“Ye gods, the list will be endless!” grumbled Hortensius, who loathed listening to any man save himself speak, especially one whose rhetoric was as unskilled as Sulla’s.
“He’s finished, he’s finished!” said Catulus impatiently. “Come on, Quintus, he’s calling the Senate to the Curia, he’ll tell these Forum fools no more! Come on, quickly!”
But it was Lucius Valerius Flaccus Princeps Senatus who took the curule chair, surrounded only by the skeletal body of magistrates who had remained in Rome and survived. Sulla sat off to the right of the curule podium, probably about where he ought to have ordinarily placed himself in the front row of consulars, ex-censors, ex-praetors. He had not, however, changed out of his armor, and that fact told the senators that he was by no means relinquishing his control of the proceedings.
“On the Kalends of November,” said Flaccus in his wheezing voice, “we almost lost Rome. Had it not been for the valor and promptness of Lucius Cornelius Sulla, his legates, and his army, Rome would now be in the power of Samnium, and we would be passing under the yoke just as we did after the Caudine Forks. Well, I need go no further on that subject! Samnium lost, Lucius Cornelius won, and Rome is safe.”
“Oh, get on with it!” breathed Hortensius. “Ye gods, he’s growing more senile every day!”
Flaccus got on with it, fidgeting a little because he was not comfortable. “However, even with the war over, Rome has many other troubles to plague her. The Treasury is empty. So are the temple coffers. The streets are thin of business, the Senate thin of numbers. The consuls are dead, and only one praetor is left of the six who commenced at the beginning of the year.” He paused, drew a deep breath, and launched heroically into what Sulla had ordered him to say. “In fact, Conscript Fathers, Rome has passed beyond the point where normal governance is possible. Rome must be guided by the most able hand. The only hand capable of reaching out and drawing our beloved Lady Roma to her feet. My term as interrex is five days long. I cannot hold elections. I will be succeeded by a second interrex who will also serve for five days. He will be expected to hold elections. It may not lie in his power to do so, in which case a third interrex will have to try. And so on, and so forth. But this sketchy governance will not do, Conscript Fathers. The time is one of the acutest emergency, and I see only one man present here capable of doing what has to be done. But he cannot do what has to be done as consul. Therefore I propose a different solution—one which I will ask of the People in their Centuries, the most senior voting body of all. I will ask the People in their Centuries to draft and pass a lex rogata appointing and authorizing Lucius Cornelius Sulla the Dictator of Rome.”
The House stirred; men looked at each other, amazed.
“The office of Dictator is an old one,” Flaccus went on, “and normally confined to the conduct of a war. In the past, it has been the Dictator’s job to pursue a war when the consuls could not. And it is over one hundred years since the last Dictator was put into power. But Rome’s situation today is one she has never experienced before. The war is over. The emergency is not. I put it to you, Conscript Fathers, that no elected consuls can put Lady Roma back on her feet. The remedies called for will not be palatable, will incur huge resentments. At the end of his year in office, a consul can be compelled to answer to the People or the Plebs for his actions.
He can be charged with treason. If all have turned against him he may be sent into exile and his property confiscated. Knowing himself vulnerable to such charges in advance, no man can produce the strength and resolution Rome needs at this moment. A Dictator, however, does not fear retribution from People or Plebs. The nature of the office indemnifies him against all future reprisals. His acts as the Dictator are sanctioned for all time. He is not prosecutable at law on any charge. Bolstered by the knowledge that he is immune, that he cannot be vetoed by a tribune of the plebs or condemned in any assembly, a Dictator can utilize every ounce of his strength and purpose to put matters right. To set our beloved Lady Roma on her feet.”
“It sounds wonderful, Princeps Senatus,” said Hortensius loudly, “but the hundred and twenty years which have elapsed since the last Dictator took office have spoiled your memory! A Dictator is proposed by the Senate, but must be appointed by the consuls. We have no consuls. The fasces have been sent to the temple of Venus Libitina. A Dictator cannot be appointed.”
Flaccus sighed. “You were not listening to me properly, Quintus Hortensius, were you? I told you how it could be done. By means of a lex rogata passed by the Centuries. When there are no consuls to act as executives, the People in their Centuries are the executive. The only executive, as a matter of fact—the interrex must apply to them to execute his only function—which is to organize and hold curule elections. The People in their tribes are not an executive. Only the Centuries.”
“All right, I concede the point,” said Hortensius curtly. “Go on, Princeps Senatus.”
“It is my intention to convoke the Centuriate Assembly at dawn tomorrow. I will then ask it to formulate a law appointing Lucius Cornelius Sulla the Dictator. The law need not be very complicated—in fact, the simpler it is, the better. Once the Dictator is legally appointed by the Centuries, all other laws can come from him. What I will ask of the Centuries is that they formally appoint and authorize Lucius Cornelius Sulla the Dictator for however long it may take him to fulfill his commission; that they sanction all his previous deeds as consul and proconsul; that they remove from him all official odium in form of outlawry or exile; that they guarantee him indemnity from all his acts as Dictator at any time in the future; that they protect his acts as Dictator from tribunician veto and any Assembly’s rejection or negation, from the Senate and People in any form or through any magistrates, and from appeal to any Assembly or body or magistrates.”
“That’s better than being King of Rome!” cried Lepidus.
“No, it is simply different,” said Flaccus stubbornly; he had taken some time to get into the spirit of what Sulla wanted from him, but he was now well and truly launched. “A Dictator is not answerable for his actions, but he does not rule alone. He has the services of the Senate and all the Comitia as advisory bodies, he has his Master of the Horse, and he has however many magistrates he chooses to see elected beneath him. It is the custom for consuls to serve under the Dictator, for instance.”
Lepidus spoke up loudly. “The Dictator serves for six months only,” he said. “Unless my hearing has suddenly grown defective, what you propose to ask of the Centuries is that they appoint a Dictator with no time limit to his office. Not constitutional, Princeps Senatus! I am not against seeing Lucius Cornelius Sulla appointed the Dictator, but I am against his serving one moment longer than the proper term of six months.”
“Six months won’t even see my work begun,” said Sulla without rising from his stool. “Believe me, Lepidus, I do not want the wretched job for one single day, let alone for the rest of my life! When I consider my work is finished, I will step down. But six months? Impossible.”
“How so?” asked Lepidus.
“For one thing,” Sulla answered, “Rome’s finances are in chaos. To right them will take a year, perhaps two years. There are twenty-seven legions to discharge, find land for, pay out. The men who supported the lawless regimes of Marius, Cinna and Carbo have to be sought out and shown that they cannot escape just punishment. The laws of Rome are antiquated, particularly with regard to her courts and her governors of provinces. Her civil servants are disorganized and prey to both lethargy and cupidity. So much treasure, money and bullion were robbed from our temples that the Treasury still contains two hundred and eighty talents of gold and one hundred and twenty talents of silver, even after this year’s profligate waste. The temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus is a cinder.” He sighed loudly. “Must I go on, Lepidus?”
“All right, I concede that your task will take longer than six months. But what’s to stop your being reappointed every six months for however long the job takes?” asked Lepidus.
/> Sulla’s sneer was superlatively nasty without his teeth, despite the fact that those long canines were missing. “Oh, yes, Lepidus!” he cried. “I can see it all now! Half of every six—month period would have to be spent in conciliating the Centuries! Pleading, explaining, excusing, drawing pretty pictures, pissing in every knight—businessman’s purse, turning myself into the world’s oldest and saddest trollop!” He rose to his feet, fists clenched, and shook both of them at Marcus Aemilius Lepidus with more venom in his face than most men there had seen since he had quit Rome to go to war with King Mithridates. “Well, comfortable stay—at—home Lepidus, married to the daughter of a traitor who did try to set himself up as King of Rome, I will do it my way or not at all! Do you hear me, you miserable pack of self-righteous stay—at—home fools and cravens? You want Rome back on her feet, but you want the undeserved right to make the life of the man who is undertaking to do that as miserable and anxious and servile as you possibly can! Well, Conscript Fathers, you can make up your minds to it right here and now—Lucius Cornelius Sulla is back in Rome, and if he has a mind to it, he can shake her rafters until she falls down in ruins! Out there in the Latin countryside I have an army that I could have brought into this city and set on your despicable hides like wolves on lambs! I did not do that. I have acted in your best interests since first I entered the Senate. And I am still acting in your best interests. Peacefully. Nicely. But you are trying my patience, I give all of you fair warning. I will be Dictator for as long as I need to be Dictator. Is that understood? Is it, Lepidus?”
Silence reigned absolutely for many long moments. Even Vatia and Metellus Pius sat white—faced and trembling, gazing at the naked clawed monster fit only to screech at the moon—oh, how could they have forgotten what lived inside Sulla?
Lepidus too gazed white—faced and trembling, but the nucleus of his terror was not the monster inside Sulla; he was thinking of his beloved Appuleia, wife of many years, darling of his heart, mother of his sons—and daughter of Saturninus, who had indeed tried to make himself King of Rome. Why had Sulla made reference to her in the midst of that appalling outburst? What did he intend to do when he became Dictator?
*
Sick to death of civil wars, of economic depression and far too many legions marching endlessly up and down Italy, the Centuriate Assembly voted in a law which appointed Lucius Cornelius Sulla the Dictator for an unspecified period of time. Tabled at contio on the sixth day of November, the lex Valeria dictator legibus scribundis et rei publicae constituendae passed into law on the twenty-third day of November. It contained no specifics beyond the time span; as it bestowed virtually unlimited powers upon Sulla and also rendered him unanswerable for a single one of his actions, it did not need specificity. Whatever Sulla wanted to enact or do, he could.
Many in the city fully expected a flurry of activity from him the moment his appointment as Dictator was tabled, but he did nothing until the appointment was ratified three nundinae later, in accordance with the lex Caecilia Didia.
Having taken up residence in the house which had belonged to Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus (now a refugee in Africa), Sulla did, it seemed, little except walk constantly through the city. His own house had been wrecked and burned to the ground after Gaius Marius and Cinna had taken over Rome, and he walked across the Germalus of the Palatine to inspect its site, poke slowly among the heaps of rubble, gaze over the Circus Maximus to the lovely contours of the Aventine. At any time of day from dawn to dusk he might be seen standing alone in the Forum Romanum, staring up at the Capitol, or at the life—size statue of Gaius Marius near the rostra, or at some other among the numerous smaller statues of Marius, or at the Senate House, or at the temple of Saturn. He walked along the bank of the Tiber from the great trading emporium of the Aemilii in the Port of Rome all the way to the Trigarium, where the young men swam. He walked from the Forum Romanum to every one of Rome’s sixteen gates. He walked up one alley and down another.
Never did he display the slightest sign of fear for life or limb, never did he ask a friend to accompany him, let alone take a bodyguard along. Sometimes he wore a toga, but mostly he just wrapped himself voluminously in a more easily managed cloak—the winter was early, and promised to be as cold as the last. On one fine, unseasonably hot day he walked clad only in his tunic, and it could be seen then how small he was—though he had been a well-made man of medium size, people remembered. But he had shrunk, he was bent over, he crabbed along like an octogenarian. The silly wig was always on his head, and now that the outbreaks on his face were under control he had taken once more to painting his frost—fair brows and lashes with stibium.
And by the time one market interval of the Dictator’s wait for ratification was over, those who had witnessed his awful rage in the Senate but had not been direct objects of it (like Lepidus) had begun to feel comfortable enough to speak of this walking old man with some degree of contempt; so short is memory.
“He’s a travesty!” said Hortensius to Catulus, sniffing.
“Someone will kill him,” said Catulus, bored.
Hortensius giggled. “Or else he’ll tumble over in a fit or an apoplexy.” He grasped at his brother-in-law’s toga—swaddled left arm with his right hand, and shook it. “Do you know, I can’t see why I was so afraid! He’s here, but he’s not here. Rome doesn’t have a hard taskmaster after all—very peculiar! He’s cracked, Quintus. Senescent.”
An opinion which was becoming prevalent among all classes as every day his uninspiring figure could be seen plodding along with wig askew and stibium garishly applied. Was that powder covering up his mulberry—hued scars? Muttering. Shaking his head. Once or twice, shouting at no one. Cracked. Senescent.
It had taken a great deal of courage for such a vain man to expose his aged crudities to general gaze; only Sulla knew how much he loathed what disease had done to him, only Sulla knew how much he yearned again to be the magnificent man he was when he left to fight King Mithridates. But, he had told himself, shunning his mirror, the sooner he nerved himself to show Rome what he had become, the sooner he would learn to forget what the mirror would have shown him had he looked. And this did happen. Chiefly because his walks were not aimless, not evidence of senility. Sulla walked to see what Rome had become, what Rome needed, what he had to do. And the more he walked, the angrier he became—and the more excited, because it was in his hand to take this dilapidated, threadbare lady and turn her into the beauty she used to be.
He waited too for the arrival of some people who mattered to him, though he didn’t think of himself as loving them, or even needing them—his wife, his twins, his grown—up daughter, his grandchildren—and Ptolemy Alexander, heir to the throne of Egypt. They had been waiting patiently for many months under the care of Chrysogonus, first in Greece, then in Brundisium, but by the end of December they would be in Rome. For a while Dalmatica would have to live in Ahenobarbus’s house, but Sulla’s own residence had recently begun rebuilding; Philippus-looking brown and extremely fit—had arrived from Sardinia, unofficially convoked the Senate, and browbeaten that cowed body into voting nonexistent public funds to give back to Sulla what the State had taken away. Thank you, Philippus!
On the twenty-third day of November, Sulla’s dictatorship was formally ratified, and passed into law. And on that day Rome awoke to find every statue of Gaius Marius gone from the Forums Romanum, Boarium, Holitorium, various crossroads and squares, vacant pieces of land. Gone too were the trophies hung in his temple to Honor and Virtue on the Capitol, fire—damaged but still habitable for lifeless suits of enemy armor, flags, standards, all his personal decorations for valor, the cuirasses he had worn in Africa, at Aquae Sextiae, at Vercellae, at Alba Fucentia. Statues of other men had gone too—Cinna, Carbo, Old Brutus, Norbanus, Scipio Asiagenus—but perhaps because they were far fewer in number, their going was not noticed in the same way as the disappearance of Gaius Marius. He left a huge gap, a whole grove of empty plinths with his name obliterated from each, herms
with their genitalia hammered off.
And at the same time the whispers increased about other, more serious disappearances; men were vanishing too! Men who had been strong and loud in their support of Marius, or Cinna, or Carbo, or of all three. Knights in the main, successful in business during a time when business success was difficult; knights who had gained lucrative State contracts, or loaned to partisans, or enriched themselves in other ways from affiliations to Marius, to Cinna, to Carbo, or to all three. Admittedly no senator had puffed out of existence, but suddenly the total of men who had was big enough to be noticed. Whether because of this public awareness or as a side effect of it, people now saw these men vanishing; some sturdy-looking private individuals, perhaps ten or fifteen in number, would knock upon a knight’s street door, be admitted, and then scant moments later would emerge with the knight in their midst, and march him off to—no one knew where!
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