Three's Company

by Alfred Duggan

  ‘Cicero was our foe. We agreed that he must die.’ The carefully modulated voice of Caesar was non-committal. ‘But this kind of joke should not be repeated. We still have a little dignity of our own, and we shall lose it if we dismember the corpses of our enemies. We agreed that the vote of two should bind the third. I am sure Lepidus will concur when I vote that the proscription must end as soon as possible.’

  ‘Anything you say, Caesar. We have enough money to be getting on with, and when we have conquered Brutus and Cassius we shall have the plunder of Asia. I don’t enjoy killing people, unless like Cicero they have been rude to me. I’m not sorry so many of the proscribed escaped oversea. They couldn’t take their money with them, and I have it.’

  ‘That is another subject, which we must discuss seriously when we are sober. It’s not a thing to laugh about over the wine. Lepidus, you have met this young Sextus Pompeius, haven’t you? He is becoming a much greater nuisance than I had expected. We shall have to take him seriously.’

  ‘He’s not so young as all that, Caesar,’ Lepidus replied with some pleasure. ‘About twelve or fifteen years older than you, I should estimate.’

  ‘Ah, but I am extraordinarily young for my great position. I am the first Roman to hold a curule magistracy at the age of twenty. Do you think I might be under the special protection of a divinity?’ The youth spoke without boasting, as though he himself was puzzled by the question.

  ‘There have been strange portents, or so they say. As Pontifex Maximus I am kept informed of unusual omens. But I myself have seen nothing remarkable, either in the flight of birds or in the livers of victims. It is not a subject on which I should care to venture an opinion.’

  ‘You are named Caesar, young man,’ said Antonius with a belch. ‘Your luck is in your name and nowhere else. Don’t lean on it too hard, that’s my advice. Keep away from war, and your reputation is safe. If you insist on crossing swords with Cassius, remember that he was fighting Parthians when you were playing with your marbles.’

  Caesar’s grey eyes flashed. But when he answered his voice remained level and expressionless.

  ‘You are the finest soldier in Rome; in anything connected with war I am content to follow your advice. But really, my dear Antonius, you are serving this wine too strong. My head buzzes and I can’t talk serious business. If you have any dancers to entertain us, now is the time to send for them. Otherwise I shall go home and to bed. My doctor advises me to rest in the afternoon.’

  After that the dinner followed the usual course of a party at ‘The Keels’. The three rulers lay on their couches, drinking steadily, while tumblers and jugglers performed before them. Presently it was supper time, and not worth while moving to another room. When Lepidus staggered to his litter, to be escorted home by

  torchlight, Antonius was snoring under the table.

  In all the novelty of his unconstitutional greatness it had almost slipped his memory that he was once more Consul. His colleague was Ventidius Bassus, the Italian who had once been enslaved (the partnership must have been planned by the whimsical malice of Antonius, who knew how deeply it would irk an Aemilius to appear in the records as colleague to an ex-slave and, worse still, a provincial). As Consul and Pontifex Maximus the opening of the year brought him a mass of ceremonial business, which he must perform single-handed since Bassus was shamefully ignorant of ritual. He was kept hard at work, offering sacrifice, presiding at meetings, invoking the blessing of the gods on this and that; so busy that he hardly had time to notice the slackening of the proscription.

  All the same, by the end of January the hunt for heads was over. Money was still needed, to pay the enormous and undisciplined army now encamped in central Italy; the last flicker of the great purge was the confiscation of the dowries of four hundred wealthy ladies, who were graciously permitted to live. By this time nearly every mansion in Rome had been shuttered in sign of mourning; three hundred Senators, and more than two thousand knights, had been proscribed.

  Social life of a kind continued. Rome was still the wealthiest city in the world; her wealth, the tribute of defenceless provinces, had merely changed hands. New men, army contractors or Caesarian soldiers, entertained on a great scale; for those who happened to possess money wished to enjoy it. After the lesson of the great proscription only an optimist would expect his estate to descend to his grandchildren.

  At any party a Triumvir was a lion, and Lepidus found himself dining out more frequently than in his youth. Antonius was a bothersome guest, drunken and riotous and inclined to break the furniture. Caesar was unwelcome for the opposite reason; his provincial lack of breeding had left him so reserved and shy that at any party he was a wet blanket. It was remarked that Lepidus displayed the gracious formal manners of the good old days, the days when Rome was governed from the boudoirs of highborn ladies. That was odd, he thought. When he was an unknown quaestor his stiff shyness had made him a social failure.

  These modern Caesarian parties were strange affairs. In the old days there were two kinds of party; either you took your wife, to meet the well-born wives of other noblemen; or you went alone, and your host provided dancing-girls to entertain you. Now Lepidus never knew whether to bring Junia or not. Whatever the company, and whatever the type of entertainment provided, the wives of some leading Caesarians would be there. But some leading Caesarians, soldiers whose youth had been passed in a provincial garrison, had picked up very odd wives; their presence did not make a party respectable. Often they would be mingled with smart actresses and dashing Greek courtesans, who reclined on couches like men as they conversed with these broad-minded Roman matrons.

  All the same, it was rather fun. He would be forty-eight on his next birthday, and he had come to think of himself as middle-aged. Really he was in the prime of life. Reclining between two witty beauties from Alexandria, crowned with roses and drenched with perfume, waited on by deft footmen who had been trained in the service of some now headless Optimate, he enjoyed himself like a young man. The house itself, the cooking, even the servants, would be familiar to him from the old days; only the burly figure of the host, his shoulders scarred by the buckles of his corselet, would strike a strange note. Even if these parties began with decorum, they usually ended in a drunken riot. More and more often Junia stayed at home, as was only fitting; perhaps it was not quite so fitting that the Pontifex Maximus should be present and enjoying himself.

  Then he was taken up by Fulvia, the wife of Marcus Antonius. That was, curiously exciting. In his youth he had not been a success with women, partly because he was shy, even more from laziness; while Rome was full of harlots the strenuous effort needed to seduce a lady had seemed to him more trouble than it was worth. Now that he was a Triumvir, nearly any lady would yield to him for the asking; perhaps the only exception would be the wife of another Triumvir. If Fulvia was attracted he must be more attractive than he had supposed.

  Fulvia was not strictly beautiful, though she would have made a handsome man; her sparkling black eyes and curved nose seemed to demand a helmet above them, instead of a mat of glossy curls. She was short, with fine legs and very small hands and feet; she had a trim waist, and she moved gracefully. It seemed unfair that such a dainty, attractive, energetic figure should be overbalanced by a pair of billowing breasts in front, and large, though well-curved, buttocks at the back. She lived her own life, independent of her husband, and was always saying so; it seemed to keep her very busy.

  During the proscription she had been busy taking vengeance on her personal enemies. Now that the executions were over she had become the patron of every Caesarian veteran who wanted a farm; a folded petition always protruded from the deep cleft of her bosom, and it always appeared to deal with some very hard case. If subsequent inquiry showed that the ill-treated veteran had lost his bonus because he had been discharged with ignominy for cowardice in the field, no one was more surprised than Fulvia. He had spoken so well when he approached her; it was hard to believe that a true Caesarian cou
ld be guilty of such wickedness.

  There were officials who found this lady a formidable bore; it would seem that her husband was one of them. Though Marcus Antonius was devoted to her, he seldom had time to accompany her when she paid afternoon calls or went out to supper. She was always trying to interest some magistrate in her latest deserving case, and it was natural that she should fix on Lepidus, the only Triumvir who was not working day and night to mobilize the great army which would take vengeance on Cassius and Brutus.

  She attracted him. Perhaps she was a little too emphatic, too inclined to catch hold of his toga and repeat long case-histories into his ear; but the widow of Clodius the gangster understood the personal side of politics as thoroughly as he did. She had a deep concern for the questions which concerned him: who was to fill the vacancy in the College of Augurs; which score of blameless young men, out of a hundred indistinguishable smooth-faced young men, were worthy to hold the quaestorship; which shady contractor merited the plum of providing marble for the new temple of the Divine Julius. In the old days, before the Rubicon had been crossed, such questions as these were the very stuff of politics, causes for which great men would marry or divorce. Now nearly everyone who talked politics discussed only the strength of rival armies, and the doubtful allegiance of legates of unknown birth.

  Junia could not abide Fulvia, and refused to go into company where she might encounter her. She had an excuse which her husband must accept: a woman who had mutilated the head of her dead enemy could not be a respectable Roman matron. In reply, Lepidus pointed out that they lived in a time of change; things were done in the City every day which would have shocked his father. Privately he had an uneasy suspicion that his wife put him on a level with Fulvia; she never spoke of the proscription, but he knew that she had not forgotten it. A sense of guilt made home-life irksome; with Fulvia he could feel superior.

  His colleagues were engrossed in planning something that did not concern him, the great campaign to crush the surviving murderers of Caesar. They spent their days studying maps, interviewing sea-captains newly arrived from Asia, discussing boots and mules with breezy over-confident businessmen. He was supposed to govern Rome by himself, without wasting their time which must be devoted to military affairs. The Caesarians were so powerful that this work did not occupy all his energy; long talks with Fulvia were a pleasant distraction.

  Only once was he called into a serious conference with his military colleagues, and that was because he happened to have personal knowledge of the obscure but now powerful enemy whom few other Romans had met. One morning young Caesar wrote asking him to call at the Julian mansion. The wording of the message was polite enough, as deferential as was proper from a boy to the Pontifex Maximus; but even the scored wax of the tablets conveyed Caesar’s bleak aroma of joyless responsibility. As Lepidus alighted from his litter he felt that in some obscure way he had been neglecting his duty.

  In the private office he found Antonius with young Caesar. Besides a confidential secretary to take down their decisions there was only one other man in the room, a boy no older than Caesar himself. There was about this youth a certain craggy ugliness which marked him as a member of the lower classes; Lepidus had an infallible nose for that sort of thing. Caesar had his arm on the boy’s shoulder. Ah, so young Caesar, that pattern of all the more tedious virtues, had somewhere picked up a boyfriend.

  Without shame, Caesar introduced the boy as though he were a gentleman and an equal. ‘May I present my friend Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, who will command our fleet in Sicilian waters? Agrippa is an old comrade of mine, chosen for me by my deified father. We served together in Spain, and studied together at Apollonia.’

  ‘And he is to command the fleet? Let me congratulate you, young man, on your speedy promotion.’

  ‘Don’t be a stick-in-the-mud, Lepidus,’ said Antonius in a lazy drawl. ‘Agrippa knows as much about naval tactics as I do, and I am the military expert in the partnership. Not one of us can tell the sharp end of a ship from the blunt until it starts to move, and where we’re all novices a young novice with his wits about him may pick up the tricks of the trade more quickly than a veteran.’

  ‘Agrippa is my loyal follower,’ added Caesar. ‘In naval matters my deified father relied on Decimus Brutus.’

  ‘If Antonius and Caesar are satisfied it is not for me to object. You are planning the campaign while I supervise home affairs. But if you are marching into Asia, why do you need a fleet in Sicilian waters?’

  ‘That’s where you come in, old boy,’ Antonius explained. ‘You have negotiated with this terrible pirate who dares to defy the massed legions of the republic. That’s Sextus Pompeius, of course. Before we leave for the east we must squash him, or buy him.’

  ‘How curious that you should use those words,’ said Lepidus. ‘Caesar, your deified father, dined in my house on the last night of his life. The talk turned to the rebellion in Spain, and that’s more or less what the Divine Julius said of him.’

  ‘The Senate said it also, more than three years ago, when they sent you to negotiate with him,’ Antonius went on. ‘For the last five years everyone has said it. Squash him, if you’re not too busy; or buy him cheap, because he’s notoriously for sale. Well, we go on saying it, and what happens? At the end of the five years Pompeius is stronger than ever.’

  ‘Yes, something must really be done about him, now, before we march,’ Caesar said firmly. ‘I can’t see where he gets his support from, and that’s why I want your opinion, Lepidus. He’s not an Optimate, because he’s not even a gentleman. He isn’t working with Cassius and Brutus. Surely there isn’t still a Pompeian party, after all these years? If there is, what does it stand for?’

  ‘There’s no Pompeian party, of course,’ said Lepidus weightily, enjoying his role of elder statesman. ‘There never was much of a one, except for the veterans who had defeated Mithradates. They must all be dead, with no successors. All they wanted were free farms, and they got them. When I met Sextus in Spain I asked myself the same question: who supports him, and why? A freedman of mine, one of those clever Greek secretaries, found an answer to the problem, and he may be right. He believes that Pompeius Maximus never really crushed the pirates; he just settled them on farms in the provinces – and they were grateful. Now they have rallied to his son.’

  ‘That’s what it is, by thunder,’ exclaimed Antonius, banging the table. ‘How stupid of those old buffers in the Senate not to see it. They gave the command of their fleet to the King of the Pirates, and now we have him on our doorstep.’

  ‘Surely that appointment lapsed when we took over?’ said Lepidus.

  ‘Perhaps. But the news has not reached Sicily,’ Caesar answered dryly. ‘Pompeius Bithynicus was the Optimate propraetor of Sicily, and our troops did not cross over to dislodge him. It didn’t seem worth while, when Sicily must surrender after we have beaten Cassius. Now Bithynicus has come to terms with his cousin Sextus. The Optimate authorities in Africa send them supplies and money. Sextus has made himself ruler of all the western sea. What’s very much worse, he is rescuing fugitives from our proscription.’

  ‘He had the nerve to offer twice as much for every man saved as we had put on his head,’ said Antonius with a wheezy chuckle. ‘That’s impudence, perhaps, but amusing impudence all the same. Of course he can draw on the treasury of Africa. How easy it is to be noble when you have plenty of money! I envy him.’

  ‘It’s most high-minded, and most amusing,’ Caesar said coldly. ‘But the object of that unpleasant proscription was to strike terror into our enemies. If half of them get away we look foolish, which is the worst thing that can happen to us. So we must deal with Sextus before we conquer Cassius and Brutus.’

  ‘Well, why not deal with him – literally,’ young Agrippa suddenly put in. ‘If his fleet is the old federation of the pirates I shan’t destroy it in a single campaign. Yet by summer you must be on the march to Asia, unless Cassius is to gather strength for another whole year. The Co
nsul Aemilius Lepidus has negotiated with Sextus in the past, and might reasonably write to him again. If that looks too much like official recognition you could get this Greek freedman to write, ostensibly in his own name. Offer Sextus whatever he wants, provided he will keep quiet for a year. When Cassius has been beaten he will have to surrender without a blow, or fight a war of Sicily against the rest of the world.’

  ‘That’s sound advice, Antonius,’ said Lepidus eagerly. It seemed to him that any course was better than giving command of the government’s only fleet to a boy who was not even a gentleman. ‘Africa is held by the Optimates anyway, and we haven’t time to conquer it before the great campaign in Asia. Let’s leave Sextus to rule Sicily. With any luck he will quarrel with his African supporters. That will make next year’s campaign all the easier.’

  Caesar looked up with a queer glint in his eye. Lepidus realized that he had been tactless to answer as though the decision lay with Antonius alone. It was a natural mistake. Antonius the soldier led the Caesarian party; the boy, though in theory his equal, was a mascot, called into their counsels because he bore, by unmerited good luck, a famous name.

  ‘We shall do that in the end, if Antonius agrees,’ Caesar said quickly. ‘But first Agrippa must make some kind of naval demonstration. A show of force will convince Sextus that we are in earnest; and anyway orders have gone out to the fleet at Misenum that Agrippa is coming to take command. A change of plan might make us look foolish.’

  ‘We shall look very much more foolish if you, Caesar, send orders in the name of the Triumvirs without first consulting your colleagues,’ snapped Antonius.

  ‘You consented,’ Caesar answered hotly.

  ‘I didn’t know things had gone so far as the issue of written orders. I don’t like it. Operational orders should go out only over my signet. What I say casually, especially at supper, should not be conveyed directly to the troops.’