The Grass Crown

by Colleen McCullough

  Introduced to Caepio, Varius attached himself to Caepio more firmly than a barnacle to a barge bottom, an adept at flattery, untiring in his attentions and little services—and more successful than he might otherwise have been because, without knowing it, he elevated Caepio to the level upon which Caepio used to put Drusus in the old days.

  Not all of Caepio's other friends welcomed Quintus Varius, though Lucius Marcius Philippus did, as Varius was ever-ready to extend a distressed consular aspirant some financial help, and quick to waive repayment. Quintus Caecilius Metellus Pius the Piglet loathed Varius from the moment he met him.

  "Quintus Servilius, how do you stomach that vile creature?” the Piglet was heard to ask Caepio without a single stammer. "I tell you, if Varius had been in Rome at the time my father died, I would have believed Apollodorus the physician, and known exactly who poisoned the great Metellus Numidicus!"

  Said the Piglet to Ahenobarbus Pontifex Maximus, "Why is it that your top clients are such a lot of turds? Truly, they are! Between the plebeian Servilii of the Augur's family and this Varius character, you're making a name for yourself as the patron of pimps, shits, butcher's scraps, and maggots!"

  A comment which left Ahenobarbus Pontifex Maximus openmouthed, bereft of the power to reply.

  Not all eyes saw Quintus Varius so clearly; to the gullible and the uninformed he presented as a wonderful kind of man. For one thing, he was extremely good-looking in a very masculine way—tall, well built, dark but not swarthy, fiery of eye, pleasing of features. He was also plausible, but on a personal level only. His oratory left much to be desired and would always be marred by his very thick Spanish accent, but he was working hard at it, upon Caepio's advice. And while he did, the arguments raged about the sort of man he truly was.

  "He's that rare man, a reasonable man," said Caepio.

  "He's a parasite and a panderer," said Drusus.

  "He's a most generous, charming man," said Philippus.

  "He's as slippery as a gobbet of spit," said the Piglet.

  "He's a worthy client," said Ahenobarbus Pontifex Maximus.

  "He's no Roman," said Scaurus Princeps Senatus scornfully.

  Naturally the charming, reasonable, worthy Quintus Varius was rendered uncomfortable by the new lex Minicia de liberis. It called his citizen status into question. Unfortunately he only now discovered how obtuse Caepio could be; nothing he could say would persuade Caepio to withdraw his support for the law of Minicius.

  "Don't worry about it, Quintus Varius," said Caepio, "it's not a retroactive law, you know."

  Drusus was more daunted by the law than anyone else, of that there could be no doubt, though none knew he was daunted. It was a strong indication that feeling—within Rome at least—was still heavily against giving away the citizenship.

  "I shall have to reorganize my program of legislation," he said to Silo during one of Silo's visits, just before the end of the year. “General suffrage will have to be postponed until the end of my tribunate. I had hoped to start with it, but I cannot."

  "You will never succeed, Marcus Livius," said Silo, shaking his head. "They won't let you succeed."

  "I will get there because they will let me," said Drusus, more determined than ever.

  "Well, I can offer you one crumb of comfort," said Silo with a pleased smile. "I've talked to the other Italian leaders, and to the last man they feel the way I do—that if you can bring us into the Roman fold, you deserve to be the patron of every Italian so enfranchised. We've drawn up a form of oath, and we'll be administering it between now and the end of next summer. So perhaps it's for the best that you can't start your tribunate off with your law of general suffrage."

  Drusus flushed, hardly able to believe it. Not merely an army of clients, but nations of clients!

  He plunged into his program of laws by promulgating the measure to share the major courts between Senate and Ordo Equester, and followed that up with a separate bill to enlarge the Senate. His first audience, however, was not the Plebeian Assembly; he introduced his measures in the House, requesting that the House empower him to take them to the Plebeian Assembly for ratification adorned with a senatorial decree of approval.

  "I am not a demagogue," he said to the hushed rows of togate senators inside the Curia Hostilia. "In me, you see the tribune of the plebs of the future—a man old enough in years and in experience to recognize that the old ways are indeed the right and proper ways—a man who will safeguard the auctoritas of the Senate to his last breath. Nothing I do in the Comitia will come as a surprise to the members of this House, for I will introduce it here first, seeking your mandate. Nothing I will ask of you is unworthy of you, nothing I will ask of myself is unworthy of me. For I am the son of a tribune of the plebs who felt about his duties as I do, I am the son of a man who was consul and also censor, I am the son of a man who repulsed the Scordisci in Macedonia so soundly that he was awarded a triumph. I am descendant of Aemilius Paullus, of Scipio Africanus, of Livius Salinator. I am old in name. And I am old in years for this office I presently hold.

  "Here, Conscript Fathers, in this building, in this assemblage of ancient and glorious names, lie the wellsprings of Roman law, of Roman government, of Roman administration. It is to this assemblage, in this building, that I will speak first, hoping that you have the wisdom and foresight to see that everything I propose has logic, reason, necessity."

  At the end of his speech the House applauded with a thankfulness which could only be experienced by men who had witnessed with their own eyes the tribunate doings of Saturninus. Here was a very different kind of tribune of the plebs—first a senator, and only after that, a servant of the plebs.

  The consuls of course were the outgoing pair, both fairly liberal in their ideas and ideals, and the outgoing praetors were also independent-minded. It was therefore with little opposition that Drusus got his mandate from the Senate endorsing his two laws. Though the incoming consuls were not so promising, Sextus Caesar was in support of the measures, and Philippus remarkably subdued; only Caepio spoke in condemnation; since everybody knew how Caepio felt about his erstwhile brother-in-law, nobody took any notice. The Plebeian Assembly—in which the knights were very strong—was where Drusus expected opposition, but he encountered very little. Perhaps, he thought, this was because he had introduced both his bills at the same contio, enabling a certain group of knights to see the bait dangled in the second bill. The chance to sit in the Senate, denied this same certain group of knights due to the small size of the senior governing body, was a powerful inducement. Besides, half-and-half seemed a very fair sort of jury, as the odd man out—the fifty-first juror—would be a knight, in return for which the president of the court would be a senator. Honor was definitely satisfied.

  Drusus's entire thrust was in the direction of a concord between the two great orders, senatorial and equestrian— an appeal to each side to pull together for a change. At one and the same time, Drusus deplored the actions of Gaius Sempronius Gracchus in driving an artificial wedge between the orders.

  "It was Gaius Gracchus who separated the two orders in the first place, an artificial kind of social distinction at best— for what is a non-senatorial member of a senatorial family, even now, but a knight? If he possesses enough money to qualify as a knight at the census, he is enrolled as a knight.

  Because there are too many members of his family in the Senate already. Knights and senators both belong to the First Class! One family may have many members of both orders, yet, thanks to Gaius Gracchus, we suffer an artificial separation. The only difference rests with the censors. Once a man enters the Senate, he cannot engage in commercial pursuits having nothing to do with land. And that has always been so," said Drusus in the Plebeian Assembly, with most of the Senate listening as well.

  "Men like Gaius Gracchus may not be admired or their actions approved," he went on, "but there is nothing wrong with my taking what is admirable and worth approving out of his bag of tricks! It was Gaius Gracchus who f
irst suggested that the Senate be enlarged. However, because of the general atmosphere at that time—the opposition of my father—and the less ideal parts of the Gracchan program— nothing came of it. I revive it now, son of my father though I am, because I see how useful and beneficial this law is in our time! Rome is growing. The public duties demanded of each man in public life are growing. Whereas the pool from which our public men are fished out is stagnant, turgid, unrefreshed. Both Senate and Ordo Equester need new swimmers in their pool. My measures are designed to help both sides, the two different kinds of fish in the pool."

  The laws were passed midway through January of the New Year, despite Philippus as junior consul and Caepio as one of the Rome-based praetors. And Drusus could sit back with a sigh of relief, well launched. So far he hadn't actually alienated anyone! Too much to hope perhaps that this state of affairs would continue, yet better than he had expected by a long way.

  At the beginning of March he spoke in the Senate about the ager publicus, aware that his mask was sure to slip, that some of the ultra-conservatives would suddenly see how dangerous this son of one of their own was going to be. But Drusus had confided in Scaurus Princeps Senatus, in Crassus Orator, and in Scaevola, and brought them round to his way of thinking. And if he could do that, then he had a chance to win over the whole Senate, so much was sure.

  He got up to speak with a certain change in his demeanor that warned everyone something special was coming. Never had he seemed so self-contained, so wrought, so immaculate in manner and garb.

  "There is an evil in our midst," Drusus said, speaking from the center of the floor down by the great bronze doors— which he had requested be closed. And paused, his eyes passing slowly from one part of the House to another, using that trick he had of making each and every man believe he looked at and spoke to him alone.

  "There is an evil in our midst. A great evil. An evil we have brought upon ourselves! For we created it! Thinking— as is so often the way—that what we were doing was admirable, a good and proper thing. Because I am aware of this, and have nothing but respect for our ancestors, I do not criticize the creators of this evil in our midst, nor cast the slightest slur upon those who inhabited this august building in earlier times.

  "But what is this evil in our midst?" Drusus asked rhetorically, pointed brows raised even as he dropped his voice. "It is the ager publicus, Conscript Fathers. The ager publicus. The evil in our midst. Yes, it is an evil! We took the best land from our Italian, our Sicilian, and our foreign enemies and we made it our own, and called it the ager publicus of Rome. Convinced that we were adding to the common wealth of Rome, that we would reap the benefits of so much good soil, so much extra prosperity. But it has not turned out that way, has it? Instead of keeping the confiscated land in its original small parcels, we expanded the size of the blocks we rented out—all in order to lessen the workload upon our civil servants, and keep Roman government from becoming a Greek bureaucracy. Thus we rendered our ager publicus unattractive to the farmers who had cultivated it, daunted them by the size of the allotments, and removed all hope of their continuing to use it by the size of the rents. The ager publicus became the province of the wealthy—those who can afford the rent and turn the land to the kind of activities its sheer size dictates. Where once these lands contributed greatly to the feeding of Italy, now they can only produce things to wear. Where once these lands were well settled and properly farmed, now they are huge, sparse, quite often neglected."

  The faces he looked at were setting; Drusus's heart seemed to slow and labor within his chest, he could feel his breath growing short, he had to struggle to maintain his air of calm, his stern tones. No one had interjected. They hadn't had enough of him yet. Therefore he must plough on as if he hadn't noticed the change.

  "But that, Conscript Fathers, was only the beginning of the evil. That was what Tiberius Gracchus saw when he rode through the latifundia of Etruria and found that the work was being done by foreign slaves rather than the good men of Italy and of Rome. That was what Gaius Gracchus saw when he took up his dead brother's task ten years later. I see it too. But I am not a Sempronius Gracchus. I do not regard the reasons of the Brothers Gracchi as big enough to disturb the mos maiorum, our customs and traditions. In the day of the Brothers Gracchi, I would have sided with my father."

  He stopped to use his trick with his eyes, now blazing his absolute sincerity. "I mean that, Conscript Fathers! In the day of Tiberius Gracchus, in the day of Gaius Gracchus, I would have sided with my father. He was in the right of it. But times have changed. Other factors have evolved that swell the evil attached to the ager publicus. First, I mention the troubles in our Asia Province—started by Gaius Gracchus when he legislated to provide for the farming of the tithes and taxes there by private companies. The taxes of Italy have been farmed for longer by far, but were never so significant. As a result of this shelving of our senatorial responsibilities and the increasing role in public government of factions within the Ordo Equester, we have seen a model Asia Province administration lobbied against, attacked vitriolically-—and finally, in the trial of our esteemed consular Publius Rutilius Rufus, have been given to understand by these knight factions that we—the members of the Senate of Rome!—had better not dare again to graze upon their turf. Well, I have begun the cessation of that kind of intimidation by making the Ordo Equester share its control of these courts equally with the Senate, and palliated knightly injury by expanding the size of the Senate. But the evil is still there."

  Some of the faces were not quite so set; mention of his dear uncle, Publius Rutilius Rufus, had worked in his favor—and so, he saw, did his reference to Quintus Mucius Scaevola's administration of Asia Province as a model one.

  "It has been joined, Conscript Fathers, by a new evil. How many of you know what this new evil is? Very few, I would think. I am referring to an evil created by Gaius Marius—though I acquit that eminent sextuple consular of acting in any knowledge of what he was starting. That is the trouble! At the time the evil begins it is not an evil at all! It is a result of change, of need, of shifting balances within our systems of government and within our armies. We had run out of soldiers. And why had we run out of soldiers? Among the many reasons is one which cannot be separated from the ager publicus. I mean that creation of the ager publicus threw the smallholding farmers off their land, and they ceased to breed so many sons, and so could not fuel the army. Gaius Marius did the only thing he could do, looking back on it from this point in time. He enlisted the capite censi in the army. He made soldiers out of the Head Count masses who did not have the money to buy their gear, did not come from landowning families—did not, in effect, have two sesterces to jingle together."

  When he spoke on his voice was hushed; every head craned forward, every ear was cocked.

  "Army pay is little. The spoils from our defeat of the Germans were pitiful. Gaius Marius and his successors, including his legates, had taught the Head Count how to fight, to know one end of a sword from the other, to experience a sense of worth, of dignity as Roman men. And I happen to agree with Gaius Marius! We cannot just throw them back into their mean urban back lanes, into their mean rural hovels. To do that would be to breed an entirely new kind of evil, a mass of well-trained men with nothing in their purses, time on their hands, and a growing sense of injury at their treatment by men of our class. Gaius Marius's answer—which started while he was still in Africa fighting King Jugurtha—was to settle these retired army veterans of no means upon foreign public land. It was the long and praiseworthy task of last year's urban praetor, Gaius Julius Caesar, to do this upon the islands in the African Lesser Syrtis. I am of the opinion—and I urge you strongly, fellow members of this House, to consider what I say as no more than a safeguard against our future!—I am of the opinion that Gaius Marius was right, and that we should continue to settle these Head Count veterans on foreign ager publicus."

  From the beginning Drusus had not moved from his original place. Nor did he mo
ve now. There were those whose faces had hardened again at the mere mention of Gaius Marius's name, but Marius himself continued to sit upon his chair in the forefront of the consulars with great dignity and an impassive face. On the middle tier opposite Marius's central position sat the ex-praetor Lucius Cornelius Sulla, returned now from his governorship of Cilicia, and very interested in what Drusus was saying.

  "All this, however, does not deal with the most brooding and immediate evil, the ager publicus of Italy and Sicily. Something must be done! For while ever we have this evil on our hands, Conscript Fathers, it is going to eat into our morals, our ethics, our sense of fitness, the mos maiorum itself. At the moment the Italian ager publicus belongs to those among ourselves and the First Class knights who are interested in latifundia grazing. The ager publicus of Sicily belongs to certain large-scale wheat growers who mostly live here in Rome and leave their Sicilian undertakings to overseers and slaves. A stable situation, you think? Then consider this! Ever since Tiberius and Gaius Sempronius Gracchus put the idea into our minds, the ager publicus of Italy and Sicily sits there just waiting to be sliced up and grabbed for this or that. How honorable will the generals of the future be? Will they, like Gaius Marius, be content to settle their veterans upon foreign public lands—or will they woo their veteran troops with promises of Italian land? How honorable will the tribunes of the plebs be in future years? Isn't it possible that another Saturninus might arise, woo the lowly with promises of land allotments in Etruria, in Campania, in Umbria, in Sicily? How honorable will the plutocrats of the future be? Might it not come about that the public lands are extended in the size of their allotments even more, until one or two or three men own half of Italy, half of Sicily? For what is the point of saying that the ager publicus is the property of the State, when the State leases it out, and when the men who run the State can legislate to do whatever they like with it?"