“Your younger sister will do superbly,” said Brutus with a slight tinge of malice. “A patrician married to another patrician! She and Drusus Nero can’t go wrong.”
“Drusus Nero is a plebeian,” said Servilia haughtily. “He may have been born a Claudian, but my uncle Drusus adopted him. He is a Livian, with rank no greater than yours.”
“I predict he’ll prosper all the same.”
“Drusus Nero is twenty years old, and has about a medicine spoon of intelligence. Why, our son is more capable at two!” said Servilia tartly.
Brutus eyed her warily; it had not been lost upon him that his wife’s attachment to little Brutus was phenomenal. To say the least. A lioness!
“Anyway,” said Brutus pacifically, “Sulla will continue to tell us what he means to do the day after tomorrow.”
“Have you any idea what he’s going to do?”
“Not until the day after tomorrow.”
The day after tomorrow saw Sulla tackling elections and elected offices with an expression on his face that did not brook argument. “I am tired of haphazard electoral scrambles,” he said, “and will legislate a proper procedure. In future, all elections will be held in Quinctilis, which is five to six months earlier than an elected man takes office. During the waiting period, the curule men will assume a new importance in the House. Consuls—elect will be asked to speak immediately after consuls in office, and praetors—elect immediately after praetors in office. From now on the Princeps Senatus, ex-censors and consulars will not speak until after the last praetor—elect. It is a plain waste of the House’s time to listen to men who have passed beyond office ahead of men occupying it or in transition toward occupying it.”
All eyes had turned to Flaccus Princeps Senatus, sharply demoted by this edict, but he sat blinking gently, apparently not at all put out.
Sulla continued. “The curule elections in the Centuriate Assembly will be held first, on the day before the Ides of Quinctilis. Then will follow the elections for quaestors, curule aediles, tribunes of the soldiers and other minor positions in the Assembly of the People ten days before the Kalends of Sextilis. And finally the plebeian elections in the Plebeian Assembly will be held on a date between two and six days before the Kalends.”
“Not too bad,” said Hortensius to Catilus. “We’ll all know our electoral fates well before the end of the year.”
“And enjoy a new prominence,” said Catulus, pleased.
“Now to the offices themselves,” said Sulla. “After I’ve personally finished adding the names of new senators to this distinguished body, I intend to close the door. From then on, the only entrance will be through the office of quaestor, which a man will stand for in his thirtieth year, no earlier. There will be twenty quaestors elected each year, a sufficient number to offset senatorial deaths and keep the House plump. There are two minor exceptions which will not affect overall numbers: a man elected tribune of the plebs who is not already a senator will continue to enter the Senate through this office. And a man who has been awarded the Grass Crown or the Civic Crown will be promoted to the Senate automatically.”
He shifted a little, looked at his mute flock. “I will see eight praetors elected every year. A plebeian man will not be able to seek election as praetor until his thirty-ninth year, but a patrician man two years sooner, as already said. There will be a two—year wait between a man’s election as praetor and his election as consul. No man will be able to stand for consul unless he has already been praetor. And I will restate the lex Genucia in the strongest terms, making it impossible for any man—patrician or plebeian!—to stand for consul a second time until after ten full years have elapsed. I will have no more Gaius Mariuses!”
And that, everyone thought, was an excellent thing!
*
But when Sulla introduced his legislation to cancel the powers of the tribunes of the plebs, approval was not so general or so strong. Over the centuries of the Republic, the tribunes of the plebs had gradually arrogated more and more legislative business unto themselves, and turned that Assembly which contained only plebeians into the most powerful of the lawmaking bodies. Often the main objective of the tribunes of the plebs had been to handicap the largely unwritten powers of the Senate, and to render the consuls less essential.
“That,” said Sulla in tones of great satisfaction, “is now all finished with. In future, tribunes of the plebs will retain little except their right to exercise the ius auxilii ferendi.’’
A huge stir; the House murmured and moved restlessly, then frowned and looked bleak.
“I will see the Senate supreme!” Sulla thundered. “To do that, I must render the tribunate of the plebs impotent—and I will! Under my new laws, no man who has been a tribune of the plebs will be able to hold any magistracy after it—he will not be able to become aedile or praetor or consul or censor! Nor will he be able to hold office as a tribune of the plebs for a second time until ten years have elapsed. He will be able to exercise the ius auxilii ferendi only in its original way, by rescuing an individual member of the Plebs from the clutches of a single magistrate. No tribune of the plebs will be able to call a law threatening the Plebs as a whole a part of that right! Or call a duly convened court a part of that right.”
Sulla’s eyes rested thoughtfully upon, oddly enough, two men who could not hold the office of tribune of the plebs because they were patricians—Catilina and Lepidus.
“The right of the tribune of the plebs to veto,” he went on, “will be severely curtailed. He will not be able to veto senatorial decrees, laws carrying senatorial approval, the right of the Senate to appoint provincial governors or military commanders, nor the right of the Senate to deal with foreign affairs. No tribune of the plebs will be allowed to promulgate a law in the Plebeian Assembly unless it has been authorized first by the Senate in passing a senatus consultum. He will no longer have the power to summon meetings of the Senate.”
There were many glum faces, quite a few angry ones; Sulla paused rather stagily to see if anyone was going to protest audibly. But no one did. He cleared his throat. “What do you have to say, Quintus Hortensius?”
Hortensius swallowed. “I concur, Lucius Cornelius.”
“Does anyone not concur?”
Silence.
“Good!” said Sulla brightly. “Then this lex Cornelia will go into law forthwith!”
“It’s horrific,” said Lepidus to Gaius Cotta afterward.
“I couldn’t agree more.”
“Then why,” demanded Catulus, “did we lie down under it so tamely? Why did we let him get away with it? How can the Republic be a genuine Republic without an active and properly constituted tribunate of the plebs?”
“Why,” asked Hortensius fiercely, taking this as a direct criticism of his own cowardice, “did you not speak out, then?”
“Because,” said Catulus frankly, “I like my head right where it is—firmly attached to my shoulders.”
“And that about sums it up,” said Lepidus.
“I can see,” said Metellus Pius, joining the group, “the logic behind it—how clever he’s been! A lesser man would simply have abolished the office, but not he! He hasn’t tampered with the ius auxilii ferendi. What he’s done is to pare away the powers added on in later times. So he can successfully argue that he’s working well within the framework of the mos maiorum—and that has been his theme in everything. Mind you, I don’t think this can possibly work. The tribunate of the plebs matters too much to too many.”
“It will last as long as he lives,” said Cotta grimly.
Upon which note, the party broke up. No one was very happy—but on the other hand, nor did anyone really want to pour his secret thoughts and feelings into another man’s ear. Too dangerous!
Which just went to show, thought Metellus Pius as he walked home alone, that Sulla’s climate of terror was working.
*
By the time Apollo’s games came round early in Quinctilis, these first laws had been
joined by two more: a lex Cornelia sumptuaria and a lex Cornelia frumentaria. The sumptuary law was extremely strict, even going so far as to fix a ceiling of thirty sesterces per head on ordinary meals, and three hundred per head on banquets. Luxuries like perfumes, foreign wines, spices and jewelry were heavily taxed; the cost of funerals and tombs was limited; and Tyrian purple carried an enormous duty. The grain law was reactionary in the extreme. It abolished the sale of cheap grain by the State, though Sulla was far too shrewd to forbid the State to sell grain; his law just said that the State could not undercut the private grain merchants.
A heavy program, by no means ended. Perhaps because the onerous task of preparing all this legislation had been going on without let since just after Sulla’s triumph, the Dictator decided on the spur of the moment to take a few days off and attend the ludi Apollinares, celebrated during early Quinctilis. The events held in the Circus Maximus were not what he wanted to see, of course; he wanted to go to the plays, of which a good ten or eleven had been scheduled in the temporary wooden theater erected within the space of the Circus Flaminius on the Campus Martius. Comedy reigned. Plautus, Terence and Naevius were well represented, but there were several mimes listed too, and these were always Sulla’s favorites. True comedy contained written lines which could not be deviated from, but the mime was just a stock situation upon which the cast and its director extrapolated their own lines, and played without masks.
Perhaps it was his interlude with Aurelia’s delegation that led to his wholehearted participation in the plays put on during Apollo’s games; or perhaps the fact that one of his ancestors had founded Apollo’s games made him decide he must show himself; or was it a need to set eyes upon the actor Metrobius? Thirty years! Could it really be that long? Metrobius had been a lad, Sulla celebrating his thirtieth birthday in bitter frustration. Since his entry into the Senate three years afterward, their meetings had been few and far apart, and filled with torment.
Sulla’s decision to deny that part of himself had been considered, obdurate, firmly based in logic. Those men in public life who admitted to—or succumbed to—a preference for their own sex were damned for it. No law compelled them to retire, though there were several laws on the tablets, including a lex Scantinia which demanded a death penalty; mostly they were not used, for there was a certain tolerance in fair men. The reality was more subtle, need not even retard the public career if the man was able. It consisted in amusement, contempt, liberal applications of wit and pun and sarcasm, and it diminished a man’s dignitas drastically. Some men who ought to be his peers would always regard him as their inferior because of it. And that to Sulla made it something he couldn’t have, no matter how badly he wanted it—and he wanted it badly. His hopes were pinned on his eventual retirement—after which, he told himself, he didn’t care one iota what men said of him. He would come into his own, he would grab eagerly at a personal reward. His accomplishments at his retirement would be tangible and formidable, his dignitas accumulated over the length of his public career too cemented to be diminished by an old man’s last sexual fling.
But oh, he longed for Metrobius! Who probably wouldn’t be interested in an old and ugly man. That too had contributed to his decision to go to the plays. Better to find out now than when the time came to retire. Better to feast his worsening eyes upon this beloved object while he could still see.
There were several companies taking part in the festival, including the one now led by Metrobius, who had changed from acting in tragedies to formal comedy some ten years ago. His group was not scheduled to perform until the third day, but Sulla was there on the first and second days, devoted to mime, and enjoyed himself enormously.
Dalmatica came with him, though she couldn’t sit with the men, as she could at the Circus; a rigid hierarchy had been established in the theater, plays not being quite approved of in Roman society. Women, it was felt, might be corrupted if they sat with men to watch so much immorality and nudity. The two front rows of seating in the semicircular, tiered cavea were reserved for members of the Senate, and the fourteen rows just behind had used to be reserved for the knights of the Public Horse. This privilege had been conferred on the senior knights by Gaius Gracchus. And it had afforded Sulla intense pleasure to take it away. Thus all knights were now forced to battle for seats among their inferiors on a first—come, first—served basis. The few women who attended sat right up the top at the back of the cavea; they could hear well enough, but had difficulty in seeing anything titillating on the stage. In formal comedy (such as Metrobius played), no women were included in the fully masked cast, but in the mimes from Atella female roles were played by women, and nobody was masked; quite often, nobody was clothed.
The third day’s play was by Plautus, and a favorite: The Vainglorious Soldier. The starring role was taken by Metrobius—how foolish! All Sulla could see of his face was the grotesque covering with its gaping mouth curving up in a ridiculous smile, though the hands were there, and the neat, muscular body looked well in its Greek armor. Of course at the end the cast took their bows with masks off; Sulla was finally able to see what the years had done to Metrobius. Very little, though the crisp black hair was exquisitely sprinkled with white, and there was a deepening fissure on either side of the straight, high—bridged Greek nose.
He couldn’t weep, not there in the very middle of the front row upon his cushioned section of the wooden seat. But he wanted to, had to fight not to. The face was too far away, separated from him by the vacant half—moon of the orchestra, and he couldn’t see the eyes. Oh, he could distinguish two black pools, but not what they held. Not even whether they rested on him, or on some current lover three rows behind. Mamercus was with Sulla; he turned to his son-in-law and said, voice a little constricted,
“Ask the man who played the miles gloriosus to come down, would you? I have a feeling I used to know him, but I’m not sure. Anyway, I’d like to congratulate him in person.”
The audience was vacating the temporary wooden structure, and the women present were wending their way toward their spouses if they were respectable women, or trolling for business if they were prostitutes. Carefully escorted by Chrysogonus—and very carefully avoided by those in the audience who recognized them—Dalmatica and Cornelia Sulla joined the Dictator and Mamercus just as Metrobius, still in armor, finally arrived before Sulla.
“You did very well, actor,” said the Dictator.
Metrobius smiled to reveal that he still had perfect teeth. “I was delighted to see you in the audience, Lucius Cornelius.”
“You were a client of mine once, am I right?”
“Indeed I was. You released me from my cliental obligations just before you went to the war against Mithridates,” said the actor, eyes giving nothing away.
“Yes, I remember that. You warned me of the charges one Censorinus would try to bring against me. Just before my son died.” The wrecked face squeezed up, straightened with an effort. “Before I was consul, it was.”
“A happy chance that I could warn you,” said Metrobius.
“A lucky one for me.”
“You were always one of Fortune’s favorites.”
The theater was just about empty; weary of these continuing platitudes, Sulla swung to face the women and Mamercus.
“Go home,” he said abruptly. “I wish to talk with my old client for a while.”
Dalmatica (who had not been looking well of recent days) seemed fascinated with the Greek thespian, and stood with her eyes fixed on his face. Then Chrysogonus intruded himself into her reverie; she started, turned away to follow the pair of gigantic German slaves whose duty it was to clear a path for the Dictator’s wife wherever she went.
Sulla and Metrobius were left alone to follow too far behind for anyone to think they belonged to the same party. Under normal circumstances the Dictator would have been approached by clients and petitioners, but such was his luck that no one did approach.
“Just this stroll,” Sulla said. “I ask nothin
g more.”
“Ask what you will,” said Metrobius.
Sulla stopped. “Stand here in front of me, Metrobius, and see what time and illness have done. The position hasn’t changed. But even if it had, I am no use to you or to anyone else except these poor silly women who persist in—oh, who knows? Pitying me, in all probability. I don’t think it can be love.”
“Of course it’s love!” He was close now, close enough for Sulla to see that the eyes still held love, still looked at him with tenderness. And with a dynamic kind of interest unspoiled by disgust or revulsion. A softer, more personal version of the way Aurelia had looked at him in Teanum Sidicinum. “Sulla, those of us who have once fallen under your spell can never be free of you! Women or men, there is no difference. You are unique. After you, all others pale. It’s not a matter of virtue or goodness.” Metrobius smiled. “You have neither! Maybe no great man is virtuous. Or good. Perhaps a man rich in those qualities by definition is barred from greatness. I have forgotten all my Plato, so I am not sure what he and Socrates have to say about it.”
Out of the corner of his eye Sulla noticed Dalmatica turn back to stare in his direction, but what her face displayed he could not tell at the distance. Then she went round the corner, and was gone.
“Does what you say mean,” asked the Dictator, “that if I am allowed to put down this present burden, you would consider living with me until I die? My time grows short, but I hope at least some of it will be mine alone to spend without consideration of Rome. If you would go with me into retirement, I promise you would not suffer in any way—least of all financially.”
A laugh, a shake of the curly dark head. “Oh, Sulla! How can you buy what you have owned for thirty years?”
The tears welled, were blinked away. “Then when I retire, you will come with me?”
“I will.”
“When the time comes I’ll send for you.”
“Tomorrow? Next year?”
Masters of Rome Boxset: First Man in Rome, the Grass Crown, Fortune's Favourites, Caesar's Women, Caesar Page 280
