The Grass Crown

by Colleen McCullough

  Anyway, think about it, Lucius Cornelius. I have talked to Gaius Marius, and he applauds the idea, as does—believe it or not!—none other than Marcus Aemilius Scaurus Princeps Senatus! The birth of a son the living image of him has quite turned the old boy's head. Though why I call a man my own age an old boy, I do not quite know.

  Sitting in his office in Tarraco, Sulla digested his breezy correspondent's words slowly. The news that Caecilia Metella Dalmatica had given Scaurus a son occupied his mind first, and to the complete exclusion of Rutilius Rufus's other, more important news and opinions until Sulla had smiled sourly for long enough to scotch the memory of Dalmatica. Then he turned his mind to the idea of standing for praetor, and decided that Rutilius Rufus was right. Next year was the time—there would never be a better time. That Titus Didius would not oppose his going, he did not doubt; and Titus Didius would give him letters of recommendation that would greatly enhance his chances. No, he hadn't won a Grass Crown in Spain; it had fallen to Quintus Sertorius's lot to do that. But he hadn't done too badly, either.

  Was it a dream? A little spiteful arrow shot from Fortune's bow through the medium of poor dead Julilla, who had woven a crown for him out of Palatine grass and put it on his head, not knowing the military significance of what she did. Or had Julilla seen clearly? Was the Grass Crown still waiting to be won? In what war? Nothing serious enough was going on, nothing serious loomed anywhere. Oh, Spain still boiled in both provinces, but Sulla's duties were not of the kind to permit the winning of a corona graminea. He was Titus Didius's much-valued chief of logistics, supplies, arms, strategy, but Titus Didius didn't care to use him to command armies. After he was praetor Sulla would get his chance, and dreamed of relieving Titus Didius in Nearer Spain. A rich and fruitful governorship, that was what he needed!

  Sulla needed money. He was well aware of it. At forty-five his time was running out rapidly; soon it would be too late to make a bid for the consulship, no matter what people said to him about Gaius Marius. Gaius Marius was a special case. He had no like, not even Lucius Cornelius Sulla. To Sulla, money was the harbinger of power—and that had been true for Gaius Marius as well. If he hadn't had the fortune he had won for himself while praetorian governor of Further Spain, old Caesar Grandfather would never have considered him as a husband for Julia—and if he hadn't married Julia, he could never have secured the consulship, difficult though that had been. Money. Sulla had to have money! So to Rome he would go to seek election as praetor, then back to Spain he would come to make money.

  Wrote Publius Rutilius Rufus in August of the following year, after a long silence:

  I have been ill, Lucius Cornelius, but am now fully recovered. The doctors called my malady all manner of abstruse things, but my own private diagnosis was boredom. However, I have thrown off both malady and ennui, for things in Rome are more promising.

  First off, your candidacy for praetor is already being bruited about. Reactions among the electors are excellent, you will be pleased to know. Scaurus continues to be supportive of you—a circumscribed way of saying he did not find you at fault in that old matter of his wife, I imagine. Stiff-necked old fool! He should have been big enough to have admitted it openly at the time instead of virtually forcing you into what I always think of as an exile. But at least Spain has done the trick! Had Gaius Marius only obtained the kind of support from Piggle-wiggle that you are receiving from Titus Didius, his task would have been both easier and more direct.

  Now to the international news. Old Nicomedes of Bithynia has died at last, aged, we believe, somewhere in the vicinity of ninety-three. His long-dead Queen's son—now no chicken himself at sixty-five—has succeeded to the throne. But a younger son—aged fifty-seven—by name of Socrates (the elder's name is Nicomedes, and he will rule as the third of that name), has lodged a complaint with the Senate in Rome demanding that Nicomedes the Third be deposed, and himself elevated. The Senate is deliberating the matter with extreme turgidity, deeming foreign affairs unimportant. There has also been a little bit of a stir in Cappadocia, where the Cappadocians apparently have haled their boy-king off his throne and replaced him with a fellow whom they call the ninth Ariarathes. But the ninth Ariarathes died recently in suspicious circumstances, so we are told; the boy-king and his regent, Gordius, are back in control—not without some aid from Mithridates of Pontus and a Pontic army.

  When Gaius Marius came back from that part of the world he made a speech to the House warning us that King Mithridates of Pontus is a dangerous young man, but those who bothered to turn up to that particular meeting contented themselves with dozing all the way through Gaius Marius's statement, and then Scaurus Princeps Senatus got up and said he thought Gaius Marius was exaggerating. It appears that the young King of Pontus has been wooing Scaurus with a spate of terrifically polite letters written in immaculate Greek and absolutely larded with quotations from Homer, Hesiod, Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides—not to mention Menander and Pindar. Therefore Scaurus has concluded he must be a nice change from your average oriental potentate, keener on reading the Classics than on driving a spike up through his grandmother's posterior fundamental orifice. Whereas Gaius Marius contends that this sixth Mithridates—called Eupator, of all things!—starved his mother to death, killed the brother who was King under the mother's regency, killed several of his uncles and cousins, and then finished things off by poisoning the sister to whom he was married! A nice sort of fellow, you perceive, very up on the Classics!

  Politically Rome is saturated with lotus-eaters, for I swear nothing happens. On the court front things have been more interesting. For the second year in a row the Senate sent out its special courts to enquire into the illegal mass enrollment of Italian nationals, and—as was the case last year—found it impossible to trace most of the men who had put down their names. However, there have been several hundred victories, which means several hundred poor bleeding wretches have been entered against Rome's debit account. I tell you, Lucius Cornelius, one gets a chill on the back of the neck if one is stranded without a dozen stout fellows at one's back in any Italian locality! Never have I encountered such looks, such—I suppose the word is passive—lack of co-operation from the Italians. It is probably many years since they loved us at all, but since these courts were established and began their dirty work of flogging and dispossessing, the Italians have learned to hate us. The one cheering factor is that the Treasury is starting to bleat because the fines levied haven't even begun to cover the cost of sending ten lots of expensive senators out of Rome. Gaius Marius and I intend to move a motion in the House toward the end of the year, to the effect that the quaestiones of the lex Licinia Mucia be abandoned as futile and far too costly to the State.

  A very new and very young sprig of the plebeian house Sulpicius, one Publius Sulpicius Rufus, actually had the gall to prosecute Gaius Norbanus in the treason court for unlawfully driving Quintus Servilius Caepio of aurum Tolosanum and Arausio fame into exile. The charge, alleged Sulpicius, was inadmissible in the Plebeian Assembly; it should have been tried in the treason court. This young Sulpicius, I add, is a constant companion of the present Caepio's, which shows extremely poor taste on his part. Anyway, Antonius Orator acted for the defense—and made, I personally think, the finest speech of his entire career. With the result that the jury voted solidly for absolution and Norbanus thumbed his nose at Sulpicius and Caepio. I enclose a copy of Antonius Orator's speech for your delectation. You will enjoy it.

  Concerning the other Orator, Lucius Licinius Crassus, the husbands of his two daughters have fared oppositely in the nursery. Scipio Nasica's son, Scipio Nasica, now has a son, called Scipio Nasica. His Licinia is breeding superbly, as there is already a daughter. But the Licinia who married Metellus Pius the Piglet has had no luck at all. The Piglet nursery is full of echoes because Licinia Piglet is not full. And my niece Livia Drusa had a girl toward the end of last year—a Porcia, of course, and boasting a head of hair that would set six haystacks on fire. Livia Drusa co
ntinues to be besotted by Cato Salonianus, whom I find a really pleasant sort of fellow, actually. Now in Livia Drusa, Rome really has a breeder!

  I wander about, but what does it matter? Our aediles this year are curiously linked. My nephew Marcus Livius is one of the plebeian aediles, his colleague a fabulously rich nonentity named Remmius, whereas his brother-in-law Cato Salonianus is a curule aedile. Their games will be splendid.

  Family news. Poor Aurelia is still living alone in the Subura, but we hope to see Gaius Julius home at last next year—or the year after, at the latest. His brother Sextus is a praetor this year, and it will soon be Gaius Julius's turn. Of course Gaius Marius will honor his promise, bribe heavily if he has to. Aurelia and Gaius Julius have the most remarkable son. Young Caesar, as they call him, is now five years old, and can already read and write. What is more, he reads immediately! Give him a piece of gibberish you wrote down yourself not moments before and he rattles it off without pausing for breath! I have never known a grown man who could do that—yet there he stands, all of five years old, making fools of the best of us. A stunning-looking child too. But not spoiled. Aurelia is too hard on him, I think.

  I can think of nothing else, Lucius Cornelius. Make sure you hurry home. I know in my bones that there is a praetor's curule chair waiting for you.

  Lucius Cornelius Sulla hurried home as bidden, half of him alight with hope, the other half convinced something would happen to mar his chances. Though he longed with every cord that tied his heart to visit his lover of many years, Metrobius, he did not, nor was he at home to Metrobius when that star of the tragic theater came as a client to call. This was his year. If he failed, the goddess Fortune had turned her face away forever, so he would do nothing to annoy that lady; she was especially prone to dislike it when her favorites engaged in love affairs which mattered too much. Goodbye, Metrobius.

  He did, however, call upon Aurelia as soon as he had spent a little time with his children, who had grown up so much that he wanted to weep; four years of their little lives stolen from him by a foolish girl he still hankered after! Cornelia Sulla was thirteen years old, and had enough of her dead mother's fragile beauty to turn heads already, allied as it was to Sulla's richly waving red-gold hair. She was regularly menstruating, so Aelia said, and the budding breasts beneath her plain gown confirmed. The sight of her made Sulla feel old, a sensation entirely new and most unwelcome; but then she gave him Julilla's bewitching smile and ran into his arms and stood almost on his level to cover his face with kisses. His son was twelve, an almost pure Caesar in physical type—golden hair and blue eyes, long face, long bumpy nose, tall and slender yet well muscled.

  And in the boy Sulla found at last the friend he had never owned; a love so perfect, pure, innocent, heart-whole, that he found himself thinking of nothing and no one else when he should have been concentrating upon charming the electors. Young Sulla—though still in the purple-bordered toga of childhood and wearing the magical talisman of the bulla around his neck on a chain to ward off the Evil Eye— accompanied his father everywhere, standing gravely off to one side and listening intently to whatever was said between Sulla and his acquaintances. Then when they went home they sat together in Sulla's study and talked about the day, the people, the mood in the Forum.

  But Sulla did not take his son with him to the Subura; he walked alone, surprised when every now and then someone in the crowd greeted him, or clapped him on the shoulder; at last he was beginning to be known! Taking these encounters as a good omen, he knocked on Aurelia's door with greater optimism than he had experienced as he left the Palatine. And, sure enough, Eutychus the steward admitted him immediately. Possessing no sense of shame, he felt at no disadvantage as he waited in the reception room; when he saw her emerge from her workroom he simply held out his hand with a smile. A smile she returned.

  How little she had changed. How much she had changed. What was her age now? Twenty-nine? Thirty? Helen of Troy, yield up your laurels, he thought; here is beauty personified. The purple eyes were larger, their black lashes as dense, the skin as thick and creamy as ever, that indefinable air of immense dignity and composure more marked.

  "Am I forgiven?" he asked, taking her hand and squeezing it.

  "Of course you are, Lucius Cornelius! How could I continue to blame you for a weakness in myself?"

  "Shall I try again?" he asked irrepressibly.

  "No, thank you," she said, taking a seat. "Some wine?"

  "Please." He looked around. "Still alone, Aurelia?"

  "Still alone. And perfectly happy, I do assure you."

  "You are the most self-sufficient person I have ever met. If it hadn't been for that one little episode, I'd be tempted to think you inhuman—or superhuman!—so I'm glad it happened. One could not maintain a friendship with a genuine goddess, could one?"

  "Or a genuine demon, Lucius Cornelius,'' she countered.

  He laughed. "All right, I yield!"

  The wine came, was poured. Sipping at his cup, he looked at her across its brim, her face rayed by the fizzing little purple bubbles the slightly effervescent wine gave off. Perhaps it was the peace and contentment of his new friendship with his son allowed his eyes an extra measure of vision, pierced the lucent windows of her mind and dived into the depths beyond, there to discover layer upon layer of complexities, contingencies, conundrums, all logically put away in carefully sorted categories.

  "Oh!" he said, blinking, "There isn't a facade to you at all! You are exactly what you seem to be."

  "I hope so," she said, smiling.

  "We mostly aren't, Aurelia."

  "Certainly you aren't."

  "So what do you think exists behind my facade?"

  But she shook her head emphatically. "Whatever I think, Lucius Cornelius, I shall keep to myself. Something tells me it is safer.''

  "Safer?"

  She shrugged. "Why that word? I don't honestly know. A premonition? Or something from long ago, more likely. I don't have premonitions, I'm not giddy enough."

  “How are your children?'' he asked, changing the subject to something safer.

  "Would you like to see for yourself?"

  "Why not? My own have surprised me, that much I can tell you. I confess I shall find it hard to be civil to Marcus Aemilius Scaurus. Four years, Aurelia! They're almost grown up, and I was not here to see it happen."

  "Few Roman men of our class are, Lucius Cornelius," she said placidly. "In all likelihood you would have gone away even had that business with Dalmatica never happened. Just enjoy your children while you can; and don't think harshly of what cannot now be altered."

  The fine fair brows he darkened artificially lifted quizzically. "There is so much about my life that I would change! That's the trouble, Aurelia. So much I regret."

  "Regret it if you must, but don't let it color today or tomorrow," she said, not mystically, but practically. "If you do, Lucius Cornelius, the past will haunt you forever. And—as I have told you several times before—you still have a long course to run. The race has hardly commenced.''

  "You feel that?"

  "Completely."

  And in trooped her three children, Caesars all. Julia Major called Lia was ten years old and Julia Minor called Ju-ju was almost eight. Both girls were tall, slender, graceful; they looked like Sulla's dead Julilla, save that their eyes were blue. Young Caesar was six. Quite how he contrived to give the impression that his beauty was greater than that of his sisters, Sulla didn't know, only felt it. A totally Roman beauty, of course; the Caesars were totally Roman. This was the boy, he remembered, who Publius Rutilius Rufus had said could read at a glance. That indicated an extraordinary degree of intelligence. But many things might happen to Young Caesar to damp down the fires of his mind.

  "Children, this is Lucius Cornelius Sulla," said Aurelia.

  The girls murmured shy greetings, whereas Young Caesar turned on a smile which caught at Sulla's breath, stirred him in a way he hadn't felt since his first meeting with Metrobius. The
eyes looking directly at him were very like his own—palest blue surrounded by a dark ring. They blazed intelligence. Here am I as I might have been had I known a mother like the wonderful Aurelia and never known a drunkard like my father, thought Sulla. A face to set Athens on fire, and a mind too.

  "They tell me, boy," said Sulla, "that you're very clever.''

  The smile became a laugh. "Then you haven't been talking to Marcus Antonius Gnipho," Young Caesar said.

  "Who's he?"

  "My tutor, Lucius Cornelius."

  "Can't your mother teach you for two or three more years?"

  "I think I must have driven her mad with my questions when I was a little boy. So she got a tutor for me."

  "Little boy? You're still that."

  "Littler," said Young Caesar, not at all daunted.

  "Precocious," said Sulla dismissively.

  "Not that word, please!"

  "Why not, Young Caesar? What do you know, at six, about the nuances in a word?"

  "About that one, enough to know that it's almost always applied to haughty little girls who sound exactly like their grandmothers," said Young Caesar sturdily.

  "Ahah!" said Sulla, looking more interested. "That's not got out of a book, is it? So you have eyes which feed your clever mind with information, and from it you make deductions."

  "Naturally," said Young Caesar, surprised.

  "Enough. Go away now, all of you," said Aurelia.

  The children went, Young Caesar smiling at Sulla over his shoulder until he caught his mother's eye.

  "If he doesn't burn out, he'll either be an adornment to his class or a thorn in its paw," said Sulla.