The Grass Crown (30 page)

Scaurus Princeps Senatus rose to his feet. “If I may, Lucius Licinius, I would like to ask if you propose to set up one of your special quaestiones in the city of Rome herself, and if so, whether this quaestio will function as the one investigating Latium as well as Rome?”

Crassus Orator looked solemn. “Rome herself will constitute the eleventh quaestio,” he answered. “Latium will be dealt with separately. With regard to Rome, however, I would like to say that the rolls of the city have not revealed any mass declarations of new citizens we believe to be spurious. Despite this, we believe it will be worth setting up a court of enquiry within Rome, as the city probably contains many enrolled citizens who—if the enquiries are taken far enough—will be proven ineligible.”

“Thank you, Lucius Licinius,” said Scaurus, sitting down.

Crassus Orator was now thoroughly put out. All hopes he might have cherished to work up to some of his finer rhetorical periods were now utterly destroyed; what had started out as a speech had turned into a questions-and-answers exercise.

Before he could resume his address, Quintus Lutatius Catulus Caesar got up, confirming the senior consul’s suspicions that the House was just not in the mood to listen to magnificent speeches.

“May I venture a question?” asked Catulus Caesar demurely.

Crassus Orator sighed. “Everyone else is, Quintus Lutatius, even those not entitled to speak! Feel free. Do not hesitate. Be my guest. Avail yourself of the opportunity, do!”

“Is the lex Licinia Mucia going to prescribe or specify particular penalties, or is punishment going to be left up to the discretion of the judges, working from existing statutes?”

“Believe it or not, Quintus Lutatius, I was coming to that!” said Crassus Orator with visibly fraying patience. “The new law specifies definite penalties. First and foremost, all spurious citizens who have declared themselves to be citizens during this last census will incur the full wrath of the courts. A flogging will be administered with the knouted lash. The guilty man’s name will be entered upon a list barring him and all his descendants in perpetuity from acquiring the citizenship. A fine of forty thousand sesterces will be levied. If the spurious citizen has taken up residence within any Latin Rights or Roman city, town, or municipality, he and his relations will be deprived of residence and will have to return to the place of his ancestors. In that respect only is this a law of expulsion. Those who do not possess the citizenship but who did not falsify their status will not be affected, they may remain where currently domiciled.”

“What about those who falsified their status on an earlier census than this last one?” asked Scipio Nasica the elder.

“They will not be flogged, Publius Cornelius, nor will they be fined. But they will be entered on the list and they will be expelled from any Latin or Roman center of habitation.”

“What if a man can’t pay the fine?” asked Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus Pontifex Maximus.

“Then he will be sold into debt bondage to the State of Rome for a period of not less than seven years.”

Up clambered Gaius Marius. “May I speak, Lucius Licinius?”

Crassus Orator threw his hands in the air. “Oh, why not, Gaius Marius? That is, if you can speak without being interrupted by all the world and his uncle!”

Drusus watched Marius walk from the place where his stool sat to the center of the floor. His heart, that organ he had thought to have died inside him when his wife died, was beating fast. Herein lay the only chance. Oh, Gaius Marius, little though I like you as a man, Drusus said within himself, say now what I would say, did I only have the right to speak! For if you do not, no one will. No one.

“I can see,” said Marius strongly, “that this is a carefully planned piece of legislation. As one would expect from two of our finest legal draftsmen. It requires but one more thing to make it watertight, and that is a clause paying a reward to any man who comes forward as an informant. Yes, an admirable piece of legislation! But is it a just law? Ought we not to concern ourselves with that aspect above all others? And, even more to the point, do we genuinely consider ourselves powerful enough, arrogant enough—-dim-witted enough!—to administer the penalties this law carries? From the tenor of Lucius Licinius’s speech—not one of his better ones, I add!—there are tens of thousands of these alleged false citizens, scattered from the border of Italian Gaul all the way to Bruttium and Calabria. Men who feel themselves entitled to full participation in the internal affairs and governance of Rome—otherwise, why run the risk of making a false declaration of citizenship? Everyone in Italy knows what such a declaration involves if it is discovered. The flogging, the disbarment, the fine—though usually all three are not levied upon the same man.”

He turned from the right side of the House to the left side, and continued. “But now, Conscript Fathers, it seems we are to visit the full force of retribution upon each and every one of these tens of thousands of men—and their families! We are to flog them. Fine them more than many of them can afford. Put them upon a blacklist. Evict them from their homes if their homes happen to be situated within a Roman or a Latin place.”

Down the length of the House he walked to the open doors, and turned there to face both sides. “Tens of thousands, Conscript Fathers! Not one or two or three or four men, but tens of thousands! And families of sons, daughters, wives, mothers, aunts, uncles, cousins, all adding up to tens of thousands more. They will have friends—even perhaps have friends among those who do legally possess the Roman citizenship or the Latin Rights. Outside the Roman and Latin towns, their own kind will be in the majority. And we, the senators who are chosen—by lot, do you think?—to man these boards of enquiry, are going to listen to the evidence, follow the guidelines for the inquisition of those brought before us, and follow the letter of the lex Licinia Mucia in sentencing those discovered spurious. I applaud those among us brave enough to do our duty—though I, for one, will be pleading another stroke! Or is the lex Licinia Mucia going to provide for armed detachments of militiamen to be in constant attendance upon each and every one of these quaestiones?’

He began to walk slowly down the floor, continuing to speak as he did so. “Is it really such a crime? To want to be a Roman? It is not much of an exaggeration to say that we rule all of the world that matters. We are accorded every respect, we are deferred to when we travel abroad—even kings back down when we issue orders. The very least man who can call himself a Roman, albeit a member of the Head Count, is better than any other kind of man. Too poor to own a single slave though he may be, he is still and yet a member of the people who rule the world. It endows him with a precious exclusivity no other word than Roman can bestow. Even as he does the menial work his lack of that single slave dictates, still and yet he can say to himself, ’I am a Roman, I am better than the rest of mankind!’ ”

Almost upon the tribunician bench, he turned to face the open doors. “Here within the bounds of Italy, we dwell cheek by jowl with men and women who are racially akin to us, even racially the same in many instances. Men and women who have fed us troops and tribute for four hundred years at least, who participate with us in our wars as paying partners. Oh yes, from time to time some of them have rebelled, or aided our enemies, or spoken out against our policies. But for those crimes they have already been punished! Under Roman law we cannot punish them all over again. Can they be blamed for wanting to be Roman? That is the question. Not why they want to be Roman, nor what prompted this recent onslaught of false declarations. Can they truly be blamed?”

“Yes!” shouted Quintus Servilius Caepio. “Yes! They are our inferiors! Our subjects, not our equals!”

“Quintus Servilius, you are out of order! Sit down and be silent, or leave this meeting!” thundered Crassus Orator.

At a pace which enabled him to preserve physical dignity, Gaius Marius rotated to look about him through a full circle, his face deformed further by a bitter grin. “You think you know what I’m going to say, don’t you?” he asked the House. Then he laughed aloud. “Gaius Marius the Italian, you are thinking, is going to recommend Rome forget the lex Licinia Mucia, leave those tens of thousands of extra citizens on the rolls.” Up flew the brows. “Well, Conscript Fathers, you’re wrong! That is not what I advocate. Like you, I do not believe that our suffrage can be demeaned by allowing men to retain registration who lacked the principles to reject illegal enrollment as Romans. What I advocate is that the lex Licinia Mucia proceed with its courts of enquiry as its eminent engineers have outlined—but only up to a certain point. Beyond that point we dare not go further! Every false citizen must be struck from our rolls and ejected from our tribes. That—and nothing else. Nothing else! For I give you solemn warning, Conscript Fathers, Quirites listening at the doors, that the moment you inflict penalties upon these spurious citizens that consist of defilement of their bodies, their homes, their purses, their future progeny, you will sow a crop of hatred and revenge the like of which will give pause to the dragon’s teeth! You will reap death, blood, impoverishment, and a loathing which will last for millennia to come! Do not condone what the Italians have tried to do. But do not punish them for trying to do it!”

Oh, well said, Gaius Marius! thought Drusus, and applauded. Some others applauded too. But most did not, and from outside the doors came rumbles indicating that those who heard in the Forum did not agree with so much clemency.

Marcus Aemilius Scaurus got up. “May I speak?”

“You may, Leader of the House,” said Crassus Orator.

Though he and Gaius Marius were the same age, Scaurus Princeps Senatus had not retained the same illusion of youth, despite his symmetrical face. The lines which seamed it ate into the flesh, and his hairless dome was anciently wrinkled too. But his beautiful green eyes were young, keen, healthy, sparkling. And formidably intelligent. His much-admired and much-anecdoted sense of humor was not to the fore today, however, even in the creases at the corners of his mouth; today those corners turned right down. He too strolled across the floor to the doors, but then he turned away from the House to face the crowds outside.

“Conscript Fathers of the Senate of Rome, I am your leader, duly reappointed by our present censors. I have been your leader since the year of my consulship, exactly twenty years ago. I am a consular who has been censor. I have led armies and concluded treaties with our enemies, and with those who came asking to be our friends. I am a patrician of the gens Aemilia. But more important by far than any of those things, laudable and prestigious though they may be, I am a Roman!

“It sits oddly with me to have to agree with Gaius Marius, who called himself an Italian. But let me tell you over again the things he said at the beginning of his address. Is it really such a crime? To want to be a Roman? To want to be a member of the race which rules all of the world that matters? To want to be a member of the race which can issue orders to kings and see those orders obeyed? Like Gaius Marius, I say it is no crime to want to be a Roman. But where we differ is on the emphasis in that statement. It is no crime to want. It is a crime to do. And I cannot permit anyone hearing Gaius Marius to fall into the trap he has laid. This House is not here today to commiserate with those who want what they do not have. This House is not here today to wrestle with ideals, dreams, hungers, aspirations. We are here today to deal with a reality—the illegal usurpation of our Roman citizenship by tens of thousands of men who are not Roman, and therefore not entitled to say they are Roman. Whether they want to be Roman is beside the point. The point is that a great crime has been committed by tens of thousands of men, and we who guard our Roman heritage cannot possibly treat that great crime as something minor deserving no more than a metaphorical slap on the wrist.”

Now he turned to face the House. “Conscript Fathers, I, the Leader of the House, appeal to you as a genuine Roman to enact this law with every ounce of power and authority you can give it! Once and for all this Italian passion to be Roman must cease, be crushed out of existence. The lex Licinia Mucia must contain the harshest penalties ever put upon our tablets! Not only that! I think we should adopt both of Gaius Marius’s suggestions, amend this law to contain them. I say that the first amendment must offer a reward for information leading to the exposure of a false Roman—four thousand sesterces, ten percent of the fine. That way our Treasury doesn’t have to find a farthing—it all comes out of the purses of the guilty. And I say that the second amendment must provide a detachment of armed militia to accompany each and every panel of judges as they go about the business of their courts. The money to pay these temporary soldiers can also be found out of the fines levied. It is therefore with great sincerity that I thank Gaius Marius for his suggestions.”

No one afterward was ever sure whether this was the conclusion of Scaurus’s speech, for Publius Rutilius Rufus was on his feet, crying, “Let me speak! I must speak!,” and Scaurus was tired enough to sit down, nodding to the Chair.

“He’s past it, poor old Scaurus,” said Lucius Marcius Philippus to his neighbors on either side. “It’s not like him to have to seize upon another man’s speech to make one of his own.”

“I found nothing to quarrel with in it,” said his left-hand neighbor, Lucius Sempronius Asellio.

“He’s past it,” Philippus repeated.

“Tace, Lucius Marcius!” said Marcus Herennius, his right-hand neighbor. “I’d like to hear Publius Rutilius.”

“You would!” snarled Philippus, but said no more.

Publius Rutilius Rufus made no attempt to stride about the floor of the House; he simply stood beside his little folding stool and spoke.

“Conscript Fathers, Quirites listening at the doors, hear me, I implore you!” He shrugged his shoulders, pulled a face. “I have no real confidence in your good sense, so I do not expect to succeed in turning you away from Marcus Aemilius’s opinion, which is the opinion of most here today. However, what I say must be said—and must be heard to have been said when the future reveals its prudence and rightness. As the future will, I do assure you.”