The Grass Crown (51 page)

“I am a plebeian, I am entitled to be here,” said Philippus.

Drusus smiled sweetly. “In which case, Lucius Marcius, kindly conduct yourself like a plebeian, not a consul! Stand and listen with the rest of the plebeians.”

“This meeting is illegal!” Philippus persisted.

“The omens have been declared auspicious, I have adhered to the letter of every law in convoking my contio, and you are simply taking up this meeting’s valuable time,” said Drusus, to an accompaniment of loud cheers from his audience, which may have come to oppose what Drusus wished to talk about, but resented Philippus’s interference.

That was the signal for the young men around Philippus to start pushing and shoving the crowd, ordering it to go home at the same moment as they pulled cudgels from beneath their togas.

Seeing the cudgels, Drusus acted. “This contio is concluded!” he cried from the rostra. “I will not permit anyone to make a shambles out of what should be an orderly meeting!”

But that didn’t suit the rest of the gathering; a few men began pushing and shoving back, a cudgel was swung, and it took Drusus himself, leaping down from the rostra, to make sure no blows were struck, persuade people to go peacefully home.

At which point a bitterly disappointed Italian client of Gaius Marius’s saw red. Before anyone could stop him—including the junior consul’s cluster of apathetic lictors—he had walked straight up to Philippus and walloped him on the nose; then he was gone too quickly to be apprehended, leaving Philippus trying to cope with a pulped nose pouring fountains of blood all over his snowy toga.

“Serves you right,” said Drusus, grinning again, and departed.

“Well done, Marcus Livius,” said Scaurus Princeps Senatus, who had watched from the Senate steps. “What now?”

“Back to the House,” said Drusus.

When he went back to the House on the seventh day of September, Drusus met with a better reception, much to his surprise; his consular allies had lobbied to considerable effect.

“What the Senate and People of Rome must realize,” said Drusus in a loud, firm, impressively serious voice, “is that if we go on denying our citizenship to the people of Italy, there will be war. I do not say so lightly, believe me! And before any of you start ridiculing the idea of the people of Italy as a formidable enemy, I would remind you that for four hundred years they have been participating with us in our wars—or, in some cases, warring against us. They know us as a people at war—they know how we war, and it is the same way they war themselves. In the past, Rome has been stretched to her very limits to beat one or two of the Italian nations—is there anyone here who has forgotten the Caudine Forks? That was inflicted upon us by one Italian nation, Samnium. Until Arausio, the worst defeats sustained by Rome all involved the Samnites. So if, in this day and age, the various nations of Italy decide to unite and go to war against us united, the question I ask of myself—and of all of you!—is—can Rome beat them?”

A wave of restlessness passed through the white ranks on either side of the floor where Drusus stood, like wind through a forest of feathery trees; and with it, a sigh like wind.

“I know the vast majority of you sitting here today believe that war is absolutely impossible. For two reasons. The first, because you do not believe the Italian Allies could ever find enough in common to unite against a common enemy. The second, because you will not believe any nation in Italy save Rome is prepared for war. Even among those who support me actively, there are men who cannot believe the Italian Allies are ready for war. Indeed, it might not be inaccurate if I said none of those who support me actively can credit that Italy is ready for war. Where are the arms and armor? they ask. Where the equipment, where the soldiers? And I say, there! Ready and waiting. Italy is ready. If we do not grant Italy the citizenship, Italy will destroy us in war.”

He paused, threw his arms out. “Surely, Conscript Fathers of our Senate, you can see that war between Rome and Italy would be civil war? A conflict between brothers. A conflict upon the soil we call our own, and they call their own. How can we justify to our grandchildren the ruination of their wealth, their inheritances, on grounds as flimsy as these I hear from this assembly every time it meets? There is no victor in civil war. No spoils. No slaves to sell. Think about what I am asking you to do with a care and a detachment greater than any you have ever summoned! This is not a matter for emotions. Not a matter for prejudices. Not a matter for lightness. All I am really trying to do is to save my beloved Rome from the horrors of civil war.”

This time the House really listened. Drusus began to hope. Even Philippus, who sat looking angry and muttered under his breath from time to time, did not interject. Nor—perhaps more significantly—did the vociferous and malignant Caepio. Unless, of course, these were new tactics they had dreamed up during the six intervening days. It might even be that Caepio didn’t want a nose as hugely swollen and sore as Philippus’s.

After Drusus was finished, Scaurus Princeps Senatus, Crassus Orator, Antonius Orator, and Scaevola all spoke in support of Drusus. And the House listened.

But when Gaius Marius rose to speak, the peace shattered. At precisely that moment when Drusus had decided the cause was won. Afterward, Drusus was forced to conclude that Philippus and Caepio had planned it this way all along.

Philippus jumped to his feet. “Enough!” he screamed, jumping off the curule dais. “It is enough, I say! Who are you, Marcus Livius Drusus, to corrupt the minds and the principles of men as great as our Princeps Senatus? That the Italian Marius is on your side I find inevitable, but the Leader of the House? My ears, my ears! Do they truly hear what some of our most revered consulars have said today?”

“Your nose, your nose! Does it truly smell how you smell, Philippus?” mocked Antonius Orator.

“Tace, Italian-lover!” shouted Philippus. “Shut your vile mouth, pull in your Italian-loving head!”

As this last was a reference to a part of the male anatomy not mentioned in the House, Antonius Orator was up from his stool the moment the insult was uttered. Marius on one side of him and Crassus Orator on the other were ready, however, and pulled him back before he could attack Philippus.

“I will be heard!” Philippus yelled. “Wake up to what is being put to you, you senatorial sheep! War? How can there possibly be war? The Italians have no arms and no men! They could hardly go to war with a flock of sheep—even sheep like you!”

Sextus Caesar and Scaurus Princeps Senatus had been calling for order ever since Philippus had inserted himself into the proceedings; Sextus Caesar now beckoned to his lictors, kept inside today as a precaution. But before they could advance upon Philippus, standing in the middle of the floor, he had ripped the purple-bordered toga from his body, and thrown it at Scaurus.

“Keep it, Scaurus, you traitor! Keep it, all of you! I am going into Rome to find another government!”

“And I,” cried Caepio, leaving the dais, “am going to the Comitia to assemble all the People, patrician and plebeian!”

The House dissolved into chaos, backbencher senators milling without purpose, Scaurus and Sextus Caesar calling again and again for order, and most of those in the front and middle rows streaming out of the doors in the wake of Philippus and Caepio.

The lower end of the Forum Romanum was crowded with those who waited to hear how the Senate felt at the end of this session. Caepio went straight to the rostra, shouting for the Whole People to assemble in their tribes. Not bothering with formalities—or with the fact that the Senate had not been legally dismissed, which meant no Comitia could be convoked—he launched into a diatribe against Drusus, who now stood beside him on the rostra.

“Look at him, the traitor!” howled Caepio. “He’s busy giving away our citizenship to every dirty Italian in this peninsula, to every flea-bitten Samnite shepherd, to every mentally incompetent Picentine rustic, to every stinking brigand in Lucania and Bruttium! And such is the caliber of our idiot Senate that it is actually about to let this traitor have his way! But I won’t let them, and I won’t let him!”

Drusus turned to his nine fellow tribunes of the plebs, who had followed him onto the rostra; they were not pleased at the presumption of the patrician Caepio, no matter how they felt about Drusus’s proposal. Caepio had called the Whole People, it was true, but he had done so before the Senate had been dismissed, and he had usurped the territory of the tribunes of the plebs in the most cavalier fashion; even Minicius was annoyed.

“I am going to break this farce up,” said Drusus, tight-lipped. “Are you all with me?”

“We’re with you,” said Saufeius, who was Drusus’s man.

Drusus stepped to the front of the rostra. “This is an illegally convened meeting, and I veto its continuance!”

“Get out of my meeting, traitor!” shouted Caepio.

Drusus ignored him. “Go home, people of this city! I have interposed my veto against this meeting because it is not legal! The Senate is still officially in session!”

“Traitor! People of Rome, are you going to let yourselves be ordered about by a man who wants to give away your most precious possession?” shrieked Caepio.

Drusus lost his patience at last. “Arrest this lout, fellow tribunes of the plebs!” he cried, gesturing to Saufeius.

Nine men surrounded Caepio and took hold of him, quelling his struggles easily; Philippus, who was standing on the floor of the well looking up at the rostra, suddenly thought of urgent business elsewhere, and fled.

“I have had enough, Quintus Servilius Caepio!” said Drusus in a voice which could be heard throughout the lower Forum. “I am a tribune of the plebs, and you have obstructed me in the execution of my duties! Take heed, for this is my only warning. Cease and desist at once, or I will have you thrown from the Tarpeian Rock!”

The Comitia well was Drusus’s fief, and Caepio, seeing the look in Drusus’s eyes, understood; the old rancor between patrician and plebeian was being called into effect. If Drusus did instruct the members of his college to take Caepio and throw him from the Tarpeian Rock, Drusus would be obeyed.

“You haven’t won yet!” Caepio yelled as he pulled free of the restraining hands and stormed off after the vanished Philippus.

“I wonder,” said Drusus to Saufeius as they watched the graceless exit of Caepio, “if Philippus is tired of his house guest yet?”

“I’m tired of both of them,” said Saufeius, and sighed sadly. “You realize, I hope, Marcus Livius, that had the Senate meeting continued, you would have secured your mandate?”

“Of course I do. Why do you think Philippus suddenly went into that manic temper tantrum? What a terrible actor he is!” said Drusus, and laughed. “Throwing his toga away! What next?”

“Aren’t you disappointed?”

“Almost to death. But I will not be stopped. Not until I have no breath left in my body.”

The Senate resumed its deliberations on the Ides, officially a day of rest, and therefore not a day upon which the Comitia could meet. Caepio would have no excuse to quit the session.

Sextus Caesar was looking worn out, his breathing audible throughout the House, but he saw the initial ceremonies to their conclusion, then rose to speak.

“I will tolerate no more of these disgraceful goings-on,” he said, voice clear and carrying. “As for the fact that the chief source of the disruptions emanates from the curule podium—I regard that as an additional humiliation. Lucius Marcius and Quintus Servilius Caepio, you will conduct yourselves as befits your office—which, I take leave to inform you, neither of you adorns! You demean it, both of you! If your lawlessness and sacrilegious conduct continue, I will send the fasces to the temple of Venus Libitina, and refer matters to the electors in their Centuries.” He nodded to Philippus. “You now have the floor, Lucius Marcius. But heed me well! I have had enough. So has the Leader of the House.”

“I do not thank you, Sextus Julius, any more than I thank the Leader of the House, and all the other members who are masquerading as patriots,” said Philippus impudently. “How can a man claim to be a Roman patriot, and want to give our citizenship away? The answer is that he cannot be the one and do the other! The Roman citizenship is for Romans. It should not be given to anyone who is not by family, by ancestry, and by legal writ entitled to it. We are the children of Quirinus. The Italians are not. And that, senior consul, is all I have to say. There is no more to be said.”

“There is much more to be said!” Drusus countered. “That we are the children of Quirinus is inarguable. Yet Quirinus is not a Roman god! He is a god of the Sabines, which is why he lives on the Quirinal, where the city of the Sabines once stood. In other words, Lucius Marcius, Quirinus is an Italian god! Romulus took him into our fold, Romulus made him Roman. But Quirinus belongs equally to the people of Italy. How can we betray Rome by making her mightier? For that is what we will be doing when we give the citizenship to all of Italy. Rome will be Italy, and mighty. Italy will be Rome, and mighty. What as the descendants of Romulus we retain will be ours forever, exclusively. That can never belong to anyone else. But what Romulus gave us is not the citizenship! That, we have already given to many who cannot claim to be the children of Romulus, the natives of the city of Rome. If Romanness is at issue, why is Quintus Varius Severus Hybrida Sucronensis sitting in this august body? His is a name, Quintus Servilius Caepio, that I note you have refrained from mentioning whenever you and Lucius Marcius have sought to impugn the Romanness of certain members of this House!

Yet Quintus Varius is truly not a Roman! He never laid eyes on this city nor spoke Latin in normal congress until he was in his twenties! Yet—here he sits by the grace of Quirinus in the Senate of Rome—a man less Roman by far in his thoughts, in his speech, in his way of looking at things, than any Italian! If we are to do as Lucius Marcius Philippus wants, and confine the citizenship of Rome to those among us who can claim family, ancestry, and legal writ, then the first man to have to leave both this House and the city of Rome would be Quintus Varius Severus Hybrida Sucronensis! He is the foreigner!”