The First Man in Rome

by Colleen McCullough

  “I can’t remember an occasion when an army has!”

  “And there you have it, you see!” said Marius triumphantly. “That’s why we’re going to do it. I want to see how difficult it is, how long it takes, what the roads are like, the terrain—everything. I’ll take four of the legions in light marching order, and you, Manius Aquillius, will take the other two legions plus the extra cohorts we’ve managed to scrape together, and escort the baggage train. If when they do turn south, the Germans head for Italy instead of for Spain, how do we know whether they’ll go over the Mons Genava Pass into Italian Gaul, or whether they’ll head—as they’ll see it, anyway—straight for Rome along the coast? They seem to have precious little interest in discovering how our minds work, so how are they going to know that the quickest and shortest way to Rome is not along the coast, but over the Alps into Italian Gaul?”

  His legates stared at him.

  “I see what you mean,” said Sulla, “but why take the whole army? You and I and a small squadron could do it better.”

  Marius shook his head vigorously. “No! I don’t want my army separated from me by several hundred miles of impassable mountains. Where I go, my whole army goes.”

  So at the end of January Gaius Marius led his whole army north along the coastal Via Aurelia, taking notes the entire way, and sending curt letters back to the Senate demanding that repairs be made to this or that stretch of the road forthwith, bridges built or strengthened, viaducts made or refurbished.

  “This is Italy,” said one such missive, “and all available routes to the north of the peninsula and Italian Gaul and Liguria must be kept in perfect condition; otherwise we may rue the day.”

  At Pisae, where the river Arnus flowed into the sea, they crossed from Italy proper into Italian Gaul, which was a most peculiar area, neither officially designated a province nor governed like Italy proper. It was a kind of limbo. From Pisae all the way to Vada Sabatia the road was brand-new, though work on it was far from finished; this was Scaurus’s contribution when he had been censor, the Via Aemilia Scauri. Marius wrote to Marcus Aemilius Scaurus Princeps Senatus:

  You are to be commended for your foresight, for I regard the Via Aemilia Scauri as one of the most significant additions to the defense of Rome and Italy since the opening-up of the Mons Genava Pass, and that is a very long time ago, considering that it was there for Hannibal to use. Your branch road to Dertona is vital strategically, for it represents the only way across the Ligurian Apennines from the Padus to the Tyrrhenian coast—Rome’s coast.The problems are enormous. I talked to your engineers, whom I found to be a most able group of men, and am happy to relay to you their request that additional funds be found to increase the work force on this piece of road. It needs some of the highest viaducts—not to mention the longest—I have ever seen, more indeed like aqueduct construction than road building. Luckily there are local quarry facilities to provide stone, but the pitifully small work force is retarding the pace at which I consider the work must progress. With respect, may I ask that you use your formidable clout to pry the money out of the House and Treasury to speed up this project? If it could be completed by the end of this coming summer, Rome may rest easier at the thought that a mere fifty-odd miles of road may save an army several hundreds.

  “There,” said Marius to Sulla, “that ought to keep the old boy busy and happy!”

  “It will, too,” said Sulla, grinning.

  The Via Aemilia Scauri ended at Vada Sabatia; from that point on there was no road in the Roman sense, just a wagon trail which followed the line of least resistance through an area where very high mountains plunged into the sea.

  “You’re going to be sorry you chose this way,” said Sulla.

  “On the contrary, I’m glad. I can see a thousand places where ambush is possible, I can see why no one in his right mind goes to Gaul-across-the-Alps this way, I can see why our Publius Vagiennius—who hails from these parts—could climb a sheer wall to find his snail patch, and I can see why we need not fear that the Germans will choose this route. Oh, they might start out along the coast, but a couple of days of this and a fast horseman going ahead will see them turn back. If it’s difficult for us, it’s impossible for them. Good!”

  Marius turned to Quintus Sertorius, who, in spite of his very junior status, enjoyed a privileged position nothing save merit had earned him.

  “Quintus Sertorius, my lad, whereabouts do you think the baggage train might be?” he asked.

  “I’d say somewhere between Populonia and Pisae, given the poor condition of the Via Aurelia,” Sertorius said.

  “How’s your leg?”

  “Not up to that kind of riding.” Sertorius seemed always to know what Marius was thinking.

  “Then find three men who are, and send them back with this,” said Marius, drawing wax tablets toward him.

  ‘‘ You’ re going to send the baggage train up the Via Cassia to Florentia and the Via Annia to Bononia, and then across the Mons Genava Pass,” said Sulla, sighing in satisfaction.

  “We might need all those beams and bolts and cranes and tackle yet,” said Marius. He smacked the backs of his fingers down on the wax to produce a perfect impression from his seal ring, and closed the hinged leaves of the tablet. “Here,” he said to Sertorius. “And make sure it’s tied and sealed again; I don’t want any inquisitive noses poking inside. It’s to be given to Manius Aquillius himself, understood?”

  Sertorius nodded and left the command tent.

  “As for this army, it’s going to do a bit of work as it goes,” Marius said to Sulla. “Send the surveyors out ahead. We’ll make a reasonable track, if not a proper road.”

  In Liguria, like other regions where the mountains were precipitous and the amount of arable land small, the inhabitants tended to a pastoral way of life, or else made a profession out of banditry and piracy, or like Publius Vagiennius took service in Rome’s auxiliary legions and cavalry. Wherever Marius saw ships and a village clustered in an anchorage and deemed the ships more suited to raiding and boarding than to fishing, he burned both ships and village, left women, old men, and children behind, and took the men with him to labor improving the road. Meanwhile the reports from Arausio, Valentia, Vienne, and even Lugdunum made it increasingly clear as time went on that there would be no confrontation with the Germans this year.

  At the beginning of June, after four months on the march, Marius led his four legions onto the widening coastal plains of Gaul-across-the-Alps and came to a halt in the well-settled country between Arelate and Aquae Sextiae, in the vicinity of the town of Glanum, south of the Druentia River. Significantly, his baggage train had arrived before him, having spent a mere three and a half months on the road.

  He chose his campsite with extreme care, well clear of arable land; it was a large hill having steep and rocky slopes on three sides, several good springs on top, and a fourth side neither too steep nor too narrow to retard swift movement of troops in or out of a camp atop the hill.

  “This is where we are going to be living for many moons to come,” he said, nodding in satisfaction. “Now we’re going to turn it into Carcasso.”

  Neither Sulla nor Manius Aquillius made any comment, but Sertorius was less self-controlled.

  “Do we need it?” he asked. “If you think we’re going to be in the district for many moons to come, wouldn’t it be a lot easier to billet the troops on Arelate or Glanum? And why stay here? Why not seek the Germans out and come to grips with them before they can get this far?”

  “Well, young Sertorius,” said Marius, “it appears the Germans have scattered far and wide. The Cimbri, who seemed all set to follow the Rhodanus to its west, have now changed their minds and have gone—to Spain, we must presume—around the far side of the Cebenna, through the lands of the Arverni. The Teutones and the Tigurini have left the lands of the Aedui and gone to settle among the Belgae. At least, that’s what my sources say. In reality, I imagine it’s anyone’s guess.”

  �
�Can’t we find out for certain?” asked Sertorius.

  “How?” asked Marius. “The Gauls have no cause to love us, and it’s upon the Gauls we have to rely for our information. That they’ve given it to us so far is simply because they don’t want the Germans in their midst either. But on one thing you can rely: when the Germans reach the Pyrenees, they’ll turn back. And I very much doubt that the Belgae will want them any more than the Celtiberians of the Pyrenees. Looking at a possible target from the German point of view, I keep coming back to Italy. So here we stay until the Germans arrive, Quintus Sertorius. I don’t care if it takes years.”

  “If it takes years, Gaius Marius, our army will grow soft, and you will be ousted from the supreme command,” Manius Aquillius pointed out.

  “Our army is not going to grow soft, because I am going to put it to work,” said Marius. “We have close to forty thousand men of the Head Count. The State pays them; the State owns their arms and armor; the State feeds them. When they retire, I shall see to it that the State looks after them in their old age. But while they serve in the State’s army, they are nothing more nor less than employees of the State. As consul, I represent the State. Therefore they are my employees. And they are costing me a very large amount of money. If all they are required to do in return is sit on their arses waiting to fight a battle, compute the enormity of the cost of that battle when it finally comes.” The eyebrows were jiggling up and down fiercely. “They didn’t sign a contract to sit on their arses waiting for a battle, they enlisted in the army of the State to do whatever the State requires of them. Since the State is paying them, they owe the State work. And that’s what they’re going to do. Work! This year they’re going to repair the Via Domitia all the way from Nemausus to Ocelum. Next year they’re going to dig a ship canal all the way from the sea to the Rhodanus at Arelate.”

  Everyone was staring at him in fascination, but for a long moment no one could find anything to say.

  Then Sulla whistled. “A soldier is paid to fight!”

  “If he bought his gear with his own money and he expects nothing more from the State than the food he eats, then he can call his own tune. But that description doesn’t fit my lot,” said Gaius Marius. “When they’re not called upon to fight, they’ll do much-needed public works, if for no other reason than it will give them to understand that they’re in service to the State in exactly the same way as a man is to any employer. And it will keep them fit!”

  “What about us?” asked Sulla. “Do you intend to turn us into engineers?”

  “Why not?” asked Marius.

  “I’m not an employee of the State, for one thing,” said Sulla, pleasantly enough. “I give my time as a gift, like all the legates and tribunes.”

  Marius eyed him shrewdly. “Believe me, Lucius Cornelius, it’s a gift I appreciate,” he said, and left it at that.

  *

  Sulla left the meeting dissatisfied nonetheless. Employees of the State, indeed! True for the Head Count, perhaps, but not for the tribunes and legates, as he had pointed out. Marius had taken the point, and backed away. But what Sulla had left unsaid was true just the same. Monetary rewards for the tribunes and legates would be shares in the booty. And no one had any real idea how much booty the Germans were likely to yield. The sale of prisoners into slavery was the general’s perquisite — he did not share it with his legates, his tribunes, his centurions, or his troops — and somehow Sulla had a feeling that at the end of this however-many-years-long campaign, the pickings would be lean except in slaves.

  Sulla had not enjoyed the long, tedious journey to the Rhodanus. Quintus Sertorius had snuffled his way like a hound on a leash, tail wagging, all of himself aquiver with pleasure at the slightest whiff of any kind of job. He had taught himself to use the groma, the surveyor’s instrument; he had settled down to watch how the corps of engineers dealt with rivers in spate, or fallen bridges, or landslides; he had led a century or two of soldiers to winkle out a nest of pirates from some mean cove; he had done duty with the gangs on road repairs; he had gone ranging ahead to spy out the land; he had even cured and tamed a young eagle with a broken wing, so that it still came back to visit him from time to time. Yes, everything was grist to Quintus Sertorius ‘s mill. If in nothing else, in that one could see that he was related to Gaius Marius.

  But Sulla needed drama. He had gained sufficient insight into himself to understand that now he was a senator, this represented a flaw in his character, yet at thirty-six years of age, he didn’t think he was going to be able to excise a facet of himself so innate. Until that dreary interminable journey along the Via Aemilia Scauri and through the Maritime Alps, he had thoroughly enjoyed his military career, finding it full of action and challenge, be it the action and challenge of battle or of carving out a new Africa. But making roads and digging canals? That wasn’t what he had come to Gaul-across-the-Alps to do! Nor would he!

  And in late autumn there would be a consular election, and Marius would be replaced by someone inimical, and all that he’d have to show for his much-vaunted second consulship was a magnificently upkept road already bearing someone else’s name. How could the man remain so tranquil, so unworried? He hadn’t even bothered to answer that half of Aquillius’s statement, to the effect that he would be ousted from his command. What was the Arpinate fox up to? Why wasn’t he worried?

  Suddenly Sulla forgot these vexed questions, for he had spied something which promised to be deliciously piquant; his eyes began to dance with interest and amusement.

  Outside the senior tribunes’ mess tent two men were in conversation. Or at least that was what it looked like to a casual observer. To Sulla it looked like the opening scene of a wonderful farce. The taller of the two men was Gaius Julius Caesar. The shorter was Gaius Lusius, nephew (by marriage only, Marius had been quick to say) of the Great Man.

  I wonder, does it take one to know one? Sulla asked himself as he strolled up to them. Caesar obviously didn’t know one when he saw one, and yet it was clear to Sulla that every instinct in Caesar was clanging an alarm.

  “Oh, Lucius Cornelius!” whinnied Gaius Lusius. “I was just asking Gaius Julius whether he knew what sort of night life there is in Arelate, and if there is any, whether he’d care to sample it with me.”

  Caesar’s long, handsome face was an expressionless mask of courtesy, but his anxiety to be away from his present company showed itself in a dozen ways, thought Sulla; the eyes that tried to remain focused on Lusius’s face but drifted aside, the minimal movements his feet made inside his military boots, the little flicks his fingers were making, and more.

  “Perhaps Lucius Cornelius knows better than I do,” said Caesar, beginning to make his bolt for freedom by shifting all his weight onto one foot, and poking the other forward a trifle.

  “Oh no, Gaius Julius, don’t go!” Lusius protested. “The more the merrier!” And he actually giggled.

  “Sorry, Gaius Lusius, I have to go on duty,” said Caesar, and was away.

  More Lusius’s own height, Sulla put his hand on Lusius’s elbow and drew him further away from the tent. His hand fell immediately.

  Gaius Lusius was very good-looking. His eyes were long-lashed and green, his hair a tumbled mass of darkish red curls, his brows finely arched and dark, his nose rather Greek in its length, high bridge, and straightness. Quite the little Lord Apollo, thought Sulla, unmoved and untempted.

  He doubted whether Marius had so much as set eyes on the young man; that would not have been Marius’s way. Having been pressured by his family into accepting Gaius Lusius into his military family—he had appointed Lusius an unelected tribune of the soldiers because his age was correct—Marius would prefer to forget the young man’s existence. Until such time as the young man intruded himself upon his notice, hopefully via some deed of valor or extraordinary ability.

  “Gaius Lusius, I’m going to offer you a word of advice,” said Sulla crisply.

  The long-lashed eyelids fluttered, lowered. “I am gratef
ul for any advice from you, Lucius Cornelius.”

  “You joined us only yesterday, having made your own way from Rome,” Sulla began.

  Lusius interrupted. “Not from Rome, Lucius Cornelius. From Ferentinum. My uncle Gaius Marius gave me special leave to remain in Ferentinum because my mother was ill.”

  Aha! thought Sulla. That explains some of Marius’s gruff offhandedness about this nephew by marriage! How he would hate to trot out that reason for the young man’s tardy arrival, when he would never have used it to excuse himself!

  “My uncle hasn’t asked to see me yet,” Lusius was busy complaining now. “When may I see him?”

  “Not until he asks, and I doubt he’ll ask at all. Until you prove your worth, you’re an embarrassment to him, if for no other reason than that you claimed extra privilege before the campaign even started—you came late.”

  “But my mother was ill!” said Lusius indignantly.

  “We all have mothers, Gaius Lusius—or we all did have mothers. Many of us have been obliged to go off to military service when our mothers were ill. Many of us have learned of a mother’s death when on military service very far away from her. Many of us are deeply attached to our living mothers. But a mother’s illness is not normally considered an adequate excuse for turning up late on military service. I suppose you’ve already told all your tentmates why you’re tardy?”

  “Yes,” said Lusius, more and more bewildered.

  “A pity. You’d have done better to have said nothing at all, and let your tentmates guess in the dark. They won’t think the better of you for it, and your uncle knows they won’t think the better of him for allowing it. But blood family is blood family, and often unfair.” Sulla frowned. “However, that is not what I wanted to say to you. This is the army of Gaius Marius, not the army of Scipio Africanus. Do you know what I am referring to?’ ‘

  “No,” said Lusius, completely out of his depth.

  “Cato the Censor accused Africanus and his senior officers of running an army riddled with moral laxity. Well, Gaius Marius is a lot closer in his thinking to Cato the Censor than he is to Scipio Africanus. Am I making myself understood?”