3. Fortune's Favorites

by Colleen McCullough

  But when Sulla introduced his legislation to cancel the powers of the tribunes of the plebs, approval was not so general or so strong. Over the centuries of the Republic, the tribunes of the plebs had gradually arrogated more and more legislative business unto themselves, and turned that Assembly which contained only plebeians into the most powerful of the lawmaking bodies. Often the main objective of the tribunes of the plebs had been to handicap the largely unwritten powers of the Senate, and to render the consuls less essential. "That," said Sulla in tones of great satisfaction, "is now all finished with. In future, tribunes of the plebs will retain little except their right to exercise the ius auxilii ferendi.'' A huge stir; the House murmured and moved restlessly, then frowned and looked bleak. "I will see the Senate supreme!" Sulla thundered. "To do that, I must render the tribunate of the plebs impotent and I will! Under my new laws, no man who has been a tribune of the plebs will be able to hold any magistracy after it he will not be able to become aedile or praetor or consul or censor! Nor will he be able to hold office as a tribune of the plebs for a second time until ten years have elapsed. He will be able to exercise the ius auxilii ferendi only in its original way, by rescuing an individual member of the Plebs from the clutches of a single magistrate. No tribune of the plebs will be able to call a law threatening the Plebs as a whole a part of that right! Or call a duly convened court a part of that right." Sulla's eyes rested thoughtfully upon, oddly enough, two men who could not hold the office of tribune of the plebs because they were patricians Catilina and Lepidus. "The right of the tribune of the plebs to veto," he went on, "will be severely curtailed. He will not be able to veto senatorial decrees, laws carrying senatorial approval, the right of the Senate to appoint provincial governors or military commanders, nor the right of the Senate to deal with foreign affairs. No tribune of the plebs will be allowed to promulgate a law in the Plebeian Assembly unless it has been authorized first by the Senate in passing a senatus consultum. He will no longer have the power to summon meetings of the Senate." There were many glum faces, quite a few angry ones; Sulla paused rather stagily to see if anyone was going to protest audibly. But no one did. He cleared his throat. "What do you have to say, Quintus Hortensius?" Hortensius swallowed. "I concur, Lucius Cornelius." "Does anyone not concur?" Silence. "Good!" said Sulla brightly. "Then this lex Cornelia will go into law forthwith!" "It's horrific," said Lepidus to Gaius Cotta afterward. "I couldn't agree more." "Then why," demanded Catulus, "did we lie down under it so tamely? Why did we let him get away with it? How can the Republic be a genuine Republic without an active and properly constituted tribunate of the plebs?" "Why," asked Hortensius fiercely, taking this as a direct criticism of his own cowardice, "did you not speak out, then?" "Because," said Catulus frankly, "I like my head right where it is firmly attached to my shoulders." "And that about sums it up," said Lepidus. "I can see," said Metellus Pius, joining the group, "the logic behind it how clever he's been! A lesser man would simply have abolished the office, but not he! He hasn't tampered with the ius auxilii ferendi. What he's done is to pare away the powers added on in later times. So he can successfully argue that he's working well within the framework of the mos maiorum and that has been his theme in everything. Mind you, I don't think this can possibly work. The tribunate of the plebs matters too much to too many." "It will last as long as he lives," said Cotta grimly. Upon which note, the party broke up. No one was very happy but on the other hand, nor did anyone really want to pour his secret thoughts and feelings into another man's ear. Too dangerous! Which just went to show, thought Metellus Pius as he walked home alone, that Sulla's climate of terror was working.

  By the time Apollo's games came round early in Quinctilis, these first laws had been joined by two more: a lex Cornelia sumptuaria and a lex Cornelia frumentaria. The sumptuary law was extremely strict, even going so far as to fix a ceiling of thirty sesterces per head on ordinary meals, and three hundred per head on banquets. Luxuries like perfumes, foreign wines, spices and jewelry were heavily taxed; the cost of funerals and tombs was limited; and Tyrian purple carried an enormous duty. The grain law was reactionary in the extreme. It abolished the sale of cheap grain by the State, though Sulla was far too shrewd to forbid the State to sell grain; his law just said that the State could not undercut the private grain merchants. A heavy program, by no means ended. Perhaps because the onerous task of preparing all this legislation had been going on without let since just after Sulla's triumph, the Dictator decided on the spur of the moment to take a few days off and attend the ludi Apollinares, celebrated during early Quinctilis. The events held in the Circus Maximus were not what he wanted to see, of course; he wanted to go to the plays, of which a good ten or eleven had been scheduled in the temporary wooden theater erected within the space of the Circus Flaminius on the Campus Martius. Comedy reigned. Plautus, Terence and Naevius were well represented, but there were several mimes listed too, and these were always Sulla's favorites. True comedy contained written lines which could not be deviated from, but the mime was just a stock situation upon which the cast and its director extrapolated their own lines, and played without masks. Perhaps it was his interlude with Aurelia's delegation that led to his wholehearted participation in the plays put on during Apollo's games; or perhaps the fact that one of his ancestors had founded Apollo's games made him decide he must show himself; or was it a need to set eyes upon the actor Metrobius? Thirty years! Could it really be that long? Metrobius had been a lad, Sulla celebrating his thirtieth birthday in bitter frustration. Since his entry into the Senate three years afterward, their meetings had been few and far apart, and filled with torment. Sulla's decision to deny that part of himself had been considered, obdurate, firmly based in logic. Those men in public life who admitted to or succumbed to a preference for their own sex were damned for it. No law compelled them to retire, though there were several laws on the tablets, including a lex Scantinia which demanded a death penalty; mostly they were not used, for there was a certain tolerance in fair men. The reality was more subtle, need not even retard the public career if the man was able. It consisted in amusement, contempt, liberal applications of wit and pun and sarcasm, and it diminished a man's dignitas drastically. Some men who ought to be his peers would always regard him as their inferior because of it. And that to Sulla made it something he couldn't have, no matter how badly he wanted it and he wanted it badly. His hopes were pinned on his eventual retirement after which, he told himself, he didn't care one iota what men said of him. He would come into his own, he would grab eagerly at a personal reward. His accomplishments at his retirement would be tangible and formidable, his dignitas accumulated over the length of his public career too cemented to be diminished by an old man's last sexual fling. But oh, he longed for Metrobius! Who probably wouldn't be interested in an old and ugly man. That too had contributed to his decision to go to the plays. Better to find out now than when the time came to retire. Better to feast his worsening eyes upon this beloved object while he could still see. There were several companies taking part in the festival, including the one now led by Metrobius, who had changed from acting in tragedies to formal comedy some ten years ago. His group was not scheduled to perform until the third day, but Sulla was there on the first and second days, devoted to mime, and enjoyed himself enormously. Dalmatica came with him, though she couldn't sit with the men, as she could at the Circus; a rigid hierarchy had been established in the theater, plays not being quite approved of in Roman society. Women, it was felt, might be corrupted if they sat with men to watch so much immorality and nudity. The two front rows of seating in the semicircular, tiered cavea were reserved for members of the Senate, and the fourteen rows just behind had used to be reserved for the knights of the Public Horse. This privilege had been conferred on the senior knights by Gaius Gracchus. And it had afforded Sulla intense pleasure to take it away. Thus all knights were now forced to battle for seats among their inferiors on a first come, first served basis. The few women who attended sat right
up the top at the back of the cavea; they could hear well enough, but had difficulty in seeing anything titillating on the stage. In formal comedy (such as Metrobius played), no women were included in the fully masked cast, but in the mimes from Atella female roles were played by women, and nobody was masked; quite often, nobody was clothed. The third day's play was by Plautus, and a favorite: The Vainglorious Soldier. The starring role was taken by Metrobius how foolish! All Sulla could see of his face was the grotesque covering with its gaping mouth curving up in a ridiculous smile, though the hands were there, and the neat, muscular body looked well in its Greek armor. Of course at the end the cast took their bows with masks off; Sulla was finally able to see what the years had done to Metrobius. Very little, though the crisp black hair was exquisitely sprinkled with white, and there was a deepening fissure on either side of the straight, high bridged Greek nose. He couldn't weep, not there in the very middle of the front row upon his cushioned section of the wooden seat. But he wanted to, had to fight not to. The face was too far away, separated from him by the vacant half moon of the orchestra, and he couldn't see the eyes. Oh, he could distinguish two black pools, but not what they held. Not even whether they rested on him, or on some current lover three rows behind. Mamercus was with Sulla; he turned to his son in law and said, voice a little constricted, "Ask the man who played the miles gloriosus to come down, would you? I have a feeling I used to know him, but I'm not sure. Anyway, I'd like to congratulate him in person." The audience was vacating the temporary wooden structure, and the women present were wending their way toward their spouses if they were respectable women, or trolling for business if they were prostitutes. Carefully escorted by Chrysogonus and very carefully avoided by those in the audience who recognized them Dalmatica and Cornelia Sulla joined the Dictator and Mamercus just as Metrobius, still in armor, finally arrived before Sulla. "You did very well, actor," said the Dictator. Metrobius smiled to reveal that he still had perfect teeth. "I was delighted to see you in the audience, Lucius Cornelius." "You were a client of mine once, am I right?" "Indeed I was. You released me from my cliental obligations just before you went to the war against Mithridates," said the actor, eyes giving nothing away. "Yes, I remember that. You warned me of the charges one Censorinus would try to bring against me. Just before my son died." The wrecked face squeezed up, straightened with an effort. "Before I was consul, it was." "A happy chance that I could warn you," said Metrobius. "A lucky one for me." "You were always one of Fortune's favorites." The theater was just about empty; weary of these continuing platitudes, Sulla swung to face the women and Mamercus. "Go home," he said abruptly. "I wish to talk with my old client for a while." Dalmatica (who had not been looking well of recent days) seemed fascinated with the Greek thespian, and stood with her eyes fixed on his face. Then Chrysogonus intruded himself into her reverie; she started, turned away to follow the pair of gigantic German slaves whose duty it was to clear a path for the Dictator's wife wherever she went. Sulla and Metrobius were left alone to follow too far behind for anyone to think they belonged to the same party. Under normal circumstances the Dictator would have been approached by clients and petitioners, but such was his luck that no one did approach. "Just this stroll," Sulla said. "I ask nothing more." "Ask what you will," said Metrobius. Sulla stopped. "Stand here in front of me, Metrobius, and see what time and illness have done. The position hasn't changed. But even if it had, I am no use to you or to anyone else except these poor silly women who persist in oh, who knows? Pitying me, in all probability. I don't think it can be love." "Of course it's love!" He was close now, close enough for Sulla to see that the eyes still held love, still looked at him with tenderness. And with a dynamic kind of interest unspoiled by disgust or revulsion. A softer, more personal version of the way Aurelia had looked at him in Teanum Sidicinum. "Sulla, those of us who have once fallen under your spell can never be free of you! Women or men, there is no difference. You are unique. After you, all others pale. It's not a matter of virtue or goodness." Metrobius smiled. "You have neither! Maybe no great man is virtuous. Or good. Perhaps a man rich in those qualities by definition is barred from greatness. I have forgotten all my Plato, so I am not sure what he and Socrates have to say about it." Out of the corner of his eye Sulla noticed Dalmatica turn back to stare in his direction, but what her face displayed he could not tell at the distance. Then she went round the corner, and was gone. "Does what you say mean," asked the Dictator, "that if I am allowed to put down this present burden, you would consider living with me until I die? My time grows short, but I hope at least some of it will be mine alone to spend without consideration of Rome. If you would go with me into retirement, I promise you would not suffer in any way least of all financially." A laugh, a shake of the curly dark head. "Oh, Sulla! How can you buy what you have owned for thirty years?" The tears welled, were blinked away. "Then when I retire, you will come with me?" "I will." "When the time comes I'll send for you." "Tomorrow? Next year?" "Not for a long while. Perhaps two years. You'll wait?" "I'll wait." Sulla heaved a sigh of almost perfect happiness: too short, too short! For he remembered that each time he had seen Metrobius on those last occasions, someone he loved had died. Julilla. His son. Who would it be this time? But, he thought, I do not care. Because Metrobius matters more. Except for my son, and he is gone. Only let it be Cornelia Sulla. Or the twins. Let it not be Dalmatica! He nodded curtly to Metrobius as if this had been the most trivial of encounters, and walked away. Metrobius stood watching his retreating back, filled with happiness. It was true then what the little local gods of his half remembered home in Arcadia said: if a man wanted something badly enough, he would get it in the end. And the dearer the price, the greater the reward. Only when Sulla had disappeared did he turn back toward the dressing rooms. Sulla walked slowly, completely alone; that in itself was a seldom experienced luxury. How could he find the strength to wait for Metrobius? Not a boy any longer, but always his boy. He could hear voices in the distance and slowed even more, unwilling that anyone should see his face just yet. For though his heart hoped and acknowledged a premonitory joy, there was anger in him because of this joyless task he still must finish, and fear in him that it might be Dalmatica to die. The two voices were louder now, and one of them floated high above the other. He knew it well. Odd, how distinctive a man's voice was! No two alike, once one got past superficial similarities of pitch and accent. This speaker could be no one save Manius Acilius Glabrio, who was his stepdaughter Aemilia Scaura's husband. He really is the outside of enough,'' said Glabrio now, in tones both forceful and aristocratically languid. "Thirteen thousand talents his proscriptions have put into the Treasury, and he boasts of it! The truth is, he ought to hang his head in shame! The sum should have been ten times as much! Properties worth millions knocked down for a few thousands, his own wife the proud owner of fifty millions in big estates bought for fifty thousands it's a disgrace!" "I hear you've profited yourself, Glabrio," said another familiar voice that belonging to Catilina. "A trifle only, and not more than my due. Frightful old villain! How dared he have the audacity to say the proscriptions would end on the Kalends of last month the names are still going up on the rostra every time one of his minions or his relatives covets another luscious slice of Campania or the seashore! Did you notice him remain behind to have a chat to the fellow played the vainglorious soldier? He can't resist the stage or the riffraff who strut across it! That goes back to his youth, of course, when he was no better than the most vulgar strumpet who ever hawked her fork outside Venus Erucina's! I suppose he's worth a laugh or two among the pansies when they get together to see who is on which end today. Have you ever seen a daisy chain of pansies? Sulla's seen plenty!" "Be careful what you say, Glabrio," said Catilina, sounding a little uneasy. "You too could wind up proscribed." But Glabrio laughed heartily. "Not I!" he cried gleefully. "I'm part of the family, I'm Dalmatica's son in law! Even Sulla can't proscribe a member of the family, you know." The voices faded as the two men moved off, but Sulla staye
d where he was, just around the corner. All movement had stilled in him, and the ice cold eyes glowed eerily. So that was what they said, was it? After all these years too... Of course Glabrio was privy to much Rome was not but clearly Rome would soon be privy to everything Glabrio imagined or knew. How much was idle gossip, how much the opportunity to read documents and papers filed away year by year? Sulla was in the throes of collecting all his written evidence against the day of his retirement, for he intended to author his memoirs, as Catulus Caesar had done ten years earlier. So there were plenty of bits and pieces lying around, it wouldn't have taken any great talent to unearth them. Glabrio! Why hadn't he thought of Glabrio, always in and out of his house? Not every member of that privileged visiting circle was a Cornelia Sulla or a Mamercus! Glabrio! And who else? The ashes of his anger at having to continue to hold Metrobius at arm's length tumbled onto a fresh conflagration within Sulla's mind and fueled it sourly, relentlessly. So, he thought as he picked up his feet and began to walk again, I cannot proscribe a member of my own family, eh? I cannot, he's right about that. Yet need it be proscription? Might there not be a better way? Round the corner he came, straight into the arms of Pompey. Both men stepped back, reeling a little. "What, Magnus, on your own?" asked Sulla. "Sometimes," said Pompey, falling into step alongside the Dictator, "it's a pleasure to be alone." "I heartily concur. But don't tell me you tire of Varro!" Too much Varro can be a pain in the podex, especially when he starts prating on about Cato the Censor and the old ways and when money had real value. Though I'd rather hear Varro on those topics than on invisible fingers of power," grinned Pompey. "That's right, I'd forgotten he was a friend of poor old Appius Claudius's," said Sulla, rather glad that if in his present mood he had to collide with anyone, it had turned out to be Pompey. "I wonder why we all think of Appius Claudius as so old?" Pompey chuckled. "Because he was born old! But you are out of touch, Sulla! Appius Claudius is quite eclipsed these days. There's a new man in town name of Publius Nigidius Figulus. A proper sophist. Or do I mean Pythagorean?" He shrugged casually. No use, I never can keep one sort of philosopher distinct from all the others." "Publius Nigidius Figulus! It's an old and hallowed name, but I hadn't heard of the genuine article raising his head in Rome. Is he a bucolic gentleman, perhaps?" "Not a hayseed, if that's what you're asking. More a gourd half full of peas rattle, rattle ... He's a great expert on Etruscan soothsaying, from lightning to livers. Knows more lobes in that organ than I know figures of speech." "How many figures of speech do you know, Magnus?" asked Sulla, highly diverted. "Two, I think. Or is it three?" "Name them." "Color and description "Two." "Two." They walked on in silence for a moment, both smiling, but at different thoughts entirely. "So how does it feel to be a knight when they don't have special seats at the theater anymore?" demanded Sulla. "I'm not complaining," said Pompey blithely. "I never go to the theater." "Oh. Where have you been today, then?" "Out to the Via Recta. Just for a good walk, you know. I get very hamstrung in Rome. Don't like the place." On your own here?'' "More or less. Left the wife behind in Picenum." He pulled a sour face. "Not to your liking, Magnus?" "Oh, she'll do until something better comes along. Adores me! Just not good enough, is all." "Well, well! It's an aedilician family." "I come from a consular family. So ought my wife." "Then divorce her and find a consular wife." "Hate making small talk, to women or their fathers." At that precise moment a blinding inspiration came to Sulla, who stopped dead in the middle of the lane leading from the Velabrum to the Vicus Tuscus just below the Palatine. Ye gods!" he gasped. "Ye gods!" Pompey stopped too. "Yes?" he asked politely. "My dear young knight, I have had a brilliant idea!" "That's nice." "Oh, stop mouthing platitudes! I'm thinking!" Pompey obediently said nothing further, while Sulla's lips worked in and out upon his toothless gums like a swimming jellyfish. Then out came Sulla's hand, fixed itself on Pompey's arm. "Magnus," come and see me tomorrow morning at the third hour," he said, gave a gleeful skip, and departed at a run. Pompey remained where he was, brow furrowed. Then he too began to walk, not toward the Palatine but toward the Forum; his house was on the Carinae. Home went Sulla as if pursued by the Furies; here was a task he was really going to enjoy performing! "Chrysogonus, Chrysogonus!" he bellowed in the doorway as his toga fell behind him like a collapsing tent. In came the steward, looking anxious something he did quite often of late, had Sulla only noticed. Which he didn't. "Chrysogonus, take a litter and go to Glabrio's house. I want Aemilia Scaura here at once." "Lucius Cornelius, you came home without your lictors!" "Oh, I dismissed them before the play began sometimes they're a wretched nuisance," said the Dictator impenitently. "Now go and pick up my stepdaughter!" "Aemilia? What do you want her for?" asked Dalmatica as she came into the room. "You'll find out," said Sulla, grinning. His wife paused, stared at him searchingly. "You know, Lucius Cornelius, ever since your interview with Aurelia and her delegation, you've been different." "In what way?" This she found difficult to answer, perhaps because she was reluctant to provoke displeasure in him, but finally she said, "In your mood, I think." "For better or for worse, Dalmatica?" "Oh, better. You're happy." "I am that," he said in a happy voice. "I had lost sight of a private future, but she gave it back to me. Oh, what a time I'm going to have after I retire!" "The actor fellow today Metrobius. He's a friend." Something in her eyes gave him pause; his carefree feeling vanished immediately, and an image of Julilla lying with his sword in her belly swam into his mind, actually blotted Dalmatica's face from his gaze. Not another wife who wouldn't share him, surely! How did she know? What could she know? Did they smell it? "I've known Metrobius since he was a boy," he said curtly, his tone not inviting her to enquire further. "Then why did you pretend you didn't know him before he came down from the stage?" she asked, frowning. "He was wearing a mask until the end of the play!" Sulla snapped. "It's been a good many years, I wasn't sure." Fatal! She had maneuvered him to the defensive, and he didn't like it. "Yes, of course," she said slowly. "Yes, of course." "Go away, Dalmatica, do! I've frittered away too much of my time since the games began, I have work waiting." She turned to go, looking less perturbed. "One more thing," he said to her back. "Yes?" "I shall need you when your daughter arrives, so don't go out or otherwise make yourself unavailable." How peculiar he was of late! she thought, walking through the vast atrium toward the peristyle garden and her own suite of rooms. Touchy, happy, labile. Up one moment, down the next. As if he had made some decision he couldn't implement at once, he who loathed procrastination. And that fine looking actor ... What sort of place did he occupy in Sulla's scheme of things? He mattered; though how, she didn't know. Had there been even a superficial resemblance, she would have concluded that he was Sulla's son such were the emotions she had sensed in her husband, whom she knew by now very well. Thus it was that when Chrysogonus came to inform her that Aemilia Scaura had arrived, Dalmatica had not even begun to think further about why Sulla had summoned the girl. Aemilia Scaura was in her fourth month of pregnancy, and had developed the sheen of skin and clearness of eye which some women did no bouts of sickness here! A pity perhaps that she had taken after her father, and in consequence was short of stature and a little dumpy of figure, but there were saving echoes of her mother in her face, and she had inherited Scaurus's beautiful, vividly green eyes. Not an intelligent girl, she had never managed to reconcile herself to her mother's marriage to Sulla, whom she both feared and disliked. It had been bad enough during the early years, when her brief glimpses of him had shown someone at least attractive enough to make her mother's passion for him understandable; but after his illness had so changed him for the worse she couldn't even begin to see why her mother apparently felt no less passionately about him. How could any woman continue to love such an ugly, horrible old man? She remembered her own father, of course, and he too had been old and ugly. But not with Sulla's internal rot; though she had neither the perception nor the wit thus to describe it. Now here she was summoned into his presence, and with no more notice than to leave a hasty message for Glabrio in her wake. H
er stepfather greeted her with pats of her hand and a solicitous settling on a comfortable chair actions which set her teeth on edge and made her fear many things. Just what was he up to? He was jam full of glee and as pregnant with mischief as she was with child. When her mother came in the whole business of hand pats and solicitous settlings began all over again, until, it seemed to the girl, he had arranged some sort of mood and anticipation in them that would make whatever he intended to do more enjoyable to him. For this was not unimportant. This was going to matter. "And how's the little Glabrio on the way?" he asked his stepdaughter, nicely enough. "Very well, Lucius Cornelius." "When is the momentous event?" "Near the end of the year, Lucius Cornelius." "Hmmm! Awkward! That's still a good way off." "Yes, Lucius Cornelius, it is still a good way off." He sat down and drummed his fingers upon the solid oaken back of his chair, lips pursed, looking into the distance. Then the eyes which frightened her so much became fixed upon her; Aemilia Scaura shivered. "Are you happy with Glabrio?" he asked suddenly. She jumped. "Yes, Lucius Cornelius." "The truth, girl! I want the truth!" "I am happy, Lucius Cornelius, I am truly happy!" "Would you have picked somebody else had you been able?" A blush welled up beneath her skin, her gaze dropped. "I had formed no other attachment, Lucius Cornelius, if that's what you mean. Manius Acilius was acceptable to me." "Is he still acceptable?" "Yes, yes!" Her voice held an edge of desperation. "Why do you keep asking? I am happy! I am happy!" "That's a pity," said Lucius Cornelius Sulla. Dalmatica sat up straight. "Husband, what is all this?" she demanded. "What are you getting at with these questions? I am indicating, wife, that I am not pleased at the union between your daughter and Manius Acilius Glabrio. He deems it safe to criticize me because he is a member of my family," said Sulla, his anger showing. "A sign, of course, that I cannot possibly permit him to continue being a member of my family. I am divorcing him from your daughter. Immediately." Both women gasped; Aemilia Scaura's eyes filled with tears. "Lucius Cornelius, I am expecting his child! I cannot divorce him!" she cried. "You can, you know," the Dictator said in conversational tones. "You can do anything I tell you to do. And I am telling you that you will divorce Glabrio at once." He clapped his hands to summon the secretary called Flosculus, who entered with a paper in his hand. Sulla took it, nodded dismissal. "Come over here, girl. Sign it." Aemilia Scaura sprang to her feet. "No!" Dalmatica also rose. "Sulla, you are unjust!" she said, lips thin. "My daughter doesn't want to divorce her husband." The monster showed. "It is absolutely immaterial to me what your daughter wants," he said. "Over here, girl! And sign." "No! I won't, I won't!" He was out of his chair so quickly neither woman actually saw him move. The fingers of his right hand locked in a vise around Aemilia Scaura's mouth and literally dragged her to her feet, squealing in pain, weeping frantically. "Stop, stop!" shouted Dalmatica, struggling to prise those fingers away. "Please, I beg of you! Leave her be! She's with child, you can't hurt her!" His fingers squeezed harder and harder. "Sign," he said. She couldn't answer, and her mother had passed beyond speech. "Sign," said Sulla again, softly. "Sign or I'll kill you, girl, with as little concern as I felt when I killed Carbo's legates. What do I care that you're stuffed full with Glabrio's brat? It would suit me if you lost it! Sign the bill of divorcement, Aemilia, or I'll lop off your breasts and carve the womb right out of you!" She signed, still screaming. Then Sulla threw her away in contempt. "There, that's better," he said, wiping her saliva from his hand. "Don't ever make me angry again, Aemilia. It is not wise. Now go." Dalmatica gathered the girl against her, and the look of loathing she gave Sulla was without precedent, a genuine first. He saw it, but seemed indifferent, turned his back upon them. In her own rooms Dalmatica found herself with an hysterical girl on her hands and a huge burden of anger to deal with. Both took some time to calm. "I have heard he could be like that, but I've never seen it for myself," she said when she was able. "Oh, Aemilia, I'm so sorry! I'll try to get him to change his mind as soon as I can face him without wanting to tear his eyes out of his head," But the girl, not besotted, chopped the air with her hand. "No! No, Mother, no. You'd only make things worse." "What could Glabrio have done to provoke this?" "Said something he ought not have. He doesn't like Sulla, I know that. He keeps implying to me that Sulla likes men in ways men shouldn't." Dalmatica went white. "But that's nonsense! Oh, Aemilia, how could Glabrio be so foolish? You know what men are like! If they do not deserve that slur, they can behave like madmen!" "I'm not so sure it is undeserved," said Aemilia Scaura as she held a cold wet towel to her face, where the marks of her stepfather's fingers were slowly changing from red purple to purple black. "I've always thought there was woman in him." "My dear girl, I've been married to Lucius Cornelius for almost nine years," said Dalmatica, who seemed to be shrinking in size, "and I can attest that it is an infamy." "All right, all right, have it your own way! I don't care what he is! I just hate him, the vile beast!" "I'll try when I'm cooler, I promise." "Save yourself more of his displeasure, Mother. He won't change his mind," said Aemilia Scaura. "It's my baby I'm worried about, it's my baby matters to me." Dalmatica stared at her daughter painfully. "I can say the same thing." The cold wet towel fell into Aemilia Scaura's lap. "Mother! You're pregnant too?" "Yes. I haven't known for very long, but I'm sure." "What will you do? Does he know?" "He doesn't know. And I'll do nothing that might provoke him to divorce me." "You've heard the tale of Aelia." "Who hasn't?" "Oh, Mother, that changes everything! I'll behave, I'll behave! He mustn't be given any excuse to divorce you!" "Then we must hope," said Dalmatica wearily, "that he deals more kindly with your husband than he has with you.' "He'll deal more harshly." "Not necessarily," said the wife who knew Sulla. "You were first to hand. Very often his first victim satisfies him. By the time Glabrio arrives to find out what's the matter, he may be calm enough to be merciful." If he wasn't calm enough to be merciful, Sulla was at least drained of the worst of his anger at Glabrio's indiscreet words. And Glabrio was perceptive enough to see that blustering would only make his situation more perilous. "There is no need for this, Lucius Cornelius," he said. "If I have offended you, I will strive mightily to remove the cause of that offense. I wouldn't put my wife's position in jeopardy, I assure you." "Oh, your ex wife is in no jeopardy," said Sulla, smiling mirthlessly. "Aemilia Scaura who is a member of my family! is quite safe. But she cannot possibly stay married to a man who criticizes her stepfather and spreads stories about him that are manifest lies." Glabrio wet his lips. "My tongue ran away with me." "It runs away with you very often, I hear. That is your privilege, of course. But in future you'll let it without the insulation of claiming to be a member of my family. You'll let it and take your chances, just like everyone else. I haven't proscribed a senator since my first list. But there's nothing to stop my doing so. I honored you by appointing you to the Senate ahead of your thirtieth birthday, as I have a great many other young men of high family and illustrious forebears. Well, for the moment I will leave your name among the senators and will not attach it to the rostra. Whether in future I continue to be so clement depends on you, Glabrio. Your child is growing in the belly of my children's half sister, and that is the only protection you have. When it is born, I will send it to you. Now please go." Glabrio went without another word. Nor did he inform any of his intimates of the circumstances behind his precipitate divorce. Nor the reasons why he felt it expedient to leave Rome for his country estates. His marriage to Aemilia Scaura had not mattered to him in an emotional way; she satisfied him, that was all. Birth, dowry, everything as it ought to be. With the years affection might have grown between them. It never would now, so much was sure. A small twinge of grief passed through him from time to time when he thought of her, mostly because his child would never know its mother. What happened next did nothing to help heal the breach between Sulla and Dalmatica; Pompey came to see the Dictator the following morning, as directed. "I have a wife for you, Magnus," said Sulla without delay. There was a quality of sleepy lion about Pompey that stood him in good stead when things happened he wis
hed to think about before acting or speaking. So he took time to ingest this piece of information, face open rather than guarded; but what was going on inside his mind he did not betray. Rather, thought Sulla, watching him closely, he just rolled over in some metaphorical sun to warm his other side, and licked his chops to remove a forgotten morsel from his whiskers. Languid but dangerous. Yes, best to tie him to the family he was no Glabrio. Finally, "How considerate of you, Dictator!" said Pompey. "Who might she be?" This unconscious grammatical betrayal of his Picentine origins grated, but Sulla did not let it show. He said, "My stepdaughter, Aemilia Scaura. Patrician. Of a family you couldn't better if you looked for a millennium. A dowry of two hundred talents. And proven to be fertile. She's pregnant to Glabrio. They were divorced yesterday. I realize, it's a bit inconvenient for you to acquire a wife who is already expecting another man's child, but the begetting was virtuous. She's a good girl." That Pompey was not put off or put out by this news was manifest; he beamed foolishly. "Lucius Cornelius, dear Lucius Cornelius! I am delighted!" "Good!" said Sulla briskly. "May I see her? I don't think I ever have!" A faint grin came and went across the Dictator's face as he thought of the bruises about Aemilia Scaura's mouth; he shook his head. "Give it two or three market intervals, Magnus, then come back and I'll marry you to her. In the meantime I'll make sure every sestertius of her dowry is returned, and keep her here with me." "Wonderful!" cried Pompey, transported. "Does she know?'' "Not yet, but it will please her very much. She's been secretly in love with you ever since she saw you triumph," lied Sulla blandly. That shot penetrated the lion's hide! Pompey almost burst with gratification. "Oh, glorious!" he said, and departed looking like a very well fed feline indeed. Which left Sulla to break the news to his wife and her daughter. A chore he found himself not averse to doing. Dalmatica had been looking at him very differently since this business had blown up out of a tranquillity almost nine years old, and he disliked her disliking him; as a result, he needed to hurt her. The two women were together in Dalmatica's sitting room, and froze when Sulla walked in on them unannounced. His first action was to study Aemilia Scaura' s face, which was badly bruised and swollen below her nose. Only then did he look at Dalmatica. No anger or revulsion emanated from her this morning, though her dislike of him was there in her eyes, rather cold. She seemed, he thought, ill. Then reflected that women often took refuge in genuine illnesses when their emotions were out of sorts. "Good news!" he said jovially. To which they gave him no reply. "I have a new husband for you, Aemilia." Shocked, she looked up and at him with tear reddened, dull eyes. "Who?" she asked faintly. "Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus." "Oh, Sulla, really!" snapped Dalmatica. "I refuse to believe you mean it! Marry Scaurus's daughter to that Picentine oaf? My daughter, of Caecilius Metellus blood? I will not consent!" "You have no say in the matter." "Then I wish Scaurus were alive! He'd have plenty to say!" Sulla laughed. "Yes, he would, wouldn't he? Not that it would make any difference in the end. I need to tie Magnus to me with a stronger bond than gratitude he doesn't have a grateful bone in his body. And you, stepdaughter, are the only female of the family available at the moment." The grey shade in Dalmatica's skin deepened. "Please don't do this, Lucius Cornelius! Please!" "I'm carrying Glabrio's baby," whispered Aemilia Scaura. "Surely Pompeius wouldn't want me?" "Who, Magnus? Magnus wouldn't care if you'd had sixteen husbands and had sixteen children in your nursery," said Sulla. "He knows a bargain when he sees one, and you're a bargain for him at any price. I give you twenty days to heal your face, then you'll marry him. After the child is born, I'll send it to Glabrio." The weeping broke out afresh. "Please, Lucius Cornelius, don't do that to me! Let me keep my baby!" "You can have more with Magnus. Now stop behaving like a schoolgirl and face facts!" Sulla's gaze went to Dalmatica. "That goes for you as well, wife." He walked out, leaving Dalmatica to do what she could to comfort her daughter. Two days later, Pompey informed him by letter that he had divorced his wife, and would like a firm wedding date. "I plan to be out of town until the Nones of Sextilis," said Sulla in his answer, "so I think two days after the Nones of Sextilis seems propitious. You may present yourself in my house at that time, not before."