‘That’s right,’ said Antonius. ‘We must put a guard on both bridges. Shall I make out an order? I am senior officer.’
‘You are the most famous general, but Lepidus is senior officer. He was Consul and Imperator under my father, when you were propraetor and I was learning my book. Besides, my soldiers might not like to take orders from you, who were recently my rival. Lepidus, will you tell the sentries on my bridge, the southern one, that no one is to pass until I cross it myself? And give the same order, if you agree, to your men on the northern bridge?’
‘Of course I will, Caesar. Glad to be of service.’ Then he thought guiltily that he had given quite the wrong answer; he was Caesar’s equal, and must guard his precedence.
That name Caesar was the root of the trouble. The young man had very little right to it (though if he was not truly Caesar’s son Caesar had chosen him to be his heir); yet it was almost impossible to call a man Caesar and treat him as an equal. Junia had spoken truly when she said, nearly seven years ago, that nothing would be the same after the crossing of the Rubicon.
The sentries on both bridges saluted respectfully when he gave them their orders. The instant obedience he now commanded from legionaries even of other armies was most gratifying. But he had business of his own, for his brain was working with a speed that surprised him. As he had expected, he found his orderly chatting with the guard-commander by the northern bridge. He called the man aside and spoke to him quietly, careful not to be overheard.
‘Crastinus, we have decided, the three of us, that my brother Aemilius Paullus is a danger to the republic. He is to be killed without trial, by a detail of soldiers sent for the purpose. He is not the only Senator whose fate has been decided, but the others do not concern you. Your duty lies with him alone. Take this signet of mine, and with it seal your own orders. Draft them as you please. You will take to Rome a dozen picked men, starting at first light tomorrow. You may requisition on the road for your needs. When you reach the City you will seek out my brother, and deal with him.’
He paused, looking steadily into the veteran’s eye. ‘In this signet I trust you with my whole authority. When you stand before my brother you stand in my place. You know your duty. I am confident you will perform it.’
The man stared back, disciplined but assured. ‘Imperator, I shall carry out your will. When my task is done I shall report to the lady Junia, and await your arrival in Rome.’
There had been a slight but unmistakable emphasis on the word ‘will’, where ‘command’was the routine formula. Lepidus knew he had been understood. It was ironical that one of the three rulers of the world dared not tell his orderly in plain words what he desired to have done in his name.
When he returned to the meeting he found young Caesar scribbling in a notebook with his own hand. The boy had an orderly mind, and an amazing memory. He had lived in Rome for less than eighteen months, and his manners were evidence that he had been bred in the more rustic parts of Italy; but he could remember every public figure in both parties, his kinsmen, his wealth, and in which quarter of the City he resided. Relentlessly the list of death proceeded; when Antonius contributed a name it had usually been set down already.
For nearly four hours the grim enumeration continued. Lepidus could not fix his mind on the concrete particulars; it kept on reverting to his own situation.
‘Here I am, Aemilius Lepidus, patrician, Consular, Pontifex Maximus, a nobleman of ancient lineage, who for all the forty-seven years of my life have walked in the ways of the ancestors; and I sit unprotesting while the companions of my boyhood are condemned to death untried. I ought to jump up and cut Caesar’s throat here and now, before he can carry his bloody plans into effect. But then his bodyguard would torture me to death, and my friends would be killed all the same. In this ruin my own house will continue; my first duty to the ancestors is to ensure its continuance. One day young Marcus will be Aemilius Lepidus in place of his father. That comes first. Perhaps every great statesman does as I am doing; for I am certainly a great statesman. No Lepidus before me attained such authority. That’s it,’ he comforted himself. ‘All great men do these things, and later the historians hush it up. I must not betray my anguish of spirit. The others would despise me.’
At length Caesar paused, gathering up his papers. ‘That’s all the Senators, I think. We shall have to eliminate some knights as well, but we can consider them later. We need not go lower than knights. Most of the common people are stout Caesarians, and they are too poor to be worth robbing.’
‘How many names have you?’ asked Antonius.
‘About three hundred, more or less, I should say.’
‘But that’s more than half the Senate!’ cried Lepidus.
‘More than half the Senate are our enemies. That’s why the Optimates have a majority there,’ answered Caesar with another of his bleak grins. ‘We can replace them with our own nominees, faithful Caesarians who will vote for our decrees. Incidentally, that’s a nice bit of patronage. In the provinces there are wealthy citizens who will pay heavily for a seat in the Senate.’
‘Ah, money, we can never ignore it,’ said Antonius, rubbing his hands. ‘But, my dear fellow, I don’t want to throw cold water on your plans, yet have you considered how Rome will take this news? All these Senators have clients and tenants. They may hold the City against us, rather than die like beasts at a sacrifice. There are such a lot of them, if they should combine.’
‘That had occurred to me,’ Caesar sounded annoyed. ‘I have a plan to avoid the danger. That miserable cousin of mine, Pedius, is Consul in Rome. He will do whatever I command, but there is no need to take him into our confidence. We shall send him a list of seventeen names, the names of our most dangerous enemies. We shall let him know there are a few more names to come, but not how many. If we do it little by little our enemies will be destroyed before they have a chance to combine.’
‘I see. No list bears more than a score of names, but lists keep on coming out. Is that how Sulla managed it? It seems sensible.’ Antonius spoke calmly.
‘I am sorry to learn that so many of my old friends deserve death,’ put in Lepidus. ‘Can’t we spare their lives and send them into exile? It seems an awful lot of heads to be taken, just to make three men feel safe.’
‘It is not to make three men feel safe,’ Caesar said hotly. ‘We shall never feel safe, anyway. That is one of the penalties of power. No, this proscription serves a greater end than our convenience. If we carry it out thoroughly we shall put an end to these everlasting civil wars. Do you realize that they have continued for ninety years, ever since Tiberius Gracchus was murdered by the Optimates?’
‘No more civil wars. That will seem strange,’ muttered Antonius. ‘Unless of course at some future date the Triumvirs should fall out among themselves.’
‘When I examined the liver after this morning’s sacrifice I saw that today would be peaceful. Whether there will be peace tomorrow is still hidden from me,’ snapped Caesar.
‘Gentlemen, friends and allies, we have just taken a most desperate resolution,’ Lepidus bleated. ‘This is no time for comrades to be threatening one another.’
‘I do not threaten the saviour of Mutina,’ Antonius said haughtily. ‘I have seen real war, and plenty of it. They tell me that Caesar is overcome by his distressing but punctual fever whenever he sees the red flag hoisted. He was standing gallantly on guard before his camp while I slew the two Consuls who did his fighting for him.’
‘What you say is true, Antonius. My health is weak, and I have never commanded in a great battle. Had you, when you were twenty years old? If I have given offence, I apologize. I suggest that we end this conference now, and march in company to Rome. We have been dealing with a most unpleasant business, which is now behind us for ever. Of course our nerves have been strained, and we are very near to quarrelling. It is time to part while we remain friends.’
‘Yes, Antonius, it is time we went to our quarters. There is no ground for a
quarrel, but we have been shut up together too long.’
‘Very well, Lepidus. You are right, as usual. And you too, Caesar. I have never before stuck to one piece of business for four hours, in all my misspent life. It has made me irritable. Caesar, as Consul-designate you command in Italy. If tonight you send me your marching-orders my legions will conform to your movements.’
The handsome warrior swept out of the hut; he could be heard whistling as he trudged towards the bridge.
Lepidus turned anxiously to his young colleague. ‘Antonius was gracious to leave you to arrange the order of march. I hope you will take it as an apology. It shows that he really wants to be friendly. When we arrive in Rome we must work together.’
‘I harbour no resentment against Antonius,’ young Caesar answered. ‘He acts after his kind, which some philosophers hold to be the essence of virtue. Anyway, he doesn’t matter. The soldiers like him, and he can charge like a bull. But he’s neither a good general nor a sound statesman. If he makes a nuisance of himself I can deal with him.’
‘How wonderful to be named Caesar!’ said Lepidus, without a trace of irony. ‘I envy your self-confidence. But after plotting the murder of three hundred Senators we shall have to stick together.’
At last the lady Clodia was taking an interest in politics.
‘You see, Publius, my niece is to marry this young Caesar, who was made Consul before he was of age to vote. So I shall be well in with the new government, even though Fulvia doesn’t like me. How odd that poor dear Lepidus, a figure of fun for the last five years, should be one of the rulers of the City. What are they thinking in the Senate?’
‘The Caesarians are delighted, naturally. The Optimates are afraid. Do you believe soothsayers?’
‘I don’t believe anything. I am a Claudia. But I like to know what the soothsayers are prophesying. Sometimes they give me the most delicious thrills of foreboding. What has that to do with the Senate? Don’t tell me the magistrates have come to believe in their own omens?’
‘Not as bad as that. But the helpless Optimates are longing to know the worst. Some of them sent to Etruria to fetch the oldest and wisest of the genuine Etruscan augurs. The old man came to Rome, and all day he watched his birds. At evening he told what he had learned. “The Kings return to Rome,” he said. “You will all be enslaved by them. I won’t.” Then he fell dead.’
‘That’s a nasty story. Let’s forget it. Lepidus, at least, can’t frighten me. All the same, you might put me in some out-of-the-way country villa until things are quiet again.’
With a shiver, the lady Clodia reached for the wine-bowl.
8. Order Reigns
42–41 BC
The procession was everything it should be. There were seven legions of soldiers, every man in high spirits at the prospect of a feast when he had done his duty by marching along the Sacred Way. There were captives in herds, and wagons piled high with sacks of money and strange works of barbarian art. There was the sacred chariot, drawn by four white horses and escorted by the priests of Mars. There was a hecatomb of white bulls, each one of the hundred led by a handsome young camillus, a youth from one of the ancient families of Rome. The path was strewn with laurel. From the open doors of their temples the gods, wreathed in flowers, beamed approval of this joyous occasion.
Yet as he stood in the famous chariot, robed in purple, crowned with laurel, so splendid and glorious and lucky that a slave behind him must continually whisper that he was a mortal man and not a deity, Lepidus felt that something was missing. He was not experiencing the pleasure he had anticipated. Perhaps that was because nothing is ever quite so exciting when it is done for the second time, and he was already a Triumphator. Perhaps it was because he knew, everyone knew, that the ceremony was an empty sham. The soldiers’ glittering shields had never been scarred by hostile javelins, the captives were common brigands or runaway slaves, the trophies were plunder stolen from defenceless subjects of Rome. No, that could not be the only reason. He had known for more than a year that his Triumph would be a sham. But the Senate had decreed a public thanksgiving in gratitude for the treaty he had concluded with Sextus Pompeius; a public thanksgiving implies a Triumph when next the hero enters the City. Even though he had never in his life won a battle he was lawfully entitled to this honour. All was as he had expected, in the days when he governed Narbonese Gaul and looked forward with such pleasure to this wonderful occasion. After all, the exploit which had earned a Triumph was soon forgotten; but that he was Triumphator iterum, had enjoyed two separate Triumphs, would be indicated on his image when it was placed on the ancestral shelf. It would also be set down in the official records of the City, engraved on bronze to be preserved until the end of time.
No, something he had expected was lacking. Why was the procession so flat? At last he understood. It was because the streets were nearly empty. A Triumph should fill the Forum and the approaches to the Capitol with a cheerful crowd of sightseers, proud to share in the glory of Roman arms and awaiting the largesse of the victorious general. Today the few knots of spectators cheered loudly. But there were stretches of empty roadway; many houses were hung with the myrtle of mourning instead of the laurel of victory.
Strangest of all was the silence. Had there ever before been a Triumph, in all the seven hundred years of the City, in which the chief sound was the shuffle of marching feet? He passed a group of shabby loafers, who cheered with the perfunctory unanimity that betrayed the hired claque, and an underpaid claque at that; a furlong beyond stood a few more spectators, genuine Caesarians who joked with the soldiers in the ranks. Between them lay a zone of complete silence. Not only cheering was absent, but the usual sounds of a crowded and busy metropolis. Was there no one in Rome today to cry olives for sale, or to quarrel with a neighbour at a public fountain?
Lepidus had kept the rules laid down by the ancestors. Nowadays some victorious commanders slipped into the City unofficially to make sure that all was in order for the Triumph. But a Triumph should mark the return of the victorious army; in theory every man in the procession was seeing his home for the first time since he vanquished the foe. In obedience to protocol, the Pontifex Maximus had remained outside the City until today, the 31st of December, the day before he assumed the Consulship for the coming year. He had heard rumours of the dismay in the City, for whatever happened in Rome was discussed all over Italy; but the reality was more daunting than he had expected.
At the Capitol priests were waiting to receive him, and a handful of Senators; barely enough of them to represent the Senate as a whole, though at this point he must return his imperium to the fathers, in recognition of the fact that he had victoriously fulfilled all their commands. Until tomorrow he would be a private citizen, open to prosecution for misdeeds committed during his term of office; that is, if anyone should dare to prosecute the commander of seven legions of rejoicing veterans. He duly offered his sacrifice to Jupiter the Greatest and Best, standing in an attitude of dignified reverence while the hecatomb of bulls were slaughtered, in a din of bellowing and a stench of blood and excrement. Perhaps the ancestors had been right to sacrifice a single victim; these modern large-scale offerings made the Capitol more like a butcher’s shop than a dwelling-place of the gods. Yet Homer spoke of hecatombs, and grandfather Aeneas must have been familiar with them. The trouble is that we have a great many ancestors, who did not all follow the same customs.
The sacrifice was the culmination of the Triumph. As he came down from the Capitol Lepidus had accomplished completely his duty to the republic, and received all the thanks due to him. But of course he must remain with his soldiers while they marched to the Campus Martius for their feast of victory. Soldiers nowadays were very important personages, and their commander in particular must take great care to be civil to them. At last, by mid-afternoon, he had seen them seated at their banquet; as a private citizen he was free to go home to his family.
It was nearly two years since he had seen his wife and children; f
or a time he had wondered whether he would ever see them again. In the old tradition of civil war women and children were not harmed; but each new outbreak of the traditional blood-feud was more savage than the last. When Lepidus was outlawed for his alliance with Antonius Cicero had proposed to kill Junia and the boys; even Aemilius Paullus, blinded by jealousy of his successful brother, had spoken in favour of the murder of his nephews. Oddly enough, they had been saved by the intercession of Brutus, writing from his camp in Asia. That strange young man was genuinely fond of his half-sister, and, for an assassin, eccentrically averse to bloodshed.
Lepidus did not blame himself for hazarding the life of Junia and risking the extinction of his line. He had joined Antonius because no other course was open to him, and he had not looked for such savagery from decent Optimate gentlemen. But if Junia chose to hold it against him she could make his home-coming very unpleasant.
When he entered the Aemilian mansion he saw at once that his fears had been unfounded. His reception was worthy of a returning Triumphator. The doorposts were wreathed with laurel, and the footmen gaily garlanded. Two elderly gardeners, inexpensive labourers whose working lives were nearly over, capered in the Phrygian caps of emancipation; the liberation of slaves was a pious method of rejoicing, and Junia had done it sensibly, with an eye to economy. At the head of the assembled servants and freedmen his wife and sons stood to greet him in the hall.
As usual, he found nothing to say to Marcus and Quintus. They were good boys, and their father was a great man; what was there for them to talk about? They kissed his hand, and he patted them on the head; in his baggage he had presents suited to their years. After a word of welcome they withdrew to their own apartments.
The lady Junia greeted her lord with solemnity. After he had venerated the images she handed him the wine and stood beside him as he poured it to the Lar. With her own hands she took off the purple robe and wreath of laurel, which must be preserved with other relics of Aemilian greatness. Taking from a footman a tray of wine and cakes, she herself served him with the first food he ate in his own house after long absence. Throughout her eyes were cast down, and she spoke nothing save ceremonious greetings. In the last two years she had lost all trace of girlish frivolity; she was all Roman matron.
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