“Two thousand talents is a vast sum. In fact, one thousand talents is a vast sum.”
“That’s true.” The gross little mouth peeled its thick lips back to reveal Hybrida’s small and perfect white teeth. “I am not a fool, Staienus! If I agree to split the two thousand talents equally with you, you’ll guarantee to get me off. Is that right?”
“That’s right.”
“Then I agree. You get me off, and one thousand of those Greek talents are yours.”
“It’s simple, really,” said Staienus thoughtfully. “You have Sulla to thank for it, of course. But he’s dead, so he won’t care if you thank me instead.”
“Stop tormenting me and tell me!”
“Oh, yes! I forgot that you prefer to torment others than be tormented yourself.” Like many small men suddenly given a position of power, Staienus was incapable of concealing his pleasure at owning power, even though this meant that when the affair was over, so was his friendship with Hybrida. No matter how successful his ploy. But he didn’t care. A thousand talents was reward enough. What was friendship with a creature like Hybrida anyway?
“Tell me, Staienus, or get out!”
“The ius auxilii ferendi” was what Staienus said.
“Well, what about it?”
“The original function of the tribunes of the plebs, and the only function Sulla didn’t take off them—to rescue a member of the plebs from the hands of a magistrate.”
“The ius auxilii ferendi!” cried Hybrida, amazed. For a moment his pouting face lightened, then darkened again. “They wouldn’t do it,” he said.
“They might,” said Staienus.
“Not Sicinius! Never Sicinius! All it takes is one veto within the college and the other nine tribunes of the plebs are powerless. Sicinius wouldn’t stand for it, Staienus. He’s a wretched nuisance, but he’s not bribable.”
“Sicinius,” said Staienus happily, “is not popular with any of his nine colleagues. He’s made such a thorough nuisance of himself—and stolen their thunder in the Forum!—that they’re sick to death of him. In fact the day before yesterday I heard two of them threaten to throw him off the Tarpeian Rock unless he shut up about restoring their rights.”
“You mean Sicinius could be intimidated?”
“Yes. Definitely. Of course you’ll have to find a goodly sum of cash between now and tomorrow morning, because none of them will be in it unless they’re well rewarded. But you can do that—especially with a thousand talents coming in because of it.”
“How much?’’ asked Hybrida.
“Nine times fifty thousand sesterces. That’s four hundred and fifty thousand. Can you do it?”
“I can try. I’ll go to my brother, he doesn’t want scandal in the family. And there are a few other sources. Yes, Staienus, I believe I can do it.”
And so it was arranged. Gaius Aelius Staienus had a busy evening bustling from the house of one tribune of the plebs to another—Marcus Atilius Bulbus, Manius Aquillius, Quintus Curius, Publius Popillius, and on through nine of the ten. He did not go near the house of Gnaeus Sicinius.
The hearing was due to recommence two hours after dawn; by then the Forum Romanum had already experienced high drama, so it promised to be quite a day for the Forum frequenters, who were ecstatic. Just after dawn his nine fellow tribunes of the plebs had ganged up on Gnaeus Sicinius and physically hauled him to the top of the Capitol, where they beat him black and blue, then held him over the end of the overhanging ledge called the Tarpeian Rock and let him look down at the needle—sharp outcrop below. No more of this perpetual agitating to see the powers of the tribunate of the plebs restored! they cried to him as he dangled, and got an oath from him that he would in future do as his nine colleagues told him. Sicinius was then packed off home in a litter.
And not more than a very few moments after Cethegus opened the second day’s proceedings in the suit against Hybrida, nine tribunes of the plebs descended upon Varro Lucullus’s tribunal shouting that a member of the Plebs was being detained against his will by a magistrate.
“I appeal to you to exercise the ius auxilii ferendi!” cried Hybrida, arms extended piteously.
“Marcus Terentius Varro Lucullus, we have been appealed to by a member of the Plebs to exercise the ius auxilii ferendi!” said Manius Aquillius. “I hereby notify you that we so exercise it!”
“This is a manifest outrage!” Varro Lucullus shouted, leaping to his feet. “I refuse to allow you to exercise that right! Where is the tenth tribune?”
“At home in bed, very sick,” sneered Manius Aquillius, “but you can send to him if you like. He won’t veto us.”
“You transgress justice!” yelled Cethegus. “An outrage! A shame! A scandal! How much has Hybrida paid you?”
“Release Gaius Antonius Hybrida, or we will take hold of every last man who objects and throw him from the Tarpeian Rock!” cried Manius Aquillius.
“You are obstructing justice!” said Varro Lucullus.
“There can be no justice in a magistrate’s court, as you well know, Varro Lucullus,” said Quintus Curius. “One man is not a jury! If you wish to proceed against Gaius Antonius, then do so in a criminal court, where the ius auxilii ferendi does not apply!”
Caesar stood without moving, nor did he try to object. His clients huddled in his rear, shivering. Face stony, he turned to them and said softly, “I am a patrician, and not a magistrate. We must let the praetor peregrinus deal with this. Say nothing!”
“Very well, take your member of the Plebs!” said Varro Lucullus, hand on Cethegus’s arm to restrain him.
“And,” said Gaius Antonius Hybrida, standing in the midst of nine tribunes of the plebs bent on war, “since I have won the case, I will take the sponsio lodged by our Greek—loving Caesar’s clients here.”
The reference to Greek love was a deliberate slur which brought back to Caesar in one red flash all the pain of that accusation concerning King Nicomedes. Without hesitating, he walked through the ranks of the tribunes of the plebs and took Hybrida’s throat between his hands. Hybrida had always considered himself a Hercules among men, but he could neither break the hold nor manage to come at his taller assailant, whose strength he would not have believed were he not its victim. It took Varro Lucullus and his six lictors to drag Caesar off him, though some men in the crowd wondered afterward at the inertia of the nine tribunes of the plebs, who made no move to help Hybrida at all.
“This case is dismissed!” bawled Varro Lucullus at the top of his lungs. “There is no suit! I, Marcus Terentius Varro Lucullus, so declare it! Plaintiffs, take back your sponsio! And every last mother’s son of you go home!”
“The sponsio! The sponsio belongs to Gaius Antonius!” cried another voice: Gaius Aelius Staienus.
“It does not belong to Hybrida!” Cethegus yelled. “The case has been dismissed by the praetor peregrinus, in whose jurisdiction it lies! The sponsio returns to its owners, there is no wager!”
“Will you take your member of the Plebs and quit my tribunal!” said Varro Lucullus through his teeth to the tribunes of the plebs. “Go, get out of here, all of you! And I take leave to tell you that you have done the cause of the tribunate of the plebs no good by this scandalous miscarriage of its original purpose! I will do my utmost to keep you muzzled forever!”
Off went the nine men with Hybrida, Staienus trailing after them howling for the lost sponsio, Hybrida tenderly feeling his bruised throat.
While the excited crowd milled, Varro Lucullus and Caesar looked at each other.
“I would have loved to let you strangle the brute, but I hope you understand that I could not,” said Varro Lucullus.
“I understand,” said Caesar, still shaking. “I thought I was well in control! I’m not a hot man, you know. But I don’t care for excrement like Hybrida calling me a deviate.”
“That’s obvious,” said Varro Lucullus dryly, remembering what his brother had had to say on the subject.
Caesar too now paused to
recollect whose brother he was with, but decided that Varro Lucullus was quite capable of making up his own mind.
“Do you believe,” said Cicero, rushing up now that the violence appeared to be at an end, “the gall of that worm? To demand the sponsio, by all the gods!”
“It takes a lot of gall to do that,” said Caesar, pointing to the mutilated man and his spokeswoman wife.
“Disgusting!” cried Cicero, sitting down on the steps of the tribunal and mopping his face with his handkerchief.
“Well,” said Caesar to Iphicrates, who hovered uncertainly, “at least we managed to save your two thousand talents. And I would say that if what you wanted was to create a stir in Rome, you have succeeded. I think the Senate will be very careful in future whom it sends to govern Macedonia. Now go back to your inn, and take those poor unfortunates with you. I’m just sorry that the citizens of their towns will have to continue supporting them. But I did warn you.”
“I am sorry about only one thing,” said Iphicrates, moving away. “That we failed to punish Gaius Antonius Hybrida.”
“We didn’t succeed in ruining him financially,” said Caesar, “but he will have to leave Rome. It will be a long time before he dares to show his face in this city again.”
“Do you think,” asked Cicero, “that Hybrida actually bribed nine tribunes of the plebs?’’
“I for one am sure of it!” snapped Cethegus, whose anger was slow to cool. “Apart from Sicinius—little though I love that man!—this year’s tribunes of the plebs are a shabby lot!”
“Why should they be splendid?” asked Caesar, whose anger had cooled completely. “There’s no glory to be had in the office these days. It’s a dead end.”
“I wonder,” asked Cicero, loath to abandon the direction of his thoughts, “how much nine tribunes of the plebs cost Hybrida?”
Cethegus pursed his lips. “About forty thousand each.”
Varro Lucullus’s eyes danced. “You speak with such absolute authority, Cethegus! How do you know?”
The King of the Backbenchers set his ire aside; it did not become his style, though, he assured himself, it was excusable. He proceeded to answer the foreign praetor with raised brows and the customary drawl in his voice. “My dear praetor peregrinus, there is nothing I do not know about the cupidity of senators! I could give you every bribable senator’s price down to the last sestertius. And for that shabby lot, forty thousand each.”
And that, as Hybrida was busy discovering, was what Gaius Aelius Staienus had paid; he had kept ninety thousand sesterces for himself.
“Give them back!” said the man who loved to torture and mutilate his fellow men. “Give the extra money back, Staienus, or I’ll tear your eyes out with my own fingers! I’ll be three hundred and sixty thousand sesterces out of purse as it is—you and your two thousand talents!”
“Don’t forget,” said the uncowed Staienus, looking vicious, “that it was my idea to use the ius auxulii ferendi. I’ll keep the ninety thousand. As for you—thank all the gods that you’re not stripped of your whole fortune!”
*
The sensation of the almost—hearing took some time to die away, and there were several long—lasting results of it. One was that that year’s College of Tribunes of the Plebs went down in the annals of political diarists as the most shameful ever; one other was that Macedonia did remain in the hands of responsible—if warlike—governors; Gnaeus Sicinius spoke no more in the Forum about restoring its full powers to the tribunate of the plebs; Caesar’s fame as an advocate soared; and Gaius Antonius Hybrida absented himself from Rome and the places Romans frequented for several years. In fact, he went on a little trip to the island of Cephallenia in the Ionian Sea, where he found himself the only civilized man (if such he could be called) in the whole region, and discovered too several incredibly ancient grave mounds rilled with treasure—exquisitely chased and inlaid daggers, masks made of pure gold, electrum flagons, rock—crystal cups, heaps of jewelry. Greater by far in value than two thousand talents. Great enough to assure him the consulship when he returned home, if he had to buy every single vote.
*
No stirring incidents enlivened the next year for Caesar, who remained in Rome and practiced as an advocate with resounding success. Cicero was not in Rome that year, however. Elected quaestor, he drew the lot for Lilybaeum in western Sicily, where he would work under the governor, Sextus Peducaeus. As his quaestorship meant he was now a member of the Senate, he was willing to leave Rome (though he had hoped for a job within Italy, and cursed his luck in the lots) and plunge himself enthusiastically into his work, which was mostly to do with the grain supply. It was a poor year, but the consuls had dealt with the coming shortage in an effective way; they bought huge quantities of grain still in storage in Sicily, and sold it cheaply in Rome by enacting a lex frumentaria.
Like almost everyone else literate, Cicero adored both to write and receive letters, and had been an avid correspondent for many years before this one, his thirty-first. But it was to this time in western Sicily that the enduring focus of his epistolary efforts was to date; that is, the steady flow of letters between him and the erudite plutocrat, Titus Pomponius Atticus. Thanks to Atticus, the loneliness of those many months in insular Lilybaeum was alleviated by a steady flow of information and gossip about everything and everyone in Rome.
Said Atticus in a missive sent toward the end of Cicero’s Sicilian exile:
The expected food riots never happened, only because Rome is fortunate in her consuls. I had a few words with Gaius Cotta’s brother, Marcus, who is now consul—elect for next year. In this nation of clever men, I asked, why are the common people still obliged from time to time to subsist on millet and turnips? It is high time, I said, that Rome levied against the private growers of Sicily and our other grain provinces and forced them to sell to the State rather than hang on for higher prices from the private grain merchants, for all too often that simply means the grain sits ensiloed in Sicily when it ought to be feeding the common people. I disapprove of stockpiling for profit when that affects the well-being of a nation full of clever men. Marcus Cotta listened to me with great attention, and promised to do something about it next year. As I do not have shares in grain, I can afford to be patriotic and altruistic. And stop laughing, Marcus Tullius.
Quintus Hortensius, our most self-important plebeian aedile in a generation, has given magnificent games. Along with a free distribution of grain to the populace. He intends to be consul in his year! Of course your absence has meant he is enjoying a high time of it in the law courts, but young Caesar always manages to give him a fright, and often filches his laurels. He doesn’t like it, and was heard to complain the other day that he wished Caesar would depart from Rome too. But those bits of Hortensical nonsense are as nothing compared to the banquet he gave on the occasion of his (yes, it has finally happened!) inauguration as an augur. He served roast peacock. You read aright: roast peacock. The birds (six of them all told) had been roasted and carved down to the eunuch’s nose, then the cooks somehow reassembled all the feathers over the top, so that they were carried in head—high on golden platters in all their fine plumage, tails fanned out and crests nodding. It created a sensation, and other gourmets like Cethegus, Philippus and the senior consul—elect, Lucullus, sat there contemplating suicide. However, dear Marcus, the actual eating of the birds was an anticlimax. An old army boot would have tasted—and chewed!—better.
The death of Appius Claudius Pulcher in Macedonia last year has led to a most amusing situation. That family never seems to have much luck, does it? First, nephew Philippus when he was censor stripped Appius Claudius of everything, then Appius Claudius wasn’t enterprising enough to buy up big at the proscription auctions, then he became too ill to govern his province, then he caps a bitter life by getting to his province at last, doing very well in military terms, and expiring before he could fix his fortune.
The six children he has left behind we all know only too well, of cours
e. Frightful! Especially the youngest members. But Appius Claudius, the oldest son, is turning out to be very clever and enterprising.
First, the moment his father’s back was turned he gave the oldest girl, Claudia, to Quintus Marcius Rex, though she had no dowry whatsoever. I believe Rex paid through the nose for her! Like all the Claudii Pulchri she is a ravishing piece of goods, and that certainly helped. We expect that Rex will fare reasonably well as her husband, as she is reputed to be the only one of the three girls with a nice disposition.
Three boys are a difficulty, no one denies that. And adoption is out of the question. The youngest boy (who calls himself plain Publius Clodius) is so repulsive and wild that no one can be found willing to adopt him. Gaius Claudius, the middle boy, is an oaf. Unadoptable too. So there is young Appius Claudius, just twenty years of age, obliged to fund not only his own career in the Senate, but the careers of two younger brothers as well. What Quintus Marcius Rex was compelled to contribute can be but a drop in the empty Claudius Pulcher bucket.
Yet he has done remarkably well, dear Marcus Tullius. Knowing that he would be refused by every tata with a grain of sense, he looked around for a rich bride and went a—wooing—guess who? None other than that dismally plain spinster, Servilia Gnaea! You know who I mean—she was, you might say, hired by Scaurus and Mamercus to live with Drusus’s six orphans. Had no dowry and the most terrifying mother in Rome, a Porcia Liciniana. But it appears Scaurus and Mamercus dowered Gnaea with a full two hundred talents to be paid to her the moment Drusus’s orphans were all grown. And they are grown! Marcus Porcius Cato, the youngest of the brood, aged eighteen at the moment, lives in his father’s house and has declared his independence.
When the twenty-year-old Appius Claudius Pulcher came a—wooing, Servilia Gnaea grabbed him. She is, they say, all of thirty-two years old now, and an old maid to her core. I do not believe the rumor that she shaves! Her mother does, but that everybody knows. The best part about Appius Claudius’s bargain is that his mother-in-law, the aforementioned Porcia Liciniana, has retired to a commodious seaside villa which, it seems, Scaurus and Mamercus bought against this day at the time they hired the daughter. So Appius Claudius does not have to live with his mother-in-law. The two hundred talents will come in handy.
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