The Grass Crown

by Colleen McCullough

  "We have new consuls. None other than Lucius Licinius Crassus Orator and my own dear Quintus Mucius Scaevola. Our urban praetor is Lucius Julius Caesar, who has replaced that extraordinary New Man, Marcus Herennius. I've never seen anyone with more voter appeal than Marcus Herennius, though why escapes me. But all they have to do is see Herennius, and they start crying out to vote for him. A fact which did not please that slimy piece of work you had working for you when he was a tribune of the plebs—I mean Lucius Marcius Philippus. When all the votes for praetor were counted a year ago, there was Herennius at the top of the poll and Philippus at the very bottom. Of the six who got in, I mean. Oh, the wails and whines and whimpers! This year's lot are not nearly as interesting. Last year's praetor peregrinus, Gaius Flaccus, drew attention to himself by giving the full Roman citizenship to a priestess of Ceres in Velia, one Calliphana. All Rome is still dying to know why—but we all can guess!

  "Our censors Antonius Orator and Lucius Flaccus, having finished the letting of the contracts (complicated by the activities of two people in Asia Province, which slowed them down quite a bit!), then scanned the senatorial rolls and found no one reprehensible, after which they scrutinized the knights, same result. Now they are moving toward a full census of the Roman People everywhere in the world, they say. No Roman citizen will escape their net, they say.

  "With that laudable purpose in mind, they have set up their booth on the Campus Martius to do Rome. To do Italy, they have assembled an amazingly well organized force of clerks whose duty will be to go to every town in the peninsula and take a proper census. I approve, though there are many who do not; the old way—of having rural citizens go through the duumviri of their municipality and provincial citizens go through the governor—should be good enough. But Antonius and Flaccus insist their way will be better, so their way it is. I gather, however, that the provincial citizens will still have to go through their various governors. The fogies of course are predicting that the results will be the same as they always are.

  "And a little provincial news, since you are in that neck of the world, but may not have heard. The eighth Antiochus of Syria, nicknamed Grypus Hook-nose, has been murdered by his cousin—or is it his uncle?—or his half brother?—the ninth Antiochus of Syria, nicknamed Cyzicenus. Whereupon the wife of Grypus, Cleopatra Selene of Egypt, promptly married his murderer, Cyzicenus! I wonder how much weeping she did between being widowed and remarried? However, this news does at least mean that for the moment northern Syria is under the rule of a single king.

  "Of more interest to Rome is the death of one of the Ptolemies. Ptolemy Apion, bastard son of horrible old Ptolemy Gross Belly of Egypt, has just died in Cyrene. He was, you may recollect, the King of Cyrenaica. But he died without an heir. And you'll never guess! He willed the Kingdom of Cyrenaica to Rome! Old Attalus of Pergamum has started a fashion. What a nice way to end up ruling the world, Gaius Marius. Left everything in a will.

  "I do hope you decide to come home this year! Rome is a very lonely place without you, and I don't even have Piggle-wiggle to complain about. There is the most peculiar rumor going around, incidentally—that Piggle-wiggle died as the result of being poisoned! The originator of the rumor is none other than that fashionable physician practitioner on the Palatine, Apollodorus Siculus. When Piggle-wiggle took ill, Apollodorus was summoned. Apparently he wasn't happy about the death, so he asked for an autopsy. The Piglet refused, his tata Piggle-wiggle was burned, and his ashes put in a hideously ornate tomb, and all that was many moons ago. But our little Greek from Sicily has been doing some research, and now he insists that Piggle-wiggle drank a very nasty brew decocted from crushed peach seeds! The Piglet rightly says that no one had a motive, and has threatened to haul Apollodoras into court if he doesn't stop going around saying Piggle-wiggle was poisoned. No one—even I!— thinks for one moment that the Piglet did his tata in, and who else is there, I ask you?

  "One final delicious snippet, and I will leave you in peace. Family gossip, though it's become the talk of Rome. Her husband having come home from abroad and seen the bright red hair of his new son, my niece has been divorced for adultery!

  "Further details of this will be forthcoming when I see you in Rome. I will make an offering to the Lares Permarini for your safe return."

  Putting the letter down as if it burned, Marius looked at his wife. "Well, what do you think of that little bit of news?'' he asked.' 'Your brother Gaius has divorced Aurelia for adultery! Apparently she's had another boy—a boy with bright red hair! Oh ho ho ho! Three guesses who's the father, eh?"

  Julia was gaping, literally unable to find anything to say. A bright tide of red flooded into the skin of neck and head, her lips thinned. Then she began to shake her head, and went on shaking it until finally she found words. "It's not true! It can't be true! I don't believe it!"

  "Well, her uncle's the one telling us. Here," said Marius, and thrust the last part of Rutilius Rufus's letter at Julia.

  She took the scroll from him and began to work on separating the endless row of continuous letters into words, her voice sounding hollow, unnatural. Over and over she read the brief message, then put the letter down.

  "It is not Aurelia," she said firmly. "I will never believe it is Aurelia!"

  "Who else could it be? Bright red hair, Julia! That's the brand marked Lucius Cornelius Sulla, not Gaius Julius Caesar!"

  "Publius Rutilius has other nieces," said Julia stubbornly.

  "On close terms with Lucius Cornelius? Living all alone in Rome's worst slum?"

  "How would we know? It's possible."

  "So are flying pigs to a Pisidian," said Marius.

  "What's living all alone in Rome's worst slum got to do with it, anyway?" Julia demanded.

  "Easy to carry on an affair undetected," said Marius, who was highly amused. "At least until you produce a little red-haired cuckoo in the family nest!"

  "Oh, stop wallowing'." cried Julia, disgusted. "I do not believe it, I will not believe it." Another idea occurred to her. "Besides, it can't be my brother Gaius. He isn't due to come home yet, and if he had come home, you would have heard. It's your work he's doing." She looked at Marius with a minatory eye. "Well? Isn't that true, husband?"

  "He probably wrote to me in Rome," said Marius feebly.

  "After I wrote to tell him we'd be away for three years? And giving him our approximate whereabouts? Oh, come now, Gaius Marius, admit it's highly unlikely to be Aurelia!"

  "I'll admit anything you want me to admit," said Marius, and began to laugh. "All the same, Julia, it is Aurelia!"

  "I am going home," said Julia, rising to her feet.

  "I thought you wanted to go to Egypt?"

  "I am going home," Julia repeated. "I don't care where you go, Gaius Marius, though I would prefer it be the Land of the Hyperboreans. I am going home."

  II (97-93 B.C.)

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  1

  I’m going to Smyrna to bring back my fortune,” said Quintus Servilius Caepio to his brother-in-law, Marcus Livius Drusus, as they walked home from the Forum Romanum.

  Drusus stopped, one pointed black eyebrow flying upward. "Oh! Do you think that's wise?" he asked, then could have bitten off his tactless tongue.

  "What do you mean, wise?" Caepio asked, looking pugnacious.

  Out went Drusus's hand to grip Caepio's right arm. "Just what I said, Quintus. I am not implying that your fortune in Smyrna is the Gold of Tolosa—nor for that matter that your father stole the Gold of Tolosa! But the fact remains that almost all of Rome does believe your father guilty, and also believes that the fortune in your name in Smyrna is really the Gold of Tolosa. In the old days, to have brought it back might have earned you nothing more harmful than black looks and a degree of odium you would have found a nuisance in your public career. But nowadays there is a lex Servilia Glaucia de repetundis on the tablets, don't forget. Gone is the time when a governor could peculate or extort and see his loot safe because he put it in someone els
e's name. Glaucia's law specifically provides for the recovery of illegally acquired monies from their ultimate recipients as well as from the guilty party. Using Uncle Lucius Tiddlypuss doesn't work anymore."

  "I remind you that Glaucia's law is not retroactive," said Caepio stiffly.

  "All it will take is one tribune of the plebs in a mood of vengeance, a quick appeal to the Plebeian Assembly to invalidate that particular loophole, and you'll find the lex Servilia Glaucia is retroactive," said Drusus firmly. "Truly, brother Quintus, think about it! I don't want to see my sister and her children deprived of both paterfamilias and fortune, nor do I want to see you sitting out the years as an exile in Smyrna.''

  "Why did it have to be my father they picked on?" demanded Caepio angrily. "Look at Metellus Numidicus! Home again just covered in glory, while my poor father died in permanent exile!"

  "We both know why," said Drusus patiently, wishing for the thousandth time at least that Caepio was brighter.

  "The men who run the Plebeian Assembly can forgive a high nobleman anything—especially after a little time goes by. But the Gold of Tolosa was unique. And it disappeared while in your father's custody. More gold than Rome has in her Treasury! Once people here made up their minds your father took it, they conceived a hatred for him that has nothing to do with right, justice, or patriotism." He started walking again, and Caepio followed.' 'Think it out properly, Quintus, please! If the sums you bring home total anything like ten percent of the value of the Gold of Tolosa, you'll have the whole of Rome saying your father did take it, and you inherited it."

  Caepio began to laugh. "They won't," he said positively. "I have already thought everything out properly, Marcus. It's taken me all these years to solve the problem, but solve it, I have. Truly!"

  "How?" asked Drusus skeptically.

  “First of all, none except you will know where I've really gone and what I'm really doing. As far as Rome will know— as Livia Drusa and Servilia Caepionis will know—I'm in Italian Gaul-across-the-Padus, looking into property. I've been talking about doing so for months; no one will be surprised or bother to query it. Why should they, when I've deliberately harangued people with my plans to set up whole towns full of foundries geared to make anything from ploughshares to chain mail? And as it's the property side of the project I'm interested in, no one can criticize my senatorial integrity. Let others run the foundries—I'm happy to own the towns!"

  Caepio sounded so eager that Drusus (who had hardly heard his brother-in-law on the subject because he had hardly listened) stared at him now in surprise.

  "You sound as if you mean to do it," Drusus said.

  "Oh, I do. The foundry towns represent just one of many things in which I intend to invest my money from Smyrna. As I'm going to keep my investments in Roman territories rather than in Rome herself, there will be no new amounts of my money coming into city financial institutions. Nor do I think the Treasury will be clever enough—or have time enough—to look into who, what, and how much I am investing in business enterprises far from the city of Rome," said Caepio.

  Drusus's expression had changed to amazement. "Quintus Servilius, I am staggered! I didn't think you had so much guile in you," he said.

  "I thought you might be staggered," said Caepio smugly, then spoiled the effect by adding, "though I must admit I had a letter from my father not long before he died, telling me what I must do. There's an enormous amount of money in Smyrna."

  "Yes, I imagine there is," said Drusus dryly.

  "No, it is not the Gold of Tolosa!" cried Caepio, throwing his hands out. "There's my mother's fortune as well as my father's! He was clever enough to move his money before he was prosecuted, in spite of that conceited cunnus Norbanus's measures to prevent his doing so, like throwing, my father in prison between trial and exile. Some of the money has been gradually returned to Rome over the years, but not sufficient to draw attention. Which is why—as you yourself have cause to know!—I still live modestly."

  "I do certainly have cause to know," said Drusus, who had been housing his brother-in-law and his brother-in-law's family since the elder Caepio had been convicted. "One thing does puzzle me, however. Why not just leave your fortune in Smyrna?"

  "Can't," said Caepio quickly. "My father said it wouldn't be safe forever in Smyrna—or any other city in Asia Province with the right banking facilities, like Cos— or even Rhodes, he said. He said Asia Province will revolt against Rome. He said that the tax-farmers there have made everyone hate Rome. He said sooner or later the whole province will rise up."

  "If it did, we'd soon get it back," said Drusus.

  "Yes, I know that! But in the meantime, do you think all the gold and silver and coins and treasures on deposit in Asia Province would just sit there safe and sound? My father said the first thing the revolutionaries would do would be to pillage the temples and the banks," said Caepio.

  Drusus nodded. "He's probably right. So you're going to move your money. But to Italian Gaul?”

  "Only some, only some. Some of it will go to Campania. And some to Umbria. And some to Etruria. Then there are places like Massilia, Utica, and Gades—some will go to them. All up the western end of the Middle Sea."

  "Why don't you admit the truth, Quintus—at least to me, your brother-in-law twice over?" asked Drusus a little wearily. "Your sister is my wife, and my sister is your wife. We are so tied together we can never be free of each other. So admit it, at least to me! It is the Gold of Tolosa."

  "It is not the Gold of Tolosa," said Quintus Servilius Caepio stubbornly.

  Thick, thought Marcus Livius Drusus, leading the way into the peristyle-garden of his house, the finest mansion in Rome; he is as thick as porridge which has boiled too long. And yet... There he is, sitting on fifteen thousand talents of gold his father smuggled from Spain to Smyrna eight years ago, after pretending it was stolen en route from Tolosa to Narbo. A cohort of good Roman troops perished guarding that wagon train of gold, but does he care? Did his father—who must have organized their massacre—care? Of course not! All they care about is their precious gold. They're Servilii Caepiones, the Midases of Rome, can't be jolted out of their intellectually moribund state unless someone whispers the word "Gold!"

  It was January of the year Gnaeus Cornelius Lentulus and Publius Licinius Crassus were consuls, and the lotus trees in the Livius Drusus garden were bare, though the magnificent pool and its statues and fountains by Myron still played, thanks to piped warm water. The paintings by Apelles, Zeuxis, Timanthes, and others had been removed from the back walls of the colonnade and put into storage earlier in the year, after Caepio's two daughters had been caught daubing them with pigments taken from two artists who were restoring the atrium frescoes at the time. Both little girls had been beaten thoroughly, but Drusus had judged it prudent to remove temptation; as the daubs were still fresh, they were able to be removed, yet—who was to say it wouldn't happen all over again when his own small boy grew a little larger, and more mischievous? Priceless collections of art were best not displayed in houses containing children. He didn't think Servilia and Servililla would do anything like it again, but there were bound to be more offspring.

  His own family was finally started, though not in the way he had hoped for; somehow he and Servilia Caepionis couldn't seem to make babies. Two years ago they had adopted the youngest son of Tiberius Claudius Nero, a man as impoverished as most of the Claudii of all branches, and delighted to hand over his new child to become heir to the Livius Drusus wealth. It was more usual to adopt the eldest boy of a family, so that the family adopting might be sure the child they took on was sane, healthy, nice-natured and reasonably intelligent; but Servilia Caepionis, starved for a baby, had insisted upon adopting a baby. And Marcus Livius Drusus—who had learned to love his wife dearly, though he had loved her not at all when they married—allowed her to have her way. His own misgivings he placated by making a generous offering to Mater Matuta, enlisting the goddess's support to ensure that the baby would prove sat
isfactory when he grew into his wits.

  The women were together in Servilia Caepionis's sitting room just next door to the nursery, and came to greet their men with every evidence of pleasure. Though they were only sisters-in-law, they looked more like real sisters, for both were short, very dark of hair and eye, and owned small, regular features. Livia Drusa—who was Caepio's wife— was the prettier of the two, as she had escaped the family affliction of stumpy legs, and had the better figure; into the bargain, she fulfilled the criteria of beauty in a woman, for her eyes were very large, well spaced and well opened, and her mouth was tiny, folded like a flower. The nose in between was a little too small to please the connoisseurs, but it escaped the additional disadvantage of straightness by ending in a little knob. Her skin was thick and creamy, her waist was trim, her breasts and hips well curved and ample. Servilia Caepionis—who was Drusus's wife—was a thinner version of the same; however, her skin had a tendency to produce pimples around chin and nose and her legs were too short for her trunk, her neck too short as well.

  Yet it was Marcus Livius Drusus who loved his less pretty wife, Quintus Servilius Caepio who did not love the beautiful one. At the time of their joint marriage eight years earlier, it had been the other way around. Though neither man realized it, the difference lay in the two women; Livia Drusa had loathed Caepio and had been forced to marry him, whereas Servilia Caepionis had been in love with Drusus since childhood. Members of Rome's highest nobility, both women were model wives of the old kind—obedient, subservient, even-tempered, unfailingly respectful. Then as the years went by and a certain degree of knowledge and familiarity crept into each marriage, Marcus Livius Drusus's indifference melted in the steady glow of his wife's affection, an increasing ardor she displayed in their bed, a shared grief because there were no children; whereas Quintus Servilius Caepio's inarticulate adoration was suffocated by his wife's unspoken dislike, an increasing coolness she displayed in their bed, a resentment because their children were both girls and none had followed.