Fortune's Favorites

by Colleen McCullough

  You know-I know you know because my colleague Pius and I both reported it in our dispatches-that Quintus Sertorius has made a pact with King Mithridates of Pontus. He has agreed to confirm King Mithridates in all his conquests and allow Pontus more conquests when he is Dictator of Rome. Now that should tell you that Quintus Sertorius is not going to stop when he is King of Spain. He intends to be King of Rome too, no matter what title he likes to award himself. There are only two people who can stop him. My colleague Pius and I. I say that because we are here on the spot and we have the chance to stop him. But we cannot stop him with what we have. He has all the manpower Spain can offer and he has the Roman skills to turn barbarian Spaniards into good Roman soldiers. If he had not these two things, he would have been stopped years ago. But he is still here and still recruiting and training. My colleague Pius and I cannot recruit in Spain. No one in his right mind would join our armies. We cannot pay our men. We cannot even keep their bellies full. And the gods be my witness, there are no spoils to share.

  I can beat Sertorius. If I cannot do it any other way, then I will be the drop of water that wears down the hardest stone to a hollow shell a child can break with a toy hammer. My colleague Pius feels the same. But I cannot beat Sertorius unless I am sent more soldiers and more cavalry AND SOME MONEY. My soldiers here have not been paid in a year and a half, and I owe the dead as well as the living. I did bring a lot of my own money with me, but I have spent it all buying supplies.

  I do not apologize for my troop losses. They were the result of a miscalculation not helped by the information I received in Rome. Namely, that six legions and fifteen hundred horse were more than enough to deal with Sertorius. I ought to have had ten legions and three thousand cavalry. Then I would have beaten him in the first year and Rome would be the richer in men and money. You ought to think about that, you miserly lot.

  And here is something else for you to think about. If I am not able to stay in Spain and my colleague Pius is therefore unable to come out of his little corner of Spain, what do you think will happen? I will go back to Italy. Dragging Quintus Sertorius and his armies along in my wake like the tail on a comet. Now you think about that long and hard. And send me some legions and some cavalry AND SOME MONEY.

  By the way, Rome owes me a Public Horse.

  The letter reached Rome at the end of November, a time of flux in Sulla's reorganized Senate. The consuls of the year were drawing to the end of their tenure in office and the consuls-elect were feeling their coming power. Because of Lucius Octavius's state of chronic ill health, only one consul, Gaius Aurelius Cotta, occupied the curule chair. Mamercus Princeps Senatus read Pompey's letter to the silent senators, as this was one privilege Sulla had not stripped from the Leader of the House.

  It was Lucius Licinius Lucullus, senior consul-elect for the next year, who rose to reply; his junior colleague was the present consul's middle brother, Marcus Aurelius Cotta, and neither of the Cottae wanted to answer that bald, comfortless letter.

  "Conscript Fathers, you have just listened to a soldier's report rather than the meretricious missive of a politician."

  "A soldier's report? I'd rather call it as incompetently written as its author is an incompetent commander!" said Quintus Hortensius, holding his nose with his fingers as if to shut out a bad smell.

  "Oh, pipe down, Hortensius!" said Lucullus wearily. "I do not need to have what I am about to say punctuated by the smart remarks of a stay-at-home general! When you can leap off your dining couch and abandon your pretty fish to outsoldier Quintus Sertorius, I'll not only give you the floor, I'll strew rose petals before your pudgy flat feet! But until your sword is as sharp as your tongue, keep your tongue where it belongs-behind your gourmandizing teeth!"

  Hortensius subsided, looking sour.

  "It is not the meretricious missive of a politician. Nor does it spare us politicians. On the other hand it does not spare its writer either. It isn't full of excuses, and the statement about battles won and lost is fully supported by the dispatches we have received regularly from Quintus Caecilius Metellus Pius.

  "Now I have never been to Spain. Some of you sitting here do know the place, but many more of you are in my boat, and know it not at all. In the old days the Further province always had the reputation of being good pickings for a governor-rich, well ordered, peaceful, yet amply provided with barbarians on two frontiers so that the wars a governor might feel free to wage were fairly easily managed. The Nearer province has never enjoyed the same reputation-the pickings are lean and the native peoples in a perpetual state of unrest. Therefore the governor of Nearer Spain could only look forward to an empty purse and much aggravation from the mountain-dwelling tribesmen.

  "However, all that changed when Quintus Sertorius arrived. He already knew Spain well, from his missions for Gaius Marius to a military tribunate under Titus Didius-during which, I remind you, he won the Grass Crown, though still a youngster. And when this remarkable and absolutely formidable man arrived back in Spain as a Marian rebel fleeing retribution, the Nearer province became literally ungovernable, and the Further province ungovernable west of the Baetis. As Gnaeus Pompeius's letter says, it took the excellent governor of Further Spain almost three years to win a battle against one of Sertorius's adherents, Hirtuleius-not against Sertorius himself. What the letter does not reproach us with is the fact that due to strife inside Italy, we neglected to send Nearer Spain a governor at all for nearly two years. That, Conscript Fathers, was tantamount to handing Sertorius the Nearer province as a gift!"

  Lucullus paused to look directly at Philippus, who was leaning forward on his stool and smiling broadly. It galled Lucullus to be doing Philippus's work for him; but he was a fair man, and it came better from the consul-elect than from one even the stupidest senator now realized was Pompey's lobbyist.

  "When, Conscript Fathers, you gave your special commission to Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus, I was governing Africa Province and you could find no capable senator willing to undertake the task of uprooting Quintus Sertorius. You sent Gnaeus Pompeius off with six legions and fifteen hundred cavalry. I tell you frankly that I would not have consented to go with less than ten full legions and three thousand cavalry- the figures Gnaeus Pompeius gives in his letter as adequate for the job. The correct figures!

  "If one examines Gnaeus Pompeius's military record, it is impressive. And Pompeius is young enough to be flexible, adaptable, all the qualities men lose along with their youthful enthusiasm. Against any other enemy of Rome, six legions and fifteen hundred cavalry would probably have been sufficient. But Quintus Sertorius is a very special case. We have not seen his like since Gaius Marius, and I personally rank him a better general than Marius. So the initial defeats of Pompeius are not so very surprising. His luck was out, was all. For he ran up against one of the best military minds Rome has ever produced. Do you doubt that? You ought not! It is the truth.

  "However, even the finest military minds think in a certain way. The governor of the Further province, our good Pius, has now been in Spain long enough to have begun to understand the way Sertorius thinks. I congratulate Pius for that. Frankly, I did not think he had it in him! Yet he cannot beat Sertorius alone. The theater of war is too vast-it is Italy during the Italian War all over again. One man cannot be north and south at the same time, and between the two regions is a dry and mountainous barrier.

  "You sent the second man-a mere knight upon whom you put a kind of unnamed military crown-to govern the Nearer province. How did you phrase it, Philippus?-non pro-consule, sed pro consulibus. You gave him to understand that you were sending him adequately staffed and adequately remunerated. Oh, make no mistake, he was eager for the job! At twenty-nine years of age and already a hoary veteran, which one of us military fellows would not have been? He was eager for the job, and may well have been eager enough to have gone off even less well provided! You might have got him as cheaply as four legions and five hundred cavalry!"

  "A pity we didn't," said Catulus. "He's l
ost more men than that since he's been there."

  "Hear, hear!" cried Hortensius.

  "And that," said Lucullus, ignoring the brothers-in-law this time, “brings me to the crux of the matter. How can Rome hope to stop a man like Quintus Sertorius when Rome is not willing to send the money or the men to Spain that would ensure he was stopped? Not even a Quintus Sertorius could have coped with the war Pompeius and Pius might have brought to bear on him on two fronts had each of them commanded ten legions and three thousand horse! Pompeius's letter accuses this body of losing the war-and I agree with that judgement! How can this body expect miracles when it will not pay the magicians to work them? No money, no reinforcements-it cannot go on! This body must find the money to pay the woefully inadequate legions of Pompeius and Pius, and it must also find the money to give Pompeius at least two more legions. Four would be better."

  Gaius Cotta spoke from the curule chair. "I agree with every last thing you've said, Lucius Licinius. But we do not have the money, Lucius Licinius. We just do not have the money."

  "Then we have to find it," said Lucullus.

  "Find it from where?" asked Gaius Cotta. "It is three years since we saw any significant revenues from Spain, and since the Contestani rose up we have seen no revenues at all.

  The Further province cannot mine the Marian Mountains or the southern Orospeda, and the Nearer province now cannot mine around New Carthage. The days when the Treasury's share of the gold, silver, lead and iron from Spain amounted to twenty thousand talents are gone, as are the mines themselves. Added to which, the events of the last fifteen years have reduced our income from Asia Province to its lowest level since we inherited the place over fifty-five years ago. We are at war in Illyricum, Macedonia and Gaul-across-the-Alps. We even hear rumors that King Mithridates is rising again, though no one can be sure. And should Nicomedes of Bithynia die, the situation in the east will become more precarious still."

  "To deny our governors in Spain money and troops because we foresee events at the other end of Our Sea that may well not come to pass, Gaius Cotta, is absolute idiocy," said Lucullus.

  "No, Lucius Lucullus!" Cotta snapped, angered. "I do not need to foresee anything to know that we do not have the money to send to Spain, let alone the troops! Gnaeus Pompeius and Quintus Pius must put up with things the way they are!''

  The long face grew flintlike. "Then," said Lucullus in freezing tones, "there will be a new comet in Rome's sky. Its head will be loyal enough, for that will be a bankrupt Gnaeus Pompeius hurrying home with his tatterdemalion army. But the tail-ah, the tail! The tail will be Quintus Sertorius and the barbarians of Spain he holds in utter thrall. Joined along the way by Volcae, Salluvii, Vocontii, Allobroges, Helvii- and no doubt by the Boii and Insubres of Italian Gaul-not to mention the Ligures and Vagienni!"

  Absolute silence greeted this Parthian shot.

  Deciding it was time to break Sulla's rule, Philippus got to his feet and walked deliberately into the middle of the Curia Hostilia floor. There he looked at everybody in turn, from an ashen Cethegus to the flinching figures of Catulus and Hortensius. Then he turned to the curule podium and gazed at the discomfited Gaius Cotta, whose face reflected his state of mind.

  "I suggest, Conscript Fathers," Philippus said, "that we summon the heads of the Treasury and the tax experts and see how we can find a considerable sum of money the honorable consul says we do not have. I also suggest that we find some legions and a squadron or two of cavalry."

  When Pompey arrived before Septimanca in the lands of the Vaccei he found it smaller than his informants had thought, though it looked prosperous enough. It was situated on a bluff above the Pisoraca River, but not invulnerably so; at Pompey's advent the whole district surrendered without a fight. Surrounded by interpreters, he endeavored to soothe Septimancan fears and convince the chieftains of the region that he would eventually pay in full for what he took, and that his men would behave.

  Clunia, some miles to the north of the sources of the Durius, was the westernmost of Sertorius's strongholds, but some of the settlements to the south of the same reach of that river had heard of the fate of Segovia and sent to Pompey at Septimanca the moment he arrived there, fervently assuring him of their loyalty to Rome and offering him whatever he needed. So after a conference with his legates, interpreters and locals, he dispatched Lucius Titurius Sabinus and fifteen cohorts to winter at Termes, Celtiberian in populace but no longer keen to serve Sertorius.

  In fact (as Pompey told Metellus Pius in a letter sent to wish him felicitations for the New Year) the ground swell was now beginning. If in the next campaign season they could damage Sertorius so badly he visibly reeled, places like Septimanca and Termes anxious to submit would increase. The war would go on in Sertorius's heartland of the Iberus; there would be no more expeditions to the lower east coast.

  The spring came early to the upper Durius, and Pompey did not linger. Leaving the people of Septimanca and Termes to plant their crops (with something extra in case the Romans came back next winter), the reunited four very under-strength legions set off up the Pisoraca to Pallantia, which had declared for Sertorius, apparently for no other reason than that the rival Septimanca had declared for Rome.

  Metellus Pius pulled up stakes in Narbonese Gaul early as well, and marched up the Iberus with the intention of eventually joining Pompey marching down. His most important task, however, was to open the route between the Iberus and central Spain to Roman use, so when he reached the Salo-a big tributary of the Iberus flowing from the Juga Carpetana-he turned up it and one by one subdued the Sertorian towns along it. At the end of this crisp campaign he now had a quick way home to his own province, and had cut Sertorius off from the headwaters of both the Tagus and the Anas, which meant isolation from the tribes of Lusitania.

  Pallantia turned out to be a hard nut to crack, so Pompey settled down to besiege it in the manner of Scipio Aemilianus before Numantia-as he informed the town through a relentless barrage of heralds. To retaliate, Pallantia sent to Sertorius in Osca, and Sertorius responded by bringing his own army to besiege the besiegers. It was clear that he wanted nothing to do with the old woman of the Further province, whose efforts up the Salo he chose to ignore as he passed by; Sertorius was as certain as ever that Pompey was the weak link in the Roman chain.

  Neither side was interested in a direct confrontation at Pallantia, where Pompey concentrated upon reducing the town and Sertorius upon reducing Pompey's ranks. So while Pompey piled logs and tinder against Pallantia's stout wooden walls, Sertorius picked off Pompey's men a few at a time. And at the beginning of April Pompey withdrew, leaving Sertorius to help the town repair its burned section of fortifications before setting off in pursuit.

  A month later Pompey and Metellus Pius met before one of Sertorius's strongest towns, Calagurris on the upper Iberus.

  With the Piglet came a chest of money for Pompey and two more legions plus six thousand extra men formed into cohorts to plump out his existing legions to full strength. And with all that largesse from Rome came his new proquaestor, none other than Marcus Terentius Varro.

  Oh, how glad he was to see that shiny pate with the fringe of dark hair above its ears! Pompey wept unashamedly.

  "I'd gone before Varro and your reinforcements reached Narbo," said the Piglet as the three of them sat in Pompey's tent over a much-needed goblet of watered wine, “but I picked him up when I came out of the Salo valley into the Iberus. And I'm pleased to say he handed me a full war chest too, Magnus."

  Pompey's chest expanded; he exhaled a huge sigh of relief. "I take it then that my letter worked," he said to Varro.

  "Worked?" Varro laughed. "I'd rather say it lit a fire under the Senate hotter than any since Saturninus declared that he was King of Rome! I wish you could have seen everybody's faces when Lucullus started itemizing the number of Gallic tribes which were sure to tack themselves on to Sertorius's comet tail when he followed you toward Rome!"

  "Lucullus?" asked Pompey, astonishe
d.

  "Oh, he was your champion, Magnus!"

  "Why? I didn't think he was fond of me."

  "He probably isn't. But I think he was afraid someone might suggest sending him to replace you in Spain. He's a very good military man, but the last thing he wants is to be sent to Spain. Who in full possession of his wits would want Spain?"

  "Who indeed," said the Piglet, smiling.

  "So I now have six legions, and both of us can issue some pay," said Pompey. "How much did we get, Varro?"

  “Enough to give the living and the dead their back pay, and to pay the living for a part of this year. But unfortunately not enough to keep on paying them. I'm sorry, Magnus. It was the best Rome could do."

  "I wish I knew where Sertorius kept his treasure! I'd make sure it was the next town I attacked, and I wouldn't rest until his moneybags were in my war chest," said Pompey.

  "I doubt Sertorius has any funds either, Magnus," said the Piglet, shaking his head.

  "Rubbish! He got three thousand talents of gold from King Mithridates not more than a year ago!"

  "Swallowed up already, is my guess. Don't forget that he has no provinces to bring in a regular income, and he hasn't the slaves to work the mines. Nor do the Spanish tribes have money."

  "Yes, I suppose you're right."

  A small and comfortable silence fell. Metellus Pius broke it suddenly, as if reaching a decision he had mulled over in his mind for some time. He drew a breath of sufficient dimension to make Pompey and Varro look at him.

  "Magnus, I have an idea," he said.