The First Man in Rome

by Colleen McCullough

  “My nephew Drusus?”

  Marius turned his head to stare. “Is he?”

  “Well, he is if he’s the son of the Marcus Livius Drusus who triumphed last January and intends to seek election as one of the censors for next year,” said Rutilius Rufus.

  Marius laughed, shook his head. “Oh, how embarrassing! Why don’t I ever remember such things?”

  “Probably,” said Rutilius Rufus dryly, “because my wife, Livia—who, to refresh your bucolic memory, was the sister of your interesting young man’s father—has been dead these many years, and never went out, and never dined with me when I entertained. The Livius Drususes have a tendency to break the spirits of their womenfolk, unfortunately. Nice little thing, my wife. Gave me two fine children, but never an argument. I treasured her.”

  “I know,” said Marius uncomfortably, disliking being caught out—would he never get them all straight? But old friend though Rutilius Rufus was, Marius couldn’t remember ever meeting his shy little wife. “You ought to marry again,” he said, very enamored of marriage these days.

  “What, just so you don’t look so conspicuous? No, thank you! I find sufficient outlet for my passions in writing letters.” One dark blue eye came open, peered at Marius. “Anyway, why do you think so highly of my nephew Drusus?”

  “In the last week I’ve been approached by several groups of Italian Allies, all from different nations, and all bitterly complaining that Rome is misusing their soldier levies,” said Marius slowly. “In my opinion they have good grounds for complaint. Almost every consul for a decade and more has wasted the lives of his soldiers—and with as little concern as if men were starlings, or sparrows! And the first to perish have been Italian Allied troops, because it’s become the custom to use them ahead of Romans in any situation where lives are likely to be lost. It’s a rare consul who genuinely appreciates that the Italian Allied soldiers are men of property in their nations and are paid for by their nations, not by Rome.”

  Rutilius Rufus never objected to a roundabout discussion; he knew Marius far too well to assume that what he spoke of now bore no relationship to the nephew Drusus. So he answered this apparent digression willingly. “The Italian Allies came under Rome’s military protection to unify defense of the peninsula,” he said. “In return for donating soldiers to us, they were accorded special status as our allies and reaped many benefits, not the least of which was a drawing-together of the nations of the peninsula. They give their troops to Rome so that we all fight in a common cause. Otherwise, they’d still be warring one Italian nation against another—and undoubtedly losing more men in the process than any Roman consul has lost.”

  “That is debatable,” said Marius. “They might have combined and formed one Italian nation instead!”

  “Since the alliance with Rome is a fact, and has been a fact for two or three hundred years, my dear Gaius Marius, I fail to see where you’re going at the moment,” Rutilius said.

  “The deputations who came to see me maintain that Rome is using their troops to fight foreign wars of absolutely no benefit to Italy as a whole,” Marius said patiently. “The original bait we dangled before the Italian nations was the granting of the Roman citizenship. But it’s nearly eighty years since any Italian or Latin community has been gifted with the citizenship, as you well know. Why, it took the revolt of Fregellae to force the Senate to make concessions to the Latin Rights communities!”

  “That is an oversimplification,” said Rutilius Rufus. “We didn’t promise the Italian Allies general enfranchisement. We offered them gradual citizenship in return for consistent loyalty—Latin Rights first.”

  “Latin Rights mean very little, Publius Rutilius! At best, they offer a rather tawdry second-class citizenship—no vote in any Roman elections.”

  “Well, yes, but in the fifteen years since Fregellae’s revolt, you must admit things have improved for those with the Latin Rights,” Rutilius Rufus said stubbornly. “Every man holding a magistracy in a Latin Rights town now automatically gains the full Roman citizenship for himself and his family.”

  “I know, I know, and that means there is now a considerable pool of Roman citizens in every Latin Rights town— an ever-growing pool, at that! Not to mention that the law provides Rome with new citizens of exactly the right type— men of property and great local importance—men who can be trusted to vote the right way in Rome,” jeered Marius.

  Up went Rutilius Rufus’s brows. “And what’s wrong with that?” he asked.

  “You know, Publius Rutilius, open-minded and progressive though you are in many ways, at heart you’re as stuffy a Roman nobleman as Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus!” snapped Marius, still hanging on to his temper. “Why can’t you see that Rome and Italy belong together in an equal union?”

  “Because they don’t,” said Rutilius Rufus, his own sense of placid well-being beginning to fray. “Really, Gaius Marius! How can you sit here inside the walls of Rome advocating political equality between Romans of Rome and Italians? Rome is not Italy! Rome didn’t stumble by accident into first place in the world, nor did she do it on Italian troops! Rome is different.”

  “Rome is superior, you mean,” said Marius.

  “Yes!” Rutilius Rufus seemed to swell. “Rome is Rome. Rome is superior.”

  “Hasn’t it ever occurred to you, Publius Rutilius, that if Rome admitted the whole of Italy—even Italian Gaul of the Padus too!—into its hegemony, Rome would be enhanced?” Marius asked.

  “Rubbish! Rome would cease to be Roman,” said Rutilius.

  “And therefore, you imply, Rome would be less.”

  “Of course.”

  “But the present situation is farcical,” Marius persevered. “Italy is a checkerboard! Regions with the full citizenship, regions with the Latin Rights, regions with mere Allied status, all jumbled up together. Places like Alba Fucentia and Aesernia holding the Latin Rights completely surrounded by the Italians of the Marsi and the Samnites, citizen colonies implanted in the midst of the Gauls along the Padus—how can there be any real feeling of unity, of oneness with Rome?”

  “Seeding Roman and Latin colonies through the Italian nations keeps them in harness to us,” said Rutilius Rufus. “Those with the full citizenship or the Latin Rights won’t betray us. It wouldn’t pay them to betray us, considering the alternative.”

  “I think you mean war with Rome,” said Marius.

  “Well, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that,” Rutilius Rufus said. “More that it would entail a loss of privilege the Roman and Latin communities would find insupportable. Not to mention a loss of social worth and standing.”

  “Dignitas is all,” said Marius.

  “Precisely.”

  “So you believe the influential men of these Roman and Latin communities would carry the day against the thought of alliance with the Italian nations against Rome?”

  Rutilius Rufus looked shocked. “Gaius Marius, why are you taking this position? You’re no Gaius Gracchus, and you are certainly no reformer!”

  Marius got to his feet, paced up and down in front of the bench several times, then swung to direct those fierce eyes beneath their even fiercer brows upon the much smaller Rutilius, huddled in a distinctly defensive pose. “You’re right, Publius Rutilius, I’m no reformer, and to couple my name with that of Gaius Gracchus is laughable. But I am a practical man, and I have, I flatter myself, more than my fair share of intelligence. Besides which, I am not a Roman of the Romans—as everyone who is a Roman of the Romans is at great pains to point out to me. Well, it may be that my bucolic origins endow me with a kind of detachment no Roman of the Romans can ever own. And I see trouble in our checkerboard Italy. I do, Publius Rutilius, I do! I listened to what the Italian Allies had to say a few days ago, and I smelled a change in the wind. For Rome’s sake, I hope our consuls in the next few years are wiser in their use of Italian troops than the consuls of the previous decade.”

  “So do I, if not for quite the same reasons,” said Rutil
ius Rufus. “Poor generalship is criminal, especially when it ends in wasting the lives of soldiers, Roman or Italian.” He looked up at the looming Marius irritably. “Do sit down, I beg you! I’m getting a pain in the neck.”

  “You are a pain in the neck,” said Marius, but sat down obediently, stretching his legs out.

  “You’re gathering clients among the Italians,” said Rutilius Rufus.

  “True.” Marius studied his senator’s ring, made of gold rather than of iron, for only the oldest senatorial families kept up the tradition of an iron ring. “However, I’m not alone in that activity, Publius Rutilius. Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus has enlisted whole towns as his clients, mainly by securing remissions of their taxes.”

  “Or even securing removal of their taxes, I note.”

  “Indeed. Nor is Marcus Aemilius Scaurus above client gathering among the Italians of the north,” said Marius.

  “Yes, but admit he’s less feral than Gnaeus Domitius,” Rutilius Rufus objected; he was a Scaurus partisan. “At least he does good works for his client towns—drains a swamp, or erects a new meeting-house.”

  “I concede the point. But you mustn’t forget the Caecilius Metelluses in Etruria. They’re very busy.”

  Rutilius Rufus sighed a long-suffering sigh. “Gaius Marius, I wish I knew exactly what you’re taking such an inordinately long time to say!”

  “I’m not sure myself,” said Marius. “Only that I sense a groundswell among the Famous Families, a new awareness of the importance of the Italian Allies. I don’t think they’re conscious of this importance in any way spelling danger to Rome, only acting on some instinct they don’t understand. They—smell something in the wind?”

  “You certainly smell something in the wind,” said Rutilius Rufus. “Well, you’re a remarkably shrewd man, Gaius Marius. And anger you though I may have done, I have also taken due note of what you’ve said. On the surface of it, a client isn’t much of a creature. His patron can help him far more than he can help his patron. Until an election, or a threatened disaster. Perhaps he can assist only by refusing to support anyone acting against the interests of his patron. Instincts are significant, I agree with you. They’re like beacons: they light up whole fields of hidden facts, often long before logic can. So maybe you’re right about the groundswell. And maybe to enlist all the Italian Allies as clients in the service of some great Roman family is one way of dealing with this danger you insist is looming. I don’t honestly know.”

  “Nor do I,” said Marius. “But I’m gathering clients.”

  “And gathering wool,” said Rutilius Rufus, smiling. “We started out, as I remember, to discuss my nephew Drusus.”

  Marius folded his legs beneath his knees and pushed himself to his feet so quickly the action startled Rutilius Rufus, who had resumed his shut-eyed repose. “That we did! Come, Publius Rutilius, we may not be too late for me to show you an example of the new feeling about the Italian Allies among the Famous Families!”

  Rutilius got up. “I’m coming, I’m coming! But where?”

  “To the Forum, of course,” said Marius, setting out down the slope of the temple precinct toward the street. As they walked, Marius spoke. “There’s a trial in progress, and if we’re lucky we’ll arrive before it ends.”

  “I’m surprised you noticed,” said Rutilius Rufus dryly; Marius was not usually prone to pay attention to Forum trials.

  “I’m surprised you haven’t been attending it every day,” Marius countered. “After all, it’s the debut of your nephew Drusus as an advocate.”

  “No!” said Rutilius Rufus. “He made his debut months ago, when he prosecuted the chief tribune of the Treasury for recovery of certain funds which had mysteriously gone missing.”

  “Oh.” Marius shrugged, speeded up his pace. “Then that accounts for what I thought was your delinquency. However, Publius Rutilius, you really ought to follow young Drusus’s career more closely. If you had, my remarks about the Italian Allies would have made more sense to you.”

  “Enlighten me,” said Rutilius Rufus, beginning to labor just a little; Marius always forgot his legs were longer.

  “I noticed because I heard someone speaking the most beautiful Latin in an equally beautiful voice. A new orator, I thought, and stopped to see who it was. Your young nephew Drusus, no less! Though I didn’t know who he was until I asked, and I’m still embarrassed that I didn’t associate the name with your family.”

  “Who’s he prosecuting this time?” asked Rutilius Rufus.

  “That’s the interesting thing, he’s not prosecuting,” said Marius. “He’s defending, and before the foreign praetor, if you please! It’s an important case; there’s a jury.”

  “Murder of a Roman citizen?”

  “No. Bankruptcy.”

  “That’s unusual,” panted Rutilius Rufus.

  “I gather it’s some sort of example,” said Marius, not slowing down: “The plaintiff is the banker Gaius Oppius, the defendant a Marsic businessman from Marruvium called Lucius Fraucus. According to my informant—a real professional court-watcher—Oppius is tired of bad debts among his Italian accounts, and decided it was time he made an example of an Italian here in Rome. His object is to frighten the rest of Italy into keeping up what I suspect are exorbitant interest payments.”

  “Interest,” huffed Rutilius Rufus, “is set at ten percent.”

  “If you’re a Roman,” said Marius, “and preferably a Roman of the upper economic classes.”

  “Keep on going, Gaius Marius, and you’ll wind up like the Brothers Gracchi—very dead.”

  “Rubbish!”

  “I would—much rather—go home,” said Rutilius Rufus.

  “You’re getting soft,” said Marius, glancing down at his trotting companion. “A good campaign would do wonders for your wind, Publius Rutilius.”

  “A good rest would do wonders for my wind.” Rutilius Rufus slowed down. “I really don’t see why we’re doing this.”

  “For one thing, because when I left the Forum your nephew still had a good two and a half hours left in which to sum up his case,” said Marius. “It’s one of the experimental trials—you know, to do with changing trial procedures. So the witnesses were heard first, then the Prosecution was allowed two hours to sum up, and the Defense three hours, after which the foreign praetor will ask the jury for its verdict.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with the old way,” said Rutilius.

  “Oh, I don’t know, I thought the new way made the whole process more interesting for the spectators,” said Marius.

  They were descending the slope of the Clivus Sacer, the lower Forum Romanum just ahead, and the figures in the foreign praetor’s court had not changed their distribution while Marius had been away.

  “Good, we’re in time for the peroration,” said Marius.

  Marcus Livius Drusus was still speaking, and his audience was still listening in rapt silence. Obviously well under twenty years of age, the shaveling advocate was of average height and stocky physique, black-haired and swarthy of complexion: not an advocate who would transfix by sheer physical presence, though his face was pleasant enough.

  “Isn’t he amazing?” asked Marius of Rutilius in a whisper. “He’s got the knack of making you think he’s speaking to you personally, not to anyone else.”

  He had. Even at the distance—for Marius and Rutilius Rufus stood at the back of the large crowd—his very dark eyes seemed to look deeply into their eyes, and into their eyes alone.

  “Nowhere does it say that the fact a man is a Roman automatically puts him in the right,” the young man was saying. “I do not speak for Lucius Fraucus, the accused— I speak for Rome! I speak for honor! I speak for integrity! I speak for justice! Not the kind of lip-service justice which interprets a law in its most literal sense, but the kind of justice which interprets a law in its most logical sense. The law should not be a huge and weighty slab which falls upon a man and squashes him into a uniform shape, for men are not uniform. T
he law should be a gentle sheet which falls upon a man and shows his unique shape beneath its blanketing sameness. We must always remember that we, the citizens of Rome, stand as an example to the rest of the world, especially in our laws and our courts of law. Has such sophistication ever been seen elsewhere? Such drafting? Such intelligence? Such care? Such wisdom? Do not even the Greeks of Athens admit it? Do not the Alexandrians? Do not the Pergamites?”

  His rhetorical body language was superb, even with the severe disadvantages of his height and physique, neither lending itself to the toga; to wear the toga superlatively, a man had to be tall, wide of shoulder, and narrow of hip, and move with consummate grace. Marcus Livius Drusus did not qualify on any point. And yet he worked wonders with his body, from the smallest wiggle of a finger to the largest sweep of his whole right arm. The movements of his head, the expressions on his face, the changes in his walk—everything so good!

  “Lucius Fraucus, an Italian from Marruvium,” he went on, “is the ultimate victim, not the perpetrator. No one— including Lucius Fraucus!—disputes the fact that this very large sum of money advanced by Gaius Oppius is missing. Nor is it disputed that this very large sum of money must be restored to Gaius Oppius, together with the interest the loan has incurred. One way or another, it will be repaid. If necessary, Lucius Fraucus is willing to sell his houses, his lands, his investments, his slaves, his furniture—all he possesses! More than enough to constitute restitution!”

  He walked up to the front row of the jury and glared at the men in its middle ranks. “You have heard the witnesses. You have heard my learned colleague the Prosecutor. Lucius Fraucus was the borrower. But he was not the thief. Therefore, say I, Lucius Fraucus is the real victim of this fraud, not Gaius Oppius, his banker. If you condemn Lucius Fraucus, conscript members of the jury, you subject him to the full penalty of the law as it applies to a man who is not a citizen of our great city, nor a holder of the Latin Rights. All of Lucius Fraucus’s property will be put up for forced sale, and you know what that means. It will fetch nowhere near its actual value, and indeed might not even fetch enough to make restitution of the full sum.” This last was said with a most speaking glance toward the sidelines, where the banker Gaius Oppius sat on a folding chair, attended by a retinue of clerks and accountants.