The First Man in Rome

by Colleen McCullough

  “All they’ll see is my dust,” Saturninus said to Glaucia as the tenth day of the month of December drew near, the day upon which the new college would enter office.

  “What’s first?” asked Glaucia idly, a little put out that he, older than Saturninus, had not yet found the opportunity to seek election as a tribune of the plebs.

  Saturninus grinned wolfishly. “A little agrarian law,” he said, “to help my friend and benefactor Gaius Marius.”

  With great care in his planning and through the medium of a magnificent speech, Saturninus tabled for discussion a law to distribute the ager Africanus insularum, reserved in the public domain by Lucius Marcius Philippus one year before; it was now to be divided among Marius’s Head Count soldiers at the end of their service in the legions, at the rate of a hundred iugera per man. Oh, how he enjoyed it! The howls of approbation from the People, the howls of outrage from the Senate, the fist that Lucius Cotta raised, the strong and candid speech Gaius Norbanus made in support of his measure.

  “I never realized how interesting the tribunate of the plebs can be,” he said after the contio meeting was dissolved, and he and Glaucia dined alone at Glaucia’s house.

  “Well, you certainly had the Policy Makers on the defensive,” said Glaucia, grinning at the memory. “I thought Metellus Numidicus was going to rupture a blood vessel!”

  “A pity he didn’t.” Saturninus lay back with a sigh of content, eyes roaming reflectively over the patterns sooty smoke from lamps and braziers had made on the ceiling, which was badly in need of new paint. “Odd how they think, isn’t it? Even breathe the words ‘agrarian bill’ and they’re up in arms, yelling about the Brothers Gracchi, horrified at the idea of giving something away for nothing to men without the wit to acquire anything. Even the Head Count doesn’t approve of giving something away for nothing!”

  “Well, it’s a pretty novel concept to all right-thinking Romans, really,” said Glaucia.

  “And after they got over that, they started to yell about the huge size of the allotments—ten times the size of a smallholding in Campania, moaned the Policy Makers. You’d think they’d know without being told that an island in the African Lesser Syrtis isn’t one tenth as fertile as the worst smallholding in Campania, nor the rainfall one tenth as reliable,” said Saturninus.

  “Yes, but the debate was really about so many thousands of new clients for Gaius Marius, wasn’t it?” asked Glaucia. “That’s where the shoe actually pinches, you know. Every retired veteran in a Head Count army is a potential client for his general—especially when his general has gone to the trouble of securing him a piece of land for his old age. He’s beholden! Only he doesn’t see that it’s the State that is his true benefactor, since the State has to find the land. He thanks his general. He thanks Gaius Marius. And that’s what the Policy Makers are up in arms about.’’

  “Agreed. But fighting it isn’t the answer, Gaius Servilius. The answer is to enact a general law covering all Head Count armies for all time—ten iugera of good land to every man who completes his time in the legions—say, fifteen years? Twenty, even? Given irrespective of how many generals the soldier serves under, or how many different campaigns he sees.”

  Glaucia laughed in genuine amusement. “That’s too much like good sound common sense, Lucius Appuleius! And think of the knights a law like that would alienate. Less land for them to lease—not to mention our esteemed pastoralist senators!”

  “If the land was in Italy, I’d see it,” said Saturninus. “But the islands off the coast of Africa? I ask you, Gaius Servilius! Of what conceivable use are they to these dogs guarding their stinking old bones? Compared to the millions of iugera Gaius Marius gave away in the name of Rome along the Ubus and the Chelif and around Lake Tritonis— and all to exactly the same men currently screaming!—this is a pittance!”

  Glaucia rolled his long-lashed grey-green eyes, lay flat on his back, flapped his hands like a stranded turtle his flippers, and started to laugh again. “I liked Scaurus’s speech best, though. He’s clever, that one. The rest of them don’t matter much apart from their clout.” He lifted his head and stared at Saturninus. “Are you prepared for tomorrow in the Senate?” he asked.

  “I believe so,” said Saturninus happily. “Lucius Appuleius returns to the Senate! And this time they can’t throw me out before my term in office is finished! It would take the thirty-five tribes to do that, and they won’t do that.

  Whether the Policy Makers like it or not, I’m back inside their hallowed portals as angry as a wasp—and just as nasty.”

  He entered the Senate as if he owned it, with a sweeping obeisance to Scaurus Princeps Senatus, and flourishes of his right hand to each side of the House, which was almost full, a sure sign of a coming battle. The outcome, he decided, did not matter very much, for the arena in which the real conflict would be decided lay outside the Curia Hostilia’s doors, down in the well of the Comitia; this was brazening-it-out day, the disgraced grain quaestor transmogrified into the tribune of the plebs, a bitter surprise indeed for the Policy Makers.

  And for the Conscript Fathers of the Senate he took a new tack, one he fully intended to present later in the Plebeian Assembly; this would be a trial run.

  “Rome’s sphere of influence has not been limited to Italy for a very long time,” he said. “All of us know the trouble King Jugurtha caused Rome. All of us are forever grateful to the esteemed senior consul, Gaius Marius, for settling the war in Africa so brilliantly—and so finally. But how can we in Rome today guarantee the generations to come that our provinces will be peaceful and their fruits ours to enjoy? We have a tradition concerning the customs of peoples not Roman, though they live in our provinces—they are free to pursue their religious practices, their trade practices, their political practices. Provided these pursuits do not hamper Rome, or offer a threat to Rome. But one of the less desirable side effects of our tradition of noninterference is ignorance. Not one of our provinces further from Italy than Italian Gaul and Sicily knows enough about Rome and Romans to favor co-operation over resistance. Had the people of Numidia known more about us, Jugurtha would never have managed to persuade them to follow him. Had the people of Mauretania known more about us, Jugurtha would never have managed to persuade King Bocchus to follow him.”

  He cleared his throat; the House was taking it well so far—but then, he hadn’t reached his conclusion. Now he did. “Which brings me to the matter of the ager Africanus insularum. Strategically these islands are of little importance. In size they are modest. None of us here in this House will miss them. They contain no gold, no silver, no iron, no exotic spices. They are not particularly fertile when compared to the fabulous grainlands of the Bagradas River, where quite a few of us here in this House own properties, as do many knights of the First Class. So why not give them to Gaius Marius’s Head Count soldiers upon their retirement? Do we really want close to forty thousand Head Count veterans frequenting the taverns and alleys of Rome? Jobless, aimless, penniless after they’ve spent their tiny shares of the army’s booty? Isn’t it better for them — and for Rome! — to settle them on the ager Africanus insularum? For, Conscript Fathers, there is one job left that they in their retirement can do. They can bring Rome to the province of Africa! Our language, our customs, our gods, our very way of life! Through these brave and cheerful expatriate Roman soldiers, the peoples of Africa Province can come to understand Rome better, for these brave and cheerful expatriate Roman soldiers are ordinary — no richer, no brighter, no more privileged than many among the native peoples they will mingle with on a day-to-day basis. Some will marry local girls. All will fraternize. And the result will be less war, greater peace.”

  It was said persuasively, reasonably, without any of the grander periods and gestures of Asianic rhetoric, and as he warmed to his peroration Saturninus began to believe that he would make them, the pigheaded members of this elite body, see at last where the vision of men like Gaius Marius — and himself! — would lead thei
r beloved Rome.

  And when he moved back to his end of the tribunes’ bench, he sensed nothing in the silence to gainsay his conviction. Until he realized that they were waiting. Waiting for one of the Policy Makers to point the way. Sheep. Sheep, sheep, sheep. Wretched woolly pea-brained sheep.

  “May I?” asked Lucius Caecilius Metellus Dalmaticus Pontifex Maximus of the presiding magistrate, the junior consul, Gaius Flavius Fimbria.

  “You have the floor, Lucius Caecilius,” said Fimbria.

  He took the floor, his anger, well concealed until that moment, breaking the bounds of control with the sudden flare of tinder. “Rome is exclusive!” he trumpeted, so loudly that some of the listeners jumped. “How dare any Roman elevated to membership of this House propose a program aimed at turning the rest of the world into imitation Romans?”

  Dalmaticus’s normal pose of superior aloofness had vanished; he swelled up, empurpled, the veins beneath his plump pink cheeks no darker than those selfsame cheeks. And he trembled, he vibrated almost as quickly as the wings of a moth, so angry was he. Fascinated, awed, every last man present in the House sat forward to listen to a Dalmaticus Pontifex Maximus no one had ever dreamed existed.

  “Well, Conscript Fathers, we all know this particular Roman, don’t we?” he brayed. “Lucius Appuleius Saturninus is a thief—an exploiter of food shortages—an effeminate vulgarity—a polluter of little boys who harbors filthy lusts for his sister and his young daughter—a puppet manipulated by the Arpinate dollmaster in Gaul-across-the-Alps—a cockroach out of Rome’s vilest stew—a pimp—a pansy—a pornographer—the creature on the end of every verpa in town! What does he know of Rome, what does his peasant dollmaster from Arpinum know of Rome? Rome is exclusive! Rome cannot be tossed to the world like shit to sewers, like spit to gutters! Are we to endure the dilution of our race through hybrid unions with the raggle-taggle women of half a hundred nations? Are we in the future to journey to places far from Rome and have our Roman ears defiled by a bastard Latin argot? Let them speak Greek, I say! Let them worship Serapis of the Scrotum or Astarte of the Anus! What does that matter to us? But we are to give them Quirinus? Who are the Quirites, the children of Quirinus? We are! For who is this Quirinus? Only a Roman can know! Quirinus is the spirit of the Roman citizenship; Quirinus is the god of the assembly of Roman men; Quirinus is the unconquered god because Rome has never been conquered—and never will be conquered, fellow Quirites!”

  The whole House erupted into screaming cheers; while Dalmaticus Pontifex Maximus staggered to his stool and almost fell onto it, men wept, men stamped their feet, men clapped until their hands were numb, men turned to each other with the tears streaming down their faces, and embraced.

  But so much emotion uncontained spent itself like sea foam on basaltic rock, and when the tears dried and the bodies ceased to shake, the men of the Senate of Rome found themselves with nothing more to give that day, and dragged their leaden feet home to live again in dreams that one magical moment when they actually saw the vision of faceless Quirinus rear up to throw his numinous toga over them as a father over his truehearted and unfailingly loyal sons.

  The House was nearly empty when Crassus Orator, Quintus Mucius Scaevola, Metellus Numidicus, Catulus Caesar, and Scaurus Princeps Senatus recollected themselves enough to break off their euphoric conversation and think about following in the footsteps of the rest. Lucius Caecilius Metellus Dalmaticus Pontifex Maximus was still sitting on his stool, back straight, hands folded in his lap as neatly as a well-bred girl’s. But his head had fallen forward, chin on chest, the thinning wisps of his greying hair blowing gently in a little breeze through the open doors.

  “Brother of mine, that was the greatest speech I have ever heard!” cried Metellus Numidicus, putting his hand out to squeeze Dalmaticus’s shoulder.

  Dalmaticus sat on, and did not speak or move; only then did they discover he was dead.

  “It’s fitting,” said Crassus Orator. “I’d die a happy man to think I gave my greatest speech on the very threshold of death.”

  *

  But not the speech of Metellus Dalmaticus Pontifex Maximus nor the passing of Metellus Dalmaticus Pontifex Maximus nor all the ire and power of the Senate could prevent the Plebeian Assembly from passing Saturninus’s agrarian bill into law. And the tribunician career of Lucius Appuleius Saturninus was off to a resounding start, a curious compound of infamy and adulation.

  “I love it,” said Saturninus to Glaucia over dinner late in the afternoon of the day the agrarian lex Appuleia was voted into law. They often did dine together, and usually at Glaucia’s house; Saturninus’s wife had never properly recovered from the awful events following Scaurus’s denunciation of Saturninus when the quaestor at Ostia. “Yes, I do love it! Just think, Gaius Servilius, I might have had quite a different kind of career if it hadn’t been for that nosy old mentula, Scaurus.”

  “The rostra suits you, all right,” said Glaucia, eating hot-house grapes. “Maybe there is something shapes our lives after all.”

  Saturninus snorted. “Oh, you mean Quirinus!”

  “You can sneer if you want. But I maintain that life is a very bizarre business,” said Glaucia. “There’s more pattern and less chance to it than there is in a game of cottabus.”

  “What, no element of Stoic or Epicure, Gaius Servilius? Neither fatalism nor hedonism? You’d better be careful, or you might confound all the old Greek killjoys who maintain so loudly that we Romans will never produce a philosophy we didn’t borrow from them,” laughed Saturninus.

  “Greeks are. Romans do. Take your pick! I never met a man yet who managed to combine both states of being. We’re the opposite ends of the alimentary canal, we Greeks and Romans. Romans are the mouth—we shove it in. Greeks are the arsehole—they shove it out. No disrespect to the Greeks intended, simply a figure of speech,” said Glaucia, punctuating his statement by popping grapes into the Roman end of the alimentary canal.

  “Since one end has no job to do without the contributions of the other, we’d better stick together,” said Saturninus.

  Glaucia grinned. “There speaks a Roman!” he said.

  “Through and through, despite Metellus Dalmaticus’s saying I’m not one. Wasn’t that a turnup for the books, the old fellator up and dying so very timely? If the Policy Makers were more enterprising, they might have made an undying example of him. Metellus Dalmaticus—the New Quirinus!” Saturninus swirled the lees in his cup and tossed them expertly onto an empty plate; the splatter they made was counted according to the number of arms radiating out of the central mass. “Three,” he said, and shivered. “That’s the death number.”

  “And where’s our Skeptic now?” gibed Glaucia.

  “Well, it’s unusual, only three.”

  Glaucia spat expertly, and destroyed the form of the splash with three grape seeds. “There! Three done in by three!”

  “We’ll both be dead in three years,” said Saturninus.

  “Lucius Appuleius, you’re a complete contradiction! You are as white as Lucius Cornelius Sulla, and with far less excuse. Come, it’s only a game of cottabus!” said Glaucia, and changed the subject. “I agree, life on the rostra is far more exciting than life as a darling of the Policy Makers. It’s a great challenge, politically manipulating the People. A general has his legions. A demagogue has nothing sharper than his tongue.” He chuckled. “And wasn’t it a pleasure to watch the crowd chase Marcus Baebius from the Forum this morning, when he tried to interpose his veto?”

  “A sight to cure sore eyes!” grinned Saturninus, the memory banishing ghostly fingers, three or thirty-three.

  “By the way,” said Glaucia with another abrupt change of subject, “have you heard the latest rumor in the Forum?”

  “That Quintus Servilius Caepio stole the Gold of Tolosa himself, you mean?” asked Saturninus.

  Glaucia looked disappointed. “Dis take you, I thought I’d got in first!”

  “I had it in a letter from Manius Aquillius,�
� Saturninus said. “When Gaius Marius is too busy, Aquillius writes to me instead. And I confess I don’t repine, since he’s a far better man of letters than the Great Man.”

  “From Gaul-across-the-Alps? How do they know?”

  “That’s where the rumor began. Gaius Marius has acquired a prisoner. The King of Tolosa, no less. And he alleges that Caepio stole the gold—all fifteen thousand talents of it.”

  Glaucia whistled. “Fifteen thousand talents! Mazes the mind, doesn’t it? A bit much, though—I mean, everyone understands that a governor is entitled to his perquisites, but more gold than there is in the Treasury? A trifle excessive, surely!”

  “True, true. However, the rumor will work very well for Gaius Norbanus when he brings his case against Caepio, won’t it? The story of the gold will be around the whole city in less time than it takes Metella Calva to lift her dress for a lusty gang of navvies.”

  “I like your metaphor!” said Glaucia. And suddenly he looked very brisk. “Enough of this idle chatter! You and I have work to do on treason bills and the like. We can’t afford to let anything go unnoticed.”

  The work Saturninus and Glaucia did on treason bills and the like was as carefully planned and co-ordinated as any grand military strategy. They intended to remove treason trials from the province of the Centuries and the impossible sequence of dead ends and stone walls this entailed; after which, they intended to remove extortion and bribery trials from the control of the Senate by replacing the senatorial juries with juries composed entirely of knights.

  “First, we have to see Norbanus convict Caepio in the Plebeian Assembly on some permissible charge—as long as the charge isn’t worded to say treason, we can do that right now, with popular feeling running so high against Caepio because of the stolen gold,” said Saturninus.

  “It’s never worked before in the Plebeian Assembly,” said Glaucia dubiously. “Our hot-headed friend Ahenobarbus tried it when he charged Silanus with illegally causing a war against the Germans—no mention of treason there! But the Plebeian Assembly still threw the case out. The problem is that no one likes treason trials.”