The Grass Crown (113 page)

Metellus Pius reared back, outraged. “Yes, certainly!” he said sarcastically. “Why not just require us to pass under the yoke, Gaius Papius, as the Samnites did after the battle of the Caudine Forks two hundred years ago?” he asked. “Your terms are absolutely impossible! Good day to you.”

Head up and spine straight, he rode back to his camp and icily informed the delegation from Octavius and Merula that there would be no peace treaty, and that in consequence he would not be able to go to Rome’s assistance.

The Samnite Mutilus returned in his litter to Aesernia feeling a great deal happier than the Piglet; he had been visited by a brilliant idea. After nightfall his courier sneaked through the Roman lines bearing a letter from Mutilus to Gaius Marius asking Marius if he was interested in concluding a peace treaty with Samnium. Though he was well aware that Cinna was the rebel consul and Marius only a rebel privatus, it never even occurred to Mutilus to send his letter to Cinna. In any enterprise involving Gaius Marius, he would be the leader, the man with the clout.

With Marius, now approaching Rome, was the tribune of the soldiers Gaius Flavius Fimbria; he had been with the legion at Nola, and like his colleagues Publius Annius and Gaius Marcius Censorinus, elected to follow Cinna. But the moment Fimbria heard of the advent of Marius in Etruria, he transferred immediately to Marius, who was delighted to see him.

“No point in making you a tribune of the soldiers here,” Marius said. “My army has few Roman legionaries, it’s mostly servile. So I’ll give you the command of my Numidian cavalry—brought them from Africa with me.”

When Marius received Mutilus’s letter, he sent for Fimbria. “Go and see Mutilus in the Melfa Gorge, which is where he says he’ll be.” Marius snorted contemptuously. “No doubt he wants to remind us how many times we were beaten in that selfsame spot. However, for the time being we’ll ignore his impudence. Meet him, Gaius Flavius, and agree to whatever he asks, be it rule over all Italy or a trip to the land of the Hyperboreans. We’ll cut Mutilus and the Samnites down to size later.”

While this was going on, a second delegation from Rome arrived to see Metellus Pius before Aesernia. It comprised much stronger men; Catulus Caesar and his son Catulus, and Publius Crassus the censor and his son Lucius.

“I beg you, Quintus Caecilius,” said Catulus Caesar to the Piglet and his legate, Mamercus, “leave as small a force as you can to contain Aesernia, and come to Rome yourself! Otherwise you will have no purpose besieging Aesernia anyway. Rome and all Rome stands for will be finished.”

So Metellus Pius agreed. He left Marcus Plautius Silvanus behind with a paltry five cohorts of suddenly very frightened men to contain the Samnites, but no sooner had the other fifteen cohorts disappeared in the direction of Rome than the Samnites issued out of Aesernia. They trounced Silvanus’s skeleton force, and then overran all of Roman-held Samnium. Those Samnites who had not gone to Rome with Cinna now overran all southwestern Campania almost as far as Capua; the little town of Abella was sacked and burned, after which a second Samnite army went off to join the insurgents. These Italians gave Cinna no thought whatsoever—they went directly to Gaius Marius and offered him their services.

With Metellus Pius were Mamercus and Appius Claudius Pulcher. The fifteen cohorts they brought from Aesernia were put into the Janiculan garrison; Appius Claudius was appointed garrison commander. Unfortunately Octavius insisted upon retaining the title of chief garrison commander for himself, which Appius Claudius took as a monumental insult. Why should he do all the work and get none of the glory? Smoldering, Appius Claudius contemplated changing sides.

Word had also been sent by the Senate to Publius Servilius Vatia in Italian Gaul, where two legions of trainees had been kept under arms; one lay in Placentia with the legate Gaius Coelius, and one in Aquileia with Vatia, far to the east. These two forces were purely intended to intimidate the Italian Gauls, as Vatia feared the accumulating resentment of Rome’s unpaid war debts, particularly in the steel towns near Aquileia. When he got the Senate’s letter Vatia notified Coelius to march his legion from Placentia to the east, and himself set off for Rome with his own legion the moment Coelius assured him it was safe to do so.

Unfortunately for the “true” government of Rome, when Vatia reached Ariminum he encountered the outlawed tribune of the plebs Marcus Marius Gratidianus, who had been sent north on the Via Flaminia with every spare cohort Cinna could provide, just in case the governor of Italian Gaul should try to send reinforcements. After his unblooded recruits gave a very poor account of themselves, Vatia crossed back into his own province and abandoned all ideas of trying to relieve Rome. Hearing a garbled version of what had happened at Ariminum, Gaius Coelius, a very depressed man, decided all was lost for the “true” government of Rome, and killed himself.

Octavius, Merula, and the rest of the “true” government of Rome watched their position worsen almost hour by hour. Gaius Marius came prancing up the Via Campana and set his troops down just to the south of the Janiculan garrison, whereupon the resentful Appius Claudius secretly collaborated with Marius and allowed him to penetrate the Janiculan fortress’s outer stockade and defenses. That the citadel did not fall was thanks to Pompey Strabo, who deflected Cinna’s attention from Marius by marching over the Pincian hill and engaging Sertorius. At the same time Octavius and the censor Publius Crassus led a fresh force of volunteers across the Wooden Bridge and relieved the citadel just in time to prevent its being overwhelmed. Hampered by the lack of discipline among his slave soldiers, Marius was forced to withdraw; the tribune of the plebs Gaius Milonius was killed trying to help him. Publius Crassus and his son Lucius were put permanently inside the Janiculan citadel to keep an eye on Appius Claudius, who had changed his mind again and now felt the “true” government would win. And Pompey Strabo, informed the fortress was safe, disengaged his legions from those belonging to Sertorius and marched back to his camp on the Colline Gate side of the Pincian hill.

To give him his due, all was far from well with Pompey Strabo. As ever by his side, his son no sooner got his father back to their camp than he ordered Pompey Strabo to bed. Fever and dysentery had struck while the battle was going on, and though Pompey Strabo continued to command in person, it was clear to his son and his legates that he was in no condition to follow up his partial success on the Campus Martius. Too young yet to enjoy the full confidence of the Picentine troops, Young Pompey elected not to try to assume the command, especially in the midst of heavy fighting.

For three days the lord of northern Picenum and adjacent Umbria lay in his house a prey to the worst ravages of enteric fever, while Young Pompey and his friend Marcus Tullius Cicero nursed him devotedly and the troops waited to see what would happen. In the early hours of the fourth day, Pompey Strabo, so strong and vigorous, died of dehydration and physical exhaustion.

Supported by Cicero, his weeping son walked down the Vicus Sub Aggere below the double rampart of the Agger, heading for Venus Libitina to arrange for his father’s funeral. Had this been held in Picenum on Pompey Strabo’s enormous estates, it would have been almost as large as the parade of a triumphing general, but the son was as shrewd as he was capable, and understood that the obsequies must be kept as simple as possible given the circumstances; the men were upset enough, and the inhabitants of the Quirinal, Viminal, and upper Esquiline hated the dead leader intensely, blaming his camp for the diseases currently decimating them.

“What will you do?” asked Cicero as the grove of cypresses sheltering the booths of the Guild of Undertakers came into view.

“I’m going home to Picenum,” said Pompey amid terrible heaves of chest and shoulders, eyes and nose running. “My father was wrong to come—I told him not to come! Let Rome perish, I said! But he wouldn’t listen. He said he had to protect my birthright, he had to make sure Rome was still Rome against the day when it would be my turn to be consul.”

“Come into the city with me and stay for a while in my house,” said Cicero, in tears himself; much though he had loathed and feared Pompey Strabo, he was not proof against the son’s desolation. “Gnaeus Pompeius, I’ve met Accius! He came to Rome to produce his new play for the ludi Romani, and then when the trouble arose between Lucius Cinna and Gnaeus Octavius, he said he was too old to make the journey back to Umbria while there was so much unrest. I suspect he likes the present atmosphere of high drama is closer to the truth! Please, come and stay with me for a while. You’re closely related to the great Lucilius—you’d so much enjoy Accius. And it would take your mind off all this chaotic horror.”

“No,” said Pompey, still weeping. “I’m going home.”

“With your army?”

“It was my father’s army. Rome can have it.”

The two young men were some hours on their doleful errand, so did not return to the villa just outside the Colline Gate wherein Pompey Strabo had taken up residence until well after noon. No one—least of all the grief-stricken Pompey—had thought to mount a guard within the spacious grounds; the general was dead, there was nothing of value within. Of servants there were few thanks to the inroads of disease, but when son and friend had left, they had already laid Pompey Strabo out upon his bed, two female slaves keeping vigil.

Now Pompey and Cicero found the place utterly deserted—still, silent, seemingly untenanted. And when they entered the room wherein Pompey Strabo lay, they discovered him gone.

Pompey whooped triumphantly. “He’s alive!” he cried, face suffused with incredulous joy.

“Gnaeus Pompeius, your father is dead,” said Cicero, whose emotions were not engaged upon the father’s account at all, and who therefore retained his good sense. “Come, calm yourself! You know he was dead when we left. We washed him, we dressed him. He was dead!”

The joy died, but not to be replaced by a new outbreak of tears. Instead, the fresh young face hardened to stone. “What is it then? Where is my father?”

“The servants are gone, even those who were ill, I think,” said Cicero. “The first thing we had better do is search the place.”

The search revealed nothing, yielded no clues as to where the body of Gnaeus Pompeius Strabo had gone. The one growing ever stonier, the other ever more bewildered, Pompey and Cicero left the villa to gather its silence fast around it, and stood outside on the Via Nomentana looking both ways.

“Do we go to the camp or the gate?” asked Cicero.

Both lay within scant paces. Pompey wrinkled his brow as he thought, then made up his mind.

“We’ll go to the general’s tent. Perhaps the men removed him to lie in state there,” he said.

They had turned and were walking campward when someone shouted.

“Gnaeus Pompeius! Gnaeus Pompeius!”

Back they swung toward the gate, to see a disheveled Brutus Damasippus waving at them as he ran.

“Your father!” he panted, reaching Pompey.

“What about my father?” Pompey asked, very cool, very calm.

“The people of Rome stole his body saying they were going to drag it behind an ass through every street in the city!” said Brutus Damasippus. “One of the women keeping vigil came to tell me, and like a fool I just ran! I suppose thinking I’d catch them. Luckily I saw you—otherwise they’d probably be dragging me as well.” He looked at Pompey with as much respect as he would have accorded the father. “What do you want me to do?” he asked.

“Bring two cohorts of soldiers to me here at once,” Pompey said curtly. “Then we’ll go inside and look for him.”

Cicero didn’t ask why, nor did Pompey say a word while they waited. The ultimate insult had been done Pompey Strabo, and there could be no doubt why; it was the only way left to the people of the northeastern city to express their contempt and disgust for one they deemed the author of their woes. The more crowded parts of Rome all received their water from the aqueducts, but the upper Esquiline, Viminal and Quirinal, less populous, relied heavily on local spring water.

When Pompey led his cohorts through the Colline Gate and into its very large marketplace, he found the whole area deserted. Nor was a soul on the streets beyond, even in the meanest alley leading to the lower Esquiline. One by one the narrow thoroughfares were combed, Damasippus taking a cohort toward the Agger, the two young men working in the opposite direction. Three hours later Pompey’s contingent found their dead general sprawled on the lower Alta Semita outside the temple of Salus.

Well, thought Cicero to himself, the place they chose to leave him says everything. Outside the temple of Good Health.

“I shall not forget,” said Pompey, looking down at the naked and mangled body of his father. “When I am consul and embark upon my building program, nothing will I give to the Quirinal!”

When Cinna heard of the death of Pompey Strabo, he breathed a sigh of relief. Then when he heard how the body of Pompey Strabo had been dragged through the streets of the city, he whistled softly. So all was not happy within Rome! Nor apparently were Rome’s military defenders popular with the ordinary people. Happily he settled to wait for the surrender he now expected would come within hours.

But it did not come. Seemingly Octavius had decided that only if the ordinary people boiled into open revolt would he surrender.

Quintus Sertorius came to report late on that same day, his left eye covered by a blood-soaked bandage.

“What’s happened to you?” demanded Cinna, dismayed.

“Lost my eye,” said Sertorius briefly.

“Ye gods!”

“Lucky for me it’s my left one,” said Sertorius stoically. “I can still see on my sword side, so it shouldn’t inconvenience me much in a battle.”

“Sit down,” said Cinna, pouring wine. He watched his legate closely, deciding there was little in this life capable of throwing Quintus Sertorius off balance. Then, when Sertorius was settled, Cinna sat down himself, sighing. “You know, Quintus Sertorius, you were quite right,” he said slowly.