Hearing of Marius’s departure, Quintus Sertorius privately wondered whether the real reason behind Marius’s withdrawal was a reflexive movement to safeguard himself and his men from Cinna. Mad he might be, but a fool he was not.
It was now the end of November. Everyone on both sides—or all three sides might have been a more accurate assessment—knew that Gnaeus Octavius Ruso’s “true” government of Rome was doomed. The dead Pompey Strabo’s army had flatly refused to accept Metellus Pius as its new commander, then marched over the Mulvian Bridge to offer its services to Gaius Marius. Not to Lucius Cinna.
The death toll from disease now stood at over eighteen thousand people, many of them from the ranks of Pompey Strabo’s legions. And the granaries within Rome were now completely empty. Sensing the beginning of the end, Marius brought his five-thousand-strong bodyguard of slaves and ex-slaves back to the southern flank of the Janiculum. Significantly, he did not bring the rest of his army with him, neither the Samnites, the Italians nor the remnants of Pompey Strabo’s forces. Thus ensuring his own safety? wondered Quintus Sertorius. Yes, it very much looked as if Marius was deliberately keeping the bulk of his own men in reserve.
*
On the third day of December a treating party crossed the Tiber via the two bridges connecting through Tiber Island. It consisted of Metellus Pius the Piglet (who was its official leader), the censor Publius Crassus, and the Brothers Caesar. Waiting for them at the end of the second bridge was Lucius Cinna. And Gaius Marius.
“Greetings, Lucius Cinna,” said Metellus Pius, outraged to see Marius present, especially as he was attended by that vile wretch Fimbria, and a gigantic German in ostentatious golden armor.
“Do you address me as the consul or as a private citizen, Quintus Caecilius?” asked Cinna coldly.
As Cinna said this, Marius rounded on him furiously and snarled, “Weakling! Spineless idiot!”
Metellus Pius swallowed. “As consul, Lucius Cinna,” he said.
Whereupon Catulus Caesar rounded on the Piglet furiously and snarled, “Traitor!”
“That man is not consul! He is guilty of sacrilege!” cried the censor Crassus.
“He doesn’t need to be consul, he’s the victor!” shouted Marius.
Clapping his hands over his ears to shut out the heated exchanges between all present save himself and Cinna, Metellus Pius turned on his heel in anger and stalked back across the bridges into Rome.
When he reported what had happened to Octavius, Octavius too flew at the hapless Piglet. “How dared you admit he’s consul? He is not consul! Cinna is nefas! snapped Octavius.
“The man is consul, Gnaeus Octavius, and will continue to be consul until the end of this month,” said Metellus Pius coldly.
“A fine negotiator you turned out to be! Don’t you even understand that the worst thing any of us can do is to acknowledge Lucius Cinna as true consul?” asked Octavius, wagging one finger at the Piglet much as a schoolmaster might chastise a student.
The Piglet lost his temper. “Then you go and do better!” he said tightly. “And don’t you point your finger at me! You’re little better than a jumped-up nobody! I am a Caecilius Metellus, and not Romulus himself points a finger at me! Whether it suits your ideas or not, Lucius Cinna is consul. If I go back again and he asks me the same question again, I will give him the same answer!”
His unhappiness and discomfort, present since the very beginning of his tenure of the curule chair, now became intolerable; the flamen Dialis and suffect consul Merula drew himself up and faced his colleague Octavius and the enraged Metellus Pius with all the dignity he could muster. “Gnaeus Octavius, I must resign as consul suffectus,” he said quietly. “It is not fitting that the priest of Jupiter be a curule magistrate. The Senate, yes. Imperium, no.”
Speechless, the rest of the group watched Merula leave the lower Forum—where this exchange had taken place— and walk up the Via Sacra toward his State House.
Catulus Caesar then looked at Metellus Pius. “Quintus Caecilius, would you assume the military high command?” he asked. “If we made your appointment official, perhaps both our men and our city might take on a new lease of life.”
But Metellus Pius shook his head firmly. “No, Quintus Lutatius, I will not. Our men and our city have no heart for this cause, between disease and hunger. And—though it gives me no joy to say it—their uncertainty as to who is in the right. I hope none of us wants another battle through the streets of Rome—Lucius Sulla’s was one too many. We must come to terms! But with Lucius Cinna. Not with Gaius Marius.”
Octavius looked around the faces of his treating party, lifted his shoulders, shrugged, sighed in defeat. “All right then, Quintus Caecilius. All right. Go back and see Lucius Cinna again.”
Back went the Piglet, accompanied only by Catulus Caesar and his son, Catulus. It was now the fifth day of December.
This time they were received in greater state. Cinna had set up a high platform and sat atop it in his curule chair while the treating party stood below and were forced to look up at him. With him on the dais—though unseated and standing behind him—was Gaius Marius.
“First of all, Quintus Caecilius,” said Cinna loudly, “I bid you welcome. Secondly, I assure you that Gaius Marius’s status is that of an observer only. He understands that he is a privatus, and cannot speak during formal negotiations.”
“I thank you, Lucius Cinna,” said the Piglet with equally stiff formality, “and inform you that I am authorized to treat only with you, not with Gaius Marius. What are your conditions?”
“That I enter Rome as Rome’s consul.”
“Agreed. The flamen Dialis has already stepped down.”
“No future retaliations will be tolerated.”
“None will be made,” said Metellus Pius.
“The new citizens from Italy and Italian Gaul will be given tribal status across the full thirty-five.”
“Agreed absolutely.”
“The slaves who deserted from service under Roman owners to enlist in my armies are to be guaranteed their freedom and the full citizenship,” said Cinna.
The Piglet froze. “Impossible!” he snapped. “Impossible!”
“It is a condition, Quintus Caecilius. It must be agreed to along with the rest,” Cinna maintained.
“I will never consent to free and enfranchise slaves who deserted their legal masters!”
Catulus Caesar stepped forward. “A word with you in private, Quintus Caecilius?” he asked delicately.
It took Catulus Caesar and his son a long time to persuade the Piglet this particular condition must be met; that in the end Metellus Pius yielded was only because he too could see Cinna was adamant—though he wondered on whose behalf, his own or Marius’s? There were few slaves in Cinna’s forces, but Marius’s were riddled with them, according to reports.
“All right, I agree to that stupidity about the slaves,” said the Piglet ungraciously. “However, there is one point on which I must set the terms.”
“Oh?” from Cinna.
“There can be no bloodshed,” said the Piglet strongly. “No disenfranchisements, no proscriptions, no banishments, no trials for treason, no executions. In this business, all men have done as their principles and convictions have dictated. No man ought to be penalized for adhering to his principles and convictions, no matter how repugnant they may seem. That goes as much for those who have followed you, Lucius Cinna, as it does for those who followed Gnaeus Octavius.”
Cinna nodded. “I agree with you wholeheartedly, Quintus Caecilius. There must be no revenge.”
“Will you swear to that?” asked the Piglet slyly.
Cinna shook his head, blushing. “I cannot, Quintus Caecilius. The most I can guarantee is that I will do my personal utmost to see that there are no treason trials, no bloodshed, no confiscations of men’s property.”
Metellus Pius turned his head slightly to look directly at the silent Gaius Marius. “Are you implying, Lucius Cinna, that yo
u—the consul!—cannot control your own faction?”
Cinna flinched, but said steadily, “I can control it.”
“Then will you swear?”
“No, I will not swear,” said Cinna with great dignity, red face betraying his discomfort. He rose from his chair to signify that the meeting was over, and accompanied Metellus Pius down to the Tiber Island bridge. For a few precious moments he and the Piglet were alone. “Quintus Caecilius,” he said urgently, “I can control my faction! Just the same, I would rest easier if Gnaeus Octavius is kept out of the Forum—kept completely out of sight! In case. A remote possibility. I can control my faction! But I would rather Gnaeus Octavius was not on display. Tell him!”
“I will,” said Metellus Pius.
Marius caught up to them at a hobbling run, so anxious was he to cut this private conversation short. He looked, the Piglet thought, quite grotesque. There was something new and horribly simian about him, and a diminishing in that awesome air of power he had always radiated, even in the days when the Piglet’s father had been his commander in Numidia, and the Piglet a mere cadet.
“When do you and Gaius Marius plan to enter the city?” asked Catulus Caesar of Cinna as the two parties prepared to go their separate ways.
Before Cinna could answer, Gaius Marius broke his silence with a contemptuous snort. “Lucius Cinna can enter as the lawful consul any time he likes,” said Marius, “but I am waiting here with the army until the convictions against me and my friends have been legally quashed.”
Cinna could hardly wait for Metellus Pius and his escort to start walking away down the Tiber Island bridge before he said to Marius sharply, “What do you mean, you’ll stay with the army until your conviction is quashed?”
The old man stood there looking more inhuman than human; like Mormolyce or Lamia, a monstrous, wickedly intelligent tormentor from the Underworld. He was smiling, his eyes glittering through the tangled curtain of his brows, bushier than of yore because he had developed a habit of pulling at them.
“My dear Lucius Cinna, it’s Gaius Marius the army follows, not you! Were it not for me, the desertions would have been all the other way, and Octavius would have won. Think on that! If I enter the city still inscribed on the tablets as an outlaw under sentence of death, what’s to stop you and Octavius agreeing to patch up your differences and carry out the sentence on me? What a pickle for me to be in! There I’d be, standing around with my cap of liberty in my hand, a privatus waiting for the consuls and the Senate—a body I no longer belong to!—to absolve me of my nonexistent crimes. Now I ask you—is that a fitting stance for Gaius Marius?” He patted Cinna patronizingly on the shoulder. “No, Lucius Cinna, you have your little moment of glory all to yourself! You enter Rome alone. I’ll stay where I am. With the army I own. Because you don’t.”
Cinna writhed. “Are you saying you’d use the army— my army!—against me? The lawful consul?”
“Cheer up, it won’t get as far as that,” said Marius with a laugh. “Say, rather, that the army will be most concerned to see Gaius Marius gets his due.”
“And what exactly is Gaius Marius’s due?”
“On the Kalends of January, I will be the new senior consul. You of course will be my junior colleague.”
“But I can’t be consul again!” gasped Cinna, horrified.
“Rubbish! Of course you can! Now go away, do!” said Marius in the same tone he would have used to an importunate child.
Cinna went to seek out Sertorius and Carbo, who had been present at the negotiations, and told them what Marius had said.
“Don’t say you weren’t warned,” said Sertorius grimly.
“What can we do?” wailed Cinna, despairing. “He’s right, the army belongs to him!”
“Not my two legions,” said Sertorius.
“Insufficient to pit against him,” said Carbo.
“What can we do?” wailed Cinna again.
“For the moment, nothing. Let the old man have his day—and his precious seventh consulship,” said Carbo, teeth set hard together. “We’ll worry about him after Rome is ours.”
Sertorius made no further comment; he was too busy trying to decide what his own future course ought to be. Somehow every last one of them was sounding meaner, nastier, smaller, more selfish, more grasping. They’ve caught the disease from Gaius Marius, and they’re busy giving it to each other. As for myself, he thought, I am not sure I want to be a part of this sordid and unspeakable conspiracy for power. Rome is sovereign. But thanks to Lucius Cornelius Sulla, men have now got the idea that they can be sovereign over Rome.
*
When Metellus Pius reported the gist of Cinna’s advice about Octavius’s staying out of sight to Octavius and the rest, every last one of them knew what was in the wind. This was one of the few conferences at which Scaevola Pontifex Maximus was present; it had not escaped notice that he was withdrawing as unobtrusively as possible into the background. Probably, thought Metellus Pius, because he can see victory for Gaius Marius looming, and remembers that his daughter is still affianced to Young Marius.
Catulus Caesar sighed. “Well, I suggest that all the younger men quit Rome before Lucius Cinna enters. We will need all our younger boni for the future—these awful creatures like Cinna and Marius will not last forever. And one day Lucius Sulla is going to come home.” He paused, then added, “I think we old fellows are better off staying in Rome and taking our chances. I for one have no desire to emulate Gaius Marius’s odyssey, even were I guaranteed no Liris swamps.”
The Piglet looked at Mamercus. “What do you say?”
Mamercus considered. “I think it imperative you should go, Quintus Caecilius, I really do. But for the moment I shall stay. I’m not such a big fish in Rome’s pond.”
“Very well, I will go,” said Metellus Pius with decision.
“And I will go,” said the senior consul Octavius loudly.
Everyone turned to look at him, puzzled.
“I will set myself up on a tribunal in the Janiculan garrison,” Octavius said, “and wait there for whatever comes. That way, if they are determined to spill my blood, it will not pollute the air or the stones of Rome.”
No one bothered to argue. The massacre of Octavius’s Day made this course inevitable.
The following day at dawn Lucius Cornelius Cinna, in his toga praetexta and preceded by his twelve lictors, entered the city of Rome on foot across the bridges linking Tiber Island with either bank of the Tiber River.
But, having heard where Gnaeus Octavius Ruso had gone from a friend in the confidence of those inside Rome, Gaius Marcius Censorinus gathered a troop of Numidian cavalry and rode for the fortress on the Janiculum. No one had authorized this sortie—indeed, no one knew of it, least of all Cinna. That Censorinus had taken it upon himself to do what he intended to do was Cinna’s fault; those of wolfish disposition among Cinna’s officers had come to the conclusion that once he entered the city, Cinna would knuckle under to men like Catulus Caesar and Scaevola Pontifex Maximus. That the whole campaign to return Cinna to authority in Rome would end as a dry and bloodless exercise. But Octavius at least would not escape, vowed Censorinus.
Finding his entry to the stronghold uncontested (Octavius had dismissed the garrison), Censorinus rode into the outer stockade at the head of his five-hundred-strong troop.
And there on the tribunal in the citadel forum sat Gnaeus Octavius Ruso, shaking his head adamantly in response to his chief lictor’s pleas that he leave. Hearing the sound of many hooves, Octavius turned and arranged himself properly upon his curule chair, his lictors white-faced in fear.
Gaius Marcius Censorinus ignored the attendants. Sword drawn, he came down from his horse, bounded up the tribunal steps, walked to where Octavius sat calmly, and fastened the fingers of his left hand in Octavius’s hair. One powerful yank, and the senior consul—who did not fight back—came to his knees. While the terrified lictors looked on helplessly, Censorinus raised his sword in both hands and broug
ht it down with all the force he could summon upon Octavius’s bared neck.
Two of the troopers took the dripping head, its face curiously peaceful, and fixed it upon a spear. Censorinus took it himself, then dismissed the squadron back to camp on the Vatican plain; on one point he was not prepared to disobey orders, and that concerned Cinna’s edict that no soldiers of any kind were to cross the pomerium. Tossing his sword, helmet, and cuirass to his servant, he mounted his horse clad in his leather under-dress and rode straight to the Forum Romanum, carrying the shaft before him like a lance. Without a word he raised the spear on high and presented the head of Octavius to the unsuspecting Cinna.
The consul’s initial reaction was naked horror; he recoiled physically, both hands up with palms outward to fend this appalling gift off. Then he thought of Marius waiting across the river, and of all those eyes upon him and his known lieutenant Censorinus. He drew a sobbing breath, closed his eyes in pain, and faced the hideous consequences of his march upon Rome.
“Fix it to the rostra,” he said to Censorinus. Turning to the silent crowd, he shouted, “This is the only act of violence I condone! I vowed that Gnaeus Octavius Ruso would not live to see me resume my place as consul. He it was— together with Lucius Sulla!—who began this custom! They put the head of my friend Publius Sulpicius where this head is now. It is fitting that Octavius should continue the custom—as will Lucius Sulla when he returns! Look well on Gnaeus Octavius, People of Rome! Look well on the head of the man who brought all this pain and hunger and suffering into being when he slaughtered over six thousand men upon the Campus Martius in the midst of a legally convened assembly. Rome is avenged! There will be no more bloodshed! Nor was the blood of Gnaeus Octavius shed within the pomerium.”
Not quite the truth; but it would serve.
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