Fortune's Favorites

by Colleen McCullough

  "I'm listening."

  "We've just agreed Spain is impoverished, Spaniards and Romans alike. Even the Punic Gadetanians are suffering. Wealth is an unattainable dream to most men who live in Spain. Now I happen to have a tiny treasure which belongs to the Further province, and has sat in a trunk in the governor's residence at Castulo since Scipio Africanus put it there. I have no idea why none of our more avaricious governors took it, but they didn't take it. It amounts to one hundred talents of gold coins minted by Hannibal's brother-in-law, Hasdrubal."

  "That's why they didn't take it," said Varro, grinning. "How could any Roman get rid of Carthaginian gold coins without someone asking questions?"

  "You're right."

  "So, Pius, you have a hundred talents in Carthaginian gold coins," said Pompey. "What do you intend to do with them?"

  "I have a little more than that, actually. I also have twenty thousand iugera of prime river frontage land on the Baetis which a Servilius Caepio took off some local nobleman in payment for tax arrears. It too has been sitting there in Rome's name for decades, bringing in a little in lease money."

  Pompey saw the point, "You're going to offer the gold and the land as a reward to anyone who turns Quintus Sertorius in."

  "Absolutely correct."

  "That's a brilliant idea, Pius! Whether we like it or not, it seems to me that we'll never manage to crush Sertorius on a battlefield. He's just too clever. He also has enormous reserves of men to draw on, and they don't mind whether he pays them or not. All they want is to see the end of Rome. But there are a few greedy men around any army camp or national capital. If you offer a reward you bring the war right inside Sertorius's palace walls. And you make it a war of nerves. Do it, Pius! Do it!"

  Pius did it. The proclamations went out within a market interval from one end of Spain to the other: a hundred talents of gold coins and twenty thousand iugera of prime river frontage land on the Baetis to the lucky man who laid information directly leading to the death or capture of Quintus Sertorius.

  That it smote Sertorius hard was made apparent to Metellus Pius and Pompey very soon, for they heard that when Sertorius learned of the reward he immediately dismissed his bodyguard of Roman troops and replaced it with a detachment of his loyalest Oscan Spaniards, then removed himself from the company of his Roman and Italian adherents. Actions which wounded the Romans and Italians to the quick. How dared Quintus Sertorius assume it would be a Roman or an Italian to betray him! Chief among the offended Romans and Italians was Marcus Perperna Veiento.

  Amid this war of nerves the actual war ground on inexorably. Working now as a team, Pompey and Metellus Pius reduced some of Sertorius's towns, though Calagurris had not fallen; Sertorius and Perperna had turned up with thirty thousand men and sat back to pick off the Roman besiegers in much the same way as Sertorius had dealt with Pompey before Pallantia. In the end lack of supplies forced Pompey and Metellus Pius to pull out of the investment of Calagurris, not Sertorius's harassment; their twelve legions just could not be fed.

  Supplies were a perpetual problem, thanks to the previous year's poor harvest. And as spring turned into summer, and summer blazed on toward the coming harvest, a freakish disaster played havoc with the war of attrition Pompey and Metellus Pius were intent upon waging. The whole of the western end of the Middle Sea underwent a frightful shortage of food when scanty rains in winter and late spring were succeeded, just as the crops struggled to mature, by a deluge which stretched from Africa to the Alps, from Oceanus Atlanticus to Macedonia and Greece. The harvest did not exist: not in Africa, in Sicily, in Sardinia, in Corsica, in Italy, in Italian Gaul, in Gaul-across-the-Alps, or in Nearer Spain. Only in Further Spain did some crops survive, though not with the usual abundance.

  "The only comfort," said Pompey to the Piglet at the end of Sextilis, "is that Sertorius will run short of food too."

  "His granaries are full from earlier years," said the Piglet gloomily. "He'll survive far more easily than we will."

  "I can go back to the upper Durius," said Pompey doubtfully, "but I don't think the area can feed six full legions."

  Metellus Pius made up his mind. “Then I am going back to my province, Magnus. Nor do I think you will need me next spring. What has still to be done in Nearer Spain, you can do for yourself. There won't be food for my men in Nearer Spain, but if you can get inside some of Sertorius's bigger strongholds you'll manage to provision your own men. I can take two of your legions to Further Spain with me and winter them there. If you want them back in the spring I'll send them to you-but if you think you won't be able to feed them, I'll keep them. It will be difficult, but the Further province is not as badly hit as every other place west of Cyrenaica. Rest assured, whoever stays with me will be well fed."

  Pompey accepted the offer, and Metellus Pius marched with eight legions for his own province far earlier in the year than he had planned or wanted to. The four legions Pompey kept were sent at once to Septimanca and Termes, while Pompey, lingering with Varro and the cavalry on the lower Iberus (thanks to the deluge grazing for horses was no longer a problem, so Pompey was sending his troopers to Emporiae to winter under the command of Varro), sat down to write to the Senate in Rome for the second time. And even though he now had Varro, he kept the prose his own.

  To the Senate and People of Rome:

  I am aware that the general shortage of grain must be affecting Rome and Italy as badly as it is affecting me. I have sent two of my legions to the Further province with my colleague Pius, who is in better case than Nearer Spain.

  This letter is not to ask for food. I will manage to keep my men alive somehow, just as I will manage to wear Quintus Sertorius down. This letter is to ask for money. I still owe my men about one year of pay, and am tired of never catching up for the future.

  Now although I am at the western end of the earth, I do hear what is going on elsewhere. I know that Mithridates invaded Bithynia in early summer, following on the death of King Nicomedes. I know that the tribes to the north of Macedonia are boiling from one end of the Via Egnatia to the other. I know that the pirates are making it impossible for Roman fleets to bring grain from eastern Macedonia and Asia Province back to Italy to help overcome the present food crisis. I know that the consuls of this year, Lucius Lucullus and Marcus Cotta, have been compelled to go out to fight Mithridates during their consulship. I know that Rome is pressed for money. But I also know that you offered the consul Lucullus seventy-two millions of sesterces to pay for a fleet- and that he declined your offer. So you do have at least seventy-two millions of sesterces under a flagstone in the Treasury floor, don't you? That's what really annoys me. That you value Mithridates higher than you do Sertorius. Well, I don't. One is an eastern potentate whose only real strength is in numbers. The other is a Roman. His strength is in that. And I know which man I'd rather be fighting. In fact, I wish you'd offered the job of putting Mithridates down to me. I might have jumped at it after this thankless business in Spain, an address no one remembers.

  I cannot continue in Spain without some of those seventy-two millions of sesterces, so I suggest you lever up that flagstone in the Treasury floor and scoop a few bags of money out. The alternative is simple. I will discharge my soldiers here in Nearer Spain-all the men of the four legions I still have with me-and leave them to fend for themselves. It is a long way home. Without the structure of command and the comfort of knowing they are led, I believe few of them will elect to march home. The majority of them will do what I would myself in the same situation. They will go to Quintus Sertorius and offer to enlist in his armies because he will feed them and he will pay them regularly. It is up to you. Either send me money, or I will discharge my troops on the spot.

  By the way, I have not been paid for my Public Horse.

  Pompey got his money; the senators understood an ultimatum when it was put to them in such downright, forthright language. The whole country groaned, but was in no condition to deal with an invasion by Quintus Sertorius, especiall
y reinforced by four legions of Pompeian troops. So salutary was the shock of Pompey's letter that Metellus Pius also received money. It only remained for the two Roman generals to find food.

  Back came Pompey's two legions from Further Spain, bringing a huge column of supplies with them, and back to his war of attrition went Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus. He took Pallantia at last, then moved on to Cauca, where he begged the townspeople to take in his sick and wounded and succor them. The townspeople agreed; but Pompey disguised his best soldiers as sick and wounded, and took Cauca from within. One after the other Sertorius's strongholds fell, yielding their stores of grain to Pompey. When winter came, only Calagurris and Osca still held out.

  Pompey received a letter from Metellus Pius.

  I am delighted, Pompeius. This year's campaigning by you and you alone has broken Sertorius's back. Perhaps the victories in the field were mine, but the determination has been all yours. At no time did you give up, at no time did you allow Sertorius the room to breathe. And always it was you Sertorius himself attacked, whereas I had the luck to face first Hirtuleius-a good man, but not in Sertorius's class-and then Perperna-a pure mediocrity.

  However, I would like to commend the soldiers of our legions. This has been the most thankless and bitter of all Rome's wars, and our men have had to endure hideous hardships. Yet neither of us has experienced discontent or mutiny, though the pay has been years late and the booty nonexistent. We have sacked cities to scrabble like rats for the last grain of wheat. Yes, two wonderful armies, Gnaeus Pompeius, and I wish I was confident that Rome will reward them as they ought to be rewarded. But I am not. Rome cannot be defeated. Battles she may lose, wars she does not. Perhaps our gallant troops are the reason for that, if one takes their loyalty, their good behavior and their absolute determination to grind on into account. We generals and governors can only do so much; in the end, I believe the credit must go to Rome's soldiers.

  I do not know when you plan to go home. It may be, I suppose, that as the Senate gave you your special command, the Senate will take it away. For myself, I am the Senate's governor in the Further province, and in no hurry to return home. It is easier for the Senate at the moment to prorogue me if I request it than to find Further Spain a new governor. So I will request that I be prorogued for at least two more years. Before I leave I would like to set my province on its feet properly, and make it safe from the Lusitani.

  I do not look forward upon my eventual return to Rome to engaging in a fresh conflict-a clash with the Senate to procure lands on which to settle my veterans. Yet I refuse to see my men go unrewarded. Therefore what I plan to do is to settle my men in Italian Gaul, but on the far side of the Padus, where there are tremendous expanses of good tilling soil and rich pastures at present in the hands of Gauls. It is not Roman land per se so the Senate will not be interested, and I will back my veterans against a pack of Insubres any day. I have already discussed this with my centurions, who profess themselves well pleased. My soldiers will not have to mill about aimlessly for up to several years waiting for a committee of land commissioners and bureaucrats to survey and chat and cull lists and chat and apportion and chat, and end in accomplishing nothing. The more I see of committees, the more convinced I am that the only thing a committee can organize is a catastrophe.

  I wish you well, dear Magnus.

  Pompey wintered that year among the Vascones, a powerful tribe which occupied the western end of the Pyrenees, and whose men were now thoroughly disenchanted with Sertorius. Because they were good to his soldiers, Pompey kept his army busy in building a stronghold for them, having elicited an oath from them to the effect that Pompaelo (as he called this new focus for a town) would always remain loyal to the Senate and People of Rome.

  That winter was a bitter one for Quintus Sertorius. Perhaps he had always known that his was a lost cause; certainly he knew he had never been one of Fortune's favorites. But he could not consciously admit these facts to himself in so many words. Instead he told himself that things had gone all his way as long as he had managed to delude his Roman adversaries that they could win against him in the field. His downfall had arrived when the old woman and the kid saw through the ploy and adopted a policy of trying to avoid battle. Fabian strategy.

  The offer of a reward for betrayal had cut him to the heart, for Quintus Sertorius was a Roman, and understood the cupidity which lived somewhere inside the most reasonable and decent of men. He could no longer trust any of his Roman or Italian confederates, brought up in the same traditions as he, whereas his Spanish people were as yet innocent of that particular fault civilization brought along with it. Always alert now for a hand stealing toward a knife or a certain look on a face, his temper began to shred under the strain. Aware that this new behavior must seem peculiar and atypical to his Spaniards, he strove mightily to control his moods; and in order to control them, he began to use wine as a pacifier.

  Then-cruelest blow of his life-word came from Nersae that his mother was dead. The ultimate betrayal. Not if the bloodied bodies of his German wife and the son he had deliberately excluded from a Roman education had been laid at his feet would he have mourned as he mourned for his mother, Maria. For days he shut himself in his darkened room, only Diana the white fawn and an endless number of wine flagons for company. The years of absence, the loss! The loss! The guilt.

  When he finally emerged a strange iron had entered into him. Hitherto the epitome of courtesy and kindness, he now revealed a Sertorius who was surly and suspicious even of his Spaniards, and quick to insult even his closest friends. Physically could he seem to feel Pompey prising apart the hold he had kept on Spain as Pompey pursued his policy of attrition with smooth efficiency, physically could he seem to feel his world disintegrating. And then, fed by the insidious phantoms in his wine, the paranoia in him erupted. When he heard that some of his Spanish chieftains were surreptitiously removing their sons from his famous school in Osca, he descended with his bodyguards upon its light-filled and peaceful colonnades and killed many of the children who remained. It was the beginning of his end.

  Marcus Perperna Veiento had never forgotten or forgiven the way Sertorius had wrested control of his army from him, nor could he cope with the natural superiority in this Marian renegade from the Sabine mountains. Every time they fought a battle it was brought home to Perperna anew that he had neither the talent nor the devotion of his soldiers that Sertorius possessed in such abundance. Oh, but it came hard to admit that he could not surpass Sertorius in anything! Except, as it turned out, in treachery.

  From the moment he learned of the reward being offered by Metellus Pius, his course was set. That Sertorius would make it so easy for him by lashing out in all directions was a piece of luck he hadn't counted on, but seized nonetheless.

  Perperna threw a feast-to relieve the monotony of life in wintry Osca, he explained lightly, inviting his Roman and Italian cronies. And inviting Sertorius, of course. He wasn't sure Sertorius would come until he actually saw that familiar bulk and divided face come through his door, but then he rushed forward and eagerly ushered his principal guest to the locus consularis upon his own couch, and made sure his slaves plied the man with undiluted fortified wine.

  Everyone present was a party to the plot; the atmosphere crackled with emotions. Chiefly fear, apprehension. So the wine flowed unwatered down every throat until Perperna began to think that no one would remain sober enough to do the deed. The little white fawn had come with its master, of course-he never stirred without it these days-and settled itself on the couch between him and Perperna, an affront which angered Perperna with a peculiar intensity considering the real purpose of the gathering. So as soon as he could he removed himself from the lectus medius, thrust the part-Roman, part-Spanish Marcus Antonius down in his place. A low fellow got on some peasant by one of the great Antonii, he had never been acknowledged by his father, let alone been showered with the usual openhanded Antonian generosity.

  The conversation grew coarser, the roiste
ring more vulgar, with Antonius at its forefront. Sertorius, who detested obscene language and jokes, took no part in the banter. He cuddled Diana and drank, the readable side of his face aloof, withdrawn. Then one of the others made a particularly crude remark which appealed to everybody except Sertorius, who threw himself backward on the couch with a grimace of disgust. Fearing that he would get up and leave, Perperna in a panic gave the signal, though the noise was so uproarious he didn't know whether it would be heard.

  Down onto the floor he threw his silver goblet, so hard that it gave forth a ringing clatter and bounced high into the air. Absolute silence fell immediately. But Antonius was quicker by far than the unsuspecting, wine-soaked Sertorius; he drew a Roman legionary's big dagger from under his tunic, hurled himself upon Sertorius and stabbed him in the chest. Diana squealed and scrabbled away, Sertorius began to struggle upright. All the company surged forward to pin the stricken man down by arms and legs, while Antonius plied his dagger up and down, up and down. Sertorius had made no outcry, but had he cried out no one would have come to help him; his Spanish bodyguards waiting outside Perperna's door had been murdered earlier in the night.

  Still squealing, the white fawn jumped up on the couch as the assassins drew back, satisfied; it began to nose frantically at its master, covered in blood, perfectly still. Now this was a task Perperna felt himself qualified to do! Seizing the knife Marcus Antonius had dropped, he plunged it into Diana's left side just behind the foreleg. The white fawn collapsed in a tangle athwart the dead Sertorius, and when the jubilant party picked him up to throw him out the door of Perperna's house like a piece of unwanted furniture, they pitched Diana after him.

  Pompey heard the news in what, he decided afterward, was actually a predictable way, though at the time it struck him as noisome, disgusting. For Marcus Perperna Veiento sent him Sertorius's head as fast as a horse and rider could gallop from Osca to Pompaelo. With the gruesome trophy came a note which informed Pompey that he and Metellus Pius owed Perperna one hundred talents of gold and twenty thousand iugera of land. A second letter to the same effect had been dispatched to Metellus Pius, Perperna said.