The First Man in Rome

by Colleen McCullough

  “I’ll take it,” said Cotta.

  *

  Caepio and his son didn’t bother to take the detour a visit to Massilia would have meant for a road traveler. No one knew better than Caepio — veteran of a year in Narbo and a year in Spain when he had been praetor — that the winds always blew the wrong way across the Sinus Gallicus. He would take the Via Domitia up the valley of the Druentia River, cross into Italian Gaul through the Mons Genava Pass, and hurry as fast as he could down the Via Aemilia and the Via Flaminia. Hopefully he could average seventy miles a day if he managed to commandeer decent animals often enough, and he expected his proconsular imperium to do that for him. It did; as the miles flew by Caepio began to feel confident that he would beat even the senatorial courier to Rome. So rapid had his crossing of the Alps been that the Vocontii, always on the lookout for vulnerable Roman travelers on the Via Domitia, were unable to organize an attack on the two galloping gigs.

  By the time he reached Ariminum and the end of the Via Aemilia, Caepio knew he would make it from Arausio to Rome in seven days, assisted by good roads and plenty of fresh mules. He began to relax. Exhausted he might be, a headache of huge proportions he might have, but his version of what had happened at Arausio would be the first version Rome heard, and that was nine tenths of the battle. When Fanum Fortunae appeared and the gigs turned onto the Via Flaminia for the crossing of the Apennines and the descent into the Tiber Valley, Caepio knew he had won. His was the version of Arausio Rome would believe.

  But Fortune had a greater favorite; Marcus Aurelius Cotta sailed the Sinus Gallicus from Massilia to Ostia in winds that veered between perfect and nonexistent, a better passage by far than could have been predicted. When the wind dropped, the professional oarsmen took their places in the outriggers, the hortator started to mark the stroke on his drum, and thirty muscled backs bent to the task. It was a small ship, built for speed rather than cargo, and looked suspiciously like a Massiliote fighting ship to Cotta, though the Massiliotes were not supposed to have any without Roman approval. Its two banks of oars, fifteen to a side, were housed in outriggers surmounted by decks that could easily have been fenced with a row of good stout shields and turned into fighting platforms in the twinkling of an eye, and the crane rigged on the afterdeck seemed rather haphazard in construction; perhaps, thought Cotta, a hefty catapult normally sits there. Piracy was a profitable industry, and rife from one end of the Middle Sea to the other.

  However, he was not the man to question a gift from Fortune, so Cotta nodded blandly when the captain explained that he specialized in passengers, and that the outrigger decks were a nice place for the passengers to stretch their legs, since cabin accommodation was a bit primitive. Before they sailed Cotta had been persuaded by the captain that two extra teams of oarsmen were excessive, for his men were the best in the business and would keep up a top pace with only one extra team. Now Cotta was glad he had agreed, for they were the lighter in weight because they carried fewer men, and the wind provided enough puff to rest both teams of rowers just when it looked as if exhaustion was going to set in.

  The ship had sailed out of Massilia’s magnificent harbor at dawn on the eleventh day of October, and came to anchor in Ostia’s dismally poor harbor at dawn on the day before the Ides, exactly three days later. And three hours later Cotta walked into the consul Publius Rutilius Rufus’s house, scattering clients before him like hens before a fox.

  “Out!” he said to the client seated in the chair at Rutilius Rufus’s desk, and threw himself wearily into the chair as the startled client scuttled to the door.

  *

  By noon the Senate had been summoned to an emergency meeting in the Curia Hostilia; Caepio and his son were at that same moment trotting briskly down the last stretch of the Via Aemilia.

  “Leave the doors open,” said Publius Rutilius Rufus to the chief clerk. “This is one meeting the People must hear. And I want it taken down verbatim and transcribed for the records.”

  Given the short notice, it was a fairly full House; for in the unfathomable way that news has of percolating ahead of official dissemination, the rumor was already spreading through the city that there had been a great disaster against the Germans in Gaul. The well of the Comitia near the foot of the Curia Hostilia steps was rapidly filling with people; so were the steps and all the level spaces nearby.

  Fully privy to Caepio’s letters protesting against Mallius Maximus as well as demanding the supreme authority, and fearing a fresh round of arguments, the Conscript Fathers were edgy. Not having heard in weeks from Caepio, the doughty Marcus Aemilius Scaurus was at a disadvantage, and knew it. So when the consul Rutilius Rufus commanded that the House doors remain open, Scaurus made no move to insist they be closed. Nor did Metellus Numidicus. All eyes were riveted on Cotta, given a chair in the front row in close proximity to the dais on which stood his brother-in-law Rutilius Rufus’s ivory chair.

  “Marcus Aurelius Cotta arrived in Ostia this morning,” Rutilius Rufus said. “Three days ago he was in Massilia, and the day before that, he was in Arausio, near which our armies stationed themselves. I call upon Marcus Aurelius Cotta to speak, and give the House notice that this meeting is being transcribed verbatim for the records.”

  Of course Cotta had bathed and changed, but there could be no mistaking the grey tinge of fatigue in his normally highly colored face, and every line of his body as he got to his feet indicated the immensity of that fatigue.

  “On the day before the Nones of October, Conscript Fathers, a battle was fought at Arausio,” said Cotta, not needing to project his voice, for the House was utterly still. “The Germans annihilated us. Eighty thousand of our soldiers are dead.”

  No one exclaimed, no one murmured, no one moved; the House sat in a silence as profound as that inside the Sibyl’s cave at Cumae. “When I say eighty thousand soldiers, I mean just that. The noncombatant dead number some twenty-four thousand more. And the cavalry dead are separate again.”

  His voice expressionlessly level, Cotta went on to tell the senators exactly what had happened from the time he and his five companions arrived at Arausio—the fruitless dickering with Caepio; the atmosphere of confusion and unrest Caepio’s flouting of orders created within Mallius Maximus’s chain of command, some of whom sided with Caepio, like Caepio’s son; the stranding of the consular Aurelius and the cavalry too far away to act as part of a military machine. “Five thousand troopers, all their noncombatants, and every single animal in Aurelius’s camp perished. The legate Marcus Aurelius Scaurus was taken prisoner by the Germans and used as a deliberate example. They burned him alive, Conscript Fathers. He died, I was told by a witness, with extreme courage and bravery.”

  There were ashen faces among the senators now, for most had sons or brothers or nephews or cousins in one or the other of the armies; men wept silently, heads muffled in their togas, or sat forward, faces hidden in their hands. Scaurus Princeps Senatus alone remained erect, two fierce spots of color in his cheeks, mouth a hard line.

  “All of you here today must take a part of the blame,” said Cotta. “Your delegation did not contain one consular, and I—a mere ex-praetor!—was the only curule magistrate among the six. With the result that Quintus Servilius Caepio refused to speak with us as his equals in birth or seniority. Or even experience. Instead, he took our insignificance, our lack of clout, as a message from the Senate that it was behind him in his stand against Gnaeus Mallius Maximus. And he was right to do so, Conscript Fathers! If you had seriously intended to see that Quintus Servilius obeyed the law by subordinating himself to the consul of the year, you would have stuffed your delegation with consulars! But you did not. You deliberately sent five pedarii and one ex-praetor to deal with one of the House’s most obdurately elitist, most senior members!’’

  Not a head came up; more and more were now shrouded in folds of toga. But Scaurus Princeps Senatus continued to sit bolt upright, his blazing eyes never leaving Cotta’s face.

  “The rift
between Quintus Servilius Caepio and Gnaeus Mallius Maximus prevented the amalgamation of their forces. Instead of a tightly bound single army comprising no less than seventeen legions and over five thousand horse, Rome fielded two armies twenty miles apart, with the smaller one closer to the German advance, and the body of cavalry separate again. Quintus Servilius Caepio personally told me that he would not share his triumph with Gnaeus Mallius Maximus, and so had deliberately put his army too far north of Gnaeus Mallius’s to allow it any participation in his battle.”

  Cotta drew in a rasping breath which sounded so loud in the silence that Rutilius Rufus jumped. Scaurus did not. Beside Scaurus, Metellus Numidicus poked his head slowly out of his toga, straightened to reveal a stony face.

  “Even leaving aside the disastrous rift between them, the truth is, Conscript Fathers, that neither Quintus Servilius nor Gnaeus Mallius had sufficient military talent to win against the Germans! However, of the two commanders, it is Quintus Servilius who must take the brunt of the blame. For not only was he as poor a general as Gnaeus Mallius, but he flouted the law as well. He put himself above the law, he deemed the law a device for lesser mortals than himself! A true Roman, Marcus Aemilius Scaurus Princeps Senatus”—this was said directly to the Leader of the House, who didn’t move—”holds the law paramount, knowing that under the law there is no true social distinction, only a system of checks and balances we have deliberately designed to ensure that no man can consider himself above his peers. Quintus Servilius Caepio behaved like the First Man in Rome. But under the law, there cannot be a First Man in Rome! So I say to you that Quintus Servilius broke the law, where Gnaeus Mallius was simply an inadequate general.”

  The stillness and the silence continued; Cotta sighed. “Arausio is a worse disaster than Cannae, my fellow senators. The flower of our men is perished. I know, for I was there. Perhaps thirteen thousand soldiers survived, and they—the greenest troops of all—fled without any order to retreat, leaving their arms and armor behind on the field, and swimming the Rhodanus to safety. They are still wandering unmustered to the west of the river somewhere, and, from some reports I have had, are so frightened of the Germans that they intend to go to earth rather than run the risk of being collected and put back into a Roman army. When he tried to stop this rout, the tribune Sextus Julius Caesar was cut down by his own soldiers. I am pleased to say he lives, for I found him on the field myself, left for dead by the Germans. I and my companions—twenty-nine, all told—were the only people available to succor the wounded, and for nearly three days no others came to help. Though the vast majority of those left lying on the field were dead, there can be no doubt that some died who might not have died were there people on hand to give them aid after the battle.”

  In spite of iron control, Metellus Numidicus moved, his hand going out in dreadful query. Cotta caught the gesture, and looked at Gaius Marius’s enemy, who was his own friend; for Cotta had no love to lay on Gaius Marius’s altar.

  “Your son, Quintus Caecilius Metellus Numidicus, survived unharmed, but not as a coward. He rescued the consul Gnaeus Mallius and some of his personal staff. However, both the sons of Gnaeus Mallius were killed. Of the twenty-four elected tribunes of the soldiers, only three survived— Marcus Livius Drusus, Sextus Julius Caesar, and Quintus Servilius Caepio Junior. Marcus Livius and Sextus Julius were severely wounded. Quintus Servilius Junior—who commanded the greenest legion of troops, closest to the river—survived unharmed by swimming to safety, in what circumstances of personal integrity I do not know.”

  Cotta paused to clear his throat, wondering if the vast relief in Metellus Numidicus’s eyes was mostly for the simple survival of his son, or for the news that his son had been no coward. “But these casualty figures pale when compared to the fact that not one centurion of any experience in either army is now alive. Rome is officerless, Conscript Fathers! And the great army of Gaul-across-the-Alps no longer exists.” He waited for a moment, then added, “It never did exist, thanks to Quintus Servilius Caepio.”

  Outside the great bronze doors of the Curia Hostilia the news was being disseminated by those close enough to hear to those too far-away to hear, an ever-widening audience that was still gathering, now spreading up the Argiletum and the Clivus Argentarius, and across the lower Forum Romanum behind the well of the Comitia. The crowds were immense. But they were quiet crowds. The only sounds were the sounds of tears. Rome had lost the crucial battle. And Italy was open to the Germans.

  Before Cotta could sit down, Scaurus spoke.

  “And where are the Germans now, Marcus Aurelius? How much farther south of Arausio were they when you left to bring us the news? And how much farther south might they be now, this very moment?” he asked.

  “I honestly do not know, Princeps Senatus. For when the battle was over—and it only took about an hour—the Germans turned back into the north, apparently to fetch their wagons and women and children, left just to the north of the cavalry camp. But when I departed, they had not come back. And I interviewed a German man whom Marcus Aurelius Scaurus had employed as one of his interpreters when the German chiefs came to parley. This man was captured, recognized as a German, and so was not harmed. According to him, the Germans quarreled, and have—for the moment, anyway—split up into three separate groups. It seems none of the three groups is confident enough to press on alone south into our territory. So they are going to Spain by various routes through Long-haired Gaul. But the quarrel was induced by Roman wine taken as part of the spoils. How long the rift will persist, no one can predict. Nor can I be sure that the man I interviewed was telling all the truth. Or even part of the truth, for that matter. He says he escaped and came back because he doesn’t want to live as a German anymore. But it may be that he was sent back by the Germans to lull our fears and make us even easier prey. All I can tell you for certain is that when I left, there was no sign of a southward German movement,” said Cotta, and sat down.

  Rutilius Rufus rose to his feet. “This is not the occasion for a debate, Conscript Fathers. Nor is it an occasion for recriminations, yet more quarrels. Today is an occasion for action.”

  “Hear, hear!” said a voice from the back.

  “Tomorrow is the Ides of October,” Rutilius Rufus went on. “That means the campaign season is just about over. But we have very little time left to us if we are to prevent the Germans invading Italy anytime they feel like doing so. I have formulated a plan of action which I intend to present to you now, but first I am going to give you a solemn warning. At the slightest sign of argument, dissension, or any other conceivable polarization of this House, I will take my plan to the People and have it approved in the Plebeian Assembly. Thereby depriving you, Conscript Fathers, of your prerogative to take the lead in all matters pertaining to the defense of Rome. The conduct of Quintus Servilius Caepio points up the greatest weakness of our senatorial order—namely, its unwillingness to admit that Chance and Fortune and Luck occasionally combine to throw up men from the lower ranks with far greater abilities than all of us who regard ourselves as entitled by birth and tradition to govern the People of Rome—and command Rome’s armies.”

  He had turned his person and pitched his voice toward the open doors, and the great high sound of it floated out into the air above the Comitia.

  “We are going to need every able-bodied man in all of Italy, so much is sure. From the Head Count clear through the orders and classes to the Senate, every able-bodied man! I therefore require a decree from you directing the Plebs to enact a law immediately forbidding any man between the ages of seventeen and thirty-five—any man, be he Roman or Latin or Italian—to leave the shores of Italy, or cross the Arnus or the Rubico into Italian Gaul. By tomorrow I want couriers riding at the gallop to every port in our peninsula with orders that no ship or boat is to accept an able-bodied free man as crew or passenger. The penalty will be death, both for the man trying to avoid military service and the man accepting him.”

  No one in the House said a word
—not Scaurus Princeps Senatus, not Metellus Numidicus, not Metellus Dalmaticus Pontifex Maximus, not Ahenobarbus Senior, not Catulus Caesar, not Scipio Nasica. Good, thought Rutilius Rufus. They’ll not oppose that law, anyway.

  “All available personnel will be set to recruiting soldiers of any class from Head Count to Senate. And that means, Conscript Fathers, that those among you aged thirty-five or younger will automatically be inducted into the legions, no matter how many campaigns you have served in previously. We will get soldiers if we enforce this law rigorously. However, I very much fear we won’t get enough. Quintus Servilius cleaned out the last pockets of those throughout Italy owning property, and Gnaeus Mallius took almost seventy thousand men of the Head Count, either as soldiers or as noncombatants.

  “So we must look to what other armies we have available. In Macedonia: two legions only, both of auxiliaries, which cannot possibly be spared duty there. In Spain: two legions in the further province, and one in the nearer province— two of these legions are Roman, one auxiliary—and not only will they have to stay in Spain, but they must be heavily reinforced, for the Germans say they intend to invade Spain.” He paused.

  And Scaurus Princeps Senatus came to life at last. “Get on with it, Publius Rutilius!” he said testily. “Get to Africa—and Gaius Marius!”

  Rutilius Rufus blinked, feigning surprise. “Why, thank you, Princeps Senatus, thank you! If you hadn’t mentioned it, I might have forgotten! Oh, truly are you called the watchdog of the Senate! What would we do without you?”

  “Spare me the sarcasm, Publius Rutilius!” Scaurus snarled. “Just get on with it!”

  “Certainly! There are three aspects of Africa which I think must be mentioned. The first is a war successfully concluded—an enemy completely rolled up, an enemy king and his family at this very moment waiting for retribution right here in Rome, as houseguests of our noble Quintus Caecilius Metellus Piggle-wiggle—oooops, I do beg your pardon, Quintus Caecilius!—Numidicus, I mean!—well, here in Rome, certainly.