.

“I’m sorry, Father, but she really was delicious. Besides, I didn’t seduce her—she seduced me.”

“You could have turned her down, you know.”

“I could have,” said Young Marius impenitently, “but I didn’t. She really was delicious.”

“You’re using the correct tense, my son. Was is right. The stupid woman has parted company with her head because of you.”

Knowing perfectly well that Marius was only annoyed because they were now obliged to move on, that otherwise he would have been pleased his boy could lure a foreign queen into indiscretion, Young Marius continued to grin. Salammbo’s fate worried neither of them; she knew the penalty for being caught would be on her own head.

“That’s too bad,” said Young Marius. “She really was—”

“Don’t say it!” his father interrupted sharply. “If you were smaller or I could balance on one leg, I’d put my boot so far up your arse I kicked your teeth out! We were comfortable.”

“Kick me if you like,” said Young Marius, bending over and presenting his rear to his father jokingly, legs wide, head between his knees. Why should he fear to do it? His crime was the sort a father could forgive his son with pleasure; and besides, in all his life Young Marius had never felt his father’s hand, let alone his foot.

Whereupon Marius gestured to the faithful Burgundus, who slid his arm around Marius’s waist and took his weight. Up came the right leg; Marius planted his heavy boot hard and accurately right inside the sensitive crevice between the son’s buttocks. That Young Marius did not pass out was purely due to pride; the pain was truly frightful. For some days he remained in agony, talking very hard to persuade himself that his father’s action had not been deliberate malice, that he had misgauged the intensity of his father’s feelings about the incident with Salammbo.

The Flight of Gaius Marius

From Icosium they sailed east along the north African coast and made no inhabited landfalls between Icosium and Gaius Marius’s new destination—the island of Cercina, in the African Lesser Syrtis. Here at last they did find safe harbor, for here were some thousands of Marius’s veteran legionaries settled to a life far removed from war. A little bored with farming wheat on hundred-iugera allotments, the grizzled veterans welcomed their old commander with open arms, made much of him and his son, and vowed that it would take every army Sulla’s Rome could marshal to prize loose their hold on Gaius Marius and freedom.

More worried about his father since that kick, Young Marius watched him closely; consumed with grief, he now saw many tiny evidences of a crumbling mentality, and marveled at the way his father was forgiven much because of who he was, or would suddenly summon up an enormous effort of will and seem perfectly normal. To those who didn’t see him often or intimately, there seemed nothing worse wrong with him than an occasional lapse of memory, or a look of puzzlement, or a tendency to wander off the subject if it failed to hold his interest. But could he hold a seventh consulship? Young Marius doubted it.

The alliance between the new consuls Gnaeus Octavius Ruso and Lucius Cornelius Cinna was at best uneasy, at worst a series of public arguments which took place in Senate and Forum both, and had the whole of Rome wondering who would win. That early rush to impeach Sulla had come to a sudden halt when Pompey Strabo sent a curt private letter to Cinna informing him that if he wanted to remain consul—and his tame tribunes of the plebs wanted to continue living—Lucius Cornelius Sulla must be left in peace to depart for the East. Aware that Octavius was Pompey Strabo’s man and that the only other legions under arms in Italy belonged to two of Sulla’s staunchest supporters, Cinna had angry words with his tribunes of the plebs Vergilius and Magius, who were unwilling to abandon their quarry; Cinna finally had to inform them that unless they did, he would change sides, ally himself with Octavius and eject them from the Forum and Rome.

During their first eight months in office, there were more than enough problems within Rome and Italy to occupy Octavius and Cinna; not only was the Treasury still empty and money still shy in coming into the open, but Sicily and Africa were enduring a second year of drought. Their governors, Norbanus and Sextilius, had been sent out while still praetors to do what they could to increase grain shipments to the capital, even if they had to buy in wheat with promissory notes enforced by their soldiers. Not for any consideration or any wheat growers’ lobby would the consuls and the Senate see a repetition of the events which had led to that brief hour of glory Saturninus had enjoyed because the Head Count of Rome was hungry; the Head Count must be fed. Discovering some of the hideous difficulties Sulla had known during his year as consul, Cinna seized upon every source of revenue he could find, and sent letters to the two governors in the Spains instructing them to squeeze their provinces dry. The governor of the Gauls, Publius Servilius Vatia, was instructed to get what he could by walking the Gaul-across-the-Alps barbarian tightrope, while simultaneously balancing the creditors of Italian Gaul on the end of his nose. When the outraged replies came in, Cinna burned them after he read the opening columns, wishing for two inaccessible things; one, that Octavius would concern himself more with the hard parts of governing, and the other, that Rome still had the incomes from Asia Province.

Rome was also under duress from the newly enfranchised Italians, who resented their tribal status bitterly, even though under the leges Corneliae their tribal votes were nonexistent. The laws of Publius Sulpicius had whetted their appetite, they resented the invalidation of those laws. Even after more than two years of war there were still important men left among the Allies; they now inundated the Senate with letters of complaint on behalf of themselves and their less privileged Italian brothers. Cinna would gladly have obliged them by legislating to distribute all the new citizens equally across the thirty-five tribes, but neither the Senate nor the faction led by the senior consul Octavius would cooperate. And the Sullan constitution handicapped Cinna severely.

However, in Sextilis he saw his first ray of hope; word had come that Sulla was fully occupied in Greece, could not possibly contemplate a sudden return to Rome to shore up his constitution or pander to his supporters. Time, thought Cinna, to sort out his differences with Pompey Strabo, still lurking in Umbria and Picenum with four legions. Without telling anyone where he was going—including his wife—Cinna journeyed to see what Pompey Strabo had to say now that Sulla was totally committed to the war with Mithridates.

“I’m prepared to make the same bargain with you that I made with the other Lucius Cornelius,” said the cross-eyed lord of Picenum, who had not been warm in his welcome, but had not indicated unwillingness to listen either. “You leave me and mine alone in my corner of our great big Roman world, and I won’t bother you in the mighty city.”

“So that was it!” exclaimed Cinna.

“That was it.”

“I need to rectify many of the alterations the other Lucius Cornelius made to our systems of government,” said Cinna, keeping his voice dispassionate. “I also want to distribute the new citizens equally across the whole thirty-five tribes, and I like the idea of distributing the Roman freedmen across the tribes.” He smothered his outrage at needing to obtain permission from this Picentine butcher to do what had to be done, and continued smoothly. “How do you feel about all this, Gnaeus Pompeius?”

“Do whatever you like,” said Pompey Strabo indifferently, “as long as you leave me alone.”

“I give you my word I’ll leave you alone.”

“Is your word as valuable as your oaths, Lucius Cinna?”

Cinna blushed deep red. “I did not swear that oath,” he said with great dignity. “I held a stone in my hand throughout, which invalidated it.”

Pompey Strabo threw back his head and demonstrated that when he laughed, he neighed. “Oh, a proper little Forum lawyer, aren’t we?” he asked when he was able.

“The oath did not bind me!” Cinna insisted, face still red.

“Then you are a far greater fool than the other Lucius Cornelius. Once he comes back, you won’t last longer than a snowflake in a fire.”

“If you believe that, why let me do what I want to do?”

“The other Lucius Cornelius and I understand each other, that’s why,” said Pompey Strabo. “He won’t blame me for whatever happens—he’ll blame you.”

“Perhaps the other Lucius Cornelius won’t come back.”

That provoked another whinny of amusement. “Don’t count on it, Lucius Cinna! The other Lucius Cornelius is definitely Fortune’s prime favorite. He leads a charmed life.”

Cinna journeyed back to Rome without staying in Pompey Strabo’s fief a moment longer than their brief interview; he preferred to sleep in a house where his host was less unnerving. Consequently he had to listen to his host in Assisium recount the tale of how the mice ate the socks of Quintus Pompeius Rufus and thus foretold his death. All in all, thought Cinna when he finally got back to Rome, I do not like those northern people! They’re too basic, too close to the old gods.

Early in September the greatest games of the year, the ludi Romani, were held in Rome. For three years they had been as small and inexpensive as possible, thanks to the war in Italy and the lack of those huge sums the curule aediles normally felt it worthwhile to dig out of their own purses. Great things had been hoped of last year’s aedile, Metellus Celer, yet nothing had come of that. But this year’s pair were both fabulously rich, and by Sextilis there was concrete evidence that they would honor their word and give great games. So the rumor went up and down the peninsula—the games were going to be spectacular! As a result, everyone who could afford to make the trip suddenly decided that the best cure for wartime woes and malaise was a holiday to Rome to see the ludi Romani. Thousands of Italians, newly enfranchised and smarting about the shabby way in which they had been treated, began to arrive in Rome toward the end of Sextilis. Theater lovers, chariot-racing lovers, wild-beast-hunt lovers, spectacle lovers—everyone who could come, came. The theater lovers especially knew themselves in for a treat; old Accius had been persuaded to leave his home in Umbria to produce his new play personally.

And Cinna decided he would act at last. His ally the tribune of the plebs Marcus Vergilius convened an “unofficial” meeting of the Plebeian Assembly, and announced to the crowd (among whom were many of the Italian visitors) that he intended to press the Senate to distribute the new citizens properly. This meeting was held purely to attract the attention of those interested to the subject, for Marcus Vergilius could not promulgate legislation in a body no longer permitted to legislate.

Vergilius then brought his proposition to the Senate, and was firmly told that the Conscript Fathers would not debate the issue now any more than they had done in January. Vergilius shrugged and sat down on the tribunician bench alongside Sertorius and the others. He had done what Cinna had required of him; find out how the House felt. The rest was up to Cinna.

“All right,” said Cinna to his confederates, “we go to work. We promise the whole world that if our laws to remake the constitution in its old form and deal with the new citizens are passed in the Centuriate Assembly, we will legislate for a general cancellation of debts. Sulpicius’s promises were suspect because he legislated in favor of creditors in the matter of the Senate, but we have no such handicap. We’ll be believed.”

The activity which followed was not secret, though it was not aired in the hearing of those bound to be against a general cancellation of debts. And so desperate was the position of the majority—even in the First Class—that opinion and support suddenly veered very much Cinna’s way; for every knight and senator who didn’t owe money or was involved in the lending of it, there were six or seven knights and senators who were in debt, many deeply.

“We’re in trouble,” said the senior consul Gnaeus Octavius Ruso to his colleagues Antonius Orator and the Brothers Caesar. “Waving a bait like a general cancellation of debts under so many greedy or needy noses will get Cinna what he wants, even from the First Class and the Centuries.”

“Give him his due, he’s clever enough not to try to convene the Plebs or the Whole People and force his measures through there,” said Lucius Caesar fretfully. “If he passes his laws in the Centuries, they’re legal under Lucius Cornelius’s present constitution. And with the fiscus the way it is and private money in even worse case, the Centuries from their top to as far down as is necessary will vote to please Lucius Cinna.”

“And the Head Count will run riot,” said Antonius Orator.

But Octavius shook his head; he was by far the acutest business man among them. “No, not the capite censi, Marcus Antonius!” he said impatiently, as he was an impatient man. “The lowly are never in debt—they just don’t have any money. It’s those in the middle and upper Classes who borrow. Mostly they have to borrow in order to keep moving upward—or quite often to stay where they presently are. No moneylender obliges those with no real collateral. So the higher up you go, the better your chances of finding men who have borrowed.”

“I take it you are convinced that the Centuries will vote to pass all this unacceptable rubbish, then?” asked Catulus Caesar.

“Aren’t you, Quintus Lutatius?”

“Yes, I very much fear that I am.”

“Then what can we do?” asked Lucius Caesar.

“Oh, I know what to do,” said Octavius, scowling. “However, I shall do it without telling anyone, including you.”

“What do you think he intends to do?” asked Antonius Orator after Octavius had gone off toward the Argiletum.

Catulus Caesar shook his head. “I haven’t the faintest idea.” He frowned. “Oh, I wish he had one-tenth the brains and ability of Lucius Sulla! But he doesn’t. He’s a Pompey Strabo man.”

Brother Lucius Caesar shivered suddenly. “I have a nasty feeling,” he said. “Whatever he means to do won’t be what ought to be done. Oh, dear!”

Antonius Orator looked brisk. “I think I shall spend the next ten days out of Rome,” he said.

In the end they all decided this was the wisest thing to do.

Sure of himself, Cinna now eagerly set the date for his contio in the Centuriate Assembly; the sixth day before the Ides of September, which was two days after the ludi Romani commenced. How prevalent was debt, how eager the debtors were to be relieved of their burdens was patent at dawn on that day, when some twenty thousand men turned up on the Campus Martius to hear Cinna’s contio. Every one of them wished he could vote that day, which Cinna had explained firmly was impossible—that would mean his first law would have had to set aside the lex Caedlia Didia prima (as Sulla had done) to hustle the measures through.

No, said Cinna, adamant, the customary waiting period of three nundinae would have to be observed. However, he did promise that he would introduce more laws at other contiones well before the voting time for this first law came round. That statement calmed everyone down, gave everyone a strong feeling that the general cancellation of debts would go through long before Cinna stepped down from his office.

There were actually two laws Cinna intended to discuss on this first day; the distribution of the new citizens across the tribes, and the pardon and recall of the nineteen fugitives. All of them, from Gaius Marius to the humblest of the knights, retained their property; Sulla had made no move to confiscate it during the last days of his consulship, and the new tribunes of the plebs—who could still exercise their vetos within the Senate—made it clear that anyone who tried to move for confiscation would be vetoed.

So when the twenty thousand members of the Classes gathered on the open grassy space of the Campus Martius, they looked forward to hearing about one law they could approve of, the recall of the fugitives; no one looked forward to distributing the new citizens across the tribes because it would dilute his own power in the tribal assemblies, and everyone knew this law was but a prelude to giving legislative powers back to the tribal assemblies. Cinna and his tribunes of the plebs were there before the crowds, moving among the growing throng answering questions and placating those who still had very grave doubts about the Italians. Most soothing of all, of course, was the promise of a general cancellation of debts.

So busy was the vast assembly talking among itself, yawning, listlessly getting ready to listen to Cinna because he and his tame tribunes of the plebs had ascended the speaker’s platform, that no one found anything odd about a sudden large influx of new arrivals. They were togate, they were quiet, they looked like members of the Third and Fourth Classes.

Gnaeus Octavius Ruso had not served as a senior legate to Pompey Strabo for nothing; his remedy for the ills assailing the State was superbly organized and properly instructed. The thousand army veterans he had hired (with money provided by Pompey Strabo and Antonius Orator) had surrounded the crowd and actually had dropped their togas to stand in full armor before a single man in that huge number noticed anything amiss. A shrill whistling began, then the hirelings waded into the mass of men from all sides, swinging their swords. Hundreds and then thousands were cut down, but many more fell under the trampling feet of panicked electors. Driven in on themselves by the encircling wall of assailants, it was some time before any man in the crowd collected himself enough to attempt to run the gauntlet of swords and flee the field.