The October Horse: A Novel of Caesar and Cleopatra

by Colleen McCullough

  They passed through a village, Misurata, and so came to a town of twenty-thousand folk of Greek descent; Leptis Major or Magna. The harvest was all in, and it had been a good one. When Cato produced his silver coins, he bought enough wheat to put the men back on bread, and sufficient oil to moisten it.

  “Only six hundred miles to Thapsus, another hundred up to Utica, and of those, but two hundred waterless ones between Sabrata and Lake Tritonis, the beginning of our Roman province.” Cato broke open a loaf of fresh, crusty bread. “At least having crossed Phazania, Sextus, I know how much water we will need on our last stretch of desert. We’ll be able to load some of the asses with grain, unearth the mills and ovens from the wagons, and make bread whenever there is fire-wood. Isn’t this a wonderful place? This once, I’m going to fill up on bread.”

  The quintessential Stoic, thought Sextus, has feet of bread. But he’s right. Tripolitana is a wonderful place.

  Though the season for grapes and peaches had finished, the locals dried them, which meant raisins to munch by the handful, and leathery slices of peach to suck on. Celery, onions, cabbage and lettuce abounded in the wild, seeded from domestic gardens.

  Women and children as well as men, the Tripolitanans wore tight trousers of densely woven wool and leather leggings over closed-toe boots as protection against snakes, scorpions and those massive spiders, known as tetragnathi. Almost all were engaged in agriculture—wheat, olives, fruit, wine—but kept sheep and cattle on common land deemed too poor for the plough. In Leptis there were businessmen and merchants, plus the inevitable contingent of Roman agents nosing to make a quick sestertius, but the feeling was of rustication, not of commerce.

  Inland lay a low plateau that was the commencement of three thousand miles of desert stretching both east and west as well as farther to the south than anybody knew. The Garamantes roamed it on camels, herding their goats and sheep, living in tents to exclude not the rain—there was none—but the sand. A high wind blasted its grains with a force that could kill by suffocation.

  A great deal more confident now that eight hundred miles lay behind them, the Ten Thousand left Leptis in high spirits.

  The two-hundred-mile expanse of salt pans took only nineteen days to cross; though lack of firewood prevented the baking of bread, Cato had acquired as many sheep as cattle to vary the all-meat diet in a better way. No more goats! If I never see another goat again as long as I live, vowed Cato, I will count myself well satisfied. A sentiment his men echoed, especially Lucius Gratidius, upon whom had devolved the goats.

  Lake Tritonis formed the unofficial boundary of the Roman African province—a disappointment, as its waters were bitter with natron, a substance akin to salt. Because an inferior sort of murex populated the sea just east of it, a factory for the manufacture of purple-dye sat on its shore alongside a stinking tower of empty shells and the rotting remains of the creatures that had lived inside them. The purple dye was extracted from a small tube in the murex body, which meant a lot of leftovers.

  However, the lake marked the beginning of a properly surveyed and paved Roman road. Laughing and chattering, the Ten Thousand hustled past the festering factory as fast as they could, prancing all over the road. Where there was a road, was also Rome.

  Outside Thapsus, Athenodorus Cordylion collapsed and died, so suddenly that Cato, elsewhere, didn’t reach him in time to say goodbye. Weeping, Cato saw to the building of a driftwood pyre, offered libations to Zeus and a coin to Charon the ferryman, then took up his staff and set off again ahead of his men. So few left from the old days. Catulus, Bibulus, Ahenobarbus, and now dear Athenodorus Cordylion. How many more days do I have? If Caesar ends in ruling the world, I trust not many.

  The march ended in a vast camp on the outskirts of Utica, always the capital of the Roman province. Another Carthage had been built adjacent to the site of the home of Hannibal, Hamilcar and Hasdrubal, but Scipio Aemilianus had razed that home so thoroughly that the new Carthage never rivaled Utica, possessed of an equally magnificent harbor.

  A terrible wrench to part from the Ten Thousand, who mourned losing their beloved Commander; never organized into legions, the fifteen cohorts and extra noncombatants Cato had brought would be broken up and inserted into existing legions to plump them out. Still, that incredible march endowed every last participant in it with a luminousness akin to godhead in the eyes of their fellow Roman soldiers.

  The only one Cato took with him and Sextus Pompey was Lucius Gratidius, who, if Cato had his way, would train civilians. On his last evening before he entered the governor’s palace in Utica and reentered a world he hadn’t known for well over five months, Cato sat to write to Socrates, the dioiketes of Arsinoë.

  I had the forethought, my dear Socrates, to find a few men whose natural double step measured exactly five feet, and I then deputed them to pace out our entire journey from Arsinoë to Utica. Averaging their tallies resulted in a figure of 1,403 miles. Given that we dallied for three days at Philaenorum, a day at Charax, and four days outside Leptis Major—a total of one nundinum—we actually walked for 116 days. If you remember, we left Arsinoë three days before the Nones of January. We have arrived in Utica on the Nones of May. I had thought until I sat to work all this out on my abacus that we traveled at the rate of ten miles per day, but it turns out we covered twelve miles per day. All save sixty-seven of my men survived the trip, though we also lost a Psylli woman to a scorpion bite.

  This is just to tell you that we arrived and are safe, but also to tell you that were it not for you and Nasamones of the Psylli, our expedition would have foundered. We had naught but kindness and succor from those we encountered along the way, but the services you and Nasamones rendered us exceed all bounds. One day when our beloved Republic is restored, I hope to see you and Nasamones in Rome as my guests. I will do you public honor in the Senaculum.

  The letter took a year to reach Socrates, a year during which much happened. Socrates read it through a wall of tears, then sat, the sheet of Fannian paper fallen to his lap, and shook his head.

  “Oh, Marcus Cato, would that you were a Xenophon!” he cried. “Four months upon an uncharted course, and all you can regale me with are facts and figures. What a Roman you are! A Greek would have been making copious notes as foundation for his book; you merely kept a few men pacing and counting. The thanks are greatly appreciated and the letter will be treasured as a relic because you found the time to write it, but oh, what I would give for a narrative of the march of your Ten Thousand!”

  3

  Roman Africa Province wasn’t unduly large, just extremely rich. After Gaius Marius had defeated King Jugurtha of Numidia sixty years earlier it had been augmented by some Numidian lands, but Rome preferred client-kings to governors, so King Hiempsal was allowed to retain most of his country. He had reigned for over forty years, and was succeeded by his eldest son, Juba. Africa Province itself owned one asset which made it necessary for Rome to govern it: the Bagradas River, a large stream of many and strong tributaries that permitted the cultivation of wheat on a grand scale. At the time that Cato and his Ten Thousand arrived there, its grain crop had become as important as Sicily’s, and the owners of its huge grain farms were members of the Senate or the Eighteen, who were the most powerful knight-businessmen. The province also possessed another quality obligating Rome to govern it directly: it occupied a northward bulge in the African coast right below Sicily and the instep of the Italian foot, therefore it was a perfect jumping-off point for an invasion of Sicily and Italy. In olden days, Carthage had done just that several times.

  After Caesar crossed the Rubicon and gained largely peaceful control of Italy, the anti-Caesarean Senate fled their homeland in the train of Pompey the Great, appointed their commander-in-chief. Unwilling to devastate the Italian countryside in yet another civil war, Pompey had resolved to fight Caesar abroad, and chose Greece/Macedonia as his theater.

  However, it was equally important to own the grain-producing provinces, particularly S
icily and Africa. Thus before it fled, the Republican Senate had dispatched Cato to hold Sicily, while Publius Attius Varus, governor of Africa Province, held that place in the name of the Republican Senate and People of Rome. Caesar sent his brilliant ex-tribune of the plebs, Gaius Scribonius Curio, to wrest both Sicily and Africa off the Republicans; he had to feed not only Rome, but also most of Italy, long incapable of feeding themselves. Sicily fell to Curio very quickly, for Cato was not a general of troops, simply a brave soldier. When he escaped to Africa, Curio and his army followed. But Attius Varus was not about to be cowed either by a couch general like Cato or a fledgling general like Curio. First he made Africa intolerable for Cato, who departed to Pompey in Macedonia, and then, aided by King Juba, Attius Varus led the overconfident Curio into an ambush. Curio and his army died.

  So it fell out that Caesar controlled one wheat province, Sicily, while the Republicans controlled the other, Africa. Which gave Caesar ample grain in good years but insufficient in lean years—and there had been a succession of lean years due to a series of droughts from one end of Our Sea to the other. Complicated by the presence of Republican fleets in the Tuscan Sea, ready to pounce on Caesar’s grain convoys; a situation bound to grow worse now that Republican resistance in the East was no more and Gnaeus Pompey had relocated his navy to the grain sea-lanes.

  Having gathered in Africa Province after Pharsalus, the Republicans were well aware that Caesar had to come after them. While ever they could field an army, Caesar’s mastery of the world remained debatable. Because he was Caesar, they expected him sooner rather than later; when Cato had started out from Cyrenaica, the general consensus had been June, as this date would give Caesar time to deal with King Pharnaces in Anatolia first. So when the Ten Thousand finished its march, Cato was amazed to find the Republican army at slothful ease, and no sign of Caesar.

  * * *

  Had the late Gaius Marius laid eyes on the governor’s palace in Utica in this present year, he would have found it very little changed from the place he had occupied six decades ago. Its walls were plastered and painted dull red inside; apart from a largish audience chamber it was a warren of smallish rooms, though there were two nice suites in an annex for visiting grain plutocrats or front bench senators off on a sight-seeing trip to the East. Now it seethed with so many Republican Great Names that it threatened to burst at the seams, and its stuffy interior thrummed with the sounds of all these Republican Great Names at outs and at odds with each other.

  A young and bashful tribune of the soldiers led Cato to the governor’s office, where Publius Attius Varus sat at his walnut desk surrounded by paper-shuffling underlings.

  “I hear you’ve survived a remarkable journey, Cato,” Varus said, not getting up to shake hands because he detested Cato. A nod, and the minions rose to file out of the room.

  “I could ill afford not to survive!” Cato shouted, back in shouting mode at mere sight of this churl. “We need soldiers.”

  “Yes, true.”

  A martial man of good—but not quite good enough—family, Varus counted himself a client of Pompey the Great’s, but more than duty to his patron had pushed him on to the Republican side; he was a passionate Caesar-hater, and proud of it. Now he coughed, looked disdainful. “I’m very much afraid, Cato, that I can offer you no accommodation. Anyone who hasn’t been at least a tribune of the plebs is dossing down in a corridor—ex-praetors like you rate a cupboard.”

  “I don’t expect you to house me, Publius Varus. One of my men is searching for a small house at this very moment.”

  Recollections of Cato’s standard of accommodation caused Varus to shudder; in Thessalonica, a three-roomed mud-brick hovel with three servants—one for himself, one for Statyllus, and one for Athenodorus Cordylion. “Good. Wine?” he asked.

  “Not for me!” Cato barked. “I have taken a vow not to drink a drop until Caesar is dead.”

  “A noble sacrifice,” said Varus.

  The awkward visitor sat mum, his hair and beard a mess because he had not paused to bathe before reporting in. Oh, what did one say to such a man?

  “I hear that all you’ve eaten for the past four months is meat, Cato.”

  “We managed to eat bread a part of the time.”

  “Indeed?”

  “I have just said so.”

  “I also hear that there were scorpions and gigantic spiders.”

  “Yes.”

  “Did many die from their bites?”

  “No.”

  “Are all of your men fully recovered from their wounds?”

  “Yes.”

  “And—ah—did you get caught in any sandstorms?”

  “No.”

  “It must have been a nightmare when you ran out of water.”

  “I did not run out of water.”

  “Were you attacked by savages?”

  “No.”

  “Did you manage to transport the men’s armaments?”

  “Yes.”

  “You must have missed the cut and thrust of politics.”

  “There are no politics in civil wars.”

  “You missed noble company, then.”

  “No.”

  Attius Varus gave up. “Well, Cato, it’s good to see you, and I trust you’ll find suitable housing. Now that you’re here and our troop tally is complete, I shall call a council for the second hour of daylight tomorrow. We have yet,” he continued as he escorted Cato out, “to decide who is going to be commander-in-chief.”

  What Cato might have replied was not voiced, for Varus spotted Sextus Pompey leaning against the outer doorway deep in talk with the sentries, and squawked.

  “Sextus Pompeius! Cato didn’t say you were here too!”

  “That doesn’t surprise me, Varus. Nevertheless, I am here.”

  “You walked from Cyrenaica?”

  “Under the aegis of Marcus Cato, a pleasant stroll.”

  “Come in, come in! May I offer you some wine?”

  “You certainly may,” said Sextus with a wink for Cato as he disappeared arm in arm with Varus.

  Lucius Gratidius was lurking in the small square just outside the palace gates, chewing a straw and ogling the women busy doing their washing in the fountain. As he still wore nothing save a bedraggled tunic, no one on guard duty had realized that this skinny hulk was the pilus prior centurion of Pompey the Great’s First Legion.

  “Found you quite a comfortable place,” he said, straightening as Cato walked out to stand blinking in the sun. “Nine rooms and a bath. With a scrubwoman, a cook and two manservants thrown in, the price is five hundred sesterces a month.”

  To a Roman of Rome, a pittance, even were he as frugal as Cato. “An excellent bargain, Gratidius. Has Statyllus turned up yet?”

  “No, but he will,” Gratidius said cheerfully, directing Cato down a mean street. “He just wanted to make sure that Athenodorus Cordylion is going to rest easy. Lonely for a philosopher, I dare-say, to have his ashes buried so far from any other philosopher’s. You were right not to let Statyllus carry them to Utica. Not enough wood for a decent pyre, too many bone bits, too much marrow left.”

  “I hadn’t quite looked at it that way,” said Cato.

  The apartment was the ground floor of a seven-story building right on the harbor front, its windows looking out over a forest of masts, tangles of silver-grey jetties and wharves, and that ethereally blue sea. Five hundred sesterces a month were indeed a bargain, Cato decided when he discovered that the two male slaves were obedient fellows pleased to fill him a warm bath. And, when Statyllus turned up in time for the late afternoon meal, he couldn’t help but give a little smile. Statyllus’s escort was none other than Sextus Pompey, who declined to share their bread, oil, cheese and salad, but ensconced himself in a chair and proceeded to give Cato the gleanings of his few hours with Varus.

  “I thought you’d like to know that Marcus Favonius is safe,” he started out. “He encountered Caesar at Amphipolis and asked for pardon. Caesar gave it
to him gladly, it seems. Pharsalus must have done something to his mind, Cato, because he wept and told Caesar that all he wanted was to return to his estates in Italy and live a quiet, peaceful life.”

  Oh, Favonius, Favonius! Well, I could see this coming. While I lingered with the wounded in Dyrrachium, you had to endure those interminable quarrels between Pompeius’s couch generals, ably assisted by that barbarian Labienus. Your letters told me all, but it doesn’t surprise me that I’ve had no letter from you since Pharsalus. How you would dread informing me that you’ve abandoned the Republican cause. May you enjoy that quiet peace, dearest Marcus Favonius. I do not blame you. No, I cannot blame you.

  “And,” Sextus was rattling on, “my informant—who shall be nameless—told me that things are even worse in Utica than they were in Dyrrachium and Thessalonica. Even idiots like Lucius Caesar Junior and Marcus Octavius, who’ve never even been tribunes of the plebs, are saying that they deserve legatal status in our army. As for the really Big Names—ugh! Labienus, Metellus Scipio, Afranius and Governor Varus all think they should occupy the command tent.”

  “I had hoped that would be decided before I got here,” Cato said, voice harsh, face expressionless.

  “No, it’s to be decided tomorrow.”

  “And what of your brother, Gnaeus?”

  “Off applying a rod to tata-in-law Libo’s arse somewhere on the south shore of Sicily. I predict,” Sextus added with a grin, “that we won’t see him until the command argument is settled.”

  “Sensible man” was Cato’s comment. “And you, Sextus?”

  “Oh, I’ll stick to my stepmother’s tata like a burr to a fleece. Metellus Scipio may not be bright or talented, but I do think my father would say I should serve with him.”

  “Yes, he would.” The fine grey eyes lifted to look at Sextus sternly.

  “What of Caesar?” he asked.

  A frown appeared. “That’s the great mystery, Cato. As far as anyone knows, he’s still in Egypt, though apparently not in Alexandria. There are all kinds of rumors, but the truth is that no one has heard a peep from Caesar since a letter written from Alexandria in November reached Rome a month later.”