I looked at them. Couldn’t help laughing. “Thank you for the advice,” I said, “but this is desert. I’d far rather have the Scorpion than the Archer!”
About five hundred of us rode off at a gallop and spent the night between a walk, a trot, a canter and another gallop. By dawn we reached Europus, which the locals call Carchemish. There were no Parthians lying in wait, and the Euphrates was calm enough to boat across, horses and all. We didn’t stop until we reached Antioch.
Later I learned that the Pahlavi Surenas got everyone who elected to stay with the General. At dawn on the second day before the Ides, as we rode into Europus, Crassus and the army were wandering in circles, getting not one mile closer to Sinnaca, thanks to Andromachus. The Parthians attacked again. It was a rout. A debacle. In a disastrous series of retreats and attempted stands, the Parthians cut them down. Those legates who remained with Crassus died—Censorinus, Vargunteius, Megabocchus, Octavius, Coponius.
The Pahlavi Surenas had his orders. Marcus Crassus was captured alive. He was to be saved to stand before King Orodes. How it happened no one knows, even Antipater, but shortly after Crassus was taken into custody a fight broke out. Marcus Crassus died.
Seven silver Eagles passed into the hands of the Pahlavi Surenas at Carrhae. We will never see them again. They have gone with King Orodes to Ecbatana.
Thus did I find myself the most senior Roman in Syria, and in charge of a province on the verge of panic. Everyone was convinced the Parthians were coming, and there was no army. I spent the next two months fortifying Antioch to withstand anything, and organized a system of watches, lookouts and beacons which would give the entire populace of the Orontes Valley time to take shelter inside the city. Then—would you believe it?—soldiers started to trickle in. Not everyone had died at Carrhae. I collected about ten thousand of them, all told. Enough to make two good legions. And according to my invaluable informant Antipater, ten thousand more who survived the first fight further down the Bilechas were rounded up by the Pahlavi Surenas and sent to the frontier of Bactria beyond the Caspian Sea, where they are to be used to keep the Massagetae from raiding. Arrows do wound, but few men die of them.
By November I felt secure enough to tour my province. Well, it is mine. The Senate has made no move to relieve me. At the age of thirty, Gaius Cassius Longinus is governor of Syria. An extraordinary responsibility, but not one which is beyond my talents.
I went to Damascus first, and then to Tyre. Because Tyrian purple is so beautiful, we tend to think that Tyre must be too. But it is a ghastly place. Stinking to the point of constant nausea with dead shellfish. There are huge hills of boiled-down murex remains all around the landward side of Tyre, taller than the buildings, which seem to kiss the sky. How the Tyrians live there on that island of festering death and fabulous incomes I do not know. However, Fortune favors the governor of Syria. I was housed in the villa of the chief ethnarch, Demetrius, a luxurious residence on the seaward side of the city, where the breezes blow down the length of Our Sea and the rotting shellfish are but a memory.
Here I met the man whose name I have already mentioned: Antipater. About forty-eight years old, and very powerful in the Kingdom of the Jews. Religiously he says he is a Jew, but by blood he is an Idumaean, apparently not quite the same thing as a Judaean. He offended the synod, which is the governing religious body, by marrying a Nabataean princess named Cypros. Since the Jews count citizenship in the mother’s line, it means Antipater’s three sons and daughter are not Jews. All of which in essence means that Antipater, a very ambitious man, cannot become King of the Jews. Nor can his sons. However, nothing will part Antipater from Cypros, who travels everywhere with him. A devoted couple. Their three sons, still adolescent, are formidable for their age. The eldest, Phasael, is impressive enough, but the second boy, Herod, is extraordinary. You might call him a perfect fusion of tortuous cunning and ferocious ruthlessness. I want to govern Syria again ten years from now just to see how Herod has turned out.
Antipater regaled me with the Parthian side of poor Marcus Crassus’s fatal expedition, and then gave me more interesting news still. The Pahlavi Surenas of Mesopotamia, having done so brilliantly on the Bilechas, was summoned to the summer court at Ecbatana. Do not, if you are a subject of the King of the Parthians, fare better than your king. Orodes was delighted at the defeat of Crassus, but not at all pleased at the innovative generalship of the Pahlavi Surenas, his blood nephew. Orodes put the Pahlavi Surenas to death. In Rome, you triumph following a victory. In Ecbatana, you lose your head following a victory.
By the time I met Antipater in Tyre, I had two good legions under arms, but no campaign whereby to blood them. That changed very rapidly. The Jews were stirring now that the Parthian menace was gone. Though Aristobulus and his son Antigonus were returned to Rome by Gabinius after their revolt, another son of Aristobulus’s named Alexander decided the time was right to throw Hyrcanus off the Jewish throne Gabinius had put him on. Thanks to Antipater’s work, I add. Well, all Syria knew the governor was a mere quaestor. What an opportunity. Two other high-ranking Jews, Malichus and Peitholaus, conspired to help Alexander.
So I marched for Hierosolyma, or Jerusalem if you like that name better. Though I didn’t get that far before I met the rebel Jewish army, over thirty thousand strong. The battle took place where the Jordanus River emerges from Lake Gennesarus. Yes, I was outnumbered badly, but Peitholaus, who was in command, had simply herded together an untrained mob of upcountry Galilaeans, put pots on their heads and swords in their hands, and told them to go out and beat two trained, disciplined (and, after Carrhae, chastened) Roman legions. I trounced them, and my troops have regained much of their confidence. They hailed me imperator on the field, though I doubt the Senate will award a mere quaestor a triumph. Antipater advised me to put Peitholaus to death. I followed his advice. Antipater is no Skenite traitor, though it seems many of the Jews would not agree with my evaluation. They want to rule their own little corner of the world without Rome looking over their shoulders. It is Antipater, however, who is the realist. Rome will not be going away.
Not many of the Galilaeans perished. I sent thirty thousand of them to the slave markets in Antioch, and have thus made my first personal profit from commanding an army. Tertulla is going to marry a much richer man!
Antipater is a good man. Sensible, subtle and very keen both to please Rome and keep the Jews from killing each other. They seem to suffer enormous internecine conflicts unless an outsider comes along to take their minds off their troubles, like Romans or (in the old days) Egyptians.
Hyrcanus still has his throne and his high priesthood. The surviving rebels, Malichus and Alexander, came to heel without a murmur.
And now I come to the last few pages in the book of Marcus Crassus’s remarkable career. He died after Carrhae in that place, yes, but he had yet to make a journey. The Pahlavi Surenas cut off his head and his right hand, and sent them in the midst of an outlandish parade from Carrhae to Artaxata, the capital of Armenia far to the north amid the towering snowy mountains where the Araxes flows down to the Caspian Sea. Here King Orodes and King Artavasdes, having met, decided to be brothers rather than enemies, and to seal their pact with a marriage. Pacorus, the son of Orodes, married Laodice, the daughter of Artavasdes. Some things are the same as in Rome.
While the festivities were going on in Ataxata, the outlandish parade wended its way north. The Parthians had captured and kept alive a centurion named Gaius Paccianus because he bore a striking physical resemblance to Marcus Crassus—tall, yet so thickset that he seemed short, with that same bovine look to him. They dressed Paccianus in Crassus’s toga praetexta, and before him they put capering clowns dressed as lictors bearing bundles of rods tied together with Roman entrails, adorned with money purses and the heads of his legates. Behind the mock Marcus Crassus pranced dancing girls and whores, musicians singing filthy songs, and some men displaying pornographic books found in the baggage of the tribune Roscius. Crassus’s head an
d hand came next and, bringing up the rear, our seven Eagles.
Apparently King Artavasdes of Armenia is a fanatical lover of Greek drama. Orodes also speaks Greek, so several of the most famous Greek plays were staged as part of the entertainment celebrating the wedding of Pacorus and Laodice. The evening on which the parade arrived in Artaxata saw a performance of The Bacchae of Euripides. Well, you know that play. The part of Queen Agave was portrayed by a locally famous actor, Jason of Tralles. But Jason of Tralles is more famous for his hatred of Romans than even for his brilliant interpretation of female roles.
In the last scene, Agave comes in bearing the head of her son, King Pentheus, upon a platter, having torn his head off herself in a Bacchic frenzy.
When the time came, in walked Queen Agave. On her platter she bore the head of Marcus Crassus. Jason of Tralles put the platter down, pulled off his mask, and picked up Crassus’s head, an easy thing to do because, like so many bald men, Crassus had grown the hair on the back of his head very long so he could comb it forward. Grinning triumphantly, the actor swung the head back and forth as if it were a lamp.
“Blessed is the prey I bear, new shorn from the trunk!” he cried out.
“Who slew him?” chanted the Chorus.
“Mine was that honor!” shrieked Pomaxarthres, a senior officer in the army of the Pahlavi Surenas.
They say the scene went down very well.
The head and the right hand were displayed, and as far as I know are still displayed, on the battlements of Artaxata’s walls. Crassus’s body was left exactly where it had fallen near Carrhae, to be picked clean by the vultures.
Oh, Marcus! That it should have come to this. Could you not see where it would all end, and how? Ateius Capito cursed you. The Jews cursed you. Your own army believed those curses, and you did nothing to disabuse them. Fifteen thousand good Roman soldiers are dead, ten thousand more sentenced to life on an alien frontier, my Aeduan cavalry are gone, most of the Galatians are gone, and Syria is being governed by an enterprising, insufferably arrogant and conceited young man whose contemptuous words about you are the words which will follow you for all time. The Parthians may have assassinated your person, but Gaius Cassius has assassinated your character. I know which fate I would prefer.
Your wonderful older son is dead. He too is vulture fodder. In the desert it is not necessary to burn and bury. Old King Mithridates tied Manius Aquillius backward on an ass, then tipped molten gold down his gullet to cure his avarice. Was that what Orodes and Artavasdes planned for you? But you cheated them of that; you died cleanly before they could do it. A poor, hapless centurion, Paccianus, probably suffered that fate in your place. And your eye sockets gaze sightlessly over a vista of endless, freezingly cold mountains toward the icy infinity of the Caucasus.
Caesar sat, remembering, for a long time. How pleased Crassus had been that the Pontifex Maximus had installed a bell he was too stingy to pay for himself. How competently and placidly he had walled Spartacus in through a time of snows. How difficult it had been to persuade him and Pompey to embrace publicly on the rostra when their first joint consulship ended. How easily he had issued the instructions which had saved Caesar from the hands of the moneylenders and permanent exile. How pleasant the many, many hours they had spent together over the years between Spartacus and Gaul. How desperately Crassus had hungered for a great military campaign and a triumph at the end of it.
The dear sight of that big, bland, impassive face at Luca.
All gone. Picked clean by the vultures. Not burned, not entombed. Caesar stiffened. Had anyone thought of it? He pulled paper toward him, dipped his reed pen in the inkwell and wrote to his friend Messala Rufus in Rome to buy the shades of those who had lost their heads a passage to the proper place.
I am, he thought, screwing up his eyes, become an authority on severed heads.
*
Luckily Lucius Cornelius Balbus Major was with Caesar when he received Pompey’s answer to his letter proposing two marriages and requesting legislation to enable him to stand for the consulship in absentia.
“I am so alone,” Caesar said to Balbus, but without self-pity. Then he shrugged. “Still, it happens as one grows older.”
“Until,” said Balbus gently, “one retires to enjoy the fruits of one’s labors, and has time to lie back among friends.”
The perceptive eyes began to twinkle, the generous mouth to curl up at its dented corners. “What an awful prospect! I do not intend to retire, Balbus.”
“Don’t you think there will ever come a time when there is nothing left to do?”
“Not for this Roman, if any Roman. When Gaul and my second consulship are over, I must avenge Marcus Crassus. I’m still reeling from that shock, let alone this.” Caesar tapped Pompey’s letter.
“And the death of Publius Clodius?”
The twinkle vanished, the mouth set. “The death of Publius Clodius was inevitable. His tampering with the mos maiorum could not be allowed to continue. Young Curio put it best in his letter to me—odd, the disparate people Clodius’s activities managed to throw into the same camp. He said that Clodius was going to hand a congress of Roman men over to a parcel of non-Romans.”
Balbus, a non-Roman Roman citizen, did not blink. “They say that young Curio is extremely distressed financially.”
“Do they?” Caesar looked thoughtful. “Do we need him?”
“At the moment, no. But that might change.”
“What do you make of Pompeius in the light of his reply?”
“What do you make of him, Caesar?”
“I’m not sure, but I do know that I made a mistake in trying to woo him with more marriages. He’s grown very particular in his choice of wives, so much is sure. The daughter of an Octavius and an Ancharia isn’t good enough, or so I read it between his lines. Maybe I ought to have said straight out what I imagined he would see for himself without such bluntness—that as soon as the younger Octavia was of marriageable age, I would be happy to slip the first Octavia out from under him and substitute the second girl. Though the first would have suited him very well. Not a Julian, no, but brought up by a Julian. It shows, Balbus.”
“I doubt that an air of aristocracy operates as profoundly upon Pompeius as a pedigree,” said Balbus with the ghost of a smile.
“I wonder whom he has in mind.”
“That’s really why I’ve come to Ravenna, Caesar. A little bird perched on my shoulder and chirruped that the boni are dangling the widow of Publius Crassus under his nose.”
Caesar sat up straight. “Cacat!” He relaxed, shook his head. “Metellus Scipio would never do it, Balbus. Besides, I know the young woman. She’s no Julia. I doubt she’d permit the likes of Pompeius to touch the hem of her robe, let alone lift it.”
“One of the problems,” said Balbus deliberately, “to do with your rise into Rome’s firmament, despite all that the boni have tried to do to prevent it, is that the boni have grown desperate enough to contemplate using Pompeius in much the same way that you use him. And how else can they bind him except through a marriage so stellar that he wouldn’t dare offend them? To dower him with Cornelia Metella is literally to admit him into their ranks. Pompeius would see Cornelia Metella as confirmation from the boni that he is indeed the First Man in Rome.”
“So you think it’s possible.”
“Oh, yes. The young woman is a cool person, Caesar. If she saw herself as an absolute necessity, she’d go to the sacrifice as willingly as Iphigenia at Aulis.”
“Though for far different reasons.”
“Yes and no. I doubt any man will ever satisfy Cornelia Metella in the way that her own father does, and Metellus Scipio bears some resemblance to Agamemnon. Cornelia Metella is in love with her own aristocracy, to the extent that she would refuse to believe a Pompeius from Picenum could detract from it.”
“Then,” said Caesar with decision, “I won’t move from this side of the Alps to the far side in a hurry this year. I’ll have to monitor even
ts in Rome too thoroughly.” He clenched his teeth. “Oh, where has my luck gone? In a family famous for breeding more girls than boys, it can’t produce a girl when I need one.”
“It isn’t your luck carries you through, Caesar,” said Balbus firmly. “You’ll survive.”
“I take it Cicero is coming to Ravenna?”
“Very shortly.”
“Good. Young Caelius has potential he ought not to waste on the likes of Milo.”
“Who can’t be allowed to become consul.”
“He belongs to Cato and Bibulus.”
But when Balbus withdrew, Caesar’s thoughts did not dwell upon events in Rome. They drifted to Syria and to the loss of seven silver Eagles no doubt displayed at this moment with great ostentation in the halls of the Parthian palace at Ecbatana. They would have to be wrested from Orodes, and that meant war with Orodes. Probably also war with Artavasdes of Armenia. Ever since he’d read Gaius Cassius’s letter, a part of Caesar’s mind had stayed in the East, wrestling with the concept of a strategy capable of conquering a mighty empire and two mighty armies. Lucullus had shown that it could be done at Tigranocerta. Then had undone everything. Or rather, had allowed Publius Clodius to undo it. At least that was one good piece of news. Clodius was dead. And there will never be a Clodius in any army of mine. I will need Decimus Brutus, Gaius Trebonius, Gaius Fabius and Titus Sextius. Splendid men all. They know how my mind works, they’re able to lead and to obey. But not Titus Labienus. I do not want him for the Parthian campaign. He can finish his time in Gaul, but after that I am finished with him.
Knitting up a structure for Gaul of the Long-hairs had proven an extremely difficult business, though Caesar knew how to do it. And one of the linchpins was to forge a good relationship with sufficient Gallic leaders to ensure two things: the first, that the Gauls themselves would feel they had a powerful say in their future; and the second, that the chosen Gallic leaders were absolutely committed to Rome. Not the Acco or Vercingetorix kind, but the Commius and Vertico kind, convinced that the best chance for the preservation of Gallic customs and traditions lay in sheltering behind the Roman shield. Oh, Commius wanted to be High King of the Belgae, yes, but that was permissible. In it were planted the seeds of Belgic fusion into one people rather than many peoples. Rome dealt well with client kings; there were a dozen within the fold.
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