The Grass Crown

by Colleen McCullough

  "Oh, that's a good idea!" said Merula, face lightening.

  Sulla frowned. "Is it legal?"

  "Most definitely. The consuls, the Pontifex Maximus, and the Colleges of Pontifices are at complete liberty to set days of rest and holiday during which the Assemblies cannot meet."

  "Then post the declaration of feriae this afternoon on rostra and Regia, and have the heralds proclaim days of rest and holiday between now and the Ides of December." Sulla grinned nastily. "His term as a tribune of the plebs finishes three days before that. And the moment he's out of office, I'll have Sulpicius up on charges of treason and inciting violence."

  "You'll have to try him quietly," said Scaevola, shivering.

  "Oh, for Jupiter's sake, Quintus Mucius! How can it be done quietly?" asked Sulla. "I shall haul him up and try him, that's all! If he can't woo the crowds with lovely words, he'll be helpless enough. I'll drug him."

  Two pairs of startled eyes flew to Sulla's face; it was when he said things like drugging a man that he was most alien, least able to be understood.

  Sulla convened the Senate next morning and announced that the consuls and pontifices had declared a period of feriae during which no meetings in the Comitia could be held. It fetched a round of quiet cheers, as Gaius Marius was not in the House to object.

  Catulus Caesar walked out of the chamber afterward with Sulla. "How dared Gaius Marius place the State in jeopardy, all for the sake of a command he's not fit to take up?" demanded Catulus Caesar.

  "Oh, because he's old, he's afraid, his mind's not what it was, and he wants to be consul of Rome seven times," said Sulla wearily.

  Scaevola Pontifex Maximus, who had left ahead of Sulla and Catulus Caesar, suddenly came running back. "Sulpicius!" he cried. "He's ignoring the proclamation of feriae, he's calling it a ploy devised by the Senate and going ahead in contio!"

  Sulla didn't look surprised. "I imagined that was what he would do," he said.

  “Then what was the point of it?'' asked Scaevola indignantly.

  "It puts us in the position of being able to declare any laws he discusses or passes during the period of feriae invalid," said Sulla. "That's the only virtue feriae has."

  "If he passes his law expelling everyone in debt from the Senate," said Catulus Caesar, "we'll never be able to declare his laws invalid. There won't be enough senators left to make a quorum. And that means the Senate will cease to exist as a political force."

  "Then I suggest that we get together with Titus Pomponius, Gaius Oppius, and other bankers and arrange for the cancellation of all senatorial debts—unofficially, of course."

  "We can't!" wailed Scaevola. "The senatorial creditors are insisting on their money, and there isn't any money! No senator borrows from respectable lenders like Pomponius and Oppius! They're too public! The censors would get to know!"

  "Then I'll charge Gaius Marius with treason and take the money from his estates," said Sulla, looking ugly.

  "Oh, Lucius Cornelius, you can't!" moaned Scaevola. "The 'sovereign People' would tear us apart!"

  "Then I'll open my war chest and pay the Senate's debts with that!" said Sulla through his teeth.

  "You can't, Lucius Cornelius!"

  "I am getting very tired of being told I can't," said Sulla. "Let myself be beaten by Sulpicius and a pack of gullible fools who think he's going to cancel their debts? I won't! Pelion on top of Ossa, Quintus Mucius! I will do whatever I have to do!"

  "A fund," said Catulus Caesar. "A fund set up by those of us not in debt to salvage those who face expulsion."

  "To do that, we would have needed to see into the future," said Scaevola miserably. "It would take at least a month. I'm not in debt, Quintus Lutatius. Nor are you, I imagine. Nor Lucius Cornelius. But ready money? I don't have any! Do you? Can you scrape up more than a thousand sesterces without selling property?"

  "I can, but only just," said Catulus Caesar.

  "I can't," said Sulla.

  "I think we should put a fund together," said Scaevola, "but it will require the sale of property. Which means it will come too late. Those senators in debt will have been expelled. However, as soon as they're out of debt, the censors can reinstall them."

  "You don't think Sulpicius will permit that, do you?" asked Sulla. "He'll do some more legislating."

  "Oh, I hope I get a chance to lay my hands on Sulpicius some dark night!" said Catulus Caesar savagely. "How can he dare to do all this at a time when we can't even fund a war we have to win?"

  "Because Publius Sulpicius is clever and committed," said Sulla. "And I suspect Gaius Marius put him up to it."

  "They'll pay," said Catulus Caesar.

  "Be careful, Quintus Lutatius. It's they might make you pay," said Sulla. "Still, they fear us. And with good reason."

  Seventeen days had to elapse between the first contio at which a law was discussed and the meeting of the Assembly voting that law into being; Publius Sulpicius Rufus continued to hold his contiones while the days dripped away and the time for ratification came ever closer, seemed more inevitable.

  On the day before the first pair of Sulpicius's laws were to be put to the vote, young Quintus Pompeius Rufus and his friends who were the sons of senators and knights of the First Class decided to put a stop to Sulpicius in the only way now possible—by force. Without the knowledge of their fathers or of the curule magistrates, young Pompeius Rufus and some others gathered over a thousand men aged between seventeen and thirty. They all owned armor and arms, they had all until very recently been in the field against the Italians. As Sulpicius conducted the contio applying the finishing touches to the actual drafting of his first pair of laws, a thousand heavily armed young men of the First Class marched into the Forum Romanum and immediately attacked the men attending Sulpicius's meeting.

  The invasion caught Sulla completely unprepared; one moment he and his colleague Quintus Pompeius Rufus were observing Sulpicius from the top of the Senate steps, surrounded by other senior senators, and the next moment the whole of the lower Forum was a battlefield. He could see young Quintus Pompeius Rufus wreaking havoc with a sword, heard the father standing beside him cry out in anguish, and held the father's arm so strongly he couldn't move.

  "Leave it, Quintus Pompeius. There's nothing you can do," said Sulla curtly. "You'd never even get to his side."

  Unfortunately the crowd was so large it extended far beyond the actual Comitia well. No general, young Pompeius Rufus had deployed his men thinly spread out rather than kept them in a wedge. Had he done so, he might have driven through the middle of the pack; as it was, Sulpicius's guard had no difficulty in uniting.

  Fighting bravely, young Pompeius Rufus himself succeeded in working his way around the rim of the Comitia well and reached the rostra. Intent upon Sulpicius as he scrambled up to the rostra platform, he never even saw the burly middle-aged fellow who had obviously retired from the gladiatorial ring until his sword was wrenched down. Young Pompeius Rufus tumbled from the rostra into Sulpicius's guard below, and was clubbed to death.

  Sulla heard the father's scream, felt rather than saw several senators drag him away, and himself realized that the guard, now victorious over the ranks of the young elite, would turn next to the Senate steps. Like an eel he wriggled through the throng of panicked senators and dropped off the edge of the Senate House podium into the pandemonium below, his toga praetexta abandoned. A deft twist of his hand plucked a chlamys cloak from some Greek freedman trapped by the fight; Sulla threw it over his telltale head and pretended he too was a Greek freedman only intent upon removing himself from the turmoil. He ducked beneath the colonnade of the Basilica Porcia, where frantic merchants were trying to disassemble their stalls, and worked his way into the Clivus Argentarius. The crowd grew less, the fighting nonexistent; Sulla headed up the hill and through the Porta Fontinalis.

  He knew exactly where he was going. To see the prime mover in all this. To see Gaius Marius, who wanted to command a war and get himself elected consul a seventh t
ime.

  He threw the chlamys away and knocked on Marius's door clad only in his tunic. "I want to see Gaius Marius," he said to the porter in tones which implied he was clad in all his regalia.

  Unwilling to deny entry to a man he knew so well, the porter held the door open and admitted Sulla to the house.

  But it was Julia who came, not Gaius Marius.

  "Oh, Lucius Cornelius, this is terrible!" she said, and turned to a servant. "Bring wine."

  "I want to see Gaius Marius," said Sulla through his teeth.

  "You can't, Lucius Cornelius. He's asleep."

  "Then wake him, Julia. If you don't, I swear I will!"

  Again she turned to a servant. "Please ask Strophantes to wake Gaius Marius and tell him Lucius Cornelius Sulla is here to see him on urgent business."

  "Has he gone completely mad?" asked Sulla, reaching for the water flagon; he was too thirsty to drink wine.

  "I don't know what you mean!" cried Julia, looking defensive.

  "Oh, come, Julia! You're the Great Man's wife! If you don't know him, no one does!" snarled Sulla. "He's deliberately engineered a series of events he thinks will bring him the command against Mithridates, he's cultivated the lawless career of a man who is determined to tear down the mos maiorum, he's turned the Forum into a shambles and caused the death of the son of the consul Pompeius Rufus— not to mention the deaths of hundreds of others!"

  Julia closed her eyes. "I cannot control him," she said.

  "His mind is gone," said Sulla.

  "No! Lucius Cornelius, he is sane!"

  "Then he's not the man I thought he was."

  "He just wants to fight Mithridates!"

  "Do you approve?"

  Again Julia closed her eyes. "I think he should stay at home and leave the war to you."

  They could hear the Great Man coming, and fell silent.

  "What's amiss?" asked Marius as he entered the room. "What brings you here, Lucius Cornelius?"

  "A battle in the Forum," said Sulla.

  "That was imprudent," said Marius.

  "Sulpicius is imprudent. He's given the Senate nowhere to go except to fight for its existence in the only way left — with the sword. Young Quintus Pompeius is dead."

  Marius smiled, not a pretty sight. "That's too bad! I don't imagine his side won."

  "You're right, it didn't win. Which means that at the end of a long and bitter war — and facing yet another long and bitter war! — Rome is the poorer by a hundred or so of her best young men," said Sulla harshly.

  "Yet another long and bitter war? Nonsense, Lucius Cornelius! I'll beat Mithridates in a single season," said Marius complacently.

  Sulla tried. "Gaius Marius, why can't you get it through your head that Rome has no money? Rome is bankrupt! Rome cannot afford to field twenty legions ! The war against the Italians has put Rome into hopeless debt! The Treasury is empty! And even the great Gaius Marius cannot win against a power as strong as Pontus in one single season if he has only five legions to work with!"

  "I can pay for several legions myself," said Marius.

  Sulla scowled. "Like Pompey Strabo? But when you pay them yourself, Gaius Marius, they belong to you, not to Rome."

  "Rubbish! It means no more than that I place my own resources at the disposal of Rome."

  "Rubbish! It means you place Rome's resources at your disposal," Sulla countered sharply. "You'll lead your legions!"

  "Go home and calm down, Lucius Cornelius. You're upset at the loss of your command."

  "I haven't lost my command yet," said Sulla. He looked at Julia. "You know your duty, Julia of the Julii Caesares. Do it! To Rome, not to Gaius Marius."

  She walked with him toward the door, face impassive. "Please don't say any more, Lucius Cornelius. I can't have my husband upset."

  "To Rome, Julia! To Rome!"

  "I am Gaius Marius's wife," she said as she held open the door. "My first duty is to him."

  Well, Lucius Cornelius, you lost that one! said Sulla to himself as he walked down onto the Campus Martius. He's as mad as a Pisidian seer in a prophetic frenzy, but no one will admit it, and no one will stop him. Unless I do.

  Taking the long way round, he went not to his own house but to the house of the junior consul. His daughter was now a widow with a newborn boy and a year-old girl.

  "I have asked my younger son to take the name of Quintus," said the junior consul, tears rolling unchecked down his face. "And of course we have my dear Quintus's own little son, who will perpetuate the senior branch."

  Of Cornelia Sulla there was no sign.

  "How is my daughter?" Sulla asked.

  "Heartbroken, Lucius Cornelius! But she has her children, and that is some consolation."

  "Well, sad as this is, Quintus Pompeius, I'm not here to mourn," said Sulla crisply. "We must call a conference. It goes without saying that at a time like this a man wants nothing to do with the outside world—I speak feelingly, having lost a son myself. But the outside world will not go away. I must ask you to come to my house at dawn tomorrow."

  Exhausted, Lucius Cornelius Sulla then plodded across the brow of the Palatine to his own elegant new house and his anxious new wife, who burst into tears of joy at seeing him unharmed.

  "Never worry about me, Dalmatica," he said. "My time isn't yet. I haven't fulfilled my destiny."

  "Our world is coming to an end!" she cried.

  "Not while I live," said Sulla.

  He slept long and dreamlessly, the repose of a man much younger than he, and woke before the dawn with no idea exactly what he ought to do. This rudderless state of mind did not worry him in the least; I do best when I act as Fortune dictates on the moment, he thought, and found himself actually looking forward to the day.

  "As far as I can estimate, the moment Sulpicius's senatorial debt law is passed this morning, the number in the Senate will drop to forty. Not enough for a quorum," said Catulus Caesar gloomily.

  "We still have censors, do we not?" asked Sulla.

  "Yes," said Scaevola Pontifex Maximus. "Neither Lucius Julius nor Publius Licinius is in debt."

  "Then we must act on the assumption that it has not occurred to Publius Sulpicius that the censors might have the courage to add to the Senate," said Sulla. "When it does occur to him, he'll bring in some other law, nothing is more certain. In the meantime, we can try to get our expelled colleagues out of debt."

  "I agree, Lucius Cornelius," said Metellus Pius, who had made the trip from Aesernia the moment he heard what Sulpicius was doing in Rome, and had been talking with Catulus Caesar and Scaevola as they walked to Sulla's house. He threw out his hands irritably. "If the fools had only borrowed money from men of their own kind, they might have secured a dispensation for their debts, at least for the time being! But we're caught in our own trap. A senator needing to borrow money has to be very quiet about it if he can't secure a loan from a fellow senator. So he goes to the worst kind of usurer.''

  "I still don't understand why Sulpicius has turned on us like this!" said Antonius Orator fretfully.

  "Tace!" said every other voice, goaded.

  ''Marcus Antonius, we may never know why," said Sulla with more patience than he was known for. "At this time it's even irrelevant why. What is far more important."

  "So how do we go about getting the expelled senators out of debt?" asked the Piglet.

  "A fund, as agreed to. There will have to be a committee to handle it. Quintus Lutatius, you can be the chairman. There's no senator in debt would have the gall to conceal his true circumstances from you," said Sulla.

  Merula flamen Dialis giggled, clapped a guilty hand over his mouth. "I apologize for my levity," he said, lips quivering. "It just occurred to me that if we were sensible, we'd avoid seeking to pull Lucius Marcius Philippus out of the mire! Not only will his debts more than equal the combined total of everyone else's, but we could then lose him permanently from the Senate. After all, he's only one man. His omission won't make any difference except in the amou
nt of peace and quiet."

  "I think that's a terrifically good idea," said Sulla blandly.

  "The trouble with you, Lucius Cornelius, is that you are politically nonchalant," said Catulus Caesar, scandalized. "It makes no difference what we think of Lucius Marcius— the fact remains that his is an old and particularly illustrious family. His tenure in the Senate must be preserved. The son is a far different man."

  "You're right, of course," sighed Merula.

  "Very well, that's decided," said Sulla, smiling faintly. "For the rest, we can do no more than wait upon events. Except that I think it's time to terminate the period of feriae. According to the religious regulations, Sulpicius's laws are more than effectively invalidated. And I have an idea that it behooves us to allow Gaius Marius and Sulpicius to think they've won, that we're powerless."

  "We are powerless," said Antonius Orator.

  "I'm not convinced of that," said Sulla. He turned to the junior consul, very silent and morose. "Quintus Pompeius, you have every excuse to leave Rome. I suggest you take your whole family down to the seashore. Make no secret of your going."

  "What about the rest of us?" asked Merula fearfully.

  "You're in no danger. If Sulpicius had wanted to eliminate the Senate by killing its members, he could have done that yesterday. Luckily for us, he's preferred to use more constitutional means. Is our urban praetor clear of debt? Not that it matters, I suppose. A curule magistrate can't be ejected from his office, even if he has been ejected from the Senate," said Sulla.

  "Marcus Junius is clear of debt," said Merula.

  "Good, it's unequivocal. He's going to have to govern Rome in the absence of the consuls."

  "Both consuls? Don't tell me you intend to leave Rome too, Lucius Cornelius!" said Catulus Caesar, aghast.

  "I have five legions of infantry and two thousand horse sitting in Capua waiting for their general," said Sulla. "After my precipitate departure the rumors will be flying. I must settle everyone down."

  "You really are politically nonchalant! Lucius Cornelius, in a situation as serious as this, one of the consuls must remain in Rome!"