Caesar had decorated the whole of the Circus Maximus, and gone one better than for any of his other entertainments by using millions of fresh flowers. As Romans adored flowers, the vast audience was ravished almost to swooning point, drowned in the perfume of roses, violets, stocks, wallflowers. He served free refreshments, thought of novelties of all kinds from rope walkers to fire belchers to scantily clad women who seemed to be able almost to turn themselves inside out.
Each day of the games saw something else new and different, and the chariot races were superb.
Said Bibulus to any who remembered him enough to comment, “He told me I’d be Pollux to his Castor. How right he was! I may as well have saved my precious three hundred talents—they only served to pour food and wine down two hundred thousand greedy throats, while he took the credit for the rest.”
Said Cicero to Caesar, “On the whole I dislike games, but I must confess yours were splendid. To have the most lavish in history is laudable enough in one way, but what I really liked about your games was that they weren’t vulgar.”
Said Titus Pomponius Atticus, knight plutocrat, to Marcus Licinius Crassus, senatorial plutocrat, “It was brilliant. He managed to give business to everybody. What a year the flower growers and wholesalers have had! They’ll vote for him for the rest of his political career. Not to mention bakers, millers—oh, very, very clever!”
And said young Caepio Brutus to Julia, “Uncle Cato is really disgusted. Of course he is a great friend of Bibulus’s. But why is it that your father always has to make such a splash?”
*
Cato loathed Caesar.
When he had finally returned to Rome at the time Caesar took up his duties as curule aedile, he executed his brother Caepio’s will. This necessitated a visit to see Servilia and Brutus, who at almost eighteen years of age was well embarked on his Forum career, though he had undertaken no court case yet.
“I dislike the fact that you are now a patrician, Quintus Servilius,” said Cato, punctilious in his use of the correct name, “but as I was not willing to be anyone other than a Porcius Cato, I suppose I must approve.” He leaned forward abruptly. “What are you doing in the Forum? You should be in the field with someone’s army, like your friend Gaius Cassius.”
“Brutus,” said Servilia stiffly, emphasizing the name, “has received an exemption.”
“No one ought to be exempt unless he’s crippled.”
“His chest is weak,” said Servilia.
“His chest would soon improve if he got out and did his legal duty, which is to serve in the legions. So would his skin.”
“Brutus will go when I consider him well enough.”
“Doesn’t he have a tongue?” Cato demanded, but not in the fierce way he would have before leaving for the East, though it still came out aggressively. “Can’t he speak for himself? You smother this boy, Servilia, and that is un-Roman.”
To all of which Brutus listened mumchance, and in a severe dilemma. On the one hand he longed to see his mother lose this—or any other—battle, but on the other hand he dreaded military duty. Cassius had gone off gladly, while Brutus developed a cough which kept getting worse. It hurt to see himself lessened in his Uncle Cato’s eyes, but Uncle Cato didn’t tolerate weakness or frailty of any kind, and Uncle Cato, winner of many decorations for valor in battle, would never understand people who didn’t thrill when they picked up a sword. So now he began to cough, a thick hacking sound which started at the base of his chest and reverberated all the way to his throat. That of course produced copious phlegm, which enabled him to look wildly from his mother to his uncle, mumble an excuse, and leave.
“See what you’ve done?” asked Servilia, teeth bared.
“He needs exercise and a bit of life in the open air. I also suspect you’re quacking his skin, it looks appalling.”
“Brutus is not your responsibility!”
“Under the terms of Caepio’s will, he most certainly is.”
“Uncle Mamercus has already been through everything with him, he doesn’t need you. In fact, Cato, no one needs you. Why don’t you take yourself off and jump into the Tiber?”
“Everyone needs me, so much is plain. When I left for the East, your boy was starting to go to the Campus Martius, and for a while it looked as if he might actually learn to be a man. Now I find a mama’s lapdog! What’s more, how could you let him contract himself in marriage to a girl with no dowry to speak of, another wretched patrician? What sort of weedy children will they have?’’
“I would hope,” said Servilia icily, “that they have sons like Julia’s father and daughters like me. Say what you will about patricians and the old aristocracy, Cato, in Julia’s father you see everything a Roman ought to be, from soldier to orator to politician. Brutus wanted the match, actually, it wasn’t my idea, but I wish I had thought of it. Blood as good as his own—and that is far more important than a dowry! However, for your information her father has guaranteed a dowry of one hundred talents. Nor does Brutus need a girl with a big dowry, now that he’s Caepio’s heir.”
“If he’s prepared to wait years for a bride, he could have waited a few more and married my Porcia,” said Cato. “That is an alliance I would have applauded wholeheartedly! My dear Caepio’s money would have gone to the children of both sides of his family.”
“Oh, I see!” sneered Servilia. “The truth will out, eh, Cato? Wouldn’t change your name to get Caepio’s money, but what a brilliant scheme to get it through the distaff side! My son marry the descendant of a slave? Over my dead body!”
“It might happen yet,” said Cato complacently.
“If that happened, I’d feed the girl hot coals for supper!” Servilia tensed, understanding that she was not doing as well against Cato as she used to—he was cooler, more detached, and more difficult to wound. She produced her nastiest barb. “Aside from the fact that you, the descendant of a slave, are Porcia’s father, there’s her mother to think of too. And I can assure you that I will never let my son marry the child of a woman who can’t wait for her husband to come home!”
In the old days he would have flown at her verbally, shouted and badgered. Today he stiffened, said nothing for a long moment.
“I think that statement needs elucidating,” he said at last.
“I am happy to oblige. Atilia has been a very naughty girl.”
“Oh, Servilia, you are one of the best reasons why Rome needs a few laws on the books to oblige people to hold their tongues!”
Servilia smiled sweetly. “Ask any of your friends if you doubt me. Ask Bibulus or Favonius or Ahenobarbus, they’ve been here to witness the carryings-on. It’s no secret.”
His mouth drew in, lips disappearing. “Who?” he asked.
“Why, that Roman among Romans, of course! Caesar. And don’t ask which Caesar—you know which Caesar has the reputation. My darling Brutus’s prospective father-in-law.”
Cato rose without a word.
He went home immediately to his modest house in a modest lane at the viewless center of the Palatine, wherein he had installed his philosopher friend, Athenodorus Cordylion, in the only guest suite before he had remembered to greet his wife and children.
Reflection confirmed Servilia’s malice. Atilia was different. For one thing, she smiled occasionally and presumed to speak before being spoken to; for another, her breasts had filled out, and that in some peculiar way revolted him. Though three days had elapsed since his arriving in Rome, he had not visited her sleeping cubicle (he preferred to occupy the master sleeping cubicle alone) to assuage what even his revered great-grandfather Cato the Censor had deemed a natural urge, not only permissible between man and wife (or slave and master), but really quite an admirable urge.
Oh, what dear kind benevolent God had prevented him? To have put himself inside his legal property not knowing that she had become someone else’s illegal property—Cato shivered, had to force down his rising gorge. Caesar. Gaius Julius Caesar, the worst of a decayed and degene
rate lot. What on earth had he seen in Atilia, whom Cato had chosen because she was the absolute opposite of round, dark, adorable Aemilia Lepida? Cato knew himself to be a little intellectually slow because it had been drummed into him from infancy that he was, but he didn’t have to search very far for Caesar’s reason. Patrician though he was, that man was going to be a demagogue, another Gaius Marius. How many wives of the stalwart traditionalists had he seduced? Rumor was rife. Yet here was he, Marcus Porcius Cato, not old enough yet to be in the Senate—but obviously deemed a future enemy of note. That was good! It said he, Marcus Porcius Cato, had the strength and will to be a great force in Forum and Senate. Caesar had cuckolded him! Not for one moment did it occur to him that Servilia was the cause, for he had no idea Servilia lived on intimate terms with Caesar.
Well, Atilia may have admitted Caesar into her bed and between her legs, but she hadn’t admitted Cato since the day it happened. What Caepio’s death had begun, Atilia’s treachery finished. Never care! Never, never care. To care meant endless pain.
He did not interview Atilia. He simply summoned his steward to his study and instructed the man to pack her up and throw her out at once, send her back to her brother.
A few words scrawled on a sheet of paper, and the deed was done. She was divorced, and he would not give back one sestertius of an adultress’s dowry. As he waited in his study he heard her voice in the distance, a wail, a sob, a frantic scream for her children, and all the time his steward’s voice overriding hers, the noise of slaves falling over each other to do the master’s bidding. Finally came the front door opening, closing. After which, his steward’s knock.
“The lady Atilia is gone, domine.”
“Send my children to me.”
They came in not many moments later, bewildered at the fuss but unaware what had taken place. That both were his he could not deny, even now that doubt gnawed. Porcia was six years old, tall and thin and angular, with his chestnut hair in a thicker and curlier version, his grey and well-spaced eyes, his long neck, his nose in a smaller form. Cato Junior was two years younger, a skinny little boy who always reminded Cato of what he himself had been like in the days when that Marsian upstart Silo had held him out the window and threatened to drop him on sharp rocks; except that Cato Junior was timid rather than doughty, and tended to cry easily. And, alas, already it was apparent that Porcia was the clever one, the little orator and philosopher. Useless gifts in a girl.
“Children, I have divorced your mother for infidelity,” said Cato in his normal harsh voice, and without expression. “She has been unchaste, and proven herself unfit to be wife or mother. I have forbidden her entry to this house, and I will not allow either of you to see her again.”
The little boy hardly understood all these grown-up words, save that something awful had just happened, and that Mama was at the heart of it. His big grey eyes filled with tears; his lip wobbled. That he did not burst into howls was purely due to his sister’s sudden grip on his arm, the signal that he must control himself. And she, small Stoic who would have died to please her father, stood straight and looked indomitable, no tear or wobble of the lip.
“Mama has gone into exile,” she said.
“That is as good a way of putting it as any.”
“Is she still a citizen?’’ asked Porcia in a voice very like her father’s, no lilt or melody to it.
“I cannot deprive her of that, Porcia, nor would I want to. What I have deprived her of is any participation in our lives, for she does not deserve to participate. Your mother is a bad woman. A slut, a whore, a harlot, an adultress. She has been consorting with a man called Gaius Julius Caesar, and he is all that the Patriciate stands for—corrupt, immoral, outmoded.”
“Will we truly never see Mama again?”
“Not while you live under my roof.”
The intent behind the grown-up words had finally sunk in; four-year-old Cato Junior began to wail desolately. “I want my mama! I want my mama! I want my mama!”
“Tears are not a right act,” said the father, “when they are shed for unworthy reasons. You will behave like a proper Stoic and stop this unmanly weeping. You cannot have your mother, and that is that. Porcia, take him away. The next time I see him I expect to see a man, not a silly runny-nosed baby.”
“I will make him understand,” she said, gazing at her father in blind adoration. “As long as we are with you, Pater, everything is all right. It is you we love most, not Mama.”
Cato froze. “Never love!” he shouted. “Never, never love! A Stoic does not love! A Stoic does not want to be loved!”
“I didn’t think Zeno forbade love, just wrong acts,” said the daughter. “Is it not a right act to love all that is good? You are good, Pater. I must love you, Zeno says it is a right act.”
How to answer that? “Then temper it with detachment and never let it rule you,” he said. “Nothing which debases the mind must rule, and emotions debase the mind.”
When the children had gone, Cato too left the room. Not far down the colonnade were Athenodorus Cordylion, a flagon of wine, some good books, and even better conversation. From this day on, wine and books and conversation must fill every void.
Ah, but it cost Cato dearly to meet the brilliant and feted curule aedile as he went about his duties so stunningly well, and with such a flair!
“He acts as if he’s King of Rome,” said Cato to Bibulus.
“I think he believes he’s King of Rome, dispensing grain and circuses. Everything in the grand manner, from the easy way he has with ordinary people to his arrogance in the Senate.”
“He is my avowed enemy.”
“He’s the enemy of every man who wants the proper mos maiorum, no man to stand one iota taller than any of his peers,” said Bibulus. “I will fight him until I die!”
“He’s Gaius Marius all over again,” said Cato.
But Bibulus looked scornful. “Marius? No, Cato, no! Gaius Marius knew he could never be King of Rome—he was just a squire from Arpinum, like his equally bucolic cousin Cicero. Caesar is no Marius, take my word for it. Caesar is another Sulla, and that is far, far worse.”
*
In July of that year Marcus Porcius Cato was elected one of the quaestors, and drew a lot for the senior of the three urban quaestors; his two colleagues were the great plebeian aristocrat Marcus Claudius Marcellus and a Lollius from that Picentine family Pompey the Great was happily thrusting into the heart of Roman dominance of Senate and Comitia.
With some months to go before he actually took office or was allowed to attend the Senate, Cato occupied his days in studying commerce and commercial law; he hired a retired Treasury bookkeeper to teach him how the tribuni aerarii who headed that domain did their accounting, and he ground away at what did not come at all naturally until he knew as much about State finances as Caesar knew, unaware that what cost him so much pain had been taken in almost instantly by his avowed enemy.
The quaestors took their duty lightly and never bothered to concern themselves overmuch with an actual policing of what went on in the Treasury; the important part of the job to the average urban quaestor was liaison with the Senate, which debated and then deputed where the State’s moneys were to go. It was accepted practice to cast a cursory eye over the books Treasury staff let them see from time to time, and to accept Treasury figures when the Senate considered Rome’s finances. The quaestors also did their friends and families favors if these people were in debt to the State by turning a blind eye to the fact or ordering their names erased from the official records. In short, the quaestors located in Rome simply permitted the permanent Treasury staff to go about their business and get the work done. And certainly neither the permanent Treasury staff nor Marcellus and Lollius, the two other urban quaestors, had any idea that things were about to change radically.
Cato had no intention of being lax. He intended to be more thorough within the Treasury than Pompey the Great within Our Sea. At dawn on the fifth day of December, the day he
took office, he was there knocking at the door in the side of the basement to the temple of Saturn, not pleased to learn that the sun was well up before anyone came to work.
“The workday begins at dawn,” he said to the Treasury chief, Marcus Vibius, when that worthy arrived breathless after a harried clerk had sent for him urgently.
“There is no rule to that effect,” said Marcus Vibius smoothly. “We work within a timetable we set for ourselves, and it’s flexible.”
“Rubbish!” said Cato scornfully. “I am the elected custodian of these premises, and I intend to see that the Senate and People of Rome get value for every sestertius of their tax moneys. Their tax moneys pay you and all the rest who work here, don’t forget!”
Not a good beginning. From that point on, however, things for Marcus Vibius just got worse and worse. He had a zealot on his hands. When on the rare occasions in the past he had found himself cursed with an obstreperous quaestor, he had proceeded to put the fellow in his place by withholding all specialized knowledge of the job; not having a Treasury background, quaestors could do only what they were allowed to do. Unfortunately that tack didn’t stop Cato, who revealed that he knew quite as much about how the Treasury functioned as Marcus Vibius did. Possibly more.
With him Cato had brought several slaves whom he had seen trained in various aspects of Treasury pursuits, and every day he was there at dawn with his little retinue to drive Vibius and his underlings absolutely mad. What was this? Why was that? Where was so-and-so? When had such-and-such? How did whatever happen? And on and on and on. Cato was persistent to the point of insult, impossible to fob off with pat answers, and impervious to irony, sarcasm, abuse, flattery, excuses, fainting fits.
“I feel,” gasped Marcus Vibius after two months of this, when he had gathered up his courage to seek solace and assistance from his patron, Catulus, “as if all the Furies are hounding me harder than ever they hounded Orestes! I don’t care what you have to do to shut Cato up and ship him out, I just want it done! I have been your loyal and devoted client for over twenty years, I am a tribunus aerarius of the First Class, and now I find both my sanity and my position imperiled. Get rid of Cato!”
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