“A man always needs a tribune of the plebs or two, Caesar.”
“Does he now? What are you up to, Magnus?”
The vivid blue eyes opened wide, and the glance Pompey gave Caesar was guileless. “I’m not up to anything.”
“Oh! Look!” cried Caesar, pointing at the sky. “Did you see it, Magnus?”
“See what?” asked Pompey, scanning the clouds.
“That bright pink pig flying like an eagle.”
“You don’t believe me.”
“Correct, I don’t believe you. Why not make a clean breast of it? I’m not your enemy, as you well know. In fact, I’ve been of enormous help to you in the past, and there’s no reason why I oughtn’t help your career along in the future. I’m not a bad orator, you have to admit that.”
“Well…” began Pompey, then fell silent.
“Well what?”
Pompey stopped, glanced behind at the crowd of clients who followed in their wake, shook his head, and detoured slightly to lean against one of the pretty marble columns which propped up the arcade outside the Basilica Aemilia’s main chamber. Understanding that this was Pompey’s way of avoiding eavesdroppers, Caesar ranged himself alongside the Great Man to listen while the horde of clients remained, eyes glistening and dying of curiosity, too far away to hear a word.
“What if one of them can read our lips?’’ asked Caesar.
“You’re joking again!”
“Not really. But we could always turn our backs on them and pretend we’re pissing into Aemilia’s front passage.”
That was too much; Pompey cried with laughter. However, when he sobered, noted Caesar, he did turn sufficiently away from their audience to present his profile to it, and moved his lips as furtively as a Forum vendor of pornography.
“As a matter of fact,” muttered Pompey, “I do have one good fellow among the candidates this year.”
“Aulus Gabinius?”
“How did you guess that?”
“He hails from Picenum, and he was one of your personal staff in Spain. Besides, he’s a good friend of mine. We were junior military tribunes together at the siege of Mitylene.” Caesar pulled a wry face. “Gabinius didn’t like Bibulus either, and the years haven’t made him any fonder of the boni.”
“Gabinius is the best of good fellows,” said Pompey.
“And remarkably capable.”
“That too.”
“What’s he going to legislate for you? Strip Lucullus’s command off him and hand it to you on a golden salver?”
“No, no!” snapped Pompey. “It’s too soon for that! First I need a short campaign to warm my muscles up.”
“The pirates,” said Caesar instantly.
“Right this time! The pirates it is.”
Caesar bent his right knee to tuck its leg against his column and looked as if nothing more was going on than a nice chat about old times. “I applaud you, Magnus. That’s not only very clever, it’s also very necessary.”
“You’re not impressed with Metellus Little Goat in Crete?”
“The man’s a pigheaded fool, and venal into the bargain. He wasn’t brother-in-law to Verres for nothing—in more ways than one. With three good legions, he barely managed to win a land battle against twenty-four thousand motley and untrained Cretans who were led by sailors rather than soldiers.”
“Terrible,” said Pompey, shaking his head gloomily. “I ask you, Caesar, what’s the point in fighting land battles when the pirates operate at sea? All very well to say that it’s their land bases you need to eradicate, but unless you catch them at sea you can’t destroy their livelihood—their ships. Modern naval warfare isn’t like Troy, you can’t burn their ships drawn up on the shore. While most of them are holding you off, the rest form skeleton crews and row the fleet elsewhere.”
“Yes,” said Caesar, nodding, “that’s where everyone has made his mistake so far, from both Antonii to Vatia Isauricus. Burning villages and sacking towns. The task needs a man with a true talent for organization.”
“Exactly!” cried Pompey. “And I am that man, I promise you! If my self-inflicted inertia of the last couple of years has been good for nothing else, it has given me time to think. In Spain I just lowered my horns and charged blindly into the fray. What I ought to have done was work out how to win the war before I set one foot out of Mutina. I should have investigated everything beforehand, not merely how to blaze a new route across the Alps. Then I would have known how many legions I needed, how many horse troopers, how much money in my war chest—and I would have learned to understand my enemy. Quintus Sertorius was a brilliant tactician. But, Caesar, you don’t win wars on tactics. Strategy is the thing, strategy!”
“So you’ve been doing your homework on the pirates, Magnus?”
“Indeed I have. Exhaustively. Every single aspect, from the largest to the smallest. Maps, spies, ships, money, men. I know how to do the job,” said Pompey, displaying a different kind of confidence than he used to own. Spain had been Kid Butcher’s last campaign. In future he would be no butcher of any sort.
Thus Caesar watched the ten tribunes of the plebs elected with great interest. Aulus Gabinius was a certainty, and indeed came in at the top of the poll, which meant he would be president of the new College of Tribunes of the Plebs which would enter office on the tenth day of this coming December.
Because the tribunes of the plebs enacted most new laws and were traditionally the only legislators who liked to see change, every powerful faction in the Senate needed to “own” at least one tribune of the plebs. Including the boni, who used their men to block all new legislation; the most powerful weapon a tribune of the plebs had was the veto, which he could exercise against his fellows, against all other magistrates, and even against the Senate. That meant the tribunes of the plebs who belonged to the boni would not enact new laws, they would veto them. And of course the boni succeeded in having three men elected—Globulus, Trebellius and Otho. None was a brilliant man, but then a boni tribune of the plebs didn’t need to be brilliant; he simply needed to be able to articulate the word “Veto!”
Pompey had two excellent men in the new College to pursue his ends. Aulus Gabinius might be relatively ancestorless and a poor man, but he would go far; Caesar had known that as far back as the siege of Mitylene. Naturally Pompey’s other man was also from Picenum: a Gaius Cornelius who was not a patrician any more than he was a member of the venerable gens Cornelia. Perhaps he was not as tied to Pompey as Gabinius was, but he certainly would not veto any plebiscite Gabinius might propose to the Plebs.
Interesting though all of this was for Caesar, the one man elected who worried him the most was tied neither to the boni nor to Pompey the Great. He was Gaius Papirius Carbo, a radical sort of man with his own axe to grind. For some time he had been heard to say in the Forum that he intended to prosecute Caesar’s uncle, Marcus Aurelius Cotta, for the illegal retention of booty taken from Heracleia during Marcus Cotta’s campaign in Bithynia against Rome’s old enemy, King Mithridates. Marcus Cotta had returned in triumph toward the end of that famous joint consulship of Pompey and Crassus, and no one had questioned his integrity then. Now this Carbo was busy muddying old waters, and as a tribune of the fully restored Plebs he would be empowered to try Marcus Cotta in a specially convened Plebeian Assembly court. Because Caesar loved and admired his Uncle Marcus, Carbo’s election was a big worry.
The last ballot tile counted, the ten victorious men stood on the rostra acknowledging the cheers; Caesar turned away and plodded home. He was tired: too little sleep, too much Servilia. They had not met again until the day after the elections in the Popular Assembly some six days earlier, and, as predicted, both had something to celebrate. Caesar was curator of the Via Appia (“What on earth possessed you to take that job on?’’ Appius Claudius Pulcher had demanded, astonished. “It’s my ancestor’s road, but that big a fool I am not! You’ll be poor in a year”), and Servilia’s so-called full brother Caepio had been elected one of twe
nty quaestors. The lots had given him duty inside Rome as urban quaestor, which meant he didn’t have to serve in a province.
So they had met in a mood of satisfaction as well as mutual anticipation, and had found their day in bed together so immensely pleasurable that neither of them was willing to postpone another. They met every day for a feast of lips, tongues, skin, and every day found something new to do, something fresh to explore. Until today, when more elections rendered a meeting impossible. Nor would they find time again until perhaps the Kalends of September, for Silanus was taking Servilia, Brutus and the girls to the seaside resort of Cumae, where he had a villa. Silanus too had been successful in this year’s elections; he was to be urban praetor next year. That very important magistracy would raise Servilia’s public profile too; among other things, she was hoping that her house would be chosen for the women-only rites of Bona Dea, when Rome’s most illustrious matrons put the Good Goddess to sleep for the winter.
And it was time too that he told Julia that he had arranged her marriage. The formal ceremony of betrothal would not take place until after Brutus donned his toga virilis in December, but the legalities were done, Julia’s fate was sealed. Why he had put the task off when such was never his custom niggled at the back of his mind; he had asked Aurelia to break the news, but Aurelia, a stickler for domestic protocol, had refused. He was the paterfamilias; he must do it. Women! Why did there have to be so many women in his life, and why did he think the future held even more of them? Not to mention more trouble because of them?
Julia had been playing with Matia, the daughter of his dear friend Gaius Matius, who occupied the other ground-floor apartment in Aurelia’s insula. However, she came home sufficiently ahead of the dinner hour for him to find no further excuse for not telling her, dancing across the light-well garden like a young nymph, draperies floating around her immature figure in a mist of lavender blue. Aurelia always dressed her in soft pale blues or greens, and she was right to do so. How beautiful she will be, he thought, watching her; perhaps not the equal of Aurelia for Grecian purity of bones, but she had that magical Julia quality which Aurelia, so pragmatic and sensible and Cottan, did not. They always said of the Julias that they made their men happy, and he could believe that every time he saw his daughter. The adage was not infallible; his younger aunt (who had been Sulla’s first wife) had committed suicide after a long affair with the wine flagon, and his cousin Julia Antonia was on her second ghastly husband amid increasing bouts of depression and hysterics. Yet Rome continued to say it, and he was not about to contradict it; every nobleman with sufficient wealth not to need a rich bride thought first of a Julia.
When she saw her father leaning on the sill of the dining room window her face lit up; she came flying across to him and managed to make her scramble up and over the wall into his arms a graceful exercise.
“How’s my girl?” he asked, carrying her across to one of the three dining couches, and putting her down beside him.
“I’ve had a lovely day, tata. Did all the right people get in as tribunes of the plebs?”
The outer corners of his eyes pleated into fans of creases as he smiled; though his skin was naturally very pale, many years of an outdoor life in forums and courts and fields of military endeavor had browned its exposed surfaces, except in the depths of those creases at his eyes, where it remained very white. This contrast fascinated Julia, who liked him best when he wasn’t in the midst of a smile or a squint, and displayed his fans of white stripes like warpaint on a barbarian. So she got up on her knees and kissed first one fan and then the other, while he leaned his head toward her lips and melted inside as he never had for any other female, even Cinnilla.
“You know very well,” he answered her, the ritual over, “that all the right people never get in as tribunes of the plebs. The new College is the usual mixture of good, bad, indifferent, ominous and intriguing. But I do think they’ll be more active than this year’s lot, so the Forum will be busy around the New Year.”
She was well versed in political matters, of course, since both father and grandmother were from great political families, but living in the Subura meant her playmates (even Matia next door) were not of the same kind, had scant interest in the machinations and permutations of Senate, Assemblies, courts. For that reason Aurelia had sent her to Marcus Antonius Gnipho’s school when she turned six; Gnipho had been Caesar’s private tutor, but when Caesar donned the laena and apex of the flamen Dialis on arrival of his official manhood, Gnipho had returned to conducting a school with a noble clientele. Julia had proven a very bright and willing pupil, with the same love of literature her father owned, though in mathematics and geography her ability was less marked. Nor did she have Caesar’s astonishing memory. A good thing, all who loved her had concluded wisely; quick and clever girls were excellent, but intellectual and brilliant girls were a handicap, not least to themselves.
“Why are we in here, tata?” she asked, a little puzzled.
“I have some news for you that I’d like to tell you in a quiet place,” said Caesar, not lost for how to do it now that he had made up his mind to do it.
“Good news?”
“I don’t quite know, Julia. I hope so, but I don’t live inside your skin, only you do that. Perhaps it won’t be such good news, but I think after you get used to it you won’t find it intolerable.”
Because she was quick and clever, even if she wasn’t a born scholar, she understood immediately. “You’ve arranged a husband for me,” she said.
“I have. Does that please you?”
“Very much, tata. Junia is betrothed, and lords it over all of us who aren’t. Who is it?”
“Junia’s brother, Marcus Junius Brutus.”
He was looking into her eyes, so he caught the swift flash of a creature stricken before she turned her head away and gazed straight ahead. Her throat worked, she swallowed.
“Doesn’t that please you?” he asked, heart sinking.
“It’s a surprise, that’s all,” said Aurelia’s granddaughter, who had been reared from her cradle to accept every lot Fate cast her way, from husbands to the very real hazards of childbearing. Her head came round, the wide blue eyes were smiling now. “I’m very pleased. Brutus is nice.”
“You’re sure?”
“Oh, tata, of course I’m sure!” she said, so sincerely that her voice shook. “Truly, tata, it’s good news. Brutus will love me and take care of me, I know that.”
The weight of his heart eased, he sighed, smiled, took her little hand and kissed it lightly before enfolding her in a hug. It never occurred to him to ask her if she could learn to love Brutus, for love was not an emotion Caesar enjoyed, even the love he had known for Cinnilla and for this exquisite sprite. To feel it left him vulnerable, and he hated that.
Then she skipped off the couch and was gone; he could hear her calling in the distance as she sped to Aurelia’s office.
“Avia, avia, I am to marry my friend Brutus! Isn’t that splendid? Isn’t that good news?”
Then came the long-drawn-out moan that heralded a bout of tears. Caesar listened to his daughter weep as if her heart was broken, and knew not whether joy or sorrow provoked it. He came out into the reception room as Aurelia ushered the child toward her sleeping cubicle, face buried in Aurelia’s side.
His mother’s face was unperturbed. “I do wish,” she said in his direction, “that female creatures laughed when they’re happy! Instead, a good half of them cry. Including Julia.”
2
Fortune certainly continued to favor Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus, reflected Caesar early in December, smiling to himself. The Great Man had indicated a wish to eradicate the pirate menace, and Fortune obediently connived to gratify him when the Sicilian grain harvest arrived in Ostia, Rome’s port facility at the mouth of the Tiber River. Here the deep-drafted freighters unloaded their precious cargo into barges for the final leg of the grain journey up the Tiber to the silo facilities of the Port of Rome itself. Here was abs
olute security, home at last.
Several hundred ships converged on Ostia to discover no barges waiting; the quaestor for Ostia had mistimed things so badly that he had allowed the barges an extra trip upstream to Tuder and Ocriculum, where the Tiber Valley harvest was demanding transportation downstream to Rome. So while captains and grain tycoons fulminated and the hapless quaestor ran in ever-decreasing circles, an irate Senate directed the sole consul, Quintus Marcius Rex, to rectify matters forthwith.
It had been a miserable year for Marcius Rex, whose consular colleague had died soon after entering office. The Senate had immediately appointed a suffect consul to take his place, but he too died, and too quickly even to insert his posterior into his curule chair. A hurried consultation of the Sacred Books indicated that no further measures ought to be taken, which left Marcius Rex to govern alone. This had utterly ruined his plan to proceed during his consulship to his province, Cilicia, bestowed on him when hordes of lobbying knight businessmen had succeeded in having it taken off Lucullus.
Now, just when Marcius Rex was hoping to leave for Cilicia at last, came the grain shambles in Ostia. Red with temper, he detached two praetors from their law courts in Rome and sent them posthaste to Ostia to sort things out. Each preceded by six lictors in red tunics bearing the axes in their fasces, Lucius Bellienus and Marcus Sextilius bore down on Ostia from the direction of Rome. And at precisely the same moment, a pirate fleet numbering over one hundred sleek war galleys bore down on Ostia from the Tuscan Sea.
The two praetors arrived to find half the town burning, and pirates busily forcing the crews of laden grain ships to row their vessels back onto the sea lanes. The audacity of this raid—whoever could have dreamed that pirates would invade a place scant miles from mighty Rome?—had taken everyone by surprise. No troops were closer than Capua, Ostia’s militia was too concerned with putting out fires on shore to think of marshaling resistance, and no one had even had the sense to send an urgent message for help to Rome.
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