Fortune's Favorites

by Colleen McCullough

  "Odd," Caesar interrupted. "I said the same thing myself."

  Lucullus gave him a withering look. "I will not prosecute you, Caesar, but nor will I commend you. The battle fought at Tralles will be reported very briefly in my dispatches to Rome, and described as conducted by the Asian militia under local command. Your name will not be mentioned. Nor will I appoint you to my staff, nor will I permit any other governor to appoint you to his staff."

  Caesar had listened to this with wooden face and distant eyes, but when Lucullus indicated by an abrupt gesture that he was finished, Caesar's expression changed, became mulish.

  "I do not insist that I be mentioned in dispatches as the commander of the Asian militia, but I do absolutely insist that I be named in dispatches as present for the entire duration of the campaign on the Maeander. Unless I am listed, I will not be able to claim it as my fourth campaign. I am determined to serve in ten campaigns before I stand for election as quaestor."

  Lucullus stared. "You don't have to stand as quaestor! You are already in the Senate."

  "According to Sulla's law, I must be quaestor before I can be praetor or consul. And before I am quaestor, I intend to have ten campaigns listed."

  "Many men elected quaestor have never served in the obligatory ten campaigns. This isn't the time of Scipio Africanus and Cato the Censor! No one is going to bother to count up how many campaigns you've served in when your name goes up for the quaestorian elections."

  "In my case," said Caesar adamantly, "someone will make it his business to count up my campaigns. The pattern of my life is set. I will get nothing as a favor and much against bitter opposition. I stand above the rest and I will outdo the rest. But never, I swear, unconstitutionally. I will make my way up the cursus honorum exactly as the law prescribes. And if I am listed as having served in ten campaigns, in the first of which I won a Civic Crown, then I will come in at the top of the quaestor's poll. Which is the only place I would find acceptable after so many years a senator."

  Eyes flinty, Lucullus looked at the handsome face with its Sullan eyes and understood he could go so far, no further. "Ye gods, your arrogance knows no bounds! Very well, I will list you in dispatches as present for the duration of the campaign and also present at the battle."

  "Such is my right."

  "One day, Caesar, you will overextend yourself."

  "Impossible!" said Caesar, laughing.

  "It's remarks like that make you so detestable."

  "I fail to see why when I speak the truth."

  "One further thing."

  About to go, Caesar stayed. "Yes?"

  "This winter the proconsul Marcus Antonius is moving his theater of command against the pirates from the western end of Our Sea to its eastern end. I believe he means to concentrate upon Crete. His headquarters will be at Gytheum, where some of his legates are already working hard-Marcus Antonius has to raise a vast fleet. You, of course, are our best gatherer of ships, as I know from your activities in Bithynia and Vatia Isauricus from your activities in Cyprus. Rhodes has obliged you twice! If you wish to add another campaign to your count, Caesar, then report to Gytheum at once. Your rank, I will inform Marcus Antonius, will be junior military tribune, and you will board with Roman citizens in the town. If I hear that you have set up your own establishment or exceeded your junior status in any way, I swear to you, Gaius Julius Caesar, that I will have you tried in Marcus Antonius's military court! And do not think I can't persuade him! After you-a relative!-prosecuted his brother, he doesn't love you at all. Of course you can refuse the commission. Such is your right as a Roman. But it's the only military commission you'll get anywhere after I write a few letters. I am the consul. That means my imperium overrules every other imperium, including the junior consul's-so don't look for a commission there, Caesar!"

  "You forget," said Caesar gently, "that the aquatic imperium of Marcus Antonius is unlimited. On water, I believe he would outrank even the senior consul of the year."

  "Then I'll make sure I'm never upon the same piece of water as the one where Antonius is bobbing up and down," said Lucullus tiredly. "Go and see your uncle Cotta before you leave."

  "What, no bed for the night?"

  "The only bed I'd give you, Caesar, belonged to Procrustes."

  Said Caesar to his uncle Marcus Aurelius Cotta some moments later: "I knew dealing with Eumachus would land me in hot water, but I had no idea Lucullus would go as far as he has. Or perhaps I ought to say that I thought either I would be forgiven or tried for treason. Instead, Lucullus has concentrated upon personal retaliations aimed at hampering my career."

  "I have no genuine influence with him," said Marcus Cotta. "Lucullus is an autocrat. But then, so are you."

  "I can't stay, Uncle. I'm ordered to leave at once for- oh, Rhodes I suppose, preparatory to relocating myself at Gytheum-in a boardinghouse which has to be run by a Roman citizen! Truly, your senior colleague's conditions are extraordinary! I will have to send my freedmen home, including Burgundus-I am not to be allowed to live in any kind of state."

  "Most peculiar! Provided his purse is fat enough, even a contubernalis can live like a king if he wants. And I imagine," said Marcus Cotta shrewdly, "that after your brush with the pirates, you can afford to live like a king."

  "No, I've been strapped. Clever, to pick on Antonius. I am not beloved of the Antonii." Caesar sighed. "Fancy his giving me junior rank! I ought at least to be a tribunus militum, even if of the unelected kind."

  "If you want to be loved, Caesar-oh, rubbish! What am I doing, advising you? You know more answers than I know questions, and you know perfectly well how you want to conduct your life. If you're in hot water, it's because you stepped into the cauldron of your own free will-and with both eyes wide open."

  "I admit it, Uncle. Now I must go if I'm to find a bed in the town before all the landlords bolt their doors. How is my uncle Gaius?"

  "Not prorogued for next year in Italian Gaul, despite the fact it needs a governor. He's had enough. And he expects to triumph."

  "I wish you luck in Bithynia, Uncle."

  "I suspect I'm going to need it," said Marcus Cotta.

  It was the middle of November when Caesar arrived in the small Peloponnesian port city of Gytheum, to find that Lucullus had wasted no time; his advent was anticipated and the terms of his junior military tribunate spelled out explicitly.

  "What on earth have you done?" asked the legate Marcus Manius, who was in charge of setting up Antonius's headquarters.

  "Annoyed Lucullus," said Caesar briefly.

  "Care to be more specific?"

  "No."

  "Pity. I'm dying of curiosity." Manius strolled down the narrow, cobbled street alongside Caesar. "I thought first I'd show you where you'll be lodging. Not a bad place, actually. Two old Roman widowers named Apronius and Canuleius who share a huge old house. Apparently they were married to sisters-women of Gytheum-and moved in together after the second sister died. I thought of them immediately when the orders came through because they have lots of room to spare, and they'll spoil you. Funny old codgers, but very nice. Not that you'll be in Gytheum much. I don't envy you, chasing ships from the Greeks! But your papers say you're the best there is, so I daresay you'll manage."

  "I daresay I will," agreed Caesar, smiling.

  Collecting warships in the Peloponnese was not entirely unenjoyable, however, for one soaked in the Greek classics: did sandy describe Pylos, did titans build the walls of Argos? There was a certain quality of ageless dreaming about the Peloponnese that rendered the present irrelevant, as if the gods themselves were mere nurselings compared to the generations of men who had lived here. And while he was very good at incurring the enmity of the Roman great, when Caesar dealt with humbler men he found himself much liked.

  The fleets grew slowly through the winter, but at a rate Caesar thought Antonius would find hard to criticize. Instead of accepting promises, the best gatherer of ships in the world would commandeer any warlike vessels he saw on t
he spot, then tie the towns down to signed contracts guaranteeing delivery of newly built galleys to Gytheum in April. Marcus Antonius, Caesar thought, would not be ready to move before April, as he wasn't expected to sail from Massilia until March.

  In February the Great Man's personal entourage began to dribble in, and Caesar-brows raised, mouth quivering-got a far better idea of how Marcus Antonius campaigned. When Gytheum did not prove to own a suitable residence, the entourage insisted that one be built on the shore looking down the Laconian Gulf toward the beautiful island of Cythera; it had to be provided with pools, waterfalls, fountains, shower baths, central heating and imported multicolored marble interiors.

  "It can't possibly be finished until summer," said Caesar to Manius, eyes dancing, "so I was thinking of offering the Great Man room and board with Apronius and Canuleius."

  "He won't be happy when he finds his house unfinished," said Manius, who thought the situation as funny as Caesar did. "Mind you, the locals are adopting a praiseworthily Greek attitude toward sinking their precious town funds into that vast sybaritic eyesore-they're planning on renting it for huge sums to all sorts of would-be potentates after Antonius has moved on."

  "I shall make it my business to spread the fame of the vast sybaritic eyesore far and wide," said Caesar. "After all, this is one of the best climates in the world-ideal for a long rest cure or a secret espousal of unmentionable vices."

  "I'd like to see them get their money back," said Man-ius. "What a waste of everyone's resources! Though I didn't say that."

  "Eh?" shouted Caesar, hand cupped around his ear.

  When Marcus Antonius did arrive, it was to find Gytheum's commodious and very safe habor filling up with ships of all kinds (Caesar had not been too proud to accept merchantmen, knowing that Antonius had a legion of land troops to shunt about), and his villa only half finished. Nothing, however, could dent his uproariously jolly mood; he had been drinking unwatered wine to such effect that he had not been sober since leaving Massilia. As far as his fascinated legate Marcus Manius and his junior military tribune Gaius Julius Caesar could see, Antonius's idea of a campaign was to assault the private parts of as many women as he could find with what, so rumor had it, was a formidable weapon. A victory was a howl of feminine protest at the vigor of the bombardment and the size of the ram.

  "Ye gods, what an incompetent sot!" said Caesar to the walls of his pleasant and comfortable room in the house of Canuleius and Apronius; he dared not say it to any human listener.

  He had, of course, seen to it that Marcus Manius mentioned his fleet-gathering activities in dispatches, so when his mother's letter arrived at the end of April not many days after Antonius, the news it contained presented a merciful release from duty in Gytheum without the loss of a campaign credit.

  Caesar's eldest uncle, Gaius Aurelius Cotta, returned from Italian Gaul early in the new year, dropped dead on the eve of his triumph. Leaving behind him-among many other things-a vacancy in the College of Pontifices, for he had been in length of years the oldest serving pontifex. And though Sulla had laid down that the college should consist of eight plebeians and seven patricians, at the time of Gaius Cotta's death it contained nine plebeians and only six patricians, due to Sulla's need to reward this man and that with pontificate or augurship. Normally the death of a plebeian priest meant that the college replaced him with another plebeian, but in order to arrange the membership as Sulla had laid down, the members of the college decided to co-opt a patrician. And their choice had fallen upon Caesar.

  As far as Aurelia could gather, Caesar's selection hinged upon the fact that no Julian had been a member of the College of Pontifices or the College of Augurs since the murders of Lucius Caesar (an augur) and Caesar Strabo (a pontifex) thirteen years before. It had been generally accepted that Lucius Caesar's son would fill the next vacancy in the College of Augurs, but (said Aurelia) no one had dreamed of Caesar for the College of Pontifices. Her informant was Mamercus, who had told her that the decision had not been reached with complete accord; Catulus opposed him, as did Metellus the eldest son of the Billy-goat. But after many auguries and a consultation of the prophetic books, Caesar won.

  The most important part of his mother's letter was a message from Mamercus, that if he wanted to make sure of his priesthood, Caesar had better get back to Rome for consecration and inauguration as soon as he possibly could; otherwise it was possible Catulus might sway the college to change its mind.

  His fifth campaign recorded, Caesar packed his few belongings with no regrets. The only people he would miss were his landlords, Apronius and Canuleius, and the legate Marcus Manius.

  "Though I must confess," he said to Manius, "that I wish I could have seen the vast sybaritic eyesore standing on the cove in all its ultimate glory."

  "To be pontifex is far more important," said Manius, who had not realized quite how important Caesar was; to Manius he had always seemed a down-to-earth and unassuming fellow who was very good at everything he did and a glutton for work. "What will you do after you've been inducted into the college?"

  "Try to find some humble propraetor with a war on his hands he can't handle," said Caesar. "Lucullus is proconsul now, which means he can't order the other governors about."

  "Spain?"

  "Too prominent in dispatches. No, I'll see if Marcus Fonteius needs a bright young military tribune in Gaul-across-the-Alps. He's a vir militaris, and they're always sensible men. He won't care what Lucullus thinks of me as long as I can work." The fair face looked suddenly grim. "But first things first, and first is Marcus Junius Juncus. I shall prosecute him in the Extortion Court."

  "Haven't you heard?" asked Manius.

  "Heard what?"

  "Juncus is dead. He never got back to Rome. Shipwrecked."

  3

  He was a Thracian who was not a Thracian.

  In the year that Caesar left Gytheum to assume his pontificate, this Thracian who was not a Thracian turned twenty-six, and entered upon the stage of history.

  His birth was respectable, though not illustrious, and his father, a Vesuvian Campanian, had been one of those who applied within sixty days to a praetor in Rome under the lex Plautia Papiria passed during the Italian War, and had been awarded the Roman citizenship because he had not been one of those Italians who had borne arms against Rome.

  Nothing in the boy's farming background could explain the boy's passion for war and everything military, but it was obvious to the father that when this second son turned seventeen he would enlist in the legions. However, the father was not without some influence, and was able to procure the boy a cadetship in the legion Marcus Crassus had recruited for Sulla after he landed in Italy and began his war against Carbo.

  The boy thrived under a martial regimen and distinguished himself in battle before he had his eighteenth birthday; he was transferred to one of Sulla's veteran legions, and in time was promoted to junior military tribune. Offered a discharge at the end of the last campaign in Etruria, he elected instead to join the army of Gaius Cosconius, sent to Illyricum to subdue the tribes collectively called Delmatae.

  At first he had found the locale and the style of warfare exhilarating, and added armillae and phalerae to his growing number of military decorations. But then Cosconius had become mired in a siege which lasted over two years; the port city of Salonae refused to yield or to fight. For the boy who was by now becoming a young man, the investment of Salonae was an intolerably boring and uneventful waste of his time. His course was set: he intended to espouse a career in the army as a vir militaris-a Military Man. Gaius Marius had started out as a Military Man, and look where he ended! Yet here he was sitting for month after month outside an inert mass of brick and tile, doing nothing, going nowhere.

  He asked for a transfer to Spain because (like many of his companions) he was fascinated by the exploits of Sertorius, but the legate in command of his legion was not sympathetic, and refused him. Boredom piled upon boredom; he applied a second time for a transfer to
Spain. And was refused a second time. After that blow his conduct deteriorated. He gained a name for insubordination, drinking, absence from camp without permission. All of which disappeared when Salonae fell and the general Cosconius began to collaborate with Gaius Scribonius Curio, governor of Macedonia, in a massive sweep aimed at subduing the Dardani. Now this was more like it!

  The incident which brought about the young man's downfall was classified as insurrection, and the unsympathetic legate turned out to be a secret enemy. The young man-along with a number of others-was arraigned in Cosconius's military court and tried for the crime of mutiny. The court found against him. Had he been an auxiliary or any kind of non-Roman, his sentence would automatically have consisted of flogging and execution. But because he was a Roman and an officer with junior tribunician status-and was the owner of many decorations for valor-the young man was offered two alternatives. He would lose his citizenship, of course; but he could choose to be flogged and exiled permanently from Italy, or he could choose to become a gladiator. Understandably he chose to be a gladiator. That way, he could at least go home. Being a Campanian, he knew all about gladiators; the gladiatorial schools were concentrated around Capua.