2. The Grass Crown

by Colleen McCullough

  Tears in his eyes, Scaevola screwed the small sheet of paper up into a ball and thrust it into the middle of a brazier, for it was cold and he was old enough now to feel the cold. Fancy killing his old uncle the Augur! Harmless. They could talk until they were black in the face that it was all a terrible mistake. Nothing that had happened in Rome since New Year's Day was a mistake. Warming his hands and sniffling his tears away, Scaevola stared at the glowing coals contained within the bronze tripod, having no idea that Catulus Caesar's last impressions of life were much the same. The heads of Catulus Caesar and Merula flamen Dialis were added to the rostra's mounting collection before dawn of the third day of Gaius Marius's seventh consulship; Marius himself spent long moments contemplating Catulus Caesar's head still handsome and haughty before allowing Popillius Laenas to convene another Plebeian Assembly. This meeting directed its spleen at Sulla, who was condemned and voted a public enemy; all his property was confiscated, but not for the greater good of Rome. Marius let his Bardyaei loot Sulla's magnificent new house overlooking the Circus Maximus, then let them burn it to the ground. The property of Antonius Orator suffered a similar fate. However, neither man left any indication as to where his money was secreted, and none ever turned up in a Roman bank, at least recognizably. Thus the slave legion did very well out of Sulla and Antonius Orator, whereas Rome did no good at all. So angry was Popillius Laenas that he sent a party of public slaves to sift through the ashes of Sulla's house after they cooled, looking for hidden treasure. The image cupboards containing Sulla and his ancestors had not been in the house when the Bardyaei plundered it; nor had the priceless citrus-wood table. Mamercus was very efficient. So was Sulla's new steward, Chrysogonus. Between the two of them and a small army of slaves under strict instructions not to appear either furtive or guilty, they stripped the best out of half a dozen of Rome's most beautiful houses in less than a day and put the best into hiding in places no one would dream of looking.

  During the first days of Marius's seventh consulship he never went home to his house, nor set eyes upon Julia; even Young Marius had been sent out of the city before New Year's Day and put to work discharging the men Marius felt he would no longer need. At the beginning he seemed to fear that Julia would seek him out, and hedged himself behind his Bardyaei, under strict orders to escort his wife home should she appear in the Forum. But when three days went by without a sign of her, he relaxed somewhat, the only evidence of his state of mind the endless letters he kept writing to his son adjuring him to stay where he was, not to come to Rome. "He's quite mad, but he's also quite sane he knows he could never look Julia in the face after that bloodbath," said Cinna to his friend Gaius Julius Caesar, that moment returned to Rome from Ariminum, where he had been helping Marius Gratidianus keep Servilius Vatia inside Italian Gaul. "Where is he living, then?" asked Marius's ashen brother-in-law, maintaining a steady voice by sheer willpower. "In a tent, if you'd believe that. There it is, see? Pitched alongside the Pool of Curtius, in which he has his bath. But he never seems to sleep anyway. When he isn't carousing with the worst of his slaves and that monster Fimbria, he's walking, walking, walking, nosing into this and that for all the world like one of those little old grannies who poke their walking sticks through everything they see. Nothing is sacred!" Cinna shivered. "I can't control him. I have no idea what's in his mind or what he's likely to do next. I doubt he knows himself." The rumors of insanities within Rome had started to impinge upon Caesar's journey when he reached Veii, but so strange and muddled were the stories that he took no credence in them beyond altering his route. Instead of proceeding across the Campus Martius and calling in to say hello to his cousin-by-marriage Sertorius, Caesar took a diverticulum the moment he crossed the Mulvian Bridge and headed for the Colline Gate; his information about recent events in Rome was current enough for him to know that Pompey Strabo's army was no longer encamped there, and he knew Pompey Strabo was dead. At Veii he had discovered Marius and Cinna were consuls, one reason why he paid little attention to the rumors of unbelievable violence in the city. But when he reached the Colline Gate he found it occupied by a century of soldiers. "Gaius Julius Caesar?" asked the centurion, who knew the legates of Gaius Marius quite well. "Yes," said Caesar, growing anxious. "I have a message from the consul Lucius Cinna that you are to go straight to his offices in the temple of Castor.'' Caesar frowned. "I will be happy to do that, centurion, but I would prefer to go home first." "The message is, at once, Lucius Julius," said the centurion, managing to make it sound both courteous and an order. Stifling his anxiety, Caesar rode straight down the Vicus Longus heading for the Forum. The smoke which had marred the perfect blue of a cloudless sky from as far away as the Mulvian Bridge was now a pall, and cinders floated on the air; in growing horror his eyes took in the sight of dead bodies men, women, children sprawled here and there on the sides of this wide straight thoroughfare. By the time he reached the Fauces Suburae his heart was thudding, and every part of him wanted to turn uphill, ride at the gallop to his home to make sure his family was unharmed. But instinct said he would do better by his family to go where he had been ordered to go. Clearly there had been war in the streets of Rome, and in the far distance toward the jumbled insulae of the Esquiline he could hear shouts, screams, howls. Not a single living person could he see looking down the Argiletum; he turned instead into the Vicus Sandalarius and came into the Forum at its middle, where he could skirt the buildings and arrive at the temple of Castor and Pollux without entering the lower Forum. Cinna he found at the foot of the temple steps, and from him learned what had happened. "What do you want of me, Lucius Cinna?" he asked, having seen the big tent sprawled by the Pool of Curtius. "I don't want any thing of you, Gaius Julius," said Cinna. "Then let me go home! There are fires everywhere, I must see that my family is all right!" "I didn't send for you, Gaius Julius. Gaius Marius himself did. I simply told the gate guards to make sure you came to me first because I thought you'd be in ignorance of what's happening." "What does Gaius Marius want me for?" asked Caesar, trembling. "Let's ask him," said Cinna, starting to walk. The bodies now were headless; almost fainting, Caesar saw the rostra and its decorations. "Oh, they're friends!" he cried, tears springing to his eyes. "My cousins! My colleagues!" "Keep your manner calm, Lucius Julius," said Cinna tonelessly. "If you value your life, don't cry, don't pass out. His brother-in-law you may be, but since New Year's Day I wouldn't put it past him to order the execution of his wife or his son." And there he stood about halfway between the tent and the rostra, talking to his German giant, Burgundus. And to Caesar's thirteen-year-old son. "Gaius Julius, how good to see you!" rumbled Marius, clasping Caesar in his arms and kissing him with ostentatious affection; the boy, Cinna noticed, winced. "Gaius Marius," said Caesar, croaking. "You were always efficient, Gaius Julius. Your letter said you'd be here today, and here you are. Home in Rome. Ho ro, ho ro!" Marius said. He nodded to Burgundus, who stepped away quickly. But Caesar's eyes were on his son, who stood amid the bloody shambles as if he didn't see any of it, his color normal, his face composed, his eyelids down. "Does your mother know you're here?" Caesar blurted, looking for Lucius Decumius and finding him lurking in the lee of the tent. "Yes, Father, she knows," said Young Caesar, voice deep. "Your boy's really growing up, isn't he?" asked Marius. "Yes," said Caesar, trying to appear collected. "Yes, he is." "His balls are dropping, wouldn't you say?" Caesar reddened. His son, however, displayed no embarrassment, merely glanced at Marius as if deploring his crassness. Not an atom of fear in him, Caesar noted, proud in spite of his own fear. "Well now, I have a few things to discuss with both of you," Marius said affably, including Cinna in his statement. "Young Caesar, wait with Burgundus and Lucius Decumius while I talk to your tata." He watched until he was sure the lad was out of hearing distance, then turned to Cinna and Caesar with a gleeful look on his face. "I suppose you're all agog, wondering what business I could have that concerns you both?" "Indeed," said Caesar. "Well now," he said this phrase had become one of his favorites
, and was uttered regularly "I probably know Young Caesar better than you do, Gaius Julius. I've certainly seen more of him these last few years. A remarkable boy," said Marius, voice becoming thoughtful, eyes now holding something slyly malicious. "Yes indeed, a truly extraordinary boy! Brilliant, you know. More intelligent than any fellow I've ever met. Writes poetry and plays, you know. But just as good at mathematics. Brilliant. Brilliant. Strong-willed too. Got quite a temper when he's provoked. And he's not afraid of trouble or making trouble, for that matter." The malicious gleam increased, the right corner of Marius's mouth turned up a little. "Well now, I said to myself after I became consul for the seventh time and fulfilled that old woman's prophecy about me I am very fond of this lad! Fond enough of him to want to see him lead a more tranquil and even kind of life than I for one have led. He's a terrific scholar, you know. So, I asked myself, why not ensure him the position he will need in order to study? Why subject the dear little fellow to the ordeals of oh, war the Forum politics?" Feeling as if they trod on the crumbling lip of a volcano, Cinna and Caesar stood listening, having no idea where Gaius Marius was leading them. "Well now," Marius went on, "our flamen Dialis is dead. But Rome can't do without the special priest of the Great God, now can she, eh? And here we have this perfect child, Gaius Julius Caesar Junior. Patrician. Both parents still living. Therefore the ideal candidate for flamen Dialis. Except that he isn't married, of course. However, Lucius Cinna, you have an unbetrothed girl-child who is a patrician and has both parents still living. If you married her to Young Caesar, every criterion would be met. What a wonderfully ideal flamen and flaminica Dialis they would make! No need to worry about finding the money to see your boy climb the cursus honorum, Gaius Julius, and no need to worry about finding the money to dower your girl, Lucius Cinna. Their income is provided by the State, they are housed at the expense of the State, and their future is as august as it is assured." He stopped, beamed upon the two transfixed fathers, held out his right hand. "What do you say?" "But my daughter is only seven!" said Cinna, aghast. "That's no impediment," said Marius. "She'll grow up. They can continue to live in their own homes until they're old enough to set up house together in their State House. Naturally the marriage can't be consummated until little Cornelia Cinna Minor is older. But there is nothing in the law to stop their marrying, you know." He jigged a little. "So what do you say?" "Well, it's certainly all right by me," said Cinna, enormously relieved that this was all Marius had wanted to see him about. "I admit I'll find it difficult to dower a second daughter after my older girl cost me so much." "Gaius Julius, what do you say?" Caesar looked sidelong at Cinna, receiving his unspoken message clearly; agree, or things will not go well for you and yours. "It's all right by me too, Gaius Marius." "Splendid!" cried Marius, and did a little dance of joy. He turned toward Young Caesar and snapped his fingers yet another recent habit. "Here, boy!" What a striking lad he is! thought Cinna, who remembered him vividly from the time when Young Marius had been accused of murdering Cato the Consul. So handsome! But why don't I like his eyes? They unsettle me, they remind me ... He couldn't remember. "Yes, Gaius Marius?" asked Young Caesar, whose gaze came to rest a little warily upon Marius's face; he had known, of course, that he was the subject of the conversation he had not been allowed to listen to. "We have your future all mapped out for you," said Marius with bland contentment. "You are to marry Lucius Cinna's younger daughter at once, and become our new flamen Dialis." Nothing did Young Caesar say. Not a muscle of his face did he move. Yet as he heard Marius say it, he changed profoundly, though none watching could guess in what way. "Well now, Young Caesar, what do you say?" asked Marius. A question greeted with silence; the boy's eyes had fallen away from Marius the moment the announcement was made, and now rested firmly on his own feet. "What do you say?" Marius repeated, beginning to look angry. The pale eyes, quite expressionless, lifted to rest upon his father's face. "I thought, Father, that I was committed to marry the daughter of the rich Gaius Cossutius?" Caesar flushed, tightened his lips. "A marriage with Cossutia was discussed, yes. But no permanent arrangements have been made, and I much prefer this marriage for you. And this future for you." "Let me see," said Young Caesar in a musing voice, "as flamen Dialis I can see no human corpse. I can touch nothing made of iron or steel, from a pair of scissors and a razor to a sword and a spear. I can have no knot upon my person. I can touch no goat, no horse, no dog, no ivy. I can eat no raw meat, no wheat, no leavened bread, no beans. I can touch no leather taken from a beast specially killed to provide it. I have many interesting and important duties. For instance, I announce the vintage at the Vinalia. I lead the sheep in a suovetaurilia procession. I sweep out the temple of the Great God Jupiter. I arrange for the purification of a house after someone has died in it. Yes, many interesting, important things!" The three men listened, unable to tell from Young Caesar's tone whether he was being sarcastic or naive. "What do you say?'' demanded Marius for the third time. The blue eyes lifted to his face, so like Sulla's that for an uncanny moment Marius fancied it was Sulla stood there, and groped instinctively for his sword. "I say .. . Thank you, Gaius Marius! How thoughtful and how considerate of you to take the time to arrange my future so neatly," said the boy, voice devoid of any feeling, yet not in an offensive way. "I understand exactly why you have visited such care upon my humble fate, Uncle. Nothing is hidden from the flamen Dialis! But I tell you also, Uncle, that nothing can alter any man's fate, or prevent his being what he is meant to be." "Ah, but you can't get around the provisions of the priest of Jupiter!" cried Marius, growing angrier; he had wanted desperately to see the boy flinch, beg, weep, throw himself down. "I should hope not!" said Young Caesar, shocked. "You quite mistake my meaning, Uncle. I thank you most sincerely for this new and truly Herculean task you have given me." He looked at his father. "I am going home now," he said. "Do you want to walk with me? Or do you have further business here?" "No, I'll come," said Caesar, startled, then lifted a brow at Gaius Marius. "Is that all right, consul?" "Certainly," said Marius, accompanying father and son as they started to walk across the lower Forum. "Lucius Cinna, we will meet later," said Caesar, lifting a hand in farewell. "My thanks for everything. The horse it belongs to Gratidianus's legion, and I have no stable for it." "Don't worry, Gaius Julius, I'll have one of my men take care of it," said Cinna, heading for the temple of Castor and Pollux in a far better mood than he had suffered as he went to see Marius. "I think," said Marius when these civilities were concluded, "that we will tie our children up tomorrow. The marriage can be celebrated at the house of Lucius Cinna at dawn. The Pontifex Maximus, the College of Pontifices, the College of Augurs and all the minor priestly colleges will gather afterward in the temple of the Great God to inaugurate our new flamen and flaminica Dialis. Consecration will have to wait until after you don the toga of manhood, Young Caesar, but inauguration fulfills all the legal obligations anyway." "I thank you again, Uncle," Young Caesar said. They were passing the rostra. Marius stopped to throw his arm toward the dozens of grisly trophies ringing the speaker's platform around. "Look at that!" he cried happily. "Isn't that a sight?" "Yes," said Caesar. "It certainly is." The son strode out at a great pace; hardly conscious, thought the father, that anyone strode alongside him. Turning his head to look back, the father noted that Lucius Decumius was following at a discreet distance. Young Caesar hadn't needed to come alone to that frightful place; for all Caesar himself disliked Lucius Decumius, it was a comfort to know he was there. "How long has he been consul?" the boy suddenly demanded. "A whole four days? Oh, it seems like an eternity! I have never seen my mother cry before. Dead men everywhere children sobbing half of the Esquiline burning heads fencing the rostra round blood everywhere his Bardyaei as he calls them hard put to choose between pinching at women's breasts and guzzling wine! What a glorious seventh consulship is this! Homer must be wandering the ditch along the edge of the Elysian Fields craving a huge drink of blood so he can hymn the deeds of Gaius Marius's seventh consulship! Well, Rome can certainl
y spare Homer the blood!" How did one answer a diatribe like that? Never home, having no real understanding of his son, Caesar didn't know, so said nothing. When the boy erupted into his own home, his father trying to keep up with him, he stood in the middle of the reception room and bellowed, "Mother!" Caesar heard the clatter of a reed pen being dropped, then she came hurrying out of her workroom, face terrified. Of her normal beauty there was scarcely a relic left; she was thin, there were black crescents beneath her eyes, her face was puffy, her lips bitten to shreds. Her attention was focused on Young Caesar; as soon as she saw him apparently unharmed her whole body sagged. Then she saw who was with him, and her knees gave way. "Gaius Julius!" He caught her before she could fall, holding her very closely. "Oh, I am so glad you're back!" she said into the horsey folds of his riding cloak. "It is a nightmare!" "When you've quite finished!" snapped Young Caesar. His parents turned to look at him. "I have something to tell you, Mother," he said, not concerned with anything save his own monumental trouble. “What is it?'' she asked distractedly, still recovering from the double shock of seeing her son unharmed and her husband home. "Do you know what he's done to me?" "Who? Your father?" Young Caesar dismissed his father with a lavish gesture. "No, not him! No! He just fell in with it, and I expected that. I mean dear, kind, thoughtful Uncle Gaius Marius!" "What has Gaius Marius done?" she asked calmly, quaking inside. "He's appointed me flamen Dialis! I am to marry the seven-year-old daughter of Lucius Cinna at dawn tomorrow, and then be inaugurated as flamen Dialis straight afterward," said Young Caesar through clenched teeth. Aurelia gasped, could find no words to say; her immediate reaction was of profound relief, so afraid had she been when the summons came that Gaius Marius wanted Young Caesar in the lower Forum. All the time he had been away she had worked upon the same column of figures in her ledger without arriving at the same total twice, her mind filled with visions of what she had only heard described and her son must now see the heads on the rostra, the dead bodies. The crazy old man. Young Caesar grew tired of waiting for an answer, and launched into his own answer. "I am never to go to war and rival him there. I am never to stand for the consulship and rival him there. I am never to have the opportunity to be called the Fourth Founder of Rome. Instead, I am to spend the rest of my days muttering prayers in a language none of us understands anymore sweeping out the temple making myself available to every Lucius Tiddlypuss in need of having his house purified wearing ridiculous clothes!" Square of palm and long of finger, beautiful in a masculine way, the hands were lifted to grope at the air, clench upon it impotently. "That old man has stripped me of my birthright, all to safeguard his own wretched status in the history books!" Neither of them had much insight into how Young Caesar's mind worked, nor had either of them been privileged to listen to his dreams for his own future; as they stood listening to this passionate speech, both of them searched for a way to make Young Caesar understand that what had happened, what had been decided, was now inevitable. He must be made to see that the best thing he could do in the circumstances was to accept his fate with a good grace. His father chose to be stern, disapproving. "Don't be so ridiculous!" he said. His mother followed suit because this was how she always handled the boy duty, obedience, humility, self-effacement all the Roman virtues he did not possess. So she too said, "Don't be ridiculous!" But she added, "Do you seriously think you could ever rival Gaius Marius? No man can!" "Rival Gaius Marius?" asked their son, rearing back. "I will outstrip him in brilliance as the sun does the moon!" "If that is how you see this great privilege, Gaius Junior," she said, "then Gaius Marius was right to give you this task. It is an anchor you badly need. Your position in Rome is assured." "I don't want an assured position!" cried the boy. "I want to fight for my position! I want my position to be the consequence of my own efforts! What satisfaction is there in a position older than Rome herself, a position visited upon me by someone who dowers me with it to save his own reputation?" Caesar looked forbidding.'' You are ungrateful," he said. "Oh, Father! How can you be so obtuse? It isn't I at fault, it's Gaius Marius! I am what I have always been! Not ungrateful! In giving me this burden I shall have to find a way to rid myself of, Gaius Marius has done not one thing to earn gratitude from me! His motives are as impure as they are selfish." "Will you stop overrating your own importance?" cried Aurelia in despairing tones. "My son, I have been telling you since you were so small I had to carry you that your ideas are too grand, your ambitions too overweening!" "What does that matter?" asked the boy, his tones more despairing still. "Mother, I am the only one who can make that judgment! And it is one I can make only at the end of my life not before it has begun! Now it cannot begin at all!" Caesar thought it time to try a different tack. "Gaius Junior, we have no choice in the matter," he said. "You've been in the Forum, you know what's happened. If Lucius Cinna, who is the senior consul, thinks it prudent to agree to whatever Gaius Marius says, I cannot stand against him! I have not only to think about you, but to think about your mother and the girls. Gaius Marius is not his old self. His mind is diseased. But he has the power." "Yes, I see that," said Young Caesar, calming a little. "In that one respect I have no desire to surpass him or even to emulate him. I will never cause blood to flow in the streets of Rome." As insensitive as she was practical, Aurelia deemed the crisis over. She nodded. "There, that's better, my son. Like it or not, you are going to be flamen Dialis." Lips hard, eyes bleak, Young Caesar looked from his mother's haggardly beautiful face to his father's tiredly handsome one and saw no true sympathy; worse by far, he thought he saw no true understanding. What he didn't realize was that he himself lacked understanding of his parents' predicament. "May I please go?" he asked. "Provided you avoid any Bardyaei and don't go further than Lucius Decumius's," Aurelia said. "I'm only going to find Gaius Matius." He walked off to the door which led into the garden at the bottom of the insula's light-well, taller than his mother now and slim rather than thin, with shoulders seeming too broad for his width. "Poor boy," said Caesar, who did understand some of it. "He's permanently anchored now," said Aurelia tightly. "I fear for him, Gaius Julius. He has no brakes."