The Grass Crown (115 page)

“But I can’t be consul again!” gasped Cinna, horrified.

“Rubbish! Of course you can! Now go away, do!” said Marius in the same tone he would have used to an importunate child.

Cinna went to seek out Sertorius and Carbo, who had been present at the negotiations, and told them what Marius had said.

“Don’t say you weren’t warned,” said Sertorius grimly.

“What can we do?” wailed Cinna, despairing. “He’s right, the army belongs to him!”

“Not my two legions,” said Sertorius.

“Insufficient to pit against him,” said Carbo.

“What can we do?” wailed Cinna again.

“For the moment, nothing. Let the old man have his day—and his precious seventh consulship,” said Carbo, teeth set hard together. “We’ll worry about him after Rome is ours.”

Sertorius made no further comment; he was too busy trying to decide what his own future course ought to be. Somehow every last one of them was sounding meaner, nastier, smaller, more selfish, more grasping. They’ve caught the disease from Gaius Marius, and they’re busy giving it to each other. As for myself, he thought, I am not sure I want to be a part of this sordid and unspeakable conspiracy for power. Rome is sovereign. But thanks to Lucius Cornelius Sulla, men have now got the idea that they can be sovereign over Rome.

When Metellus Pius reported the gist of Cinna’s advice about Octavius’s staying out of sight to Octavius and the rest, every last one of them knew what was in the wind. This was one of the few conferences at which Scaevola Pontifex Maximus was present; it had not escaped notice that he was withdrawing as unobtrusively as possible into the background. Probably, thought Metellus Pius, because he can see victory for Gaius Marius looming, and remembers that his daughter is still affianced to Young Marius.

Catulus Caesar sighed. “Well, I suggest that all the younger men quit Rome before Lucius Cinna enters. We will need all our younger boni for the future—these awful creatures like Cinna and Marius will not last forever. And one day Lucius Sulla is going to come home.” He paused, then added, “I think we old fellows are better off staying in Rome and taking our chances. I for one have no desire to emulate Gaius Marius’s odyssey, even were I guaranteed no Liris swamps.”

The Piglet looked at Mamercus. “What do you say?”

Mamercus considered. “I think it imperative you should go, Quintus Caecilius, I really do. But for the moment I shall stay. I’m not such a big fish in Rome’s pond.”

“Very well, I will go,” said Metellus Pius with decision.

“And I will go,” said the senior consul Octavius loudly.

Everyone turned to look at him, puzzled.

“I will set myself up on a tribunal in the Janiculan garrison,” Octavius said, “and wait there for whatever comes. That way, if they are determined to spill my blood, it will not pollute the air or the stones of Rome.”

No one bothered to argue. The massacre of Octavius’s Day made this course inevitable.

The following day at dawn Lucius Cornelius Cinna, in his toga praetexta and preceded by his twelve lictors, entered the city of Rome on foot across the bridges linking Tiber Island with either bank of the Tiber River.

But, having heard where Gnaeus Octavius Ruso had gone from a friend in the confidence of those inside Rome, Gaius Marcius Censorinus gathered a troop of Numidian cavalry and rode for the fortress on the Janiculum. No one had authorized this sortie—indeed, no one knew of it, least of all Cinna. That Censorinus had taken it upon himself to do what he intended to do was Cinna’s fault; those of wolfish disposition among Cinna’s officers had come to the conclusion that once he entered the city, Cinna would knuckle under to men like Catulus Caesar and Scaevola Pontifex Maximus. That the whole campaign to return Cinna to authority in Rome would end as a dry and bloodless exercise. But Octavius at least would not escape, vowed Censorinus.

Finding his entry to the stronghold uncontested (Octavius had dismissed the garrison), Censorinus rode into the outer stockade at the head of his five-hundred-strong troop.

And there on the tribunal in the citadel forum sat Gnaeus Octavius Ruso, shaking his head adamantly in response to his chief lictor’s pleas that he leave. Hearing the sound of many hooves, Octavius turned and arranged himself properly upon his curule chair, his lictors white-faced in fear.

Gaius Marcius Censorinus ignored the attendants. Sword drawn, he came down from his horse, bounded up the tribunal steps, walked to where Octavius sat calmly, and fastened the fingers of his left hand in Octavius’s hair. One powerful yank, and the senior consul—who did not fight back—came to his knees. While the terrified lictors looked on helplessly, Censorinus raised his sword in both hands and brought it down with all the force he could summon upon Octavius’s bared neck.

Two of the troopers took the dripping head, its face curiously peaceful, and fixed it upon a spear. Censorinus took it himself, then dismissed the squadron back to camp on the Vatican plain; on one point he was not prepared to disobey orders, and that concerned Cinna’s edict that no soldiers of any kind were to cross the pomerium. Tossing his sword, helmet, and cuirass to his servant, he mounted his horse clad in his leather under-dress and rode straight to the Forum Romanum, carrying the shaft before him like a lance. Without a word he raised the spear on high and presented the head of Octavius to the unsuspecting Cinna.

The consul’s initial reaction was naked horror; he recoiled physically, both hands up with palms outward to fend this appalling gift off. Then he thought of Marius waiting across the river, and of all those eyes upon him and his known lieutenant Censorinus. He drew a sobbing breath, closed his eyes in pain, and faced the hideous consequences of his march upon Rome.

“Fix it to the rostra,” he said to Censorinus. Turning to the silent crowd, he shouted, “This is the only act of violence I condone! I vowed that Gnaeus Octavius Ruso would not live to see me resume my place as consul. He it was—together with Lucius Sulla!—who began this custom! They put the head of my friend Publius Sulpicius where this head is now. It is fitting that Octavius should continue the custom—as will Lucius Sulla when he returns! Look well on Gnaeus Octavius, People of Rome! Look well on the head of the man who brought all this pain and hunger and suffering into being when he slaughtered over six thousand men upon the Campus Martius in the midst of a legally convened assembly. Rome is avenged! There will be no more bloodshed! Nor was the blood of Gnaeus Octavius shed within the pomerium.”

Not quite the truth; but it would serve.

Within the space of seven days the laws of Lucius Cornelius Sulla came tumbling down. A pale shadow of its old self, the Centuriate Assembly took its example from Sulla by legislating to pass the measures in a bigger hurry than the lex Caecilia Didia prima permitted. Its former powers restored, the Plebeian Assembly then met to elect new tribunes of the plebs, as they were already overdue. A spate of new legislation followed: the Italian and Italian Gallic citizens (but not the freedmen of Rome—Cinna had decided not to risk that) were distributed across the thirty-five tribes without let or hindrance or special provisos; Gaius Marius and his fellow fugitives were restored to their rightful positions and ranks; a proconsular imperium was now officially bestowed upon Gaius Marius; the two new tribes of Piso Frugi were abolished; all the men exiled under the original Varian Commission were recalled; and—last but not least—Gaius Marius was formally given command of the war in the East against King Mithridates of Pontus and his allies.

The elections for the plebeian aediles were held in the Plebeian Assembly, after which the Assembly of the Whole People was convoked to elect curule aediles, quaestors, tribunes of the soldiers. Though they were three to four years off their thirtieth birthdays, Gaius Flavius Fimbria, Publius Annius and Gaius Marcius Censorinus were all elected quaestors and appointed immediately to the Senate, neither censor thinking it wise to protest.

In an odor of extreme sanctity, Cinna ordered the Centuries to assemble to elect the curule magistrates; he convened his meeting on the Aventine outside the pomerium, as Sertorius was still sitting on the Campus Martius with two legions. A sad gathering of no more than six hundred men of the Classes, most of them senators and very senior knights, dutifully returned as consuls the only two names put up as candidates—Lucius Cornelius Cinna, and Gaius Marius in absentia. The form had been observed, the election was legal. Gaius Marius was now consul of Rome for the seventh time, and the fourth time in absentia. The prophecy was fulfilled.

Cinna had his little moment of revenge nonetheless; when the consuls were elected, it was he who occupied the senior position, Gaius Marius the junior. Then came the praetorian elections. Only six names were put up to fill six positions, but again the form was observed, the vote could be said to be legal. Rome had her proper array of magistrates, even if there had been a dearth of candidates. Cinna could now concentrate upon trying to rectify the damage of the past few months—damage Rome could ill afford to sustain after the long war against the Italians and the loss of the East.

Like an animal backed into a corner, the city remained still and vigilant during the remainder of December, while the armies packed around her shifted and redistributed. The Samnite contingents went back to Aesernia and Nola, the latter to lock themselves in again; for Gaius Marius had graciously given Appius Claudius Pulcher permission to remove himself and his old legion back to the siege of Nola. Though Sertorius had the legion, he persuaded its men to go back to work for a commander they despised, and saw it march for Campania without regret. Many of the veterans who had enlisted to help their old general now also returned to their homes, including the two cohorts who had sailed from Cercina with Marius the moment Marius had heard Cinna was moving.

Reduced to one legion, Sertorius lay on the Campus Martius like a cat feigning deep sleep. He kept himself aloof from Gaius Marius, who had elected to keep his five-thousand-strong bodyguard of slaves and ex-slaves. What are you up to, you dreadful old man? asked Sertorius of himself. You have deliberately sent every decent element away, and retained that element which is committed to follow you into any atrocity.

Gaius Marius entered Rome at last on New Year’s Day as her lawfully elected consul, riding a pure white horse, clad in a purple-bordered toga, and wearing an oak-leaf crown. At his side rode the hulking Cimbric slave Burgundus in beautiful golden armor, girt with a sword, and mounted upon a Bastamian horse so big its hooves were the size of buckets. And behind him walked five thousand slaves and ex-slaves, all clad in reinforced leather, and wearing swords—not quite soldiers, but not civilians either.

Consul seven times! The prophecy was fulfilled. Nothing else lived inside Gaius Marius’s head but those words as he rode between walls of cheering, weeping people; what did it really matter whether he was the senior or the junior consul, when the people welcomed their hero so passionately, so blindly? Did they care that he rode instead of walked? Did they care that he came from across the Tiber rather than from his house? Did they care that he hadn’t stood the night watch for omens in the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus? Not one iota! He was Gaius Marius. What was required for other, lesser men was not required for Gaius Marius.

Moving inexorably toward his fate, he arrived in the lower Forum Romanum and there found Lucius Cornelius Cinna waiting for him at the head of a procession comprising senators and a very few senior knights. Burgundus got Marius down from the pure white horse with a minimum of fuss, adjusted the folds of his master’s toga—and, when Marius took the place in front of Cinna, stood beside him.

“Come on, Lucius Cinna, let’s get it over!” snapped Marius in loud tones, starting to walk. “I’ve done this six times before and you’ve done it once, so let’s not turn it into a triumphal parade!”

“Just a moment!” shouted the ex-praetor Quintus Ancharius, stepping out of his place among the men in purple-bordered togas who followed Cinna, and moving quickly to plant himself firmly in front of Gaius Marius. “You are in the wrong order, consuls. Gaius Marius, you are junior consul. You go after Lucius Cinna, not ahead of him. I also demand that you get rid of this great barbarian brute from our solemn deputation to the Great God, and order your bodyguard to leave the city or remove their swords.”

For a moment Marius looked as if he would strike Ancharius, or perhaps order his German giant to set the ex-praetor aside; then the old man shrugged, repositioned himself behind Cinna. But the slave Burgundus remained alongside him, and he had spoken no word commanding his bodyguard to leave.

“On the first issue, Quintus Ancharius, you have a point of law,” said Marius fiercely, “but on the second and third issues I will not yield. My life has been imperiled enough of late years. And I am infirm. ’Therefore my slave will remain by my side. My Bardyaei will remain in the Forum and wait to escort me after the ceremonies are over.”

Quintus Ancharius looked mutinous, but finally nodded and went back to his place; a praetor in the same year Sulla had been consul, he was an inveterate Marius-hater, and proud of it. Not unless he had been tied down would he have allowed Marius to get away with walking ahead of Cinna in the procession, especially after it dawned upon him that Cinna was going to accept this monumental insult. That he went back to his place was in reaction to the look of piteous appeal Cinna gave him; his gorge rose. Why should he fight a weak man’s battles? Oh, prayed Quintus Ancharius, finish that war and come home soon, Lucius Sulla!

The hundred-odd knights who led the procession had moved off the moment Marius commanded Cinna to walk, and had reached the temple of Saturn before realizing the two consuls and the Senate were still halted, apparently in argument. Thus the start of that pilgrimage to the home of the Great God on the Capitol was as ill-concerted as it was ill-omened. No one, including Cinna, had had the courage to point out that Gaius Marius had not kept watch through the night, as the new consuls were obliged to do; and Cinna said nothing to anyone about the dense black shape of some webbed and taloned creature he had seen fly across the wan sky as he stood his watch.

Never had a New Year’s Day consular inauguration been so quickly completed as that one, either, even the famous one when Marius had wanted to commence the consular ceremonies still garbed as a triumphing general. Less than four shortish daylight hours later, everything was over—sacrifices, the meeting of the Senate within the temple of the Great God, the feast which followed. Nor had any group of men in the past ever been so anxious to escape afterward. As the procession came down off the Capitol, every man saw the head of Gnaeus Octavius Ruso still rotting on its spear at the edge of the rostra, bird-tattered face turned to gaze up at the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus with empty sockets. A terrible omen. Terrible!

Emerging from the alleyway between the temple of Saturn and the Capitol hillside, Gaius Marius spied Quintus Ancharius ahead of him, and hastened to catch up. When he put his hand upon Ancharius’s arm the ex-praetor looked around, his startled surprise changing to revulsion when he saw who accosted him.

“Burgundus, your sword,” said Marius calmly.

The sword was in his right hand even as he finished speaking; his right hand flashed up, and down. Quintus Ancharius fell dead, his face cloven from hairline to chin.

No one tried to protest. As their shock dissipated, senators and knights scattered, running. Marius’s legion of slaves and ex-slaves—still standing in the lower Forum—went in hot pursuit the moment the old man snapped his fingers.

“Do what you like with the cunni, boys!” roared Marius, beaming. “Only do try to distinguish between my friends and my enemies!”

Horrified, Cinna stood watching his world disintegrate, utterly powerless to intervene. His soldiers were either on their way home or still in their camp on the Vatican plain; Marius’s “Bardyaei”—as he called his slave followers because so many of them were from this Dalmatian tribe of Illyrians—now owned the city of Rome. And, owning it, treated it more pitilessly than a crazed drunkard the wife he hates. Men were cut down for no reason, houses invaded and robbed, women defiled, children murdered. A lot of it was senseless, causeless; but there were other instances too—men whom Marius hungered to see dead, or perhaps merely fancied he would like to see dead—the Bardyaei were not clever at distinguishing between Marius’s various moods.

For the rest of the day and far into the night, Rome screamed and howled, and many died or wished they could die. In some places huge flames leaped skyward, screams turned to high and maddened shrieks.

Publius Annius, who loathed Antonius Orator above all others, led a troop of cavalry to Tusculum, where the Antonii had an estate, and took great pleasure in hunting down Antonius Orator and killing him. The head was brought back to Rome amid great jubilation, and planted on the rostra.

Fimbria chose to take his squadron of horsemen up onto the Palatine, looking first for the censor Publius Licinius Crassus and his son Lucius. It was the son Fimbria spied as he sped up the narrow street toward the safety of home; spurring his horse, Fimbria came alongside him and, bending in the saddle, ran his sword through Lucius Crassus’s back. Seeing it happen and powerless to prevent the same fate happening to him, the father drew a dagger from the recesses of his toga and killed himself. Luckily Fimbria had no idea which door in that alleyway of windowless walls belonged to the Licinii Crassi, so the third son, Marcus—not yet of an age to be a senator—was spared.

Leaving his men to decapitate Publius and Lucius Crassus, Fimbria took a few troopers and went looking for the Brothers Caesar. Two of them he found in the one house, Lucius Julius and his younger brother, Caesar Strabo. The heads of course were kept for the rostra, but Fimbria dragged the trunk and limbs of Caesar Strabo out to the tomb of Quintus Varius, and there “killed” him all over again as an offering for the man Caesar Strabo had prosecuted, and who had taken his own life so slowly, so painfully. After that he went looking for the oldest brother, Catulus Caesar, but was found by a messenger from Marius before he found his quarry; Catulus Caesar was to be spared to stand his trial.

In the next morning’s light the rostra bristled with heads on spears—Ancharius, Antonius Orator, Publius and Lucius Crassus, Lucius Caesar, Caesar Strabo, the ancient Scaevola Augur, Gaius Atilius Serranus, Publius Cornelius Lentulus, Gaius Nemetorius, Gaius Baebius, and Octavius. Bodies littered the streets, a pile of unimportant heads lay against the angle where the tiny temple of Venus Cloacina tucked itself into the Basilica Aemilia, and Rome stank of coagulating blood.

Indifferent to all save the pursuit of his revenge, Marius walked to the well of the Comitia to hear his own newly elected tribune of the plebs, Publius Popillius Laenas, convene the Plebeian Assembly. Of course no one came to attend, but the meeting went ahead anyway after the Bardyaei chose rural tribes for themselves as part of their new citizenship package. Quintus Lutatius Catulus Caesar and Lucius Cornelius Merula flamen Dialis were immediately indicted for treason.

“But I shall not wait for the verdict,” said Catulus Caesar, eyes red from weeping at the fate of his brothers and so many of his friends.

He said this to Mamercus, whom he had summoned urgently to his house. “Take Lucius Cornelius Sulla’s wife and daughter and flee at once, Mamercus, I beg of you!

The next to be indicted will be Lucius Sulla, and everyone even remotely attached to him will die—or worse, in Dalmatica’s case—and in the case of your own wife, Cornelia Sulla.”

“I had thought to remain,” said Mamercus, looking exhausted. “Rome will need men untouched by this horror, Quintus Lutatius.”

“Yes, Rome will. But she won’t find them among those who stay, Mamercus. I do not intend to live a moment longer than I have to. Promise me you’ll bundle up Dalmatica, Cornelia Sulla, all the various children, and send them to safety in Greece. With yourself as their escort. Then I can get on and do what I have to do.”

So Mamercus promised, heavyhearted, and did much that day to safeguard the mobile and monetary property of Sulla, Scaurus, Drusus, the Servilii Caepiones, Dalmatica, Cornelia Sulla, and himself. By nightfall he and the women and children were through the Porta Sanqualis, least popular of Rome’s gates, and heading for the Via Salaria; it seemed a safer way to go than south to Brundisium.

As for Catulus Caesar, he sent little notes to Merula the flamen Dialis, and to Scaevola Pontifex Maximus. Then he had his slaves light every brazier his house possessed and put them in his principal guest suite, so newly plastered its walls exuded the pungent odor of fresh lime. Having sealed every crack and opening with rags, Catulus Caesar sat himself down in a comfortable chair and opened a scroll which contained the last books of the Iliad, his favorite literature. When Marius’s men broke down the door, they found him still sitting upright and naturally in his chair, the scroll tidily in his lap; the room was choked with noxious fumes, and the corpse of Catulus Caesar was quite cold.

Lucius Cornelius Merula never saw his note from Catulus Caesar, as it found him already dead. After reverently placing his apex and his laena in a tidily folded bundle beneath the statue of the Great God in his temple, Merula went home, got into a hot bath, and opened his veins with a bone knife.

Scaevola Pontifex Maximus read his note.

I know, Quintus Mucius, that you have elected to throw in your lot with Lucius Cinna and Gaius Marius.

I can even begin to understand why. Your girl is pledged to Young Marius, and that is a tidy fortune to toss away. But you are wrong. Gaius Marius is diseased of mind, and the men who follow him are little better than barbarians. I do not mean his slaves. I mean men like Fimbria, Annius, and Censorinus. Cinna is a good enough fellow in many ways, but he cannot possibly control Gaius Marius. Nor can you.

By the time you get this, I will be dead. It seems to me infinitely preferable to die than to live out the rest of my life as an exile—or, briefly, as one of Gaius Marius’s many victims. My poor, poor brothers! It pleases me to choose my own time, place and method of dying. Did I wait until tomorrow, none of those would be mine.

I have finished my memoirs, and I freely admit that it pains me not to be present to hear the comments when they are published. However, they will live, though I do not. To safeguard them—they are anything but complimentary to Gaius Marius!—I have sent them with Mamercus to Lucius Cornelius Sulla in Greece. When Mamercus comes back in better days, he has undertaken to publish them. And to send a copy to Publius Rutilius Rufus in Smyrna, to pay him back for being so venomous about me in his own writings.

Look after yourself, Quintus Mucius. It would be most interesting to see how you manage to reconcile your principles with necessity. I could not. But then, my children are safely married.

Tears in his eyes, Scaevola screwed the small sheet of paper up into a ball and thrust it into the middle of a brazier, for it was cold and he was old enough now to feel the cold. Fancy killing his old uncle the Augur! Harmless. They could talk until they were black in the face that it was all a terrible mistake. Nothing that had happened in Rome since New Year’s Day was a mistake. Warming his hands and sniffling his tears away, Scaevola stared at the glowing coals contained within the bronze tripod, having no idea that Catulus Caesar’s last impressions of life were much the same.

The heads of Catulus Caesar and Merula flamen Dialis were added to the rostra’s mounting collection before dawn of the third day of Gaius Marius’s seventh consulship; Marius himself spent long moments contemplating Catulus Caesar’s head—still handsome and haughty—before allowing Popillius Laenas to convene another Plebeian Assembly.

This meeting directed its spleen at Sulla, who was condemned and voted a public enemy; all his property was confiscated, but not for the greater good of Rome. Marius let his Bardyaei loot Sulla’s magnificent new house overlooking the Circus Maximus, then let them burn it to the ground. The property of Antonius Orator suffered a similar fate. However, neither man left any indication as to where his money was secreted, and none ever turned up in a Roman bank, at least recognizably. Thus the slave legion did very well out of Sulla and Antonius Orator, whereas Rome did no good at all. So angry was Popillius Laenas that he sent a party of public slaves to sift through the ashes of Sulla’s house after they cooled, looking for hidden treasure. The image cupboards containing Sulla and his ancestors had not been in the house when the Bardyaei plundered it; nor had the priceless citrus-wood table. Mamercus was very efficient. So was Sulla’s new steward, Chrysogonus. Between the two of them and a small army of slaves under strict instructions not to appear either furtive or guilty, they stripped the best out of half a dozen of Rome’s most beautiful houses in less than a day and put the best into hiding in places no one would dream of looking.