The First Man in Rome

by Colleen McCullough

  “Very well! Nowhere near its actual value! After which, conscript members of the jury, Lucius Fraucus will be sold into debt-bondage until he has made up the difference between the sum demanded and the sum obtained from the forced sale of all his property. Now, a poor judge of character in choosing his senior employees Lucius Fraucus may be, but in the pursuit of his business, Lucius Fraucus is a remarkably shrewd and highly successful man. Yet—how can he ever make good his debt if, propertyless and disgraced, he is handed over into bondage? Will he even be of use to Gaius Oppius as a clerk?’’

  The young man was now concentrating every scrap of his vigor and will upon the Roman banker, a mild-looking man in his fifties, who seemed entranced by what the young man said.

  “For a man who is not a Roman citizen, conviction upon a criminal charge leads to one thing before all others. He must be flogged. Not chastised by the rods, as a Roman citizen is—a little sore, perhaps, but chiefly injured in his dignity. No! He must be flogged! Laid about with the barbed whip until nothing of skin and muscle is left, and he is maimed for life, scarred worse than any mine slave.”

  The hairs stood up on the back of Marius’s neck; for if the young man was not looking straight at him—one of the biggest mine owners in Rome—then his eyes were playing tricks. Yet how could young Drusus have found a latecomer at the very back of such a huge crowd?

  “We are Romans!” the young man cried. “Italy and its citizens are under our protection. Do we show ourselves to be mine owners of men who look to us as an example? Do we condemn an innocent man on a technicality, simply because his is the signature on the document of loan? Do we ignore the fact that he is willing to make complete restitution? Do we, in effect, accord him less justice than we would a citizen of Rome? Do we flog a man who ought rather to wear a dunce’s cap upon his head for his foolishness in trusting a thief? Do we create a widow of a wife? Do we create orphans of children with a loving father? Surely not, conscript members of the jury! For we are Romans. We are a better brand of men!”

  With a swirl of white wool the speaker turned and quit the vicinity of the banker, thus establishing an instant in which all eyes left the banker to follow, dazzled; all eyes, that is, save those of several jurymen in the front row, looking no different from the rest of the fifty-one members of the panel. And the eyes of Gaius Marius and Publius Rutilius Rufus. One juror gazed woodenly at Oppius, drawing his forefinger across the base of his throat as if it itched. The response followed instantly: the faintest shake of the great banker’s head. Gaius Marius began to smile.

  “Thank you, praetor peregrinus,” said the young man as he bowed to the foreign praetor, suddenly seeming stiff and shy, no longer possessed by whatever invaded him when he orated.

  “Thank you, Marcus Livius,” said the foreign praetor, and directed his glance toward the jury. “Citizens of Rome, please inscribe your tablets and permit the court your verdict.”

  There was a general movement throughout the court; the jurors all produced small squares of pale clay and pencils of charcoal. But they didn’t write anything, instead sat looking at the backs of the heads in the middle of their front row. The man who had ghosted a question at Oppius the banker took up his pencil and drew a letter upon his clay tablet, then yawned mightily, his arms stretched above his head, the tablet still in his left hand, the multiple folds of his toga falling back toward his left shoulder as the arm straightened in the air. The rest of the jurors then scribbled busily, and handed in their tablets to the lictors who were going among them.

  The foreign praetor did the counting himself; everyone waited, scarcely breathing, for the verdict. Glancing at each tablet, he tossed it into one of two baskets on the desk in front of him, most into one, a few into the other. When all fifty-one had been dealt with, he looked up.

  “ABSOLVO.” he said. “Forty-three for, eight against. Lucius Fraucus of Marruvium, citizen of the Marsic nation of our Italian Allies, you are discharged by this court, but only on condition that you make full restitution as promised. I leave you to arrange matters with Gaius Oppius, your creditor, before this day is over.”

  And that was that. Marius and Rutilius Rufus waited for the crowds to finish congratulating the young Marcus Livius Drusus. Finally only the friends of Drusus were left clustered about him, very excited. But when the tall man with the fierce eyebrows and the little man everyone knew to be Drusus’s uncle bore down on the group, everyone melted away bashfully.

  “Congratulations, Marcus Livius,” said Marius, extending his hand.

  “I thank you, Gaius Marius.”

  “Well done,” said Rutilius Rufus.

  They turned in the direction of the Velia end of the Forum and began to walk.

  Rutilius Rufus left the conversation to Marius and Drusus, pleased to see his young nephew was maturing so magnificently as an advocate, but well aware of the shortcomings beneath that stolidly stocky exterior. Young Drusus, thought his Uncle Publius, was a rather humorless pup, brilliant but oddly blighted, who would never have that lightness of being which could discern the shape of coming grotesqueries, and so as his life went on would fail to sidestep much of life’s pain. Earnest. Dogged. Ambitious. Incapable of letting go once his teeth were fixed in a problem. Yes. But, for all that, Uncle Publius told himself, young Drusus was an honorable pup.

  “It would have been a very bad thing for Rome if your Italian client had been convicted,” Marius was saying.

  “Very bad indeed. Fraucus is one of the most important men in Marruvium, and an elder of his Marsic nation. Of course he won’t be nearly so important once he’s paid back the money he owes Gaius Oppius, but he’ll make more,” said Drusus.

  They had reached the Velia when “Do you ascend the Palatine?” young Drusus asked, pausing in front of the temple of Jupiter Stator.

  “Certainly not,” said Publius Rutilius Rufus, emerging from his thoughts. “Gaius Marius is coming home to dine with me, nephew.”

  Young Drusus bowed to his seniors solemnly, then began to ascend the slope of the Clivus Palatinus; from behind Marius and Rutilius Rufus emerged the unprepossessing form of Quintus Servilius Caepio Junior, young Drusus’s best friend, running to catch up with young Drusus, who must have heard him, but didn’t wait.

  “That’s a friendship I don’t like,” said Rutilius Rufus, standing watching the two young men dwindle in size.

  “Oh?”

  “They’re impeccably noble and terrifically rich, the Servilius Caepios, but as short on brains as they’re long on hauteur, so it’s not a friendship between equals,” said Rutilius Rufus. “My nephew seems to prefer the peculiar style of deference and sycophancy young Caepio Junior offers to a more stimulating—not to mention deflating!—kind of fellowship with others among his peers. A pity. For I fear, Gaius Marius, that Caepio Junior’s devotion will give young Drusus a false impression of his ability to lead men.”

  “In battle?”

  Rutilius Rufus stopped in his tracks. “Gaius Marius, there are other activities than war, and other institutions than armies! No, I was referring to leadership in the Forum.”

  *

  Later in that same week Marius came again to call upon his friend Rutilius Rufus, and found him distractedly packing.

  “Panaetius is dying,” explained Rutilius, blinking back his tears.

  “Oh, that’s too bad!” said Marius. “Where is he? Will you reach him in time?”

  “I hope so. He’s in Tarsus, and asking for me. Fancy his asking for me, out of all the Romans he taught!”

  Marius’s glance was soft. “And why shouldn’t he? After all, you were his best pupil.”

  “No, no,” said the little man, seeming abstracted.

  “I’ll go home,” said Marius.

  “Nonsense,” said Rutilius Rufus, leading the way to his study, a hideously untidy room which seemed to be overfilled with desks and tables piled high with books, most of them at least partially unrolled, some anchored at one end and cascading onto the flo
or in a welter of precious Egyptian paper.

  “Garden,” said Marius firmly, perceiving no place to roost amid the chaos, but well aware that Rutilius Rufus could put his hand on any book he owned in scant moments, no matter how buried it appeared to the uninitiated eye.

  “What are you writing?’’ he asked, spotting a long screed of Fannius-treated paper on a table, already half-covered with Rutilius Rufus’s unmistakable hand, as neat and easy to read as his room was disorganized.

  “Something I’ll have to consult you about,” said Rutilius, leading the way outside. “A manual of military information. After our talk about the inept generals Rome has been fielding of late years, I thought it was time someone competent produced a helpful treatise. So far it’s been all logistics and base planning, but now I move on to tactics and strategy, where you shine far brighter than I do. So I’m going to have to milk your brains.”

  “Consider them milked.” Marius sat down on a wooden bench in the tiny, sunless, rather neglected garden, on the weedy side and with a fountain that didn’t work. “Have you had a visit from Metellus Piggle-wiggle?” he asked.

  “As a matter of fact, I have, earlier today,” said Rutilius, coming to rest on a bench opposite Marius’s.

  “He came to see me this morning too.”

  “Amazing how little he’s changed, our Quintus Caecilius Metellus Piggle-wiggle,” laughed Rutilius Rufus. “If there’d been a pigsty handy, or my fountain was worthy of its name, I think I might have tossed him in all over again.’’

  “I know how you feel, but I don’t think that’s a good idea,” said Marius. “What did he have to say to you?”

  “He’s going to stand for consul.”

  “If we ever have any elections, that is! What on earth possessed those two fools to try to stand a second time as tribunes of the plebs when even the Gracchi came to grief?”

  “It shouldn’t delay the Centuriate elections—or the People’s elections, for that matter,” said Rutilius Rufus.

  “Of course it will! Our two would-be second-termers will cause their colleagues to veto all elections,” said Marius. “You know what tribunes of the plebs are like—once they get the bit between their teeth, no one can stop them.”

  Rutilius shook with laughter. “I should think I do know what tribunes of the plebs are like! I was one of the worst. And so were you, Gaius Marius.”

  “Well, yes___”

  “There’ll be elections, never fear,” said Rutilius Rufus comfortably. “My guess is that the tribunes of the plebs will go to the polls four days before the Ides of December, and all the others will follow just after the Ides.”

  “And Metellus Piggle-wiggle will be consul,” said Marius.

  Rutilius Rufus leaned forward, folding his hands together. “He knows something.”

  “You are not wrong, old friend. He definitely knows something we don’t. Any guesses?”

  “Jugurtha. He’s planning a war against Jugurtha.”

  “That’s what I think too,” said Marius. “Only is he going to start it, or is Spurius Albinus going to?”

  “I wouldn’t have said Spurius Albinus had the intestinal fortitude. But time will tell,” Rutilius said tranquilly.

  “He offered me a job as senior legate with his army.”

  “He offered me the same position.”

  They looked at each other and grinned.

  “Then we’d better make it our business to find out what’s going on,” said Marius, getting to his feet. “Spurius Albinus is supposed to arrive here any day to hold the elections, no one having told him there aren’t going to be any elections for some time to come.”

  “He’d have left Africa Province before the news could have reached him, anyway,” said Rutilius Rufus, bypassing the study.

  “Are you going to accept Piggle-wiggle’s offer?”

  “I will, if you will, Gaius Marius.”

  “Good!”

  Rutilius opened the front door himself. “And how is Julia? I won’t have a chance to see her.”

  Marius beamed. “Wonderful—beautiful—glorious!”

  “You silly old geezer,” said Rutilius, and pushed Marius into the street. “Keep your ear to the ground while I’m away, and write to me if you hear any martial stirrings.”

  “I will. Have a good trip.”

  “In autumn? It’ll be a charnel house on board ship and I might drown.”

  “Not you,” said Marius, grinning. “Father Neptune wouldn’t have you, he wouldn’t be game to spoil Piggle-wiggle’s plans.”

  *

  Julia was pregnant, and very pleased to be so; the only stress she suffered was Marius’s henlike concern for her.

  “Truly, Gaius Marius, I am perfectly well,” she said for the thousandth time; it was now November, and the baby was due about March of the next year, so she was beginning to look pregnant. However, she had bloomed the traditional prospective mother’s bloom, untroubled by sickness or swelling.

  “You’re sure?” her husband asked anxiously.

  “Go away, do!” she said, but gently, and smilingly.

  Reassured, the fatuous husband left her with her servants in her workroom, and went to his study. It was the one place in the huge house where Julia’s presence wasn’t felt, the one place where he could forget her. Not that he tried to forget her; rather, there were times when he needed to think of other things.

  Like what was happening in Africa. Sitting at his desk, he drew paper forward and began to write in his bald unvarnished prose to Publius Rutilius Rufus, safely arrived in Tarsus after a very speedy voyage.

  I am attending every meeting of both Senate and Plebs, and it finally looks as if there will be elections in the near future. About time. As you said, four days before the Ides of December. Publius Licinius Lucullus and Lucius Annius are beginning to collapse; I don’t think they’ll succeed in standing for second terms as tribunes of the plebs. In fact, the general impression now is that they plotted to have everyone think it only in order to bring their names more forcibly before the eyes of the electors. They’re both consul material, but neither managed to make a splash while tribune of the plebs—not surprising, considering they’re not reformers. So what better way to make a splash than to inconvenience all of voting Rome? I must be turning into a Cynic. Is that possible for an Italian hayseed with no Greek?As you know, things have been very quiet in Africa, though our intelligence sources report that Jugurtha is indeed recruiting and training a very large army—and in Roman style! However, things were far from quiet when Spurius Albinus came home well over a month ago to hold the elections. He gave his report to the Senate, this including the fact that he had kept his own army down to three legions, one made up of local auxiliaries, one of Roman troops already stationed in Africa, and one he had brought with him last spring from Italy. They are yet to be blooded. Spurius Albinus is not martially inclined, it would seem. I cannot say the same for Piggle-wiggle.But what riled our venerable colleagues of the Senate was the news that Spurius Albinus had seen fit to appoint his little brother, Aulus Albinus, governor of Africa Province and commander of the African army in his absence! Imagine! I suppose if Aulus Albinus had been his quaestor it might have passed scrutiny in the Senate, but—as I know you know, but I’m telling you again anyway—quaestor wasn’t grand enough for Aulus Albinus, so he was put on his big brother’s staff as a senior legate. Without the approval of the Senate! So there sits our Roman province of Africa, being governed in the governor’s absence by a thirty-year-old hothead owning neither experience nor superior intelligence. Marcus Scaurus was spitting with rage, and served the consul a diatribe he won’t forget in a hurry, I can tell you. But it’s done. We can but hope Governor Aulus Albinus conducts himself properly. Scaurus doubts it. And so do I, Publius Rutilius.

  That letter went off to Publius Rutilius Rufus before the elections were held; Marius had intended it to be his last, hoping that the New Year would see Rutilius back in Rome. Then came a letter from Rutilius in
forming him that Panaetius was still alive, and so rejuvenated at sight of his old pupil that he seemed likely to live for several months longer than the state of his malignancy had at first suggested. “Expect me when you see me, some time in the spring just before Piggle-wiggle embarks for Africa,” Rutilius’s letter said.

  So Marius sat down again as the old year dwindled away, and wrote again to Tarsus.

  Clearly you had no doubt Piggle-wiggle would be elected consul, and you were correct. However, the People and the Plebs got their share of the elections over before the Centuries polled, neither body producing any surprises. So the quaestors entered office on the fifth day of December and the new tribunes of the plebs on the tenth day—the only interesting-looking new tribune of the plebs is Gaius Mamilius Limetanus. Oh, and three of the new quaestors are promising—our famous young orators and forensic stars Lucius Licinius Crassus and his best friend, Quintus Mucius Scaevola, are two of them, but the third I find more interesting still: a very brash and abrasive fellow of a recent plebeian family, Gaius Servilius Glaucia, whom I’m sure you’ll remember from his court days—it’s being said these days that he’s the best legal draftsman Rome has ever produced. I don’t like him. Piggle-wiggle was returned first in the Centuriate polls, so will be the senior consul for next year. But Marcus Junius Silanus was not far behind him. The voting was conservative all the way, as a matter of fact. No New Men among the praetors. Instead, the six included two patricians and a patrician adopted into a plebeian family—none other than Quintus Lutatius Catulus Caesar. As far as the Senate is concerned, it was therefore an excellent vote and promises well for the New Year.And then, my dear Publius Rutilius, the thunderbolt fell. It seems Aulus Albinus was tempted by rumors that a huge hoard of treasure was stored in the Numidian town of Suthul. So he waited just long enough to make sure his brother the consul was irrevocably on his way back to Rome to hold the elections, and then invaded Numidia! At the head of three paltry and inexperienced legions, if you please! His siege of Suthul was unsuccessful, of course—the townspeople just shut their gates and laughed at him from the top of their walls. But instead of admitting that he wasn’t capable of waging a little siege, let alone a whole campaign, what did Aulus Albinus do? Return to the Roman province? I hear you ask, eminently sensible man that you are. Well, that may have been the choice you would have made were you Aulus Albinus, but it wasn’t Aulus Albinus’s choice. He packed up his siege and marched onward into western Numidia! At the head of his three paltry and inexperienced legions. Jugurtha attacked him in the middle of the night somewhere near the town of Calama, and defeated Aulus Albinus so badly that our consul’s little brother surrendered unconditionally. And Jugurtha forced every Roman and auxiliary from Aulus Albinus on down to pass beneath the yoke. After which, Jugurtha extracted Aulus Albinus’s signature upon a treaty giving himself everything he hadn’t been able to get from the Senate!