The First Man in Rome

by Colleen McCullough

  And yet... everything from the old life was there just the same, and he knew it. The yearning to see Metrobius, the love of grotesquery—of dwarves and transvestites and raddled old whores and outrageous characters—the intractable dislike of women using their powers to dominate him, the capacity to snuff out a life when intolerably threatened, the unwillingness to suffer fools, the gnawing, consuming ambition... The actor’s African theatrical run was over, but he wasn’t looking at a prolonged rest; the future held many parts. And yet... Rome was the stage upon which his old self had postured; Rome spelled anything from ruin to frustration to discovery. So he journeyed toward Rome in wary mood, aware of the profound changes in himself, but also aware that very little had actually changed. The actor between parts, never a truly comfortable creature.

  And Julilla waited for him very differently than Julia waited for Marius, sure that she loved Sulla far more than Julia loved Marius. To Julilla, any evidence whatsoever of discipline or self-control was proof positive of an inferior brand of love; love of the highest order should overwhelm, invade, shake down the spiritual walls, drive out all vestige of rational thought, roar tempestuously, trample down everything in its path as if some vast elephant. So she waited feverishly, unable to settle to anything other than the wine flask, her costume changed several times a day, her hair now up, now down, now sideways, her servants driven mad.

  And all this she threw over Sulla like a pall woven from the most clinging and tentacular cobwebs. When he walked into the atrium, she was there running wildly across the room to him, arms outstretched, face transfigured; before he could look at her or collect himself to feel anything, she had glued her mouth to his like a leech on an arm, sucking, devouring, wriggling, wet, all blood and blackness. Her hands were groping after his genitals, she made noises of the most lascivious pleasure, then she actually began to wind her legs about him as he stood in that most unprivate place, watched by the derisive eyes of a dozen slaves, most of whom were total strangers to him.

  He couldn’t help himself; his hands came up and wrenched her arms down, his head went back and ripped her mouth away.

  “Recollect yourself, madam!” he said. “We are not alone!”

  She gasped as if he had spat in her face, but it sobered her into conducting herself more sedately; with pitifully casual artlessness she linked her arm through his and walked with him to the peristyle, then down to where her sitting room was, in Nicopolis’s old suite of rooms.

  “Is this private enough?” she asked, a little spitefully.

  But the mood had been spoiled for him long before this spurt of spite; he didn’t want her mouth or her hands probing their way into the most sequestered corners of his being without regard for the sensitivity of the layers they pierced.

  “Later, later!” he said, moving to a chair.

  She stood, poor frightened and bewildered Julilla, as if her world had ended. More beautiful than ever, but in a most frail and brittle way, from the sticklike arms poking out of what he recognized at once as draperies in the height of fashion—a man with Sulla’s background never lost his instinct for line or style—to the enormous, slightly mad-looking eyes sunk deep into their orbits amid dense blue-black shadows.

  “I—don’t—understand!” she cried to him then, not daring to move from where she stood, her gaze drinking him in not avidly anymore, but rather as the mouse drinks in the smile on the face of the cat: are you friend or enemy?

  “Julilla,” he said with what patience he could muster, “I am tired. I haven’t had time to regain my land legs. I hardly know any of the faces in this house. And since I’m not in the least drunk, I have all a sober man’s inhibitions about the degree of physical license a married couple should allow themselves in public.”

  “But I love you!” she protested.

  “So I should hope. Just as I love you. Even so, there are boundaries,” he said stiffly, wanting everything within his Roman sphere to be exactly right, from wife and domicile to Forum career.

  When he had thought of Julilla during his two years away, he hadn’t honestly remembered what sort of person she was—only how she looked, and how frantically, excitingly passionate she was in their bed. In fact, he had thought of her as a man thought of his mistress, not his wife. Now he stared at the young woman who was his wife, and decided she would make a far more satisfactory mistress—someone he visited upon his terms, didn’t have to share his home with, didn’t have to introduce to his friends and associates.

  I ought never to have married her, he thought. I got carried away by a vision of my future seen through the medium of her eyes—for that was all she did, serve as a vessel to pass a vision through on its way from Fortune to Fortune’s chosen one. I didn’t stop to think that there would be dozens of young noblewomen available to me more suitable than a poor silly creature who tried to starve herself to death for love of me. That in itself is an excess. I don’t mind excess— but not an excess I’m the object of. Only excess I’m the perpetrator of, thank you! Why have I spent my life tangled up with women who want to suffocate me?

  Julilla’s face altered. Her eyes slid away from the two pale inflexible orbs dwelling upon her in a clinical interest holding nothing of love, or of lust. There! Oh, what would she do without it? Wine, faithful trusty wine... Without stopping to think what he might think, she moved to a side table and poured herself a full goblet of unwatered wine, and downed it in one draft; only then did she remember him, and turn to him with a question in her gaze.

  “Wine, Sulla?” she asked.

  He was frowning. “You put that away mighty quick! Do you normally toss your wine back like that?’’

  “I needed a drink!” she said fretfully. “You’re being very cold and depressing.”

  He sighed. “I daresay I am. Never mind, Julilla. I’ll improve. Or maybe you should—yes, yes, give me the wine!” He almost snatched the goblet she had been extending mutely for some moments and drank from it, but not at a gulp, and by no means the entire contents. “When last I heard from you—you’re not much of a letter writer, are you?”

  The tears were pouring down Julilla’s face, but she didn’t sob; just wept soundlessly. “I hate writing letters!”

  “That much is plain,” he said dryly.

  “Anyway, what about them?” she asked, pouring herself a second goblet and drinking it down as quickly as her first.

  “I was going to say, when last I heard from you, I thought we had a couple of children. A girl and a boy, wasn’t it? Not that you bothered to tell me of the boy; I had to find that out from your father.”

  “I was ill,” she said, still weeping.

  “Am I not to see my children?”

  “Oh, down there!” she cried, pointing rather wildly toward the back of the peristyle.

  He left her mopping at her face with a handkerchief and back at the wine flagon to refill her empty goblet.

  His first glimpse of them was through the open window of their nursery, and they didn’t see him. A woman’s murmuring voice was in the background, but she was invisible; all of his sight was filled with the two little people he had generated. A girl—yes, she’d be half past two now—standing over a boy—yes, he’d be half past one!

  She was enchanting, the most perfect tiny doll he had ever seen—head crowned with a mass of red-gold curls, skin of milk and roses, dimples in her plump pink cheeks, and under soft red-gold brows, a pair of the widest blue eyes, happy and smiling and full of love for her little brother.

  He was even more enchanting, this son Sulla had never seen. Walking—that was good—not a stitch of clothing on him—that was what his sister was on at him about, so he must do it often—and talking—he was giving his sister back as good as she was giving him, the villain. And he was laughing. He looked like a Caesar—the same long attractive face, the same thick gold hair, the same vivid blue eyes as Sulla’s dead father-in-law.

  And the dormant heart of Lucius Cornelius Sulla didn’t just awaken with a leisure
ly stretch and a yawn, it leaped into the world of feeling as Athene must have leaped fully grown and fully armed from the brow of Zeus, clanging and calling a clarion. In the doorway he went down on his knees and held out both arms to them, eyes shimmering. “Tata is here,” he said. “Tata has come home.” They didn’t even hesitate, let alone shrink away, but ran into the circle of his arms and covered his rapt face with kisses.

  *

  Publius Rutilius Rufus turned out not to be the first magistrate to visit Marius at Cumae; the returned hero had scarcely settled into a routine when his steward came inquiring if he would see the noble Lucius Marcius Philippus. Curious as to what Philippus wanted—for he had never met the man, and knew the family only in the most cursory way—Marius bade his man bring the visitor into his study.

  Philippus didn’t prevaricate; he got straight to the reason for his call. A rather soft-looking fellow, thought Marius— too much flabby flesh around his waist, too much jowl beneath his chin—but with all the arrogance and self-assurance of the Marcius clan, who claimed descent from Ancus Marcius, the fourth King of Rome, and builder of the Wooden Bridge.

  “You don’t know me, Gaius Marius,” he said, his dark brown eyes looking directly into Marius’s own, “so I thought I would take the earliest opportunity to rectify the omission—given that you are next year’s senior consul, and that I am a newly elected tribune of the plebs.”

  “How nice of you to want to rectify the omission,” said Marius, his smile devoid of any irony.

  “Yes, I suppose it is,” said Philippus blandly. He sat back in his chair and crossed his legs, an affectation Marius had never cared for, deeming it unmasculine.

  “What may I do for you, Lucius Marcius?”

  “Actually, quite a lot.” Philippus poked his head forward, his face suddenly less soft, distinctly feral. “I find myself in a bit of financial bother, Gaius Marius, and I thought it behooved me to—shall we say—offer my services to you as a tribune of the plebs. I wondered, for instance, if there was a small trifle of legislation you’d like passed. Or perhaps you would just like to know that you have a loyal adherent among the tribunes of the plebs back in Rome while you’re away keeping the German wolf from our door. Silly Germans! They haven’t yet realized that Rome is a wolf, have they? But they will, I’m sure. If anyone can teach them the wolfish nature of Rome, you will.”

  The mind of Marius had moved with singular speed during this preamble. He too sat back, but didn’t cross his legs. “As a matter of fact, my dear Lucius Marcius, there is a small trifle I’d like passed through the Plebeian Assembly with a minimum of fuss or attention. I would be delighted to assist you to extricate yourself from your financial bother if you can spare me any legislative bother.”

  “The more generous the donation to my cause, Gaius Marius, the less fuss or attention my law will receive,” said Philippus with a broad smile.

  “Splendid! Name your price,” said Marius.

  “Oh, dear! Such bluntness!”

  “Name your price,” Marius repeated.

  “Half a million,” said Philippus.

  “Sesterces,” said Marius.

  “Denarii,” said Philippus.

  “Oh, I’d want a lot more than just a trifle of legislation for half a million denarii,” said Marius.

  “For half a million denarii, Gaius Marius, you will get a lot more. Not only my services during my tribunate, but thereafter as well. I do pledge it.”

  “Then we have a deal.”

  “How easy!” exclaimed Philippus, relaxing. “Now what is it I can do for you?’’

  “I need an agrarian law,” said Marius.

  “Not easy!” Philippus sat up straight, looking stunned. “What on this earth do you want a land bill for? I need money, Gaius Marius, but only if I am to live to spend what’s left over after I pay my debts! It is no part of my ambitions to be clubbed to death on the Capitol, for I assureyou, Gaius Marius, that a Tiberius Gracchus I am not!”

  “The law is agrarian in nature, yes, but not contentious,” said Marius soothingly. “I assure you, Lucius Marcius, that I am not a reformer or a revolutionary, and have other, better uses for the poor of Rome than to gift them with Rome’s precious ager publicus! I’ll enlist them in the legions—and make them work for any land I give them! No man should get anything for nothing, for a man is not a beast.”

  “But what other land is there to give away than the ager publicus? Unless you intend that the State should buy more of it? Or acquire more of it? But that means finding money,’’ said Philippus, still very uneasy.

  “There’s no need to be alarmed,” said Marius. “The land concerned is already in Rome’s possession. While ever I retain my proconsular imperium over Africa, it is in my province to nominate a use for land confiscated from the Enemy. I can lease it to my clients, or auction it to the highest bidder, or give it to some foreign king as a part of his domains. All I have to do is make sure the Senate confirms my dispositions.”

  Marius shifted, leaned forward, and continued. “But I have no intention of baring my arse for the likes of Metellus Numidicus to sink his teeth into, so I intend to go on as I have always gone on in the past—strictly according either to law, or general practice and precedent. Therefore on New Year’s Day, I intend to yield up my proconsular imperium over Africa without giving Metellus Numidicus so much as a glance at my bare arse.

  “All the main dispositions of territory I acquired in the name of the Senate and People of Rome have already been given senatorial sanction. But there is one matter I do not intend to broach myself. It is a matter so delicate, in fact, that I intend to accomplish my purpose in two separate stages. One this coming year, one the year after.

  “Your job, Lucius Marcius, will be to implement the first stage. Briefly, I believe that if Rome is to continue fielding decent armies, then the legions must become an attractive career for a man of the Head Count, not just an alternative he is pushed to by patriotic zeal in emergencies, or boredom at other times. If he is offered the routine inducements—a small wage and a small share in whatever booty a campaign produces—he may not be attracted. But if he is assured a piece of good land to settle on or sell up when he retires, the inducement to become a soldier is powerful. However, it cannot be land within Italy. Nor do I see why it should be land in Italy.”

  “I think I begin to see what you want, Gaius Marius,” Philippus said, chewing at his full lower lip. “Interesting.”

  “I think so. I have reserved the islands in the Lesser Syrtis of Africa as places on which I can settle my Head Count soldiers after their discharge—which, thanks to the Germans, is not going to be for some time. This time I shall use to secure the People’s approval for allocating land on Meninx and Cercina to my soldiers. But I have many enemies who will try to stop me, if for no other reason than that they’ve made whole careers out of trying to stop me,” said Marius.

  Philippus nodded his head up and down like a sage. “It is certainly true that you have many enemies, Gaius Marius.”

  Not sure that sarcasm underlay this remark, Marius gave Philippus a withering look, then went on. “Your job, Lucius Marcius, is to table a law in the Plebeian Assembly reserving the islands of the African Lesser Syrtis in the Roman ager publicus without lease or subdivision or sale unless by further plebiscites. You will not mention soldiers, and you will not mention the Head Count. All you have to do is—very casually and quietly—make sure that these islands are put into a storage cupboard well enough locked to keep greedy hands off them. It is vital that my enemies do not suspect that I am behind your little law.”

  “Oh, I think I can manage,” said Philippus more cheerfully.

  “Good. On the day that the law goes into effect, I will have my bankers deposit half a million denarii in your name in such a way that your change in fortune cannot be traced back to me,” said Marius.

  Philippus rose to his feet. “You have bought yourself a tribune of the plebs, Gaius Marius,” he said, and held o
ut a hand. “What is more, I shall continue to be your man throughout my political career.”

  “I’m glad to hear it,” said Marius, shaking the hand. But as soon as Philippus had taken his leave, Marius sent for warm water, and washed both his hands.

  *

  “Just because I make use of bribery does not mean I have to like the men I bribe,” said Gaius Marius to Publius Rutilius Rufus when he arrived in Cumae five days later.

  Rutilius Rufus pulled a face of resignation. “Well, he was as true as his word,” he said. “He authored your modest little agrarian law as if he’d thought of it all by himself, and he made it sound so logical that no one even argued for the sake of argument. Clever fellow, Philippus, in a slimy sort of way. Accorded himself laurels for patriotism by telling the Assembly that he felt some tiny, insignificant part of the great African land distribution ought to be saved—’banked’ was the word he used!—for the Roman People’s future. There were even those among your enemies who thought he was only doing it to irritate you. The law passed without a murmur.”

  “Good!” said Marius, sighing in relief. “For a while I can be sure the islands will be waiting for me, untouched. I need more time to prove the worth of the Head Count legionary before I dare give him a retirement gift of land. Can’t you hear it now? The old-style Roman soldier didn’t have to be bribed with a present of land, so why should the new-style soldier get preferential treatment?” He shrugged. “Anyway, enough of that. What else has happened?”

  “I’ve passed a law enabling the consul to appoint extra tribunes of the soldiers without holding an election whenever a genuine emergency faces the State,” said Rutilius.