The Grass Crown (31 page)

He cleared his throat, then shouted, “Gaius Marius is correct! Nothing must be done beyond taking every false citizen off our rolls and out of our tribes. Though I am aware most of you—and I think including me!—regard the Italian nationals as a distinct cut below true Romans, I hope we all have sufficient judgment left to understand that this by no means makes barbarians out of the Italian nationals. They are sophisticated, their leading men are extremely well educated, and basically they live the same kinds of lives as we Romans do. Therefore they cannot be treated like barbarians! Their treaties with us go back centuries, their collaborations with us go back centuries. They are our close blood kindred, just as Gaius Marius said.”

“Well, Gaius Marius’s close blood kindred, at any rate,” drawled Lucius Marcius Philippus.

Rutilius Rufus turned to stare at the ex-praetor, speckled brows lifting. “How perceptive of you to make a distinction,” he said sweetly, “between close blood kindred and the sort of kinship forged by money! Now if you hadn’t made that distinction, you’d have to stick to Gaius Marius like a suckerfish, wouldn’t you, Lucius Marcius? Because where money is concerned, Gaius Marius stands closer to you than your own tata does! For I swear that once you begged more money from Gaius Marius than your own tata ever had to give you! If money were like blood, you too would be the object of Italian slurs, am I not right?”

The House roared with laughter, clapped and whistled, while Philippus turned a dull red and tried to disappear.

Rutilius Rufus returned to the subject. “Let us look at the penal provisions of the lex Licinia Mucia more seriously, I beg you! How can we flog people with whom we must coexist, upon whom we levy soldiers and money? If certain dissolute members of this House can cast aspersions upon other members of this House as to their blood origins, how different are we from the Italians? That is what I am saying, that is what you must consider. It is a bad father brings up his son on a regimen consisting of nothing save daily beatings—when that son grows up he loathes his father, he doesn’t love or admire him. If we flog our Italian kindred of this peninsula, we will have to coexist with people who loathe us for our cruelty. If we prevent their attaining our citizenship, we will have to coexist with people who loathe us for our snobbery. If we impoverish them through outrageous fines, we will have to coexist with people who loathe us for our cupidity. If we evict them from their homes, we will have to coexist with people who loathe us for our callousness. How much loathing does that total? More by far, Conscript Fathers, Quirites, than we can afford to incur from people who live in the same lands we do ourselves.”

“Put them down even further, then,” said Catulus Caesar wearily. “Put them down so far they have no feelings whatsoever left. It is what they deserve for stealing the most precious gift Rome can offer.”

“Quintus Lutatius, try to understand!” pleaded Rutilius Rufus. “They stole because we would not give! When a man steals what he regards as rightly belonging to him, he does not call it stealing. He calls it repossession.”

“How can he repossess what wasn’t his in the first place?”

Rutilius Rufus gave up. “All right, I have tried to make you see the foolishness of inflicting truly frightful penalties upon people among whom we live, who flank our roads, form the majority of the populace in the areas where we site our country villas and have our estates, who quite often farm our lands if we are not modern enough to employ slave-labor. I say no more about the consequences to us of punishing the Italians.”

“Thank all the gods for that!” sighed Scipio Nasica.

“I move now to the amendments suggested by our Princeps Senatus—not by Gaius Marius!” said Rutilius Rufus, ignoring this remark. “And may I say, Princeps Senatus, that to take another man’s irony and turn it into your own literality is not good rhetoric! If you’re not more careful, people will begin to say you’re past it. However, I understand it must have been difficult to find moving and powerful words to describe something your heart isn’t in—am I not right, Marcus Aemilius?”

Scaurus said nothing, but had flushed a trifle red.

“It is not Roman practice to employ paid informers any more than it is Roman practice to employ bodyguards,” said Rutilius Rufus. “If we start to do so under the provisions of the lex Licinia Mucia, we will be demonstrating to our Italian co-dwellers that we fear them. We will be demonstrating to our Italian co-dwellers that the lex Licinia Mucia is not intended to punish wrongdoing, but to crush a potential menace—none other than our Italian co-dwellers! In an inverted way, we will be demonstrating to our Italian co-dwellers that we think they can swallow us far more effectively than we have ever been able to swallow them! Such stringent measures and such un-Roman tools as paid informers and bodyguards indicate an enormous fear and dread—we are displaying weakness, Conscript Fathers, Quirites, not strength! A man who feels truly secure does not walk about escorted by ex-gladiators, nor glance over his shoulder every few paces. A man who feels truly secure does not offer rewards for information about his enemies.”

“Rubbish!” said Scaurus Princeps Senatus scornfully. “To employ paid informants is plain common sense. It will lighten the Herculean task before these special courts, which will have to wade through tens of thousands of transgressors. Any tool capable of shortening and lightening the process is desirable! As for the armed escorts, they are also plain common sense. They will discourage demonstrations and prevent riots.”

“Hear, hear! Hear, hear!” came from every part of the House, sprinkled with scattered applause.

Rutilius Rufus shrugged. “I can see I’m talking to ears turned to stone—what a pity so few of you can read lips! I will conclude then by saying only one more thing. If we employ paid informers, we will let loose a disease upon our beloved homeland that will enervate it for decades to come. A disease of spies, petty, blackmailers, haunting doubts of friends and even relatives—for there are some in every community who will do anything for money—am I not right, Lucius Marcius Philippus? We will unleash that shabby brigade which slinks about the corridors of the palaces of foreign kings—which always appears out of the woodwork whenever fear rules a people, or repressive legislation is enacted. I beg you, do not unleash this shabby brigade! Let us be what we have always been—Romans! Emancipated from fear, above the ploys of foreign kings.” He sat down. “That is all, Lucius Licinius.”

No one applauded, though there were stirs and whispers, and Gaius Marius was grinning.

And that, thought Marcus Livius Drusus as the House wound up its session, was that. Scaurus Princeps Senatus had clearly won, and Rome would be the loser. How could they listen to Rutilius Rufus with ears turned to stone? Gaius Marius and Rutilius Rufus had spoken eminent good sense—good sense so clear it was almost blinding. How had Gaius Marius put it? A harvest of death and blood that would give pause to the dragon’s teeth. The trouble is, hardly one of them knows an Italian beyond some business deal or uneasy boundary sharing. They don’t even have the faintest idea, thought Drusus sadly, that inside each Italian is a seed of hatred and revenge just waiting to germinate. And I would never have known any of this either, had I not met Quintus Poppaedius Silo upon a battlefield.

His brother-in-law Marcus Porcius Cato Salonianus was seated on the top tier not far away; he threaded a path down to Drusus, put his hand upon Drusus’s shoulder.

“Will you walk home with me, Marcus Livius?”

Drusus looked up from where he still sat, mouth slightly open, eyes dull. “Go on without me, Marcus Porcius,” he said. “I’m very tired, I want to collect my thoughts.”

He waited until the last of the senators were disappearing through the doors, then signed to his servant to pick up his stool and go home ahead of his master. Drusus walked slowly down to the black and white flagging of the floor. As he left the building, the Curia Hostilia slaves were already beginning to sweep the tiers, pick up a few bits of rubbish; when they were done with their cleaning, they would lock the doors against the encroaching hordes of the Subura just up the road, and go back to the public slaves’ quarters behind the three State Houses of the major flaminate priests.

Head down, Drusus dragged himself through the ranks of the portico columns, wondering how long it would take Silo and Mutilus to hear of today’s events, sure in his heart that the lex Licinia Mucia would go—complete with Scaurus’s amendments—through the process from promulgation to ratification in the prescribed minimum time limit of three market days and two intervals; just seventeen days from now, Rome would have a new law upon its tablets, and all hope of a peaceful reconciliation with the Italian Allied nations would be at an end.

When he bumped into Gaius Marius, it was entirely unexpected. And literal. Stumbling backward, the apology died on his lips at the look on Marius’s fierce face. Behind Marius lurked Publius Rutilius Rufus.

“Walk home with your uncle and me, Marcus Livius, and drink a cup of my excellent wine,” said Marius.

Not with all the accumulated wisdom of his sixty-two years could Marius have predicted Drusus’s reaction to this kindly tendered invitation; the taut dark Livian face already starting to display lines crumpled, tears flooded from beneath the eyelids. Pulling his toga over his head to hide this unmanliness, Drusus wept as if his life was over, while Marius and Rutilius Rufus drew close to him and tried to soothe him, mumbling awkwardly, patting him on the back, clucking and shushing. Then Marius had a bright idea, dug in the sinus of his toga, found his handkerchief, and thrust it below the hem of Drusus’s impromptu hood.

Some time elapsed before Drusus composed himself, let the toga fall, and turned to face his audience.

“My wife died yesterday,” he said, hiccoughing.

“We know, Marcus Livius,” said Marius gently.

“I thought I was all right! But this today is too much. I’m sorry I made such an exhibition of myself.”

“What you need is a long draft of the best Falernian,” said Marius, leading the way down the steps.

And indeed, a long draft of the best Falernian did much to restore Drusus to some semblance of normality. Marius had drawn an extra chair up to his desk, at which the three men sat, the wine flagon and the water pitcher handy.

“Well, we tried,” said Rutilius Rufus, sighing.

“We may as well not have bothered,” rumbled Marius.

“I disagree, Gaius Marius,” said Drusus. “The meeting was recorded word for word. I saw Quintus Mucius issue the instructions, and the clerks scribbled as busily while you two were talking as they did while Scaurus and Crassus Orator talked. So at some time in the future, when events have shown who is right and who is wrong, someone will read what you said, and posterity will not consider all Romans to be arrogant fools.”

“I suppose that’s some consolation, though I would rather have seen everyone turn away from the last clauses of the lex Licinia Mucia,” said Rutilius Rufus. “The trouble is, they all live among Italians—but they know nothing about Italians!”

“Quite so,” said Drusus dryly. He put his cup down on the desk and allowed Marius to refill it. “There will be war,” he said.

“No, not war!” said Rutilius Rufus quickly.

“Yes, war. Unless I or someone else can succeed in blocking the ongoing work of the lex Licinia Mucia, and gain universal suffrage for all Italy.” Drusus sipped his wine. “On the body of my dead wife,” he said, eyes filling with tears he resolutely blinked away, “I swear that I had nothing to do with the false registration of these Italian citizens. But it was done, and I no sooner heard about it than I knew who was responsible. The high leaders of all the Italian nations, not merely my friend Silo and his friend Mutilus. I don’t think for one moment that they truly thought they could get away with it. I think it was done in an effort to make Rome see how desperately universal suffrage is needed in Italy. For I tell you, nothing short of it can possibly avoid war!”

“They don’t have the organization to make war,” said Marius.

“You might be unpleasantly surprised,” said Drusus. “If I am to believe Silo’s chance remarks—and I think I must—they have been talking war for some years. Certainly since Arausio. I have no evidence, simply knowledge of what sort of man Quintus Poppaedius Silo is. But knowing what sort of man he is, I think they are already physically preparing for war. The male children are growing up and they’re training them as soon as they reach seventeen. Why should they not? Who can accuse them of anything beyond wanting to be sure their young men are ready against the day Rome wants them? Who can argue with them if they insist the arms and equipment they’re gathering are being gathered against the day Rome demands legions of auxiliaries from them?”

Marius leaned his elbows on the desk and grunted. “Very true, Marcus Livius. I hope you’re wrong. Because it’s one thing to fight barbarians or foreigners with Roman legions—but if we have to fight the Italians, we’re fighting men who are as warlike and Romanly trained as we are ourselves. The Italians would be our most formidable enemies, as they have been in the distant past. Look at how often the Samnites used to beat us! We won in the end—but Samnium is only a part of Italy! A war against a united Italy may well kill us.”

“So I think,” said Drusus.

“Then we had better start lobbying in earnest for peaceful integration of the Italians within the Roman fold,” said Rutilius Rufus with decision. “If that’s what they want, then that’s what they must have. I’ve never been a wholehearted advocate of universal enfranchisement for Italy, but I am a sensible man. As a Roman I may not approve. But as a patriot I must approve. A civil war would ruin us.”

“You’re absolutely sure of what you say?” asked Marius of Drusus, his voice somber.

“I am absolutely sure, Gaius Marius.”

“I think, then, that you should journey to see Quintus Silo and Gaius Mutilus as soon as possible,” said Marius, forming ideas aloud. “Try to persuade them—and through them, the other Italian leaders—that in spite of the lex Licinia Mucia, the door to a general citizenship is not irrevocably closed. If they’re already preparing for war, you won’t be able to dissuade them from continuing preparations. But you may be able to convince them that war is so horrific a last resort that they would do well to wait. And wait. And wait. In the meantime, we must demonstrate in the Senate and the Comitia that a group of us is determined to see enfranchisement for Italy. And sooner or later, Marcus Livius, we will have to find a tribune of the plebs willing to put his life on the line and legislate to make all Italy Roman.”