The King's Gambit (7 page)

"I think so," he said, very doubtfully.

"For instance, my own family, the Caecilii Metelli, has had many Consuls. By far the largest number of the senatorial families these days are plebeian. There are still some patrician families." I looked over the room. "For instance: Over there is Caius Julius Caesar, a patrician. So is Sergius Catilina. Both of this year's Consuls, Crassus and Pompey, are plebeians. Cicero over there is not even from Rome, but everybody expects him to be Consul someday. Is this clear?"

"I think so," he said, nibbling on a sugared fig.

"Good. Because now it gets complicated. Our host and hostess belong to the very ancient Claudian gens. This family is unusual in having
both
patrician and plebeian branches. The patricians are usually called Claudius, and the plebeians are usually named Clodius. Certain members of this family have chosen, for political reasons, to switch from patrician to plebeian status. To do this, they arrange to have themselves adopted by a member of the plebeian family and then change the spelling of their name."

Tigranes looked slightly stunned. "But why should anyone want to change from patrician to plebeian?"

"That is a shrewd question," I admitted. "Partly, it's to curry favor with the mob, which is entirely plebeian. Partly, it's constitutional. Only plebeians can hold the office of tribune."

"I thought tribunes were military officers," he said.

"Military tribunes are low-ranking officers, appointed by the Senate, who continually embarrass our generals with their inexperience and clumsiness." Having been one, I could speak with authority. "Tribunes of the people are elected by the plebs and have had considerable power, including the power of veto over a senatorial decree."

"'Have had'?" Tigranes said, with an excellent grasp of Latin tenses.

"Well, yes," I said, floundering somewhat because I was so puzzled myself. "Actually, under the Sullan constitution, which still stands, the tribunes of the people have been stripped of most of their old powers." Sulla, one need hardly point out, had been a patrician.

"And yet Claudius wants to be a tribune," Tigranes said. "Will this be difficult?"

"Well, let me see. He'll have to have a plebeian sponsor, which is no problem since so many of his kinsman are Clodians. There will be legislation to force through the Senate. They are always reluctant to see such social fluidity. It can be complicated."

"I marvel at this multiplicity of governmental voices," Tigranes said. "In my homeland, the Great King says what is to be, and it is."

"We've done well out of our system," I assured him. At that moment, the new guest entered. It was none other than my father's patron, Quintus Hortensius Hortalus. Everybody expected a sudden clashing of guests, because Hortalus had defended Verres, whom Cicero had prosecuted with such spectacular success. However, the two men remained quite civil, in that odd fashion that lawyers have.

I excused myself to go to the privy. Actually, I only needed a few moments to ponder the makeup of the night's odd gathering. Upon reflection, I realized it was not so disparate after all. Virtually every man present was a supporter of Pompey. Within a month, Pompey and Crassus would step down from consular office to take up proconsular command. One of the Consuls for the next year was none other than Quintus Hortensius Hortalus.

Now, while Pompey and Crassus were technically equal in rank, Crassus was not one tenth the general Pompey was. It was clear to everyone that Pompey coveted the eastern command now held by Lucullus. It would be the spectacular crown to Pompey's brilliant military career to add the eastern kingdoms to Rome's holdings. The problem was, it looked as if Lucullus was going to do exactly that before Pompey had the chance. Perhaps I should say something about Lucullus here. He was an altogether admirable man whose reputation had suffered of late because he did not belong to the all-important family we all know so well. He is remembered now because of his later writings on the nature of the good life and because of his patronage of the arts, but in those days he was our most brilliant general. He was one of the few genuinely fine Romans I ever knew, able in political and military life, a patron of the arts, ferocious in battle, magnanimous in the moment of victory. I know it sounds like the praise of a lackey, but we were not related and I never owed him anything, so you may take it as true. Unlike so many of our generals who bought the goodwill of their soldiers by allowing them great license, especially after a battle, Lucullus was a strict disciplinarian, and as a result his troops had little affection for him when the campaigning was rough.

It is an oddity of soldiers that they will hate most officers who beat them and discipline them strictly, but will worship others for the same qualities. In my lifetime I have known two generals whose soldiers reveled in the strictness of their rule. One was Germanicus, beloved nephew of our First Citizen. The other was Caius Julius, who had that wonderful facility for persuading men to do those things directly contrary to their own interests but ideal for his. I do not by this mean to equate Caesar with Germanicus, for the latter is a splendid man, if somewhat dim of apprehension, while Caius Julius was the most brilliantly cold-blooded schemer Rome ever produced.

But I am getting ahead of myself. At that moment, on that night, I had only Tigranes and Publius and Claudia on my mind. Especially Claudia. It pained me that she would contemplate lowering her social status, but that would have no bearing on our personal relationship. It was the knowledge that, when Publius Claudius changed his status and became Clodius, he would instantly become a figure of controversy and acrimony. That meant that he would be a target for assassins, and so would she, if she persisted in backing his fortunes.

I returned to find the guests being conducted into the dining room. We all crawled onto the couches, a rather undignified procedure dictated by tradition, and slaves took our sandals and passed out wreaths: laurel, I noted, probably in honor of the foreign guest's Greek tastes.

The dinner was arranged in the old style, with three couches arranged around three sides of a square table, three guests to each couch.

Publius had a difficult problem of precedence to contend with, having both a visiting prince and a Consul-elect among his guests. Had Hortalus been in office, the right-hand position on the central couch would have been his by right, but Publius had given that place to Tigranes as a distinguished foreign guest. Hortalus had the next-highest place, in the center of the middle table, with Publius taking the left end.

The rest of us were seated in no particular order, since birth and office were so oddly mixed in this group. I had the upper position on the right-hand couch, putting me next to Tigranes, with Claudia to my right and Caius Julius next to her. Opposite us on the third couch Curius, Catilina and Cicero reclined. It was still a new custom for women to recline with the men at dinner, but Claudia was nothing if not up-to-date. In earlier days, women sat in chairs, usually next to their husbands. Nobody on this occasion seemed upset by Claudia's presence on the couch. I certainly wasn't. The banquet itself was perfectly decorous, probably out of respect for Hortalus's status as Consul-elect.

There were no flamingos' tongues or dormice rolled in honey and poppy seed or other culinary curiosities such as delighted Sergius Paulus. To begin, the servers brought in various appetizers: figs, dates, olives and the like, along with the inevitable eggs. Before anyone reached for these, Hortalus intoned the invocation to the gods in his matchless voice. Then we all set to.

"Ever since I reached Italy," Tigranes said to me, "every dinner has begun with eggs. Is that a custom here?"

"Every formal dinner begins with eggs and ends with fruit," I told him. "We have an expression, 'from eggs to apples,' meaning from beginning to end."

"I've heard the expression, but I never knew what it meant." He eyed a dish of hard-boiled pheasant's eggs doubtfully. Apparently, eggs were not esteemed among his countrymen. He found the next courses more to his liking: roast kid, a vast tuna and hares boiled in milk. Throughout this there was little but small talk. The latest omens were discussed, as usual.

"Four eagles were seen atop the Temple of Jupiter this morning," Hortalus said. "This must portend a good year to come." It would, of course, be the year of his Consulate.

"I've heard that a calf was born three nights ago in Campania," Curius contributed, "with five legs and two heads."

Cicero snorted. "Monstrous births have no bearing on the affairs of men. They are nothing but the sport of the gods. I think the stars are of greater significance in our lives than most of us realize."

"Oriental mummery," Hortalus pronounced, "begging our royal guest's pardon. I think that the only omens of significance for us are those officially recognized and handed down to us by ancient custom: the auguries and the haruspices."

"Those being?" Tigranes asked.

"Auguries are taken by the officials of the college of augurs, of whom there are fifteen," Caesar explained. "It is a great honor for one of us to be elected to that college. They interpret the divine will by observing the flight and feeding of birds, and by determining the direction of lightning and thunder. Favorable omens come from the left, unfavorable omens from the right."

"Haruspices, on the other hand," Cicero said, "are determined by observing the entrails of sacrificial animals. This is carried out by a professional class, mostly Etruscans. Official or not, I consider it to be fraudulent."

Tigranes looked confused. "Just a moment. If you regard the left side as favorable and the right as unfavorable, why do Roman poets often speak of thunder from the right as a sign of the gods' favor?"

"They are following a Greek custom," Claudia said "The Greek augurs faced north when taking the omens Ours face south."

"Speaking of lightning," Catilina said, "I don't know whether it came from right or left, but this morning a bolt struck the statue of Lucullus by the wharf at Ostia. I heard this from a bargeman at the Tiber docks today. Melted him into a puddle of bronze."

There was much chatter about this omen. No official augur was required to interpret this one as unfavorable to Lucullus.

"This sounds most ominous," Hortalus said. "Let us hope that it doesn't presage some terrible defeat in the East." The statement had a hypocritical ring to it, but then Hortalus always sounded that way. If he told you the sun had risen that morning, you would go outside to see, just to make sure.

"There are no few here in Rome who would rejoice to see Lucullus recalled," Curius commented.

"But the Senate would never recall a successful general," I said, not liking the sound of this.

"Not as long as he's successful," Publius Claudius said, smiling. "And my brother-in-law has been
very
successful." He picked up a skewer of grilled lamb and gnawed at it daintily.

"Mark me," Catilina said, "that man is building himself an independent power base in the East, currying favor with those Asian cities by bankrupting half of Rome." Sergius Catilina was one of those red-faced, red-haired men who looked and sounded angry all the time. He referred to Lucullus's slashing of the Asian debt. When Sulla was Dictator, he had levied a tremendous assessment on the cities of the province of Asia, which they could pay only by borrowing at usurious rates from Roman financiers. To save the cities from utter ruin Lucullus had forgiven much of the debt and had forbidden high interest, earning him the undying enmity of our moneylenders.

"Perhaps Publius will be able to point out the error of his ways when he sails to join Lucullus next year," Claudia said airily. She seemed to want to lighten the conversation and quickly changed the subject. Soon the main course dishes were cleared away and we all observed a few moments of silence as the household gods were brought in. Officiating as household priest, Publius drew his toga over his head and sprinkled the little gods with meal and wine lees. When the gods were carried out, the dessert was served.

During this time, Tigranes paid me inordinate attention, asking me to explain this or that concerning Roman custom, law or religion. He showed extraordinary interest in my career and plans for future officeholding. I might have been flattered at such interest from a man who might one day be King of Kings, but at the time I felt more annoyed that he prevented me from devoting my time to Claudia. As a result, Caesar received most of her conversation, for which I envied him.

Claudia excused herself from the drinking-bout that followed dessert, and I decided that I had better moderate my intake of wine. It had come to me during dinner that I was in the company of men with whom it would be unwise to speak carelessly. They were the sort of men who played the power game for the very highest stakes. Such men usually die by violence, and of those present at that drinking-bout, only Hortalus enjoyed a natural death. Of the nature of my own demise, I am not yet qualified to write. The politics of that time shared some aspects in common with the
munera sine missione
of which I wrote earlier.

Taking little part in the drinking, I watched my fellow guests with interest. Curius was well advanced in drunkenness from what he had sipped during dinner. Sergius Catilina had the sort of red face that grew redder as he drank. His voice loudened and coarsened as well. Hortalus remained as calm and jovial as always, and Cicero drank moderately, his voice never slurring.

Caius Julius was named master of revels and he, decreed that the wine be mixed to a strength of only one part water to two of wine, a strong mix considering the potency of the Falernian that Publius served. I was grateful that Caesar refrained from decreeing one of those bouts where every guest had to down a specified number of cups. For instance, we might have been required to drink a cup for every letter in the name of the guest of honor. Tigranes would not have been a bad choice, but we all would have been on the floor before getting to the end of Quintus Hortensius Hortalus. Instead, we were to drink as we pleased, although a server made sure that our cups never stayed empty.