Fortune's Favorites

by Colleen McCullough

  "Then what are you doing here now?" Juncus eyed his visitor with intense dislike, remembering their little exchanges in the Murder Court-and who had mostly won them.

  "I was captured by pirates off Pharmacussa two months ago."

  "Well, that happens to many. I presume that you managed to ransom yourself, since you're standing before me. But there's nothing I can do to help you recover the ransom, Caesar. However, if you insist I will have my staff enter a complaint with the Senate in Rome."

  "I am able to do that myself," said Caesar pleasantly. "I am not here to complain, Marcus Junius. I'm here to request your permission to crucify five hundred captured pirates."

  Juncus stared. "What?"

  "As you so perceptively perceived, I ransomed myself. Then in Rhodus I requisitioned a small fleet and some soldiers, went back to the pirate stronghold, and captured it."

  "You had no right to do that! I am the governor, it was my job!" snapped Juncus.

  “By the time I had sent word to Pergamum-I have just come from Pergamum, where I left my prisoners-and a message had been forwarded to you here in Nicomedia, Marcus Junius, the winter would have been over, and Polygonus the pirate vanished from his base to do his campaigning. I may be a privatus, but I acted as all members of the Senate of Rome are expected to-I proceeded to ensure that Rome's enemies did not escape Rome's retribution."

  This swift retort gave Juncus pause; he had to search for the proper answer. "Then you are to be commended, Caesar."

  "So I think."

  "And you're asking me for permission to crucify five hundred good strong men? I can't do that! Your captives are now mine. I shall sell them into slavery."

  "I pledged them my word that they would be crucified," said Caesar, lips tightening.

  "You pledged them your word?" asked Juncus, genuinely aghast. "They're outlaws and thieves!"

  "It would not matter to me if they were barbarians and apes, Marcus Junius! I swore that I would crucify them. I am a Roman and my word is my bond. I must fulfill my word."

  "The promise was not yours to give! As you've pointed out, you're a privatus. I do agree that you acted correctly in moving to ensure that Rome's enemies did not escape retribution. But it is my prerogative to say what will happen to prisoners in my sphere of auctoritas. They will be sold as slaves. And that is my last word on the subject."

  "I see," said Caesar, eyes glassy. He got up.

  "Just a moment!" cried Juncus.

  Caesar faced him again. "Yes?"

  “I presume there was booty?''

  "Yes."

  "Then where is it? In Pergamum?"

  "No."

  "You can't keep it for yourself!"

  “I did not. Most of it went to the Rhodians, who provided the manpower and seapower for the exercise. Some went to the citizens of Xanthus and Patara, who provided the fifty talents for my ransom. My share I donated to Aphrodite, asking that the Rhodians build a temple in her honor. And Rome's share is on its way to Rome."

  "And what about my share?"

  "I wasn't aware you were entitled to one, Marcus Junius."

  "I am the governor of the province!"

  “The haul was rich, but not that rich. Polygonus was no King Zenicetes."

  "How much did you send to Rome?"

  "A thousand talents in coin."

  "Then there was enough."

  "For Rome, yes. For you, no," said Caesar gently.

  "As governor of the province, it was my job to send Rome's share to the Treasury!"

  "Minus how much?"

  "Minus the governor's share!"

  "Then I suggest," said Caesar, smiling, "that you apply to the Treasury for the governor's share."

  "I will! Never think I will not!"

  "I never would, Marcus Junius."

  "I will complain to the Senate about your arrogance, Caesar! You have taken the governor's duties upon yourself!"

  "That is true," said Caesar, walking out. "And just as well. Otherwise the Treasury would be a thousand talents the poorer."

  He hired a horse and rode overland to Pergamum through a melting landscape, Burgundus and Demetrius hard put to keep up. On and on without pausing to rest he rode, his anger fueling his tired head and aching muscles. Just seven days after leaving Pergamum he was back-and two full days ahead of the Rhodian galley, still traversing the Hellespont.

  "All done!" he cried cheerfully to the proquaestor Pompeius. "I hope you've made the crosses! I haven't any time to waste."

  "Made the crosses?" asked Pompeius, astonished. "Why would I cause crosses to be made for men Marcus Junius will sell?"

  "He was inclined that way at first," said Caesar lightly, "but after I had explained that I had given my word they would be crucified, he understood. So let's start making those crosses! I was due to commence studying with Apollonius Molon two months ago. Time flies, Pompeius, so up and into it!"

  The bewildered proquaestor found himself hustled as Juncus never did, but could not move quickly enough to satisfy Caesar, who ended in buying timber from a yard and then set the pirates to making their own crosses.

  "And make them properly, you scum, for hang on them you will! There's no worse fate than lingering for days because a cross is not well made enough to hasten death."

  "Why didn't the governor elect to sell us as slaves?" asked Polygonus, who was unhandy with tools and therefore not progressing in his cross making. "I was sure he would."

  "Then you were wrong," said Caesar, taking the bolts from him and beginning to fasten crosspiece to tree. "How did you ever manage to forge a successful career as a pirate, Polygonus? You are hopelessly incompetent!"

  "Some men," said Polygonus, leaning on a spade, "make very successful careers out of being incompetent."

  Caesar straightened, cross bolted. "Not I!" he said.

  "I realized that some time ago," said Polygonus, sighing.

  "Go on, start digging!"

  “What are those for?'' Polygonus asked, allowing Caesar to take his spade while he himself pointed at a pile of wooden pins.

  "Wedges," grunted Caesar, soil flying. "When this hole is deep enough to take the weight of cross and man together, your cross will be dropped in it. But the earth here is too loose to fix it firmly upright, so we'll hammer wedges into the ground all around the base. Then when the job's done and you're dead, your cross will come out easily the moment the wedges are removed. That way, the governor can save all these wonderful instruments of an ignominious death for the next lot of pirates I capture."

  "Don't you get out of breath?"

  "I have sufficient breath to work and talk at the same time. Come, Polygonus, help me drop your final resting place in the hole.... There!" Caesar stood back. "Now shove one of the wedges into the hole-the cross is leaning." He put down the spade and picked up a mallet. “No, no, on the other side! Toward the lean! You're no engineer, are you?"

  "I may not be an engineer," said Polygonus, grinning, "but I have engineered my executioner into making my cross!"

  Caesar laughed. "Do you think I'm not aware of that, friend? However, there is a price to pay. As any good pirate should know."

  Amusement fled; Polygonus stared. "A price?"

  "The rest will have their legs broken. They'll die quickly.

  You, on the other hand, I will provide with a little rest for your feet so there's not too much weight dragging you down. It is going to take you days to die, Polygonus!"

  When the Rhodian galley which had followed Caesar from Nicomedia rowed into the river leading to the port of Pergamum, the oarsmen gaped and shivered. Men died-even by execution-in Rhodes, but Roman-style justice was not a part of Rhodian life; Rhodes was Friend and Ally, not part of a Roman province. So the sight of five hundred crosses in a field lying fallow between the port and the sea was as strange as it was monstrous. A field of dead men-all save one, the leader, whose head was adorned with the irony of a diadem. He still moaned and cried out.

  Quintus Pompeius had remaine
d in Pergamum, unwilling to leave until Caesar was gone. It was the sight of those crosses, as if a forest had been devised wherein no tree differed from its fellows in the slightest degree. Crucifixions happened-this was the death meted out to a slave, never to a free man-but never en masse. Yet there in neat rows, uniformly spaced apart, stood a regimented death. And the man who could organize and achieve it in such a short time was not a man to ignore. Or leave in charge of Pergamum, however unofficially. Therefore Quintus Pompeius waited until Caesar's fleet sailed for Rhodes and Patara.

  The proquaestor arrived in Nicomedia to find the governor elated; Juncus had found a cache of gold bullion in a dungeon beneath the palace and appropriated it for himself, unaware that Caesar and Oradaltis had put it there to trap him.

  "Well, Pompeius, you've worked very hard to incorporate Bithynia into Asia Province," said Juncus magnanimously, "so I shall accede to your request. You may call yourself Bithynicus."

  As this raised Pompeius (Bithynicus) to a state of exaltation almost equal to the governor's, they reclined to eat dinner in a positive glow of well-being.

  It was Juncus who brought up the subject of Caesar, though not until the last course had been picked over.

  "He's the most arrogant mentula I've ever encountered," he said, lips peeled back. "Denied me a share of the spoils, then had the temerity to ask for my permission to crucify five hundred hale and hearty men who will at least fetch me some compensation when I sell them in the slave market!"

  Pompeius stared at him, jaw dropped. "Sell them?"

  "What's the matter?"

  "But you ordered the pirates crucified, Marcus Junius!"

  "I did not!"

  Pompeius (Bithynicus) shriveled visibly. “Cacat!''

  "What's the matter?" Juncus repeated, stiffening.

  "Caesar arrived back in Pergamum seven days after he had gone to see you and told me that you had consented to his crucifying the men. I admit I was a bit surprised, but it never occurred to me that he was lying! Marcus Junius, he crucified the lot of them!"

  "He wouldn't dare!"

  "He did dare! With such complete assurance-so relaxed! He pushed me around like a bond servant! I even said to him that I was surprised to hear you'd consented, and did he look uncomfortable or guilty? No! Truly, Marcus Junius, I believed every word he said! Nor did you send a message to the contrary," he added craftily.

  Juncus was beyond anger; he wept. "Those men were worth two million sesterces on the market! Two million, Pompeius ! And he sent a thousand talents to the Treasury in Rome without even reporting to me first, or offering me a share! Now I'm going to have to apply to the Treasury for a share, and you know what a circus that is! I'll be lucky if the decision comes through before my first great-grandchild is born! While he-the fellator!-must have appropriated thousands of talents for himself! Thousands!"

  "I doubt it," said Pompeius (Bithynicus), trying to look anywhere but at the desolate Juncus. "I had some speech with the senior captain of the Rhodian ships, and it appears that Caesar really did give all the loot to Rhodes, Xanthus and Patara. The haul was rich, but not an Egyptian treasure. The Rhodian believed Caesar took very little for himself, and that seems to be the common belief among all those concerned. One of his own freedmen said Caesar liked money well enough, but was too clever to prize it ahead of his political skin, and informed me with a sly smile that Caesar would never find himself arraigned in the Extortion Court. It also appears that the man had pledged the pirates he would crucify them while he was living at their stronghold waiting to be ransomed. It may be difficult to prove he took a thing from the pirate spoils, Marcus Junius."

  Juncus dried his eyes, blew his nose. "I can't prove he took anything in Nicomedia or elsewhere in Bithynia, either. But he did! He must have! I've known virtuous men in my time, and I would swear he isn't among them, Pompeius! He's too sure of himself to be virtuous. And far too arrogant. He acts as if he owns the world!"

  "According to the pirate leader-who thought Caesar very strange-he acted as if he owned the world while he was held a prisoner. Used to sweep around insulting everybody with high good humor! The ransom was levied at twenty talents, which apparently outraged Caesar! He was worth at least fifty talents, he said-and made them set the ransom at fifty talents!"

  "So that's why he said fifty talents! I noticed it at the time, but I was too angry with him to take him up on it, and then I forgot." Juncus shook his head. "That probably explains him, Pompeius. The man's mad! Fifty talents is a censor's ransom. Yes, I believe the man is mad."

  "Or perhaps he wanted to frighten Xanthus and Patara into paying up quickly," said Pompeius.

  "No! He's mad, and the madness comes out in self-importance. He's never been any different." A bitter look descended upon Juncus's countenance. "But his motives are irrelevant. All I want is to make him pay for what he's done to me! Oh, I don't believe it! Two million sesterces!"

  If Caesar suffered any misgivings about the accumulating enmity his activities were provoking, he concealed them perfectly; when his ship finally docked in Rhodus he paid off the captain with a most generous bonus, hired a comfortable but not pretentious house on the outskirts of the city, and settled to studying with the great Apollonius Molon.

  Since this big and independent island at the foot of Asia Province was a crossroads for the eastern end of the Middle Sea, it was constantly bombarded with news and gossip, so there was no need for any visiting Roman student to feel cut off from Rome or from developments in any part of the Roman world. Thus Caesar soon learned of Pompey's letter to the Senate and the Senate's reaction-including the championship of Lucullus; and he learned that last year's senior consul, Lucius Octavius, had died in Tarsus soon after he had arrived there early in March to govern Cilicia, It was too soon to know what the Senate planned to do about a replacement. The testamentary gift of Bithynia had pleased everyone in Rome from highest to lowest, but, Caesar learned in Rhodes, not everyone had wanted this new land to be a part of Asia Province, and the battle was not over just because Juncus had been ordered to go ahead with incorporation. Both Lucullus and Marcus Cotta, now the consuls, were in favor of making Bithynia a separate province with a separate governor, and Marcus Cotta had his eye on the post in the following year.

  Of more interest to the Rhodians, however, was more local news; what was happening in Pontus and Cappadocia held an importance for them that Rome and Spain could not. It was said that after King Tigranes had invaded Cappadocia four years ago, not one citizen had been left in Eusebeia Mazaca, so many had the King deported to resettle in Tigranocerta; the Cappadocian king who had not impressed Caesar when he saw him had been living in exile in Alexandria since the invasion, giving as his reason for this peculiar choice of location the fact that Tarsus was too close to Tigranes, and Rome too expensive for his purse.

  There were plenty of rumors that King Mithridates was busy mobilizing a new and vast army in Pontus, so angry had the King been at the news that Bithynia had fallen to Rome's lot in a will; but no one had any details, and Mithridates was still definitely well within his own borders.

  Marcus Junius Juncus came in for his share of gossip too. About him it was being said that he had alienated some of the most important Roman citizens in Bithynia-particularly those resident in Heracleia on the Euxine-and that formal complaints had been sent off to the Senate in Rome alleging that Juncus was plundering the country of its greatest treasures.

  Then at the beginning of June the whole of Asia Province jolted, shuddered; King Mithridates was on the march, had overrun Paphlagonia and reached Heracleia, just on the Bithynian border. Word had flown to Rome that the King of Pontus intended to take Bithynia for himself. Blood, birth and proximity all dictated that Bithynia belonged to Pontus, not to Rome, and King Mithridates would not lie down while Rome usurped Bithynia! But at Heracleia the vast Pontic horde stopped short, and there remained; as usual, having thrown down the challenge to Rome, Mithridates had balked and now lay still, waiting to see wha
t Rome would do.

  Marcus Junius Juncus and Quintus Pompeius (Bithynicus) fled back to Pergamum, where they spent more time writing lengthy reports to the Senate than attempting to ready Asia Province for another war against the King of Pontus. With no governor in Cilicia thanks to the death of Lucius Octavius, the two legions stationed in Tarsus made no move to march to the aid of Asia Province, and Juncus did not summon them. The two legions of the Fimbriani stationed in Ephesus and Sardes were recalled to Pergamum, but were moved no closer to Bithynia than Pergamum. Speculation had it that Juncus intended to defend his own skin, not Bithynia.

  In Rhodus, Caesar listened to the gossip but made no effort to journey to Pergamum, more concerned, it seemed, at the talk that Asia Province wanted no more truck with Mithridates but was not willing to fight him either-unless the governor issued firm orders. And the governor made no attempt to issue firm orders about a thing. The harvest would begin in Quinctilis in the southern part of the province and by Sextilis the northern parts would also be reaping. Yet Juncus did nothing, made no move to commandeer grain against the possibility of war.

  Word came during Sextilis that both the consuls, Lucullus and Marcus Cotta, had been authorized by the Senate to deal with Mithridates; suddenly Bithynia was a separate province and given to Marcus Cotta, while Cilicia went to Lucullus. No one could say what the fate of Asia Province would be, its governor only a praetor and caught between the two consuls of the year. Outranked by Lucullus and Marcus Cotta, Juncus would have to do as he was told. But he was not a Lucullus man; he wasn't efficient nor beyond reproach. Things boded ill for Juncus.

  Not many days later Caesar received a letter from Lucullus's brother, Varro Lucullus.

  Rome is in an uproar, as you can imagine. I write to you, Caesar, because you are out of things at the moment, because I need to air my thoughts on paper and am not a diarist, and because I can think of no one I would rather write to. I am doomed to remain here in Rome no matter what happens short of the deaths of both the consuls, and since the senior consul is my brother and the junior consul is your uncle, neither of us will want that. Why am I doomed to remain in Rome? I have been elected senior consul for next year! Isn't that excellent? My junior colleague is Gaius Cassius Longinus-a good man, I think.