SPQR X: A Point of Law

by John Maddox Roberts

  They were veterans and they looked it. Their arms were dingy, their shield covers weather stained, their helmet crests and plumes drooping, their cloaks every shade of red from scarlet to rust brown. But their boots and swords were immaculate, and if their equipment wasn’t spruced up for parade, it was in perfect battle order. They looked supremely competent and dangerous.

  I went out through the Fontinalis Gate with a knot of fellow senators I’d joined in the Forum.

  “Jupiter protect us!” said one, as we caught sight of them. “I am glad to know that Caesar is still north of the Rubicon!”

  For some reason, we never feared a Roman army as long as its general was somewhere else. Caesar’s imperium ended at the Rubicon. If he crossed it, he would be just another citizen. Or so we thought.

  A good-sized fair was taking shape on the Campus Martius that morning, as the itinerant vendors and mountebanks descended upon this cornucopia of soldiery, marched all the way from Gaul with their pay in their purses.

  The men themselves were from all over Italy and Sicily, from the tip of Calabria to the northern edge of Umbria. They were the men of the villages and countryside, from towns that had borne Roman citizenship for centuries and others whose fathers had been at war with Rome within living memory. Most of them probably had never laid eyes on Rome.

  That was getting to be more and more common of late. In Hannibal’s day, the consuls had been able to whistle up ten legions within a day’s march of the City, so densely was Latium peopled with prosperous peasant families. Now we had to scour the whole peninsula for enough men to fill that many legions, and few real Romans served except as officers. Perhaps Caesar was right, and someday we would have to recruit Gauls. If he didn’t kill them all first, that is.

  I searched for familiar faces, but in an army so vast I knew only a relative handful of men. Most of my time in Gaul I had spent in command of auxilia or else working in Caesar’s headquarters. The first soldiers to arrive belonged to legions that hadn’t even been in Gaul when I was last there. The war, originally a fairly modest campaign to support our allies and drive the Germans back beyond the Rhenus, had turned into a vast war of conquest that had spread out to reach the obscure island of Britannia.

  Despite their victories, there were no laurels, trophies, or other triumphal insignia in evidence. That would have been too arrogant even for Caesar, and he must have given strict orders for his men to make no such presumptuous display. The Senate still guarded jealously its right to grant or withhold a triumph, and Caesar was not ready to break completely with the Senate. Not yet, anyway.

  In fact, as soon as their camp was made, the men made tripods of their spears, leaned their shields against them, put their helmets on the spear points, and stored their armor and swords inside the tents. When they circulated among the crowds, they retained only their military belts and boots as insignia of their status. At this demonstration of goodwill, the most ardent anti-Caesarians breathed a sigh of relief and joined in the general festivity. Thus disarmed, the soldiers were free to enter the City.

  The soldiers, like soldiers of all times and places, showed off their awards and souvenirs and loot. Torques—the twisted neck rings worn by all Gallic warriors—were everywhere, from simple bronze pieces worn by the humbler Gauls to magnificent specimens of highly worked gold and silver taken from the necks of chieftains, often by the simple operation of removing the head at the same time. Within days it seemed as if every boy in Rome was wearing a big, bronze ring around his thin neck.

  Others displayed beautiful shields of enameled bronze and long, narrow swords that looked exotic to eyes accustomed to the short, broad gladius. Gauls are passionately fond of jewelry, and these men had brought back tons of it, as well as yards of extravagantly dyed cloth worked in bewildering patterns of stripes and checks. Rome soon had the most colorful, glittering whores in the world.

  I suppose it must have been the same when the Greeks returned from Troy.

  “Very clever,” remarked Scribonius Libo, another candidate for praetor and a friend of Pompey. “It’s just like Caesar to accomplish several things with a single act. First, all these men will weight the polls in favor of his candidates. Second, it will remind everyone of how powerful he has grown. Third, it’s a recruiting campaign: these men are proclaiming, ‘Look how rich a soldier can become by serving with Caesar.’ ”

  “Caesar uses his resources efficiently,” I agreed, “but it’s all perfectly legal.”

  “It shouldn’t be,” Scribonius grumbled. “We need a law that keeps the legions on the frontiers as long as they’re under arms.”

  There was a lot of such talk in those years. Our old system of raising legions for each new war and then disbanding them upon their return was terribly outdated. We still raised them that way for a really large-scale war like Caesar’s, or for an impromptu campaign like that of Crassus against Parthia, but settling the veterans of victorious wars proved to be a perpetual headache. Usually they had no land to return to, much of Italy having been bought up by plantation owners. These, having got the land cheap, were reluctant to see any of it parceled out to veterans. Many of the greatest of these landlords were senators. This was one more way in which my own class was busily cutting its own throat during those years.

  The legionaries rarely had any trade save farming or fighting. Since land was scarce, they did their best to stay under arms as long as possible. Some legions had become permanent institutions, passed on from one proconsul to the next, remaining under their standards for twenty years or more. Others, disbanded, stayed together with their arms handy, waiting for the next call to the eagles.

  Somehow, we had acquired a class of professional soldiers. They were a constant danger to the stability of the Republic, and Scribonius was not alone in calling for their virtual banishment from Italy, locating them instead in permanent forts along our frontiers. It was an argument with merit, but thus far nobody had the courage or the power to implement such a plan. Pompey could have done it, but his power was heavily invested in the old system. His demobilized veterans were his clients and his power base. He could call them back to arms at any time, and everybody knew it.

  What nobody mentioned was the greatest source of wealth for Caesar’s rampaging legions: slaves. After the larger battles, in which great numbers of prisoners were taken, Caesar sometimes gave each man a prisoner as a slave, to sell or keep as he saw fit. Of course, men constantly under arms and on the march had little use for slaves and no convenient way to send them home, so they usually sold them immediately to the slave traders who followed the legions like vultures hovering over a battlefield.

  These prisoners, I must add, were not captive warriors. Those were regarded as too dangerous for field or domestic service, so they were usually killed on the spot, if they had not killed themselves already to avoid disgrace. Those survivors Caesar selected to fight in his triumphal games were sent to Italy in chains under heavy guard. One need not waste much pity on them. Some of them actually survived the combats and won their freedom. In any case, Gallic warriors had no objection to death in combat. It was work they feared. To men of their class, common labor was unutterably dishonorable and degrading.

  The captives were mostly the women and children of the tribe, or people who were already slaves, and these last were the most numerous. Unlike the Germans, among whom all freeborn men were warriors, the Gallic warriors were aristocrats. The bulk of the population were Gauls born to slavery or to a sort of degraded serfdom that was little better.

  The upshot of it all was that, once again, Italy was being inundated by a flood of cheap slaves, with consequent effects on the economy and on society in general, making it harder for freeborn Italians to make a living, throwing yet more peasants out of work. It always happened after a big war. You would think we’d learn better, but we never have.

  Cato showed up, plodding around barefooted, walking up and down the rows of tents like a new commander on his first inspection. He came
to join us where we watched the market taking shape in front of Pompey’s Portico, just north of his theater. For once, Cato’s ugly face wasn’t scowling.

  “These are real Roman soldiers,” he said approvingly. “These men could have gone toe-to-toe with Hannibal’s.”

  “Hurts to say it, eh, Cato?” said Scribonius Libo.

  “The times are decadent,” Cato answered, “but there is nothing wrong with Italian manhood. I disapprove of Caesar, and I’ve never made a secret of it. He is a man with too much ambition and too little respect for the Senate. But he knows how to use an army. He knows how to train and discipline soldiers, too. He doesn’t spoil and flatter and bribe them like Pompey.”

  “You’ll notice,” I commented, “that they are comporting themselves perfectly. Pompey’s veterans have been known to tromp around here at election time fully armed and scowling balefully.”

  “Caesar just knows how to make a point more tactfully,” Scribonius Libo said.

  “Decius Caecilius, might I have a word with you?” Cato said, placing his hand on my shoulder in that let’s-talk-in-private gesture.

  “Certainly.”

  We walked up the steps of the Portico and into the shade of the colonnade. Its rear wall was beautifully adorned with frescoes. Displaying uncharacteristic taste, Pompey had chosen mythological subjects instead of glorifying his own victories.

  “I attended the contio yesterday,” Cato began. “I think you should challenge its constitutionality. First, it was quite informal. There were no sacrifices, no taking of auguries, so its decisions cannot have the binding power of law.”

  “By custom,” I said, “a contio is held to discuss a pending matter and decide whether a meeting of the comitia is called for. Sacrifices and auguries are not necessary.”

  “Exactly. Yet Manilius proceeded as if he had the power to call for a trial at the contio, when it requires a vote in the full comitia to do that. Oh, he was very smooth. He acted like the gravest, most deliberate magistrate since Fabius Cunctator, but his tactics were radical! In the first place, the comitia tributa has no right to try a capital case.”

  “But is it truly a capital case?” I asked. “It’s just a common murder. It’s not parricide, so there is no sacrilege involved. He wasn’t killed by poison or magic. It was nothing but an ordinary stabbing, although it was carried out with rare zeal. It’s not as if I was charged with a really serious crime like arson or treason.”

  “Nonsense! The victim, though obscure, was a man of good family. You, too, are a man of good family and high reputation. If you are not to be tried in one of the standing courts, you should appeal for trial before the whole comitia centuriata, with all classes represented, where the tribunes don’t control everything.”

  “There’s no time. Not if I’m to stand in the election. If I stall, Manilius and Fulvius’s faction will use it as grounds for impeachment and try to keep me from assuming office.” A sitting magistrate could not be prosecuted; but if the election itself were to be invalidated, he could be prevented from taking his place.

  “Then what will you do? You haven’t time to formulate a good defense, and they’ve had plenty of time to work up their plot, whatever it is.”

  “I intend to prove myself innocent before it comes to trial.”

  He looked skeptical. Like Julia, Cato had little faith in the concept of mere innocence.

  Foreigners were often mystified by our old Republican system, with its welter of popular assemblies, courts, officials with rival jurisdictions, political factions, and competing clientela, but it all made perfect sense to us. Well, almost perfect. As in this case, there was often dispute about anyone’s right to do anything.

  Over the generations, the various classes had fought over political power; first, patrician against plebeian; then the nobiles and senators against the equites and lower plebs; until now the classes were hopelessly intertwined. I was a perfect example: a plebeian by birth, a nobiles by heritage, having many consuls among my ancestors; an eques by property qualification, and a senator by election. I was not a patrician, but by that year the patrician families were all but extinct, and the only exclusive privileges they had left were certain priesthoods, which suited me perfectly. Only a fool wanted to be Flamen Dialis or Rex Sacrorum.

  Most foreigners assumed that the Senate ran things. While the Senate was full of powerful men, its own powers were restricted almost completely to foreign affairs. Cicero got into huge trouble by trying the Catilinarian conspirators in the Senate and executing them without appeal. Even though the immensely conservative Cato fully approved of his actions, Cicero was exiled by the comitia tribute, then later recalled by a vote of the comitia centuriata.

  SPQR, our ancient civic insignia, stood for “the Senate and People of Rome,” and we meant it.

  Now, of course, it is all changed. Most of the old bodies and institutions remain, but they all just do what the First Citizen tells them to. Once we savaged each other so thoroughly that it is no wonder we were such a terror to our enemies. I fear that Rome has no great future now that it is a monarchy in all but name.

  But such thoughts did not disturb me at the time. This accusation of murder was just one more excitement in the general excitement of election time. It was an annoyance, but anything was better than being in Gaul.

  “Cato, you recall the crowd that denounced me on the basilica steps yesterday? Were they at the contio?”

  “They were there. Still denouncing you, too.”

  “Did they happen to mention that they caught me in the house of Fulvius, rifling through his belongings?”

  “Never said a word about it. Oh, there was some gossip going around that you and your boy Hermes were seen leaping from a balcony and running like the Furies were after you, but I’ve heard that so often that I discounted it. What were you up to?”

  “Gathering evidence. The door wasn’t locked and no one was there to forbid me to enter, so it wasn’t housebreaking. What interests me is that they said nothing about it.”

  “It does seem odd. What did you find?”

  “Nothing immediately useful. But he was living unusually well for a penurious man, in a house owned by Caius Claudius Marcellus.”

  “A political favor then,” he said. “But of what sort? He’s an ardent anti-Caesarian, but like you he has a marriage tie with Caesar.”

  “Really? I was unaware of that.”

  “Yes, his wife is Octavia. She is a granddaughter of Caesar’s sister.”

  “A great-niece? That’s not much of a connection.”

  “In this case it could be. Caesar has shown great favor toward her brother, young Caius Octavius. If he doesn’t breed an heir soon, he may adopt the boy. A few months ago the lad gave the funeral eulogy for his grandmother, Julia. Did a splendid job of it for one so young.”

  “I’ve never heard of him,” I said. And that was true of most of us. It was just as well for our peace of mind that we didn’t know what the future had in store for that particular brat, who was all of twelve years old at the time.

  “A couple of years ago, when Caesar and Pompey were patching up one of their breaches, Caesar wanted Octavia to divorce Marcellus and marry Pompey. Caesar would set aside Calpurnia and marry Pompey’s daughter. But it didn’t work out somehow.”

  “That must have made for some tense domestic suppers at Caesar’s house,” I said.

  “Why?” Cato was honestly mystified at the suggestion that these women might resent being ordered to divorce and remarry at someone’s political whim. Pompey’s daughter was married to Faustus Sulla and had two children by him. In the event, Pompey had actually married the daughter of Metellus Scipio. She was the widow of Publius Crassus, who had died with his father at Carrhae. Our political marriages were as complicated as our electoral politics.

  “Claudius Marcellus bids fair to be one of next year’s consuls,” I said. “What is he likely to do?”

  “Now that Caesar’s soldiers are here, his colleague will
be Lucius Aemilius Lepidus Paullus. You’ve seen the huge renovations going on at the Basilica Aemilia?”

  “It’s hard to miss.”

  “Well, Lucius will preside at its rededication, and his name will be carved on it as restorer, but it’s Caesar’s money that’s paid for the work.”

  Erection or restoration of monuments was enormously important to any man’s prestige. Families traditionally saw to the upkeep of the monuments of their ancestors, as witness my new roof on the Porticus Metelli. By restoring the old basilica, Lucius Aemilius not only glorified himself, but he received credit for his piety in honoring his ancestors.

  Something else occurred to me. Like many of Rome’s older structures, the Basilica Aemilia had more than one name. People sometimes called it the Basilica Fulvia.

  IT WAS BARELY NOON WHEN I WENT to the house of Callista. I had intended to call later, but since I might be arrested at anytime I thought it prudent to stop by early. Hermes was with me as usual, and the long walk to the Trans-Tiber took us through an almost deserted Rome because so much of the population had flocked to the Campus Martius to see the soldiers from Gaul. Like most of Caesar’s self-glorifying schemes, this one had proved to be a resounding success.

  The majordomo greeted me at the door and guided me toward the peristyle garden. From that direction I could hear the sound of feminine voices in conversation. One of them said something, another laughed. Ordinarily I find such sounds pleasant, even soothing. But one of those voices sounded disturbingly familiar.

  The two women were seated at a table next to a beautiful pool. One of them, naturally, was Callista. The other was Julia.

  “Why, Senator!” Callista exclaimed, “I was not expecting you so early. How wonderful to have you and your lovely wife as my guests at the same time!”