Fortune's Favorites

by Colleen McCullough

  The simultaneous attack on Sulla's fortifications from north and south came to pass two days after Pompey had departed with his army for Puteoli and the grain fleet. A wave of men broke on either wall, but the waves ebbed and died away harmlessly. Sulla still owned the Via Latina, and those attacking from the north could find no way to join up with those attacking on the south. At dawn on the second morning after the attack, the watchers in the towers on either wall could see no enemy; they had packed up and stolen off in the night. Reports came in all through that day that the twenty thousand men belonging to Censorinus, Carrinas and Brutus Damasippus were marching down the Via Appia toward Campania, and that the Samnite host was marching down the Via Latina in the same direction.

  "Let them go," said Sulla indifferently. "Eventually I suppose they'll come back-united. And when they do come back it will be on the Via Appia. Where I will be waiting for them."

  By the end of Sextilis, the Samnites and the remnants of Carbo's army had joined forces at Fregellae, and there moved off the Via Latina eastward through the Melfa Gorge.

  "They're going to Aesernia to think again," said Sulla, and did not instruct that they be followed further. "It's enough to post lookouts on the Via Latina at Ferentinum, and the Via Appia at Tres Tabernae. I don't need more warning than that, and I'm not going to waste my scouts sending them to sneak around Samnites in Samnite territory like Aesernia."

  The action shifted abruptly to Praeneste, where Young Marius, restless and growing steadily more unpopular within the town, emerged from the gates and ventured out into No Man's Land. At the westernmost point of the ridge, where the watershed divided Tolerus streams from Anio streams, he began to build a massive siege tower, having judged that at this point Ofella's wall was weakest. No tree had been left standing to furnish materials for this work anywhere within reach of those defending Praeneste; it was houses and temples yielded up the timber, precious nails and bolts, blocks and panels and tiles.

  The most dangerous work was to make a smooth roadway for the tower to be moved upon between the spot where it was being built and the edge of Ofella's ditch, for these laborers were at the mercy of marksmen atop Ofella's walls; Young Marius chose the youngest and swiftest among his helpers to do this, and gave them a makeshift roof under which to shelter. Out of harm's reach another team toiled with pieces of timber too small to use in constructing the tower, and made a bridge of laminated planking to throw across the ditch when it came time to push the tower right up against Ofella's wall. Once work upon the tower had progressed enough to create a shelter inside it for those who labored upon building it, the thing seemed to grow from within, up and up and up, out and out and out.

  In a month it was ready, and so were the causeway and the bridge along which a thousand pairs of hands would propel it. But Ofella too was ready, having had plenty of time to prepare his defenses. The bridge was put across the ditch in the darkest hours of night, the tower rolled heaving and groaning upon a slipway of sheep's fat mixed with oil; dawn saw the tower, twenty feet higher than the top of Ofella's wall, in position. Deep in its bowels there hung upon ropes toughened with pitch a mighty battering ram made from the single beam which had spanned the Goddess's cella in the temple of Fortuna Primigenia, who was the firstborn daughter of Jupiter, and talisman of Italian luck.

  But it was many a year before tufa stone hardened to real brittleness, so the ram when brought to bear on Ofella's wall roared and boomed and pounded in vain; the elastic tufa blocks shook, even trembled and vibrated, but they held until Ofella's catapults firing blazing missiles had set the tower on fire, and driven the attackers hurling spears and arrows fleeing with hair in flames. By nightfall the tower was a twisted ruin collapsed in the ditch, and those who had tried to break out were either dead or back within Praeneste.

  Several times during October, Young Marius tried to use the bridged ditch filled with the wreckage of his tower as a base; he roofed a section between Ofella's wall and the ditch to keep his men safe and tried to mine his way beneath the wall, then tried to cut his way through the wall, and finally tried to scale the wall. But nothing worked. Winter was close at hand, seemed to promise the same kind of bitter cold as the last one; Praeneste knew itself short of food, and rued the day it had opened its gates to the son of Gaius Marius.

  The Samnite host had not gone to Aesernia at all. Ninety thousand strong, it sat itself down in the awesome mountains to the south of the Fucine Lake and whiled away almost two months in drills, foraging parties, more drills. Pontius Telesinus and Brutus Damasippus had journeyed to see Mutilus in Teanum, come away armed with a plan to take Rome by surprise-and without Sulla's knowledge. For, said Mutilus, Young Marius would have to be left to his fate. The only chance left for all right-thinking men was to capture Rome and draw both Sulla and Ofella into a siege which would be prolonged and filled with a terrible doubt-would those inside Rome elect to join the Samnite cause?

  There was a way across the mountains between the Melfa Gorge and the Via Valeria. This stock route-for so it was better termed than road-traversed the ranges between Atina at the back of the Melfa Gorge-a wilderness-went to Sora on the elbow of the Liris River, then to Treba, then to Sublaquaeum, and finally emerged on the Via Valeria a scant mile east of Varia, at a little hamlet called Mandela. It was neither paved nor even surveyed, but it had been there for centuries, and was the route whereby the many shepherds of the mountains moved their flocks each summer season between pastures at the same altitude. It was also the route the flocks took to the sale yards and slaughterhouses of the Campus Lanatarius and the Vallis Camenarum adjoining the Aventine parts of Rome.

  Had Sulla stopped to remember the time when he had marched from Fregellae to the Fucine Lake to assist Gaius Marius to defeat Silo and the Marsi, he might have remembered this stock route, for he had actually followed a part of it from Sora to Treba, and had not found it impossible going. But at Treba he had left it, and had not thought to ascertain whereabouts it went north of Treba. So the one chance Sulla might have had to circumvent Mutilus's strategy was overlooked. Thinking that the only route open to the Samnites if they planned to attack Rome was the Via Appia, Sulla remained in his defile on the Via Latina and kept watch, sure he could not be taken by surprise.

  And while he sat in his defile, the Samnites and their allies toiled along the stock route, secure in the knowledge that they were passing through country whose inhabitants had no love of Rome, and well beyond the outermost tentacles of Sulla's intelligence network. Sora, Treba, Sublaquaeum, and finally onto the Via Valeria at Mandela. They were now a scant day's march from Rome, a mere thirty miles of superbly kept road as the Via Valeria came down through Tibur and the Anio valley, and terminated on the Campus Esquilinus beneath the double rampart of Rome's Agger.

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  But this was not the best place from which to launch an attack on Rome, so when the great host drew close to the city, Pontius Telesinus and Brutus Damasippus took a diverticulum which brought them out on the Via Nomentana at the Colline Gate. And there outside the Colline Gate-waiting for them, as it were-was the stout camp Pompey Strabo had built for himself during Cinna's and Gaius Marius's siege of Rome. By nightfall of the last day of October, Pontius Telesinus, Brutus Damasippus, Marcus Lamponius, Tiberius Gutta, Censorinus and Carrinas were comfortably ensconced within that camp; on the morrow they would attack.

  The news that ninety thousand men were occupying Pompey Strabo's old camp outside the Colline Gate was brought to Sulla after night had fallen on the last day of October. It found him a little the worse for wine, but not yet asleep. Within moments bugles were blaring, drums were rolling, men were tumbling from their pallets and torches were kindling everywhere. Icily sober, Sulla called his legates together and told them.

  "They've stolen a march on us," he said, lips compressed. "How they got there I don't know, but the Samnites are outside the Colline Gate and ready to attack Rome. By dawn, we march. We have twenty miles to cover and some of it'
s hilly, but we have to get to the Colline Gate in time to fight tomorrow." He turned to his cavalry commander, Octavius Balbus. "How many horses have you got around Lake Nemi, Balbus?"

  "Seven hundred," said Balbus.

  "Then off you go right now. Take the Via Appia, and ride like the wind. You'll reach the Colline Gate some hours before I can hope to get the infantry there, so you've got to hold them off. I don't care what you have to do, or how you do it! Just get there and keep them occupied until I arrive."

  Octavius Balbus wasted no time speaking; he was out of Sulla's door and roaring for a horse before Sulla could turn back to his other legates.

  There were four of them-Crassus, Vatia, Dolabella and Torquatus. Shocked, but not bereft of their wits.

  "We have eight legions here, and they will have to do," said Sulla. "That means we'll be outnumbered two to one. I'll make my dispositions now because there may not be the time for conferences after we reach the Colline Gate."

  He fell silent, studying them. Who would fare best? Who would have the steel to lead in what was going to be a desperate encounter? By rights it ought to be Vatia and Dolabella, but were they the best men? His eyes dwelt upon Marcus Licinius Crassus, huge and rock-solid, never anything save calm-eaten up with avarice, a thief and a swindler-not principled, not ethical, perhaps moral. And yet of the four of them he had the most to lose if this war was lost. Vatia and Dolabella would survive, they had the clout. Torquatus was a good man, but not a true leader.

  Sulla made up his mind. "I will move in two divisions of four legions each," he said, slapping his hands on his thighs. "I will retain the high command myself, but I will not command either division. For want of a better way to distinguish them, I'll call them the left and the right, and unless I change my orders after we arrive, that is how they'll fight. Left and right of the field. No center. I haven't enough men. Vatia, you will command the left, with Dolabella as your second-in-command. Crassus, you'll command the right, with Torquatus as your second-in-command."

  As he spoke, Sulla's eyes rested upon Dolabella, saw the anger and outrage; no need to look at Marcus Crassus, he would not betray his feelings.

  "That is what I want," he said harshly, spitting out the words because they shaped themselves poorly without teeth. "I don't have time for argument. You've all thrown in your lots with me, you've given me the ultimate decisions. Now you'll do as you're told. All I expect of you is the will to fight in the way I command you to fight."

  Dolabella stood back at the door and allowed the other three to precede him; then he turned back. "A word with you alone, Lucius Cornelius," he said.

  "If it's quick."

  A Cornelius and a remote relation of Sulla's, Dolabella was not from a branch of that great family which had managed to acquire the luster of the Scipiones-or even of the Sullae; if he had anything in common with most of the Cornelii, it was his homeliness-plump cheeks, a frowning face, eyes a little too close together. Ambitious and with a reputation for depravity, he and his first cousin, the younger Dolabella, were determined to win greater prominence for their branch of the family.

  "I could break you, Sulla," Dolabella said. "All I have to do is make it impossible for you to win tomorrow's fight. And I imagine you understand that I'll change sides so fast the opposition will end in believing I was always with them."

  "Do go on!" said Sulla in the most friendly fashion when Dolabella paused to see how this speech had been received.

  "However, I am willing to lie down under your decision to promote Marcus Crassus over my head. On one condition."

  "Which is?"

  "That next year, I am consul."

  "Done!" cried Sulla with the greatest goodwill.

  Dolabella blinked. "You're not put out?" he asked.

  "Nothing puts me out anymore, my dear Dolabella," said Sulla, escorting his legate to the door. "At the moment it makes little odds to me who is consul next year. What matters at the moment is who commands on the field tomorrow. And I see that I was right to prefer Marcus Crassus. Good night!"

  The seven hundred horsemen under the command of Octavius Balbus arrived outside Pompey Strabo's camp about the middle of the morning on the first day of November. There was absolutely nothing Balbus could have done had he been put to it; his horses were so blown that they stood with heads hanging, sides heaving and white with sweat, mouths dripping foam, while their riders stood alongside them and tried to comfort them by loosening girths and speaking soft endearments. For this reason Balbus had not halted too close to the enemy- let them think his force was ready for action! So he arranged it in what appeared to be a charge formation, had his troopers brandish their lances and pretend to shout messages back to an unseen army of infantry in their rear.

  It was evident that the attack upon Rome had not yet begun. The Colline Gate stood in majestic isolation, its portcullis down and its two mighty oak doors closed; the battlements of the two towers which flanked it were alive with heads, and the walls which ran away on either side were heavily manned. Balbus's arrival had provoked sudden activity within the enemy camp, where soldiers were pouring out of the southeastern gate and lining up to hold off a cavalry onslaught; of enemy cavalry there was no sign, and Balbus could only hope that none was concealed.

  Each trooper on the march carried a leather bucket tied to his left rear saddle horn to water his horse; while the front rank carried on with the farce of a coming charge and an invisible army of foot soldiers behind, other troopers ran with the buckets to various fountains in the vicinity and filled them. As soon as the horses could safely be watered, Octavius Balbus intended that the business should be finished in short order.

  So successful was this mock show of aggression that nothing further had happened when Sulla and his infantry arrived some four hours later, in the early afternoon. His men were in much the same condition as Balbus's horses had been; exhausted, blown, legs trembling with the effort of marching at the double across twenty miles of sometimes steep terrain.

  "Well, we can't possibly attack today," said Vatia after he and Sulla had ridden with the other legates to inspect the ground and see what sort of battle was going to develop.

  "Why not?" asked Sulla.

  Vatia looked blank. "They're too tired to fight!"

  "Tired they may be, but fight they will," said Sulla.

  "You can't, Lucius Cornelius! You'd lose!"

  "I can, and I won't," said Sulla grimly. "Look, Vatia, we have to fight today! This war has got to end, and here and now is where and when it must end. The Samnites know how hard we've marched, the Samnites know the odds are in their favor today more than on any other day. If we don't offer battle today, the day they believe they have their best chance of winning, who knows what might happen tomorrow? What's to stop the Samnites packing up in the night and vanishing to choose another venue? Disappearing perhaps for months? Until the spring, or even next summer? Next autumn? No, Vatia, we fight today. Because today the Samnites are in the mood to see us dead on the field of the Colline Gate."

  While his soldiers rested, ate and drank, Sulla went among them on foot to tell them in a more personal way than the usual speech from a rostra that somehow they had to find the strength and the endurance to fight. That if they waited to recover, the war might go on and on. Most of them had been with him for years and could be said in truth to love him, but even the legions which had belonged to Scipio Asiagenus had felt his hand for long enough to know themselves his men. He didn't look like the wonderful, godlike being to whom they had offered a Grass Crown outside Nola all those campaigns ago, but he was theirs-and hadn't they grizzled and wrinkled and grown a bit creaky in the joints too? So when he went among them and asked them to fight, they lifted laconic hands and told him not to worry, they'd fix the Samnites.

  A bare two hours before darkness, battle was joined. The three legions which had belonged to Scipio Asiagenus comprised the major part of Sulla's left division, so while he did not assume command of the left, Sulla elected to
remain in its area of operation. Rather than bestride his customary mule, he chose to mount a white horse, and had told his men that he would do so. That way they would know him, see him if he came to their part of the fight. Choosing a knoll which gave him a fair perspective of the field, he sat upon the white animal watching the conflict develop. Those inside Rome, he noted, had opened the doors of the Colline Gate and raised the portcullis, though no one issued out to participate in the battle.

  The enemy division facing his left was the more formidable, for it was composed entirely of Samnites and commanded by Pontius Telesinus, but at forty thousand it was less numerous-some kind of compensation, thought Sulla, touching his groom with a foot, the signal for the fellow to lead his horse onward. No rider, he didn't trust this white force of nature, and had preferred that it be led. Yes, his left was falling back, he would have to go there. On lower ground, Vatia probably couldn't see that one of his worst problems was the open gate into the city; as the Samnites pushed forward stabbing and slashing upward with their short infantry swords, some of Vatia's men were slipping through the gate rather than standing and holding.

  Just before he entered the melee, he heard the sharp smack of his groom's hand on the horse's shoulder, had the presence of mind to lean forward and grab its mane in both hands as it took off at a gallop. One glance behind showed him why; two Samnite spearmen had launched their weapons simultaneously at him, and he ought to have fallen. That he had not was thanks to the groom, who had made the horse bolt. Then the groom caught up and hung on to the creature's plumy tail; Sulla came to a halt unscathed and still in the saddle.

  A smile of thanks for his groom, and Sulla waded into the thick of the battle with his sword in his hand and a small cavalry shield to protect his left side. He found some men he knew and ordered them to drop the portcullis-which, he noted in some amusement, they did with scant regard for those beneath it at the time it fell. The measure worked; having nowhere now to retreat, Scipio's legions stood and held while the single legion of veterans began the slow and steady job of pushing the enemy back.