Brutus’s heart had broken that day, never knit itself together again. Oh, he had loved Julia! Waited for her to grow up. Then had to see her go to a man who wasn’t fit for her to wipe her shoes on. But she would see that in time; Brutus had settled back to wait, still loving her. Until she died. He hadn’t seen her in months, and then she died. All he really wanted to believe was that somewhere, in some other time, he would meet her again, and she would love him as much as he loved her. So after her death he soaked himself in Plato, that most spiritual and tender of all philosophers, never having understood until she died what Plato was actually saying.
And now, gazing at Cato, Brutus understood what he was living through in a way no one else who was close to Cato could ever comprehend; for he gazed at a man whose love had gone to someone else, a man who couldn’t learn to unlove. Sorrow washed over Brutus, made him bend his head. Oh, Uncle Cato, he wanted to cry out, I understand! You and I are twins in a wilderness of the soul, and we cannot find our way into the garden of peace. I wonder, Uncle Cato, if at the moments of our deaths we will think of them, you of Marcia and I of Julia. Does the pain ever go away, do the memories, does the enormity of our loss?
But he said none of this, just looked at the folds of toga in his lap until the tears went away.
He swallowed, said rather inaudibly, “What will happen?”
“One thing will not happen, Brutus. Pompeius will never be made Dictator. I will use my sword to stop my heart in the middle of the Forum before I would see it. There is no place in the Republic for a Pompeius— or a Caesar. They want to be better than all other men, they want to reduce us to pigmies in their shadow, they want to be like—like—like Jupiter. And we free Romans would end in worshiping them as gods. But not this free Roman! I will die first. I mean it,” said Cato.
Brutus swallowed again. “I believe you, Uncle. But if we cannot cure these ills, can we at least understand how they began? Such trouble! It seems to have been there all my life, and it gets worse.”
“It started with the Brothers Gracchi, particularly with Gaius Gracchus. It went then to Marius, to Cinna and Carbo, to Sulla, and now to Pompeius. But it isn’t Pompeius I fear, Brutus. It never has been. I fear Caesar.”
“I never knew Sulla, but people say Caesar is like him,” said Brutus slowly.
“Precisely,” said Cato. “Sulla. It always comes back to the man with the birthright, which is why no one feared Marius in his day, nor fears Pompeius now. To be a patrician is better. We cannot eradicate that except as my great-grandfather the Censor dealt with Scipio Africanus and Scipio Asiagenus. Pull them down!”
“Yet I hear from Bibulus that the boni are wooing Pompeius.”
“Oh, yes. And I approve of it. If you want to catch the king of thieves, Brutus, bait your trap with a prince of thieves. We’ll use Pompeius to bring Caesar down.”
“I also hear that Porcia is to marry Bibulus.”
“She is.”
“May I see her?”
Cato nodded, fast losing interest; his hand strayed to the wine flagon on his desk. “She’s in her room.”
Brutus rose and left the study by the door opening onto the small, austere peristyle garden; its columns were severest Doric, of pool or fountain it had none, and its walls were unadorned by frescoes or hung paintings. Down one side of it were ranged the rooms belonging to Cato, Athenodorus Cordylion and Statyllus; down the other side were the rooms belonging to Porcia and her adolescent brother, Marcus Junior. Beyond them were a bathroom and latrine, with the kitchen and a servants’ area at the far end.
The last time he had seen his cousin Porcia was before he left to go to Cyprus with her father, and that had been six years ago; Cato didn’t encourage her to mix with those who called to see him. A thin, lanky girl, he remembered. Still, why try to remember? He was about to see her.
Her room was minute, and stunningly untidy. Scrolls, book buckets and papers literally everywhere, and in no sort of order. She was sitting at her table with her head bent over an unfurled book, mumbling her way through it.
“Porcia?”
She looked up, gasped, lumbered to her feet; a dozen pieces of paper fluttered to the terrazzo floor, the inkpot went flying, four scrolls disappeared down the gap at the back of the table. It was the den of a Stoic— dismally plain, freezingly cold, utterly unfeminine. No loom or furbelows in Porcia’s quarters!
But then Porcia was dismally plain and not very feminine, though no one could accuse her of coldness. She was so tall! Somewhere up around Caesar’s height, Brutus fancied, craning his neck. A mop of luridly red, almost kinkily waving hair, a pale yet unfreckled skin, a pair of luminous grey eyes, and a nose which bade fair to outrank her father’s.
“Brutus! Dear, dear Brutus!” she cried, folding him in a hug that squeezed all the breath out of him and made it difficult for him to touch his toes to the floor. “Oh, tata says it is a right act to love those who are good and a part of the family, so I can love you! Brutus, how good to see you! Come in, come in!”
Dumped back on the ground again, Brutus watched his cousin flounder about sweeping a stack of scrolls and buckets off an old chair, then hunt for a duster to render its surface less likely to leave grey smears all over his toga. And gradually a smile began to tug at the corners of his doleful mouth; she was such an elephant! Though she wasn’t fat, or even rounded. Flat chest, wide shoulders, narrow hips. Abominably dressed in what Servilia would have called a baby-cack-brown canvas tent.
And yet, he had decided by the time she had maneuvered both of them onto chairs, Porcia wasn’t dismally plain at all, nor did she, despite that masculine physique, give an impression of mannishness. She crackled with life, and it endowed her with a certain bizarre attractiveness that he fancied most men, once over the initial shock, would appreciate. The hair was fantastic; so were the eyes. And her mouth was lovely, deliciously kissable.
She heaved a huge sigh, slapped her hands on her knees (far apart, but unselfconsciously so), beamed at him in simple pleasure. “Oh, Brutus! You haven’t changed a bit.”
His look was wry, but it didn’t put her off-stride in the least; to Porcia, he was what he was, and that was not in any way a handicap. Very strangely brought up, deprived of her mother when she was six years old, unexposed since to the influence of women save for two years of Marcia (who hadn’t noticed her), she had no inbuilt ideas of what beauty was, or ugliness was, or any—to her—abstract state of being. Brutus was her dearly loved first cousin, therefore he was beautiful. Ask any Greek philosopher.
“You’ve grown,” he said, then realized how that would sound to her—oh, Brutus, think! She too is a freak!
But clearly she took him literally. She emitted the same neigh of laughter Cato did, and showed the same big, slightly protruding top teeth; her voice too was like his, harsh, loud and unmelodic. “Grown through the ceiling, tata says! I’m taller than he is by quite a bit, though he’s a tall man. I must say,” she whinnied, “that I’m very pleased to be so tall. I find that it gives me a great deal of authority. Odd, that people are awed by accidents of birth and nature, isn’t it? Still, I have found it to be so.”
The most extraordinary picture was forming in Brutus’s mind, and not the sort of picture that he was prone to conjure up; but it was quite irresistible to envision tiny, frosty Bibulus trying to cover this flaming pillar of fire. Had the incongruity of the match occurred to him?
“Your father tells me you are to marry Bibulus.”
“Oh, yes, isn’t it wonderful?”
“You’re pleased?”
The fine grey eyes narrowed, in puzzlement rather than anger. “Why would I not be?”
“Well, he’s very much older than you are.”
“Thirty-two years,” she said.
“Isn’t that rather a big gap?” he asked, laboring.
“It’s irrelevant,” said Porcia.
“And—and you don’t mind the fact that he’s a foot shorter than you are?”
&nbs
p; “Irrelevant too,” said Porcia.
“Do you love him?”
Clearly this was the most irrelevant factor of all, though she didn’t say so. She said, “I love all good people, and Bibulus is good. I’m looking forward to it, I really am. Just imagine, Brutus! I’ll have a much bigger room!”
Why, he thought, amazed, she’s still a child! She has no idea of marriage whatsoever. “You don’t mind the fact that Bibulus has three sons already?” he asked.
Another neigh of laughter. “I’m just glad he doesn’t have any daughters!” she said when she could. “Don’t get on with girls, they’re so silly. The two grown-up ones—Marcus and Gnaeus—are nice, but the little one, Lucius—oh, I do like him! We have a marvelous time together. He’s got the most terrific toys!”
Brutus walked home in a fever of worry for Porcia, but when he tried to talk to Servilia about her, he got short shrift.
“The girl’s an imbecile!” snapped Servilia. “Still, what can you expect? She’s been brought up by a drunkard and a clutch of fool Greeks! They’ve taught her to despise clothes, manners, good food and good conversation. She walks round in a hair shirt with her head buried in Aristotle. I feel sorry for Bibulus.”
“Don’t waste your sympathy, Mama,” said Brutus, who knew these days how best to annoy his mother. “Bibulus is very well pleased with Porcia. He’s been given a prize above rubies—a girl who is absolutely pure and unspoiled.”
“Tchah!” spat Servilia.
*
The rioting in Rome continued unabated. February slipped away, a short month, then came Mercedonius, the twenty-two days intercalated by the College of Pontifices at Pompey’s instigation. Each five days a new interrex took office and tried to organize the elections, but without success. Everyone complained; no one got anywhere by complaining. Very occasionally Pompey demonstrated that when he wanted something done, it was done, as with his Law of the Ten Tribunes of the Plebs. Passed halfway through that stormy February, it gave Caesar permission to stand for the consulship four years hence in absentia. Caesar was safe. He would not have to give up his imperium by crossing Rome’s sacred boundary to register his candidacy in person, and thereby offer himself up for prosecution.
Milo continued to canvass for the consulship, but pressure to have him prosecuted was mounting. Two young Appius Claudiuses agitated constantly in the Forum on behalf of their dead uncle Publius, their chief grievance the fact that Milo had freed his slaves and that these slaves had disappeared into a fog of obscurity. Unfortunately Milo wasn’t receiving the support from Caelius he had enjoyed just after the murder; Cicero had gone obediently to Ravenna and succeeded in muzzling Caelius on his return. Not a good omen for Milo, a worried man.
Pompey was worried too; opposition in the Senate to his being appointed Dictator was as strong as ever.
“You’re one of the most prominent boni,” Pompey said to Metellus Scipio, “and I know you don’t mind my being made Dictator. I don’t want the post, mind you! That’s not what I’m saying at all. Only that I can’t understand why Cato and Bibulus won’t have it. Or Lucius Ahenobarbus. Or any of the others. Isn’t it better to have stability at any price?”
“At almost any price,” said Metellus Scipio cautiously; he was a man charged with a mission, and it had taken hours for him to rehearse it with Cato and Bibulus. Not that his intentions were quite as pure as Cato and Bibulus thought. Metellus Scipio was another worried man.
“What’s almost?” demanded Pompey, scowling.
“Well, there is an answer, and I’ve been deputed to put it to you, Magnus.”
The magical thing had happened! Metellus Scipio was calling him “Magnus”! Oh, joy! Oh, sweet victory! Pompey visibly expanded, a smile growing.
“Then put it to me, Scipio.” No more “Metellus.”
“What if the Senate were to agree to your becoming consul without a colleague?”
“You mean sole consul? No other?”
“Yes.” Frowning in an effort to remember what he had been told to say, Metellus Scipio went on. “What everyone objects to about the presence of a dictator is a dictator’s invulnerability, Magnus. He can’t be made to answer for anything he enacts while he is Dictator. And after Sulla, no one trusts the post. It isn’t merely the boni who object. The knights of the eighteen senior Centuries object far more, believe me. They were the ones who felt Sulla’s hand—sixteen hundred of them died in Sulla’s proscriptions.”
“But why should I proscribe anyone?” Pompey asked.
“I agree, I agree! Unfortunately many don’t.”
“Why? I’m not Sulla!”
“Yes, I know that. But there is a kind of man who is convinced that it isn’t the person who fills the role, but the role itself at fault. Do you see what I mean?”
“Oh, yes. That anyone appointed Dictator would go mad with the power of it.”
Metellus Scipio leaned back. “Exactly.”
“I’m not that sort of man, Scipio.”
“I know, I know! But don’t accuse me, Magnus! The knights of the Eighteen won’t have another Dictator any more than Bibulus and Cato will. All one has to do is say the word ‘proscription’ and men turn white.”
“Whereas,” said Pompey thoughtfully, “a sole consul in office is still constrained by the system. He can be hauled into court afterward, made to answer.”
His instructions were to slip the next comment in as if it were a matter of course, and Metellus Scipio did well. He said, as if it were not important, “Not a difficulty for you, Magnus. You’d have nothing to answer for in a court.”
“That’s true,” said Pompey, brightening.
“Besides which, the very concept of a consul without a colleague is a first. I mean, there have been times when a consul has served without a colleague for a few months, due to deaths in office and omens forbidding the appointment of more than one suffect consul. Quintus Marcius Rex’s year, for example.”
“And the year of the consulship of Julius and Caesar!” said Pompey, laughing.
Since Caesar’s colleague had been Bibulus, who refused to govern with Caesar, this was not a comment which impressed Metellus Scipio; however, he swallowed and let it be. “You might say that to be consul without a colleague is the most extraordinary of all the extraordinary commands you’ve ever been offered.”
“Do you really think so?” asked Pompey eagerly.
“Oh, yes. Undoubtedly.”
“Then why not?” Pompey extended his right hand. “It’s a deal, Scipio, it’s a deal!”
The two men shook hands, and Metellus Scipio rose to his feet quickly, enormously relieved that he had acquitted himself to what would be the full satisfaction of Bibulus, and determined to remove himself before Pompey asked him some question not on the list he had memorized.
“You don’t look very happy, Scipio,” said Pompey on the way to the door.
Now how would he answer this? Was it dangerous ground? A fierce effort at thinking things through decided Metellus Scipio to be frank. “I’m not happy,” he said.
“Why’s that?”
“Plancus Bursa is making it generally known that he intends to prosecute me for bribery in the consular campaigning.”
“Is he?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“Dear, dear!” cried Pompey, sounding cluckily concerned. “We can’t have that! Well, if I’m allowed to become consul without a colleague, Scipio, it will be a small matter to fix that up.”
“Will it?”
“No trouble, I assure you! I have quite a bit of dirt on our friend Plancus Bursa. Well, he’s no friend of mine really, but you know what I mean.”
A huge weight lifted off Metellus Scipio. “Magnus, I’d be your friend forever!”
“Good,” said Pompey contentedly. He opened the front door himself. “By the way, Scipio, would you care to come to dinner tomorrow afternoon?”
“I’d be delighted.”
“Do you think poor little Cornelia Metell
a would care to accompany you?”
“I think she’d like that very much.”
Pompey closed the door behind his visitor and strolled back to his study. How useful it was to have a tame tribune of the plebs who no one suspected was a tame tribune of the plebs! Plancus Bursa was worth every sestertius he was being paid. An excellent man. Excellent!
There loomed before his eyes an image of Cornelia Metella; he stifled a sigh. No Julia she. And she really did look like a camel. Not unhandsome, but insufferably proud! Couldn’t talk, though she spoke incessantly. If it wasn’t Zeno or Epicurus (she disapproved of both systems of thought), it was Plato or Thucydides. Despised mimes, farces, even Aristophanic comedy. Oh, well… she’d do. Not that he intended to ask for her. Metellus Scipio would have to ask him. What was good enough for a Julius Caesar was certainly good enough for a Metellus Scipio.
Caesar. Who didn’t have a second daughter or a niece. Oh, that one was riding for a fall! And the consul without a colleague was just the man to do the tripping-up. Caesar had his Law of the Ten Tribunes of the Plebs, but that wasn’t to say life was going to be smooth for him. Laws could be repealed. Or made redundant by other, later laws. But for the time being, let Caesar sit back and deem himself safe.
*
On the eighteenth day of intercalated Mercedonius, Bibulus got up in the House, meeting on the Campus Martius, and proposed that Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus be put up for election as consul, but without a colleague. The Interrex of the moment was that eminent jurist Servius Sulpicius Rufus, who listened to the House’s reaction with the proper gravity becoming so famous a judge.
“It’s absolutely unconstitutional!” cried Caelius from the tribunes’ bench, not bothering to stand up. “There is no such man as a consul without a colleague! Why don’t you just make Pompeius the Dictator and be done with it?”
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