Caesar's Women

by Colleen McCullough

  He hadn't changed in the ten years which had elapsed since then, thought Caesar as the new group approached, Bibulus in its forefront. The other branch of the Famous Family Calpurnius, cognominated Piso, was filled with some of Rome's tallest fellows; yet the branch cognominated Bibulus (it meant spongelike, in the sense of soaking up wine) was physically opposite. No member of the Roman nobility would have had any difficulty in deciding which Famous Family branch Bibulus belonged to. He wasn't merely small, he was tiny, and possessed of a face so fair it was bleak—jutting cheekbones, colorless hair, invisible brows, a pair of silver-grey eyes. Not unattractive, but daunting.

  Clients excluded, Bibulus was not alone; he was walking side by side with an extraordinary man who wore no tunic under his toga. Young Cato, from the coloring and the nose. Well, that friendship made sense. Bibulus was married to a Domitia who was the first cousin of Cato's brother-in-law, Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus. Odd how all the obnoxious ones stuck together, even in marriage. And as Bibulus was a member of the boni, no doubt that meant Cato was too.

  "In search of a little shade, Bibulus?" asked Caesar sweetly as they met, his eyes traveling from his old enemy to his very tall companion, who thanks to the position of the sun and the group did actually cast his shadow across Bibulus.

  "Cato will put all of us in the shade before he's done” was the reply, uttered coldly.

  "The nose will be a help in that respect," said Caesar.

  Cato patted his most prominent feature affectionately, not at all put out, but not amused either; wit escaped him. "No one will ever mistake my statues for anyone else's," he said.

  "That is true." Caesar looked at Bibulus. "Planning to run for any office this year?" he asked.

  "Not I!"

  "And you, Marcus Cato?"

  "Tribune of the soldiers," said Cato tersely.

  "You'll do well. I hear that you won a large collection of decorations as a soldier in Poplicola's army against Spartacus."

  "That's right, he did!" snapped Bibulus. "Not everyone in Poplicola's army was a coward!"

  Caesar's fair brows lifted. "I didn't say that."

  "You didn't have to. You chose Crassus to campaign with."

  "I had no choice in the matter, any more than Marcus Cato will have a choice when he's elected a tribune of the soldiers. As military magistrates, we go where Romulus sends us."

  Whereupon the conversation foundered and would have ceased except for the arrival of another pair far more congenial to Caesar at least: Appius Claudius Pulcher and Marcus Tullius Cicero.

  "Barely here, I see, Cato!" said Cicero merrily.

  Bibulus had had enough, and took himself and Cato off.

  "Remarkable," said Caesar, watching the diminishing Cato. "Why no tunic?"

  "He says it's part of the mos maiorum, and he's trying to persuade all of us to go back to the old ways," said Appius Claudius, a typical member of his family, being a dark and medium-sized man of considerable good looks. He patted Cicero's midriff and grinned. "All right for fellows like himself and Caesar, but I can't think exposure of your hide would impress a jury," he said to Cicero.

  "Pure affectation," said Cicero. "He'll grow out of it." The dark, immensely intelligent eyes rested on Caesar and danced. "Mind you, I remember when your sartorial affectations upset a few of the boni, Caesar. Those purple borders on your long sleeves?''

  Caesar laughed. "I was bored, and it seemed like something bound to irritate Catulus at the time."

  "It did, it did! As leader of the boni, Catulus fancies himself the custodian of Rome's customs and traditions."

  "Speaking of Catulus, when does he plan to finish Jupiter Optimus Maximus? I can't see any progress at all."

  "Oh, it was dedicated a year ago," said Cicero. "As to when it can be used—who knows? Sulla did leave the poor fellow in severe financial difficulties over the job, you know that. Most of the money he has to find out of his own purse."

  "He can afford it, he sat comfortably in Rome making money out of Cinna and Carbo while Sulla was in exile. Giving Catulus the job of rebuilding Jupiter Optimus Maximus was Sulla's revenge."

  "Ah, yes! Sulla's revenges are still famous, though he's been dead ten years."

  "He was the First Man in Rome," said Caesar.

  "And now we have Pompeius Magnus claiming the title," said Appius Claudius, his contempt showing.

  What Caesar might have said in answer to this was not said, for Cicero spoke.

  "I'm glad you're back in Rome, Caesar. Hortensius is getting a bit long in the tooth, hasn't been quite the same since I beat him in the Verres case, so I can do with some decent competition in the courts."

  "Long in the tooth at forty-seven?" asked Caesar.

  "He lives high," said Appius Claudius.

  "So do they all in that circle."

  "I wouldn't call Lucullus a high liver at the moment."

  "That's right, you're not long back from service with him in the East," said Caesar, preparing to depart by inclining his head toward his retinue.

  "And glad to be out of it," said Appius Claudius with feeling. He snorted a chuckle. "However, I sent Lucullus a replacement!"

  "A replacement?"

  "My little brother, Publius Clodius."

  "Oh, that will please him!" said Caesar, laughing too.

  And so Caesar left the Forum somewhat more comfortable with the thought that the next few years would be spent here in Rome. It wouldn't be easy, and that pleased him. Catulus, Bibulus and the rest of the boni would make sure he suffered. But there were friends too; Appius Claudius wasn't tied to a faction, and as a patrician he would favor a fellow patrician.

  But what about Cicero? Since his brilliance and innovation had sent Gaius Verres into permanent exile, everyone knew Cicero, who labored under the extreme disadvantage of having no ancestors worth speaking of. A homo novus, a New Man. The first of his respectable rural family to sit in the Senate. He came from the same district as Marius had, and was related to him; but some flaw in his nature had blinded him to the fact that outside of the Senate, most of Rome still worshiped the memory of Gaius Marius. So Cicero refused to trade on that relationship, shunned all mention of his origins in Arpinum, and spent his days trying to pretend that he was a Roman of the Romans. He even had the wax masks of many ancestors in his atrium, but they belonged to the family of his wife, Terentia; like Gaius Marius, he had married into the highest nobility and counted on Terentia's connections to ease him into the consulship.

  The best way to describe him was as a social climber, something his relative Gaius Marius had never been. Marius had married the older sister of Caesar's father, Caesar's beloved Aunt Julia, and for the same reasons Cicero had married his ugly Terentia. Yet to Marius the consulship had been a way to secure a great military command, nothing else. Whereas Cicero saw the consulship itself as the height of his ambitions. Marius had wanted to be the First Man in Rome. Cicero just wanted to belong by right to the highest nobility in the land. Oh, he would succeed! In the law courts he had no peer, which meant he had built up a formidable group of grateful villains who wielded colossal influence in the Senate. Not to mention that he was Rome's greatest orator, which meant he was sought after by other men of colossal influence to speak on their behalf.

  No snob, Caesar was happy to accept Cicero for his own merits, and hoped to woo him into that Caesar faction. The trouble was that Cicero was an incurable vacillator; that immense mind saw so many potential hazards that in the end he was likely to let timidity make his decisions for him. And to a man like Caesar, who had never let fear conquer his instincts, timidity was the worst of all masters. Having Cicero on his side would make political life easier for Caesar. But would Cicero see the advantages allegiance would bring him? That was on the lap of the Gods.

  Cicero was besides a poor man, and Caesar didn't have the money to buy him. His only source of income aside from his family lands in Arpinum was his wife; Terentia was extremely wealthy. Unfortunately she also control
led her own funds, and refused to indulge Cicero's taste for artworks and country villas. Oh, for money! It removed so many difficulties, especially for a man who wanted to be the First Man in Rome. Look at Pompey the Great, master of untold wealth. He bought adherents. Whereas Caesar for all his illustrious ancestry did not have the money to buy adherents or votes. In that respect, he and Cicero were two of a kind. Money. If anything could defeat him, thought Caesar, it was lack of money.

  On the following morning Caesar dismissed his clients after the dawn ritual and walked alone down the Vicus Patricii to the suite of rooms he rented in a tall insula located between the Fabricius dye works and the Suburan Baths. This had become his bolt-hole after he returned from the war against Spartacus, when the living presence of mother and wife and daughter within his own home had sometimes rendered it so overpoweringly feminine that it proved intolerable. Everyone in Rome was used to noise, even those who dwelled in spacious houses upon the Palatine and Carinae—slaves shouted, sang, laughed and squabbled as they went about their work, and babies howled, small children screamed, womenfolk chattered incessantly when they weren't intruding to nag or complain. Such a normal situation that it scarcely impinged upon most men at the head of a household. But in that respect Caesar chafed, for in him resided a genuine liking for solitude as well as little patience for what he regarded as trivia. Being a true Roman, he had not attempted to reorganize his domestic environment by forbidding noise and feminine intrusions, but rather avoided them by giving himself a bolt-hole.

  He liked beautiful objects, so the three rooms he rented on the second floor of this insula belied their location. His only real friend, Marcus Licinius Crassus, was an incurable acquisitor of estates and properties, and for once Crassus had succumbed to a generous impulse, sold Caesar very cheaply sufficient mosaic flooring to cover the two rooms Caesar himself used. When he had bought the house of Marcus Livius Drusus, Crassus had rather despised the floor's antiquity; but Caesar's taste was unerring, he knew nothing so good had been produced in fifty years. Similarly, Crassus had been pleased to use Caesar's apartment as practice for the squads of unskilled slaves he (very profitably) trained in prized and costly trades like plastering walls, picking out moldings and pilasters with gilt, and painting frescoes.

  Thus when Caesar entered this apartment he heaved a sigh of sheer satisfaction as he gazed around the perfections of study-cum-reception-room and bedroom. Good, good! Lucius Decumius had followed his instructions to the letter and arranged several new items of furniture exactly where Caesar had wanted. They had been found in Further Spain and shipped to Rome ahead of time: a glossy console table carved out of reddish marble with lion's feet legs, a gilded couch covered in Tyrian purple tapestry, two splendid chairs. There, he noted with amusement, was the new bed Lucius Decumius had mentioned, a commodious structure in ebony and gilt with a Tyrian purple spread. Who could guess, looking at Lucius Decumius, that his taste was quite up there with Caesar's?

  The owner of this establishment didn't bother checking the third room, which was really a section of the balcony rimming the interior light well. Either end of it had been walled off for privacy from the neighbors, and the light well itself was heavily shuttered, allowing air but forbidding prying eyes any sight of its interior. Herein the service arrangements were located, from a man-sized bronze bath to a cistern storing water to a chamber pot. There were no cooking facilities and Caesar did not employ a servant who lived in the apartment. Cleaning was in the care of Aurelia's servants, whom Eutychus sent down regularly to empty the bath water and keep the cistern filled, the chamber pot sweet, the linen washed, the floors swept, and every other surface dusted.

  Lucius Decumius was already there, perched on the couch, his legs swinging clear of the exquisitely colored merman on the floor, his eyes upon a scroll he held between his hands.

  "Making sure the College accounts are in order for the urban praetor's audit?" asked Caesar, closing the door.

  "Something like that," Lucius Decumius answered, letting the scroll fly shut with a snap.

  Caesar crossed to consult the cylinder of a water clock. "According to this little beast, it's time to go downstairs, dad. Perhaps she won't be punctual, especially if Silanus has no love of chronometers, but somehow the lady didn't strike me as a person who ignores the passage of time."

  "You won't want me here, Pavo, so I'll just shove her in the door and go home," said Lucius Decumius, exiting promptly.

  Caesar seated himself at his desk to write a letter to Queen Oradaltis in Bithynia, but though he wrote as expeditiously as he did everything else, he had not done more than put paper in front of him when the door opened and Servilia entered. His assessment was right: she was not a lady who ignored time.

  Rising, he went round the desk to greet her, intrigued when she extended her hand the way a man would. He shook it with exactly the courteous pressure such small bones demanded, but as he would have shaken a man's hand. There was a chair ready at his desk, though before she arrived he had not been sure whether to conduct this interview across a desk or more cozily ensconced in closer proximity. His mother had been right: Servilia was not easy to read. So he ushered her to the chair opposite, then returned to his own. Hands clasped loosely on the desk in front of him, he looked at her solemnly.

  Well preserved if she was nearing thirty-seven years of age, he decided, and elegantly dressed in a vermilion robe whose color skated perilously close to the flame of a prostitute's toga and yet contrived to appear unimpeachably respectable. Yes, she was clever! Thick and so black its highlights shone more blue than red, her hair was pulled back from a center parting to meet a separate wing covering the upper tip of each ear, the whole then knotted into a bun on the nape of her neck. Unusual, but again respectable. A small, somewhat pursed mouth, good clear white skin, heavily lidded black eyes fringed with long and curling black lashes, brows he suspected she plucked heavily, and—most interesting of all—a slight sagging in the muscles of her right cheek that he had also noticed in the son, Brutus.

  Time to break the silence, since it appeared she was not about to do so. "How may I help you, domina?” he asked formally.

  “Decimus Silanus is our paterfamilias, Gaius Julius, but there are certain things pertaining to the affairs of my late first husband, Marcus Junius Brutus, that I prefer to deal with myself. My present husband is not a well man, so I try to spare him extra burdens. It is important that you do not misunderstand my actions, which may seem on the surface to usurp duties more normally in the sphere of the paterfamilias,” she said with even greater formality.

  The expression of aloof interest his face had displayed since he sat down did not change; Caesar merely leaned back a little in his chair. "I will not misunderstand," he said.

  Impossible to say she relaxed at that, for she had not seemed from the moment of her entry to be anything other than relaxed. Yet a more assured tinge crept into her wariness; it looked at him out of her eyes. "You met my son, Marcus Junius Brutus, the day before yesterday," she said.

  "A nice boy."

  "I think so, yes."

  "Still technically a child."

  "For some few months yet. This matter concerns him, and he insists it will not wait." A faint smile touched the left corner of her mouth, which seemed from watching her speak to be more mobile than the right corner. "Youth is impetuous."

  "He didn't seem impetuous to me," said Caesar.

  "Nor is he in most things."

  "So I am to gather that your errand is on behalf of something young Marcus Junius Brutus wants?"

  "That is correct."

  "Well," said Caesar, exhaling deeply, "having established the proper protocol, perhaps you'll tell me what he wants."

  "He wishes to espouse your daughter, Julia."

  Masterly self-control! applauded Servilia, unable to detect any reaction in eyes, face, body.

  "She's only eight," said Caesar.

  “And he not yet officially a man. However, he wishes it."


  "He may change his mind."

  "So I told him. But he assures me he will not, and he ended in convincing me of his sincerity."

  "I'm not sure I want to betroth Julia yet."

  "Whyever not? My own daughters are both contracted already, and they are younger than Julia."

  "Julia's dowry is very small."

  "No news to me, Gaius Julius. However, my son's fortune is large. He doesn't need a wealthy bride. His own father left him extremely well provided for, and he is Silanus's heir too."

  "You may yet have a son to Silanus."

  "Possibly."

  "But not probably, eh?"

  "Silanus throws daughters."

  Caesar leaned forward again, still appearing detached. "Tell me why I should agree to the match, Servilia."

  Her brows rose. “I should have thought that was self-evident! How could Julia look higher for a husband? On my side Brutus is a patrician Servilius, on his father's side he goes back to Lucius Junius Brutus, the founder of the Republic. All of which you know. His fortune is splendid, his political career will certainly carry him to the consulship, and he may well end in being censor now that the censorship is restored. There is a blood relationship through the Rutilii as well as through both the Servilii Caepiones and the Livii Drusi. There is also amicitia through Brutus's grandfather's devotion to your uncle by marriage, Gaius Marius. I am aware that you are closely related to Sulla's family, but neither my own family nor my husband had any quarrel with Sulla. Your own dichotomy between Marius and Sulla is more pronounced than any Brutus can lay claim to."