The First Man in Rome

by Colleen McCullough

  Quintus Sertorius was on duty, and enjoying himself enormously. Solving conundrums of supply, discipline, morale, and men appealed to him, and he loved the increasingly complex and responsible tasks Gaius Marius gave him. If ever there was a case of hero worship, it existed in Quintus Sertorius, its object Gaius Marius; the embryonic master-soldier recognizing the mature form. Nothing Gaius Marius could have asked of him would have seemed a distasteful chore to Quintus Sertorius, so where other junior military tribunes loathed desk duty outside the general’s tent, Quintus Sertorius welcomed it.

  When the Ligurian horse trooper lurched up with the gait peculiar to men who straddle horses with their legs hanging down unsupported all their lives, Quintus Sertorius regarded him with interest. Not a very prepossessing sort of fellow, he had a face only his mother could have thought beautiful, but his mail shirt was buffed up nicely, his soft-soled Ligurian felt riding shoes were adorned with a pair of sparkling spurs, and his leather knee breeches were respectably clean. If he smelled a little of horses, that was only to be expected; all troopers did, it was ingrained, and had nothing to do with how many baths they took or how often they washed their clothes.

  One pair of shrewd brown eyes looked into another pair, each liking what it saw.

  No decorations yet, thought Quintus Sertorius, but then, the cavalry hadn’t really seen any action yet, either.

  Young for this job, thought Publius Vagiennius, but a real neat-looking soldier, if ever I saw one—typical Roman foot-slogger, though; no taste for horses.

  “Publius Vagiennius, Ligurian cavalry squadron,” said Publius Vagiennius. “I’d like to see Gaius Marius.”

  “Rank?” asked Quintus Sertorius.

  “Trooper,” said Publius Vagiennius.

  “Your business?”

  “That’s private.”

  “The general,” said Quintus Sertorius pleasantly, “doesn’t see ordinary troopers of auxiliary cavalry, especially escorted by no one save themselves. Where’s your tribune, trooper?”

  “He don’t know I’m here,” said Publius Vagiennius, looking mulish. “My business is private.”

  “Gaius Marius is a very busy man,” said Quintus Sertorius.

  Publius Vagiennius leaned both hands on the table and thrust his head closer, almost asphyxiating Sertorius with the smell of garlic. “Now listen, young sir, you tell Gaius Marius I’ve got a proposition of great advantage to him— but I’m not going to spill it to anyone else, and that’s final.”

  Keeping his eyes aloof and his face straight while he was dying to burst out laughing, Quintus Sertorius got to his feet. “Wait here, trooper,” he said.

  The interior of the tent was divided into two areas by a leather wall sliced up its center to form a flap. The back room formed Marius’s living quarters, the front room his office. This front room was by far the bigger of the two, and held an assortment of folding chairs and tables, racks of maps, some models of siege-works the engineers had been playing with regarding Muluchath Mountain, and portable sets of pigeonholed shelves in which reposed various documents, scrolls, book buckets, and loose papers.

  Gaius Marius was sitting on his ivory curule chair to one side of the big folding table he called his personal desk, with Aulus Manlius, his legate, on its other side, and Lucius Cornelius Sulla, his quaestor, between them. They were clearly engaged in the activity which they detested most, but which was dear to the hearts of the bureaucrats who ran the Treasury—going through the accounts and keeping the books. That this was a preliminary conference was easy to see for a Quintus Sertorius; if it had been serious, several clerks and scribes would also have been in attendance.

  “Gaius Marius, I apologize for interrupting you,” said Sertorius, rather diffidently.

  Something in his tone made all three men lift their heads to look at him closely.

  “You’re forgiven, Quintus Sertorius. What is it?” asked Marius, smiling.

  “Well, it’s probably a complete waste of your time, but I’ve got a trooper of Ligurian cavalry outside who insists on seeing you, Gaius Marius, but won’t tell me why.”

  “A trooper of Ligurian cavalry,” said Marius slowly. “And what does his tribune have to say?”

  “He hasn’t consulted his tribune.”

  “Oh, top secret, eh?” Marius surveyed Sertorius shrewdly. “Why should I see this man, Quintus Sertorius?”

  Quintus Sertorius grinned. “If I could tell you that, I’d be a lot better at my job,” he said. “I don’t know why, and that’s an honest answer. But—I don’t know, I’m probably wrong, but—I think you should see him, Gaius Marius. I’ve got a feeling about it.”

  Marius laid down the paper in his hand. “Bring him in.”

  The sight of all the Senior Command sitting together did not even dent Publius Vagiennius’s confidence; he stood blinking in the dimmer light, no fear on his face.

  “This is Publius Vagiennius,” said Sertorius, preparing to leave again.

  “Stay here, Quintus Sertorius,” said Marius. “Well now, Publius Vagiennius, what have you to say to me?”

  “Quite a lot,” said Publius Vagiennius.

  “Then spit it out, man!”

  “I will, I will!” said Publius Vagiennius, uncowed. “The thing is, I’m just going through my options first. Do I lay my information, or put up my business proposition?”

  “Does one hinge upon the other?” asked Aulus Manlius.

  “It most certainly do, Aulus Manlius.”

  “Then let’s have the business proposition first,” said Marius, poker-faced. “I like the oblique approach.”

  “Snails,” said Publius Vagiennius.

  All four Romans looked at him, but no one spoke.

  “My business proposition,” said Publius Vagiennius patiently. “It’s snails. The biggest, juiciest snails you ever seen!”

  “So that’s why you reek of garlic!” said Sulla.

  “Can’t eat snails without garlic,” said Vagiennius.

  “How can we help you with your snails?” asked Marius.

  “I want a concession,” said Vagiennius, “and I want a introduction to the right people in Rome to market them.”

  “I see.” Marius looked at Manlius, Sulla, Sertorius. No one was smiling. “All right, you’ve got your concession, and I imagine between us we can scrape up the odd introduction. Now what’s the information you want to lay?”

  “I found a way up the mountain.”

  Sulla and Aulus Manlius sat up straight.

  ‘‘You found a way up the mountain,” said Marius slowly.

  “Yes.”

  Marius got up from behind the table. “Show me,” he said.

  But Publius Vagiennius backed away. “Well, I will, Gaius Marius, I will! But not until we sort out my snails.”

  “Can’t it wait, man?” asked Sulla, looking ominous.

  “No, Lucius Cornelius, it can’t!” said Publius Vagiennius, thereby demonstrating that he knew all the names of the Senior Command when he saw them. “The way to the top of the mountain goes straight through the middle of my snail patch. And it’s my snail patch! The best snails in the whole world too! Here.” He unslung his lunch pouch from its rather incongruous resting place athwart his long cavalry sword, opened it, and carefully withdrew an eight-inch-long snail shell, which he put on Marius’s desk.

  They all looked at it fixedly, in complete silence. Since the surface of the table was cool and sleek, after a moment or two the snail ventured out, for it was hungry, and it had been jolted around inside Publius Vagiennius’s lunch pouch for some time, deprived of tranquillity. Now it rabbited out of its hat as snails do, not emerging like a tortoise, but rather jacking its shell up into the air and expanding into existence under it via slimy amorphous lumps. One such lump formed itself into a tapering tail, and the opposite lump into a stumpy head which lifted bleary stalks into the air by growing them out of nothing. Its metamorphosis complete, it began to chomp quite audibly upon the mulch Publius Vagiennius
had wrapped around it.

  “Now that,” said Gaius Marius, “is what I call a snail!”

  “Rather!” breathed Quintus Sertorius.

  “You could feed an army on those,” said Sulla, who was a conservative eater, and didn’t like snails any more than he liked mushrooms.

  “That’s it!” yelped Publius Vagiennius. “That’s just it! I don’t want them greedy mentulae”—his audience winced—”pinching my snails! There’s a lot of snails, but five hundred soldiers’d see the end of them! Now I want to bring them to some place handy to Rome and breed them, and I don’t want my snail patch ruined either. I want that concession, and I want my snail patch kept safe from all the cunni in this here army!”

  “It’s an army of cunni all right,” said Marius gravely.

  “It so happens,” drawled Aulus Manlius in his extremely upper-class accent, “that I can help you, Publius Vagiennius. I have a client from Tarquinia—Etruria, you know— who has been getting together a very exclusive and lucrative little business in the Cuppedenis markets—Rome, you know—selling snails. His name is Marcus Fulvius—not a noble Fulvius, you know—and I advanced him a little money to get himself started a couple of years ago. He’s doing well. But I imagine he’d be very happy to come to some sort of agreement with you, looking at this magnificent—truly magnificent, Publius Vagiennius!—snail.”

  “You got a deal, Aulus Manlius,” said the trooper.

  “Now will you show us the way up the mountain?” demanded Sulla, still impatient.

  “In a moment, in a moment,” said Vagiennius, turned to where Marius was lacing on his boots. “First I want to hear the general say my snail patch will be safe.”

  Marius finished with his boots and straightened up to look Publius Vagiennius in the eye. “Publius Vagiennius,” he said, “you are a man after my own heart! You combine a sound business head with a staunchly patriotic spirit. Fear not, you have my word your snail patch will be kept safe. Now lead us to the mountain, if you please.”

  When the investigative party set out shortly thereafter, it had been augmented by the chief of engineers. They rode to save time, Vagiennius on his better horse, Gaius Marius on the elderly but elegant steed he saved mostly for parades, Sulla adhering to his preference for a mule, and Aulus Manlius and Quintus Sertorius and the engineer on ponies out of the general compound.

  The fumarole represented no difficulties to the engineer. “Easy,” he said, gazing up the chimney. “I’ll build a nice wide staircase all the way up, there’s room.”

  “How long will it take you?” asked Marius.

  “I just happen to have a few cartloads of planks and small beams with me, so—oh, two days, if I work day and night,” said the engineer.

  “Then get to it at once,” said Marius, gazing at Vagiennius with renewed respect. “You must be three parts goat to be able to climb up this,” he said.

  “Mountain born, mountain bred,” said Vagiennius smugly.

  “Well, your snail patch will be safe until the staircase is done,” Marius said as he led the way back to the horses. “Once your snails come under threat, I’ll deal with it myself.”

  Five days later the Muluchath citadel belonged to Gaius Marius, together with a fabulous hoard of silver coins, silver bars, and a thousand talents in gold; there were also two small chests, one stuffed with the finest, reddest carbunculus stones anyone had ever seen, and the other stuffed with stones no one had ever seen, long naturally faceted crystals carefully polished to reveal that they were deep pink at one end, shading through to dark green at the other.

  “A fortune!” said Sulla, holding up one of the particolored stones the locals called lychnites.

  “Indeed, indeed!” gloated Marius.

  As for Publius Vagiennius, he was decorated at a full assembly of the army, receiving a complete set of nine solid-silver phalerae, these being big round medallions sculpted in high relief and joined together in three rows of three by chased, silver-inlaid straps so that they could be worn on the chest over the top of the cuirass or mail shirt. He quite liked this distinction, but he was far better pleased by the fact that Marius had honored his word, and protected the snail patch from predators by fencing off a route for the soldiers to take to the top of the mountain. This passageway Marius had then screened with hides, so that the soldiers never knew what succulent goodies cruised rheumily through the cave of ferns. And when the mountain was taken, Marius ordered the staircase demolished immediately. Not only that, but Aulus Manlius had written off to his client the ignoble Marcus Fulvius, setting a partnership in train for when the African campaign was over, and Publius Vagiennius had his discharge.

  “Mind you, Publius Vagiennius,” said Marius as he strapped on the nine silver phalerae, “the four of us expect a proper reward in years to come—free snails for our tables, with an extra share for Aulus Manlius.”

  “It’s a deal,” said Publius Vagiennius, who had discovered to his sorrow that his liking for snails had permanently gone since his illness. However, he now regarded snails with the jealous eye of a preserver rather than a destroyer.

  *

  By the end of Sextilis the army was on its way back from the borderlands, eating very well off the land because the harvest was in. The visit to the edge of King Bocchus’s realm had had the desired effect; convinced that once he had Numidia conquered, Marius was not going to stop, Bocchus decided to throw in his lot with his son-in-law, Jugurtha. He therefore hustled his Moorish army to the Muluchath River and there met Jugurtha, who waited until Marius was gone, then reoccupied his denuded mountain citadel.

  The two kings followed in the wake of the Romans as they headed east, not in any hurry to attack, and keeping far enough back to remain undetected. And then when Marius was within a hundred miles of Cirta, the kings struck.

  It was just on dusk, and the Roman army was busy pitching camp. Even so, the attack did not catch the men completely off-guard, for Marius pitched camp with scrupulous attention to safety. The surveyors came in and computed the four corners, which were staked out, then the whole army moved with meticulous precision into the future camp’s interior, knowing by rote exactly where each legion was to go, each cohort of each legion, each century of each cohort. No one tripped over anyone else; no one went to the wrong place; no one erred as to the amount of ground he was to occupy. The baggage mule train was brought inside too, the noncombatants of each century took charge of each octet’s mules and the century’s cart, and the train attendants saw to stabling of the animals and storage of the carts. Armed with digging tools and palisade stakes from their backpacks, the soldiers, still completely armed, went to the sections of boundary always designated to them. They worked in their mail shirts and girt with swords and daggers; their spears were planted firmly in the ground and their shields propped against them, after which their helmets were hooked by their chin straps around the spears and over the fronts of the shields so that a wind could not blow the erections over. In that way, every man’s helmet, shield, and spear were within reach while the laboring went on.

  The scouts did not find the Enemy, but came in reporting all clear, then went to do their share of pitching camp. The sun had set. And in the brief lustrous dimness before darkness fell, the Numidian and Mauretanian armies spilled out from behind a nearby ridge and descended upon the half-finished camp.

  All the fighting took place during darkness, a desperate business which went against the Romans for some hours. But Quintus Sertorius got the noncombatants kindling torches until finally the field was lit up enough for Marius to see what was happening, and from that point on, things began to improve for the Romans. Sulla distinguished himself mightily, rallying those troops who began to flag or panic, appearing everywhere he was needed—as if by magic, but in reality because he had that inbuilt military eye which could discern where the next weak spot was going to develop before it actually did. Sword blooded, blood up, he took to battle like a veteran—brave in attack, careful in defense, brill
iant in difficulties.

  And by the eighth hour of darkness, victory went to the Romans. The Numidian and Mauretanian armies drew off in fairly good order, yet left several thousands of their soldiers behind on the field, where Marius had lost surprisingly few.

  In the morning the Roman army moved on, Marius having decided rest for his men was out of the question. The dead were properly cremated, and the Enemy dead were left for the vultures. This time the legions marched in square, with the cavalry disposed at front and at back of the compressed column, and the mules as well as the baggage mule train right in the middle. If a second attack occurred on the march, all the soldiers had to do was face outward in each square, while the cavalry was already placed to form wings. Each man now wore his helmet on his head, its colored horse’s-tail plume fixed to its top; he carried his shield uncovered by its protective hide, and he also carried both his spears.

  Not until Cirta was reached would vigilance be relaxed.

  On the fourth day, with Cirta the coming night’s destination, the kings struck again. This time Marius was ready. The legions formed into squares, each square formed part of a vaster square with the baggage in its middle, and then each small square dissolved into rank and file to double its thickness facing the Enemy. As always, Jugurtha counted upon his many thousands of Numidian horse to unsettle the Roman front; superb riders, they used neither saddle nor bridle, and wore no armor, relying for their punch and power upon fleetness, bravery and their deadly accuracy with javelin and long-sword. But neither his cavalry nor Bocchus’s could break through into the center of the Roman square, and their infantry forces broke against a solid wall of legionaries undismayed by horse or foot.