The First Man in Rome

by Colleen McCullough

  The House voted with a flourishing flapping of hands, making a Division unnecessary.

  “I think, Gaius Memmius,” said Lucius Marcius Philippus in a nasal drawl of vastly aristocratic superiority (he was smarting at Scaurus’s inference that Marius had bought his services), “that the House should at this time appoint a prosecutor to deal with the case of Titus Annius Albucius.”

  “Do I hear any objections?” asked Memmius, looking around.

  No one objected.

  “Very well, let it be tabled that the House will appoint a prosecutor in the case of the State versus Titus Annius Albucius. Do I hear any names?” asked Memmius.

  “Oh, my dear praetor urbanus, there is only one possible name!” said Philippus, still drawling.

  “Then speak it, Lucius Marcius.”

  “Why, our learned young man of the courts Caesar Strabo,” said Philippus. “I mean, let us not utterly deprive Titus Annius of the sensation that he is being hounded by a voice from his past! I do think his prosecutor must be cross-eyed!”

  The House fell about laughing, Scaurus hardest of all; and when the hilarity died down, voted unanimously to appoint the cross-eyed young Gaius Julius Caesar Strabo— youngest brother of Catulus Caesar and Lucius Caesar—as Titus Annius Albucius’s prosecutor. And in so doing, revenged itself tellingly upon Pompey Strabo. When Pompey Strabo received the Senate’s stiff letter (plus a copy of Scaurus’s speech, thrown in by Gaius Memmius to rub salt into the wound), he got the message. And vowed that one day he would have all those high-and-mighty aristocrats on the hop, needing him more than he needed them.

  *

  Fight strenuously though they did, neither Scaurus nor Metellus Numidicus could swing enough votes in the Plebeian Assembly to avert the nomination of Gaius Marius as a candidate for the consulship in absentia. Nor could they sway the Centuriate Assembly, for the Second Class of voters was still smarting at Scaurus’s inference during his memorable speech that they were mere middlemen, and as reprehensible as the Third and Fourth Classes. The Centuriate Assembly gave Gaius Marius a continued mandate to stop the Germans, and would not hear of any other man’s taking his place. Elected senior consul for the second time in a row, Gaius Marius was the man of the hour, and might without fear of contradiction claim to be the First Man in Rome.

  “But not primus inter pares—first among equals,” said Metellus Numidicus to young Marcus Livius Drusus, returned to the law courts after his short-lived military career of the year before. They had encountered each other in front of the urban praetor’s tribunal, where Drusus was standing with his friend and brother-in-law, Caepio Junior.

  “I am afraid, Quintus Caecilius,” said Drusus without an ounce of apology in his tone, “that for once I did not subscribe to the thinking of my peers. I voted for Gaius Marius—yes, that stops you in your tracks, doesn’t it? Not only did I vote for Gaius Marius, but I prevailed upon most of my friends and all my clients to vote for him as well.”

  “You’re a traitor to your class!” snapped Numidicus.

  “Not at all, Quintus Caecilius. You see, I was at Arausio,” said Drusus quietly. “I saw at first hand what can happen when senatorial exclusivity overcomes the dictates of good sound Roman common sense. And I say to you flatly that if Gaius Marius was as cross-eyed as Caesar Strabo, as crass as Pompey Strabo, as lowborn as a laborer in the Port of Rome, as vulgar as the knight Sextus Perquitienus—still I would have voted for him! I do not believe we have another military man of his caliber, and I will not countenance placing a consul over him who would treat him as Quintus Servilius Caepio treated Gnaeus Mallius Maximus!”

  And Drusus walked away with great dignity, leaving Metellus Numidicus staring after him openmouthed.

  “He’s changed,” said Caepio Junior, who still followed Drusus about, but with less enthusiasm since their return from Gaul-across-the-Alps. “My father says that if Marcus Livius isn’t careful, he’ll turn into a demagogue of the worst kind.”

  “He couldn’t!” cried Metellus Numidicus. “Why, his father the censor was Gaius Gracchus’s most obdurate foe— young Marcus Livius has been brought up in the most conservative way!”

  “Arausio changed him,” maintained Caepio Junior. “Maybe it was the blow to his head—that’s what my father thinks, anyway. Ever since he came back, he’s stayed as thick as thieves with the Marsic fellow Silo he befriended after the battle.” He snorted. “Silo comes down from Alba Fucentia and lords it around Marcus Livius’s house as if he owns it, and they sit for hours and hours talking, and they never ask me to join in.”

  “A regrettable affair, Arausio,” said Metellus Numidicus, laboring a little, since he was passing these remarks to the son of the man who had incurred most of the blame.

  Caepio Junior escaped as soon as he could, and walked home conscious of a vague dissatisfaction which had wrapped him round from the time—oh, he didn’t know really, but somewhere about the time he had married Drusus’s sister, and Drusus had married his sister. There was no reason why he should feel this way; he just did. And things had changed so since Arausio! His father wasn’t the same man either; one moment he would be chuckling gleefully at a joke Caepio Junior didn’t understand, the next moment he would be down in the depths of despair at the swelling tide of public resentment for Arausio, and only moments later he would be shouting in rage at the injustice of it all—what he meant by “it all” Caepio Junior had not been able to work out.

  Nor could Caepio Junior’s feelings about Arausio ever be free from guilt; while Drusus and Sertorius and Sextus Caesar and even that Silo fellow lay on the field given up for dead, he had run away across the river like a kicked cur, no less anxious to survive than the least Head Count raw recruit in his legion. Naturally this had never been spoken to anyone, even his father; it was Caepio Junior’s awful secret. Yet every day when he met Drusus, he wondered what Drusus suspected.

  His wife, Livia Drusa, was in her sitting room, her infant daughter on her knee, for she had just finished breast-feeding the mite. As always, his advent produced a smile, and that should have warmed him. But it never did. Her eyes were at odds with the rest of her face, for no smile ever reached inside them, and no interest ever flared out of them. Whenever she spoke to him or listened to him speaking, Caepio Junior was aware that her eyes never looked into his, even for a moment. And yet, no man was ever blessed with a nicer, more accommodating wife. She was never too tired or unwell to receive his sexual advances, nor did she object to any sexual request he made of her. Of course at such times he couldn’t see her eyes; how then could he know so positively they held not a scrap of pleasure?

  A more perceptive and intelligent man would have gently taxed Livia Drusa with these things, but Caepio Junior tended to put it all down to his own imagination, having too little imagination to understand he lacked it. Mentally acute enough to know there was something radically wrong, he was not mentally acute enough to make the correct assumptions. Certainly it never occurred to him that she didn’t love him, though before they married he had been sure she positively disliked him. But that had been his imagination. For she could not have disliked him, when she had proven a model Roman wife. Therefore—she must love him.

  His daughter, Servilia, was an object rather than a human creature to Caepio Junior, disappointed that he hadn’t been dowered with a son. So now he sat down while Livia Drusa gave the baby a few rubs on the back, then handed her over to her Macedonian nursemaid.

  “Did you know that your brother actually voted for Gaius Marius in the consular elections?” he asked.

  Livia Drusa’s eyes widened. “No. Are you sure?”

  “He said so today, to Quintus Caecilius Metellus Numidicus. While I was there. Waffled on about being at Arausio. Oh, I wish my father’s enemies would let that die a natural death!”

  “Give it time, Quintus Servilius.”

  “It’s getting worse,” said Caepio Junior despondently.

  “Are you in to dinner?”

&
nbsp; “No, on my way out again, actually. Going to eat at Lucius Licinius Orator’s house. Marcus Livius will be there too.”

  “Oh,” said Livia Drusa flatly.

  “Sorry, did mean to tell you this morning. Just forgot,” said her husband, getting up. “You don’t mind, do you?”

  “No, of course not,” said Livia Drusa tonelessly.

  Of course she did mind, not because she craved her husband’s company, but because a little forethought on his part might have saved both money and effort in the kitchen. They lived with Caepio the father, who was forever complaining about the size of the household bills, and forever blaming Livia Drusa for not being a more careful housekeeper. It never occurred to Caepio the father any more than it did to his son that neither of them bothered to apprise her of their movements, and so every day she was obliged to make sure a proper dinner was prepared, even if no one turned up to eat it, and it went back almost untouched to slide down the gullets of Caepio the father’s ecstatic slaves.

  “Domina, shall I take the baby back to the nursery?” the Macedonian girl asked.

  Livia Drusa started out of her reverie, nodded. “Yes,” she said, not even giving the child a glance in passing as the maid carried her off. That she was breast-feeding her daughter was not out of any consideration for the welfare of baby Servilia; it was because she knew while ever she gave the baby her milk, she would not conceive again.

  She didn’t care for baby Servilia very much; every time she looked at the mite, she saw a miniature copy of the mite’s father—short legs, a darkness so dark it was disquieting, a dense coat of black hair along spine, arms and legs, and a shock of coarse black head hair which grew low down on the forehead and the back of the neck like an animal’s pelt. To Livia Drusa, little Servilia possessed no virtues whatsoever. She didn’t even attempt to list the baby’s assets, which were by no means contemptible, for she had a pair of black eyes so big and dark that they promised great beauty later on, and the tiniest rosebud of a mouth, still and secretive, another harbinger of beauty.

  The eighteen months of her marriage had not reconciled Livia Drusa to her fate, though never once did she disobey her brother Drusus’s orders; her courtesy and demeanor were perfect. Even in the midst of her frequent sexual encounters with Caepio Junior, she behaved impeccably. Luckily her high birth and status precluded an ardent response; Caepio Junior would have been appalled if she had moaned in ecstasy or thrown herself around in the bed as if she enjoyed herself in the manner of a mistress. All she was obliged to do, she did in the manner her wifehood dictated—flat on her back, no fancy hipwork, a suitable meed of warmth, and unassailable modesty. Oh, but it was difficult! More difficult than any other aspect of her life, for when her husband touched her she wanted to scream rape and violation, and vomit in his face.

  There was no room in her to pity Caepio Junior, who in actual fact had never really done anything to deserve the passionate revulsion she felt for him. By now, he and her brother Drusus had merged indissolubly into a single vast and threatening presence capable of reducing her to far worse circumstances; hideously afraid of them, she moved on day by day toward death aware that she was never going to know what it was like to live.

  Worst of all was her geographical exile. The Servilius Caepio house was on the Circus Maximus side of the Palatine, looked across to the Aventine, and had no houses below it, just a steep and rocky cliff. There were no more chances to stand on Drusus’s loggia watching the balcony of the house underneath for a glimpse of her red-haired Odysseus.

  And Caepio the father was a singularly unpleasant man who grew steadily more unpleasant as time went on; he didn’t even have a wife to lighten Livia Drusa’s burden, though so remote was he and so remote was her relationship with his son that she never found the courage to ask either of them whether the wife/mother was alive or dead. Of course Caepio the father’s temper was tried more and more as time went on because of his part in the disaster at Arausio. First he had been stripped of his imperium, then the tribune of the plebs Lucius Cassius Longinus had succeeded in passing a law stripping his seat in the Senate from him, and now hardly a month went by without some enterprising would-be crowd pleaser trying to prosecute him on thinly veiled treason charges. Virtually confined to his house by the virulent hatred of the People and his own lively sense of self-preservation, Caepio the father spent a good deal of his time watching Livia Drusa—and criticizing her remorselessly.

  However, she didn’t help matters by doing some very silly things. One day her father-in-law’s mania for watching her made her so angry that she marched out into the middle of the peristyle-garden where no one could overhear what she said, and began to talk to herself aloud. The moment the slaves began to gather beneath the colonnade and whisper debates as to what she might be doing, Caepio the father erupted out of his study with a face like flint.

  Down the path he came and stood over her fiercely. “What do you think you’re doing, girl?” he demanded.

  Her big dark eyes opened guilessly wide. “I’m reciting the lay of King Odysseus,” she said.

  “Well, don’t!” snarled her father-in-law. “You’re making a spectacle of yourself! The servants are saying you’ve gone off your head! If you must recite Homer, then do it where people can hear it’s Homer! Though why you’d want to beats me.”

  “It passes the time,” she said.

  “There are better ways to pass the time, girl. Set up your loom, or sing to your baby, or do whatever else women do. Go on, go on, go away!”

  “I don’t know what women do, Father,” she said, getting to her feet. “What do women do?”

  “Drive men insane!” he said, went back into his study and shut the door with a snap.

  After that she went even further, for she took Caepio the father’s advice and set up her loom. The only trouble was, she began to weave the first of a whole series of funeral dresses, and as she worked she talked very loudly to an imaginary King Odysseus, pretending that he hadbeen away for years and she was weaving funeral dresses to stave off the day when she must choose a new husband; every so often she would pause in her monologue and sit with head cocked to one side, as if she were listening to someone speak.

  This time Caepio the father sent his son to find out what was the matter.

  “I’m weaving my funeral dress,” she said calmly, “and trying to find out when King Odysseus is coming home to rescue me. He will rescue me, you know. One day.”

  Caepio Junior gaped. “Rescue you? What are you talking about, Livia Drusa?”

  “I never set foot outside this house,” she said.

  Flinging his hands up, Caepio Junior made a small sound of exasperation. “Well, what’s to stop you going out if you want to, for Juno’s sake?”

  Her jaw dropped; she could think of nothing to say except “I don’t have any money.”

  “You want money? I’ll give you money, Livia Drusa! Just stop worrying my father!” cried Caepio Junior, goaded from two directions. “Go out whenever you want! Buy whatever you want!”

  Face wreathed in smiles, she walked across the room and kissed her husband on the cheek. “Thank you,” she said, and meant it so sincerely that she actually hugged him.

  It had been as easy as that! All those years of enforced isolation were gone. For it had not occurred to Livia Drusa that in passing from the authority of her brother to the authority of her husband and his father, the rules might have changed a little.

  4

  When Lucius Appuleius Saturninus was elected a tribune of the plebs, his gratitude to Gaius Marius knew no bounds. Now he could vindicate himself! Nor was he completely without allies, as he soon discovered; one of the other tribunes of the plebs was a client of Marius’s from Etruria, one Gaius Norbanus, who had considerable wealth but no senatorial clout because he had no senatorial background. And there was a MarcusBaebius, one of the ever-tribuning Baebius clan who were justly notorious for their bribe taking; he might be bought if it proved necessary.

>   Unfortunately the opposite end of the tribunes’ bench was occupied by three formidably conservative opponents. On the very end of the bench was Lucius Aurelius Cotta, son of the dead consul Cotta, nephew of the ex-praetor Marcus Cotta, and half brother of Aurelia, the wife of young Gaius Julius Caesar. Next to him sat Lucius Antistius Reginus, of respectable but not spectacular background, and rumored to be a client of the consular Quintus Servilius Caepio, therefore faintly smeared with Caepio’s odium. The third man was Titus Didius, a very efficient and quiet man whose family had originally hailed from Campania, and who had made himself a considerable reputation as a soldier.

  Those in the middle of the bench were very humble tribunes of the plebs, and seemed to think that their chief role throughout the coming year was going to be keeping the opposite ends of the bench from tearing each other’s throats out. For indeed there was no love lost between the men Scaurus would have apostrophized as demagogues and the men Scaurus commended for never losing sight of the fact that they were senators before they were tribunes of the plebs.

  Not that Saturninus was worried. He had swept into office at the top of the college, followed closely by Gaius Norbanus, which gave the conservatives notice that the People had lost none of their affection for Gaius Marius—and that Marius had thought it worthwhile to spend a great deal of his money buying votes for Saturninus and Norbanus. It was necessary that Saturninus and Norbanus strike swiftly, for interest in the Plebeian Assembly waned dramatically after some three months of the year had gone by; this was partly due to boredom on the part of the People, and partly due to the fact that no tribune of the plebs could keep up the pace for longer than three months. The tribune of the plebs spent himself early, like Aesop’s hare, while the old senatorial tortoise kept plodding on at the same rate.