Caesar's Women

by Colleen McCullough

  "I have a name—Lucius Decumius," said Clodius.

  “For your source of information about the little fellows, you mean?'' asked Decimus Brutus, lying down on the couch opposite.

  "I mean."

  "Who is he?" Decimus Brutus began to pick at a plate of food.

  “The custodian of a crossroads college in the Subura. And a great friend of Caesar's, according to Lucius Decumius, who swears he changed Caesar's diapers and got up to all sorts of mischief with him when Caesar was a boy."

  "So?" asked Decimus Brutus, sounding skeptical.

  "So I met Lucius Decumius and I liked him. He also liked me. And," said Clodius, his voice sinking to a conspiratorial whisper, "I've found my way into the ranks of the lowly at last—or at least that segment of the lowly which can be of use to us."

  The other two leaned forward, food forgotten.

  "If Bibulus has demonstrated nothing else this year," Clodius went on, "he's shown what a mockery constitutionality can be. In the name of Law he's put the triumvirs outside it. The whole of Rome is aware that what he's really done is to use a religious trick, but it's worked. Caesar's laws are in jeopardy. Well, I'll soon make that sort of trick illegal! And once I do, there will be no impediment to prevent my passing my laws legally.''

  “Except persuading the Plebs to pass them in the first place," sneered Decimus Brutus. "I can name a dozen tribunes of the plebs foiled by that factor! Not to mention the veto. There are at least four other men in your College who will adore to veto you."

  "Which is where Lucius Decumius is going to come in extremely handy!" cried Clodius, his excitement obvious. “We are going to build a following among the lowly which will intimidate our Forum and senatorial opponents to the point whereat no one will have the courage to interpose a veto! No law I care to promulgate will not be passed!"

  "Saturninus tried that and failed," said Decimus Brutus.

  "Saturninus thought of the lowly as a crowd, he never knew any names or shared drinks with them," Clodius explained patiently. "He failed to do what a really successful demagogue must do—be selective. I don't want or need huge crowds of lowly. All I want are several groups of real rascals. Now I took one look at Lucius Decumius and knew I'd found a real rascal. We went off to a tavern on the Via Nova and talked. Chiefly about his resentment at being disqualified as a religious college. He claimed to have been an assassin in his younger days, and I believed him. But, more germane to me, he let it slip that his and quite a few of the other crossroads colleges have been running a protection ploy for—oh, centuries!"

  "Protection ploy?" asked Fulvia, looking blank.

  "They sell protection from robbery and assault to shopkeepers and manufacturers."

  "Protection from whom?"

  "Themselves, of course!" said Clodius, laughing. "Fail to pay up, and you're beaten up. Fail to pay up, and your goods are stolen. Fail to pay up, and your machinery is destroyed. It's perfect."

  "I'm fascinated," drawled Decimus Brutus.

  "It's simple, Decimus. We will use the crossroads brethren as our troops. There's no need to fill the Forum with vast crowds. All we need are enough at any one time. Two or three hundred at the most, I think. That's why we have to find out how they're gathered, where they're gathered, when they're gathered. Then we have to organize them like a little army—rosters, everything."

  "How will we pay them?" Decimus Brutus asked. He was a shrewd and extremely capable young man, despite his appearance of mindless vice; the thought of work which would make life difficult for the boni and all others of boringly conservative inclination he found immensely appealing.

  "We pay them by buying their wine out of our own purses. One thing I've learned is that uneducated men will do anything for you if you pay for their drinks."

  "Not enough," said Decimus Brutus emphatically.

  "I'm well aware of that," said Clodius. "I'll also pay them with two pieces of legislation. One: legalize all of Rome's colleges, sodalities, clubs and fraternities again. Two: bring in a free grain dole." He kissed Fulvia and got up. “We are now venturing into the Subura, Decimus, where we will see old Lucius Decumius and start laying our plans for when I enter office on the tenth day of December."

  * * *

  Caesar promulgated his law to prevent governors' extorting in their provinces during the month of Sextilis, sufficiently after the events of the month before to have allowed tempers to cool down. Including his own.

  "I am not acting in a spirit of altruism," he said to the half-filled chamber, "nor do I object to a capable governor's enriching himself in acceptable ways. What this lex Iulia does is to prevent a governor's cheating the Treasury, and protect the people of his province against rapacity. For over a hundred years government of the provinces in the provinces has been a disgrace. Citizenships are sold. Exemptions from taxes, tithes and tributes are sold. The governor takes half a thousand parasites with him to drain provincial resources even further. Wars are fought for no better reason than to ensure a triumph upon the governor's return to Rome. If they refuse to yield a daughter or a field of grain, those who are not Roman citizens are subjected to the barbed lash, and sometimes decapitated. Payment for military supplies and equipment isn't made. Prices are fixed to benefit the governor or his bankers or his minions. The practice of extortionate moneylending is encouraged. Need I go further?"

  Caesar shrugged. “Marcus Cato says my laws are not legal due to the activities of my consular colleague in watching the skies. I have not let Marcus Bibulus stand in my way. I will not let him stand in the way of this bill either. However, if this body refuses to give it a consultum of approval, I will not take it to the People. As you see from the number of buckets around my feet, it is an enormous body of law. Only the Senate has the fortitude to plough through it, only the Senate appreciates Rome's predicament anent her governors. This is a senatorial law, it must have senatorial approval." He smiled in Cato's direction. "You might say I am handing the Senate a gift— refuse it, and it will die."

  Perhaps Quinctilis had acted as a catharsis, or perhaps the degree of rancor and rage had been such that the sheer intensity of emotion could not be maintained a moment longer; whatever the reason might have been, Caesar's extortion law met with universal approval in the Senate.

  "It is magnificent," said Cicero.

  "I have no quarrel with the smallest subclause," said Cato.

  "You are to be congratulated," said Hortensius.

  "It's so exhaustive it will last forever," said Vatia Isauricus.

  Thus the lex Iulia repetundarum went to the Popular Assembly accompanied by a senatus consultum of consent, and passed into law halfway through September.

  "I'm pleased," said Caesar to Crassus amid the turmoil of the Macellum Cuppedenis, filled to overflowing with country visitors in town for the ludi Romani.

  "You ought to be, Gaius. When the boni can't find anything wrong, you should demand a new kind of triumph awarded only for the perfect law."

  “The boni could find absolutely nothing wrong with my land laws either, but that didn't stop their opposing me," said Caesar.

  "Land laws are different. There are too many rents and leases at stake. Extortion by governors in their provinces shrinks the Treasury's revenues. It strikes me, however, that you ought not to have limited your law against extortion to the senatorial class only. Knights extort in the provinces too," said Crassus.

  "Only with gubernatorial consent. However, when I'm consul for the second time, I'll bring in a second extortion law aimed at the knights. It's too long a process drafting extortion laws to permit more than one per consulship."

  "So you intend to be consul a second time?"

  "Definitely. Don't you?"

  "I wouldn't mind, actually," said Crassus thoughtfully. "I'd still love to go to war against the Parthians, earn myself a triumph at last. I can't do that unless I'm consul again."

  "You will be."

  Crassus changed the subject. "Have you settled on your fu
ll list of legates and tribunes for Gaul yet?" he asked.

  "More or less, though not firmly."

  "Then would you take my Publius with you? I'd like him to learn the art of war under you."

  "I'd be delighted to put his name down."

  “Your choice of legate with magisterial status rather stunned me—Titus Labienus? He's never done a thing."

  "Except be my tribune of the plebs, you're inferring," said Caesar, eyes twinkling. "Acquit me of that kind of stupidity, my dear Marcus! I knew Labienus in Cilicia when Vatia Isauricus was governor. He likes horses, rare in a Roman. I need a really able cavalry commander because so many of the tribes where I'm going are horsed. Labienus will be a very good cavalry commander."

  "Still planning on marching down the Danubius to the Euxine?"

  "By the time I'm finished, Marcus, the provinces of Rome will marry Egypt. If you win against the Parthians when you're consul for the second time, Rome will own the world from the Atlantic Ocean to the Indus River." He sighed. "I suppose that means I'll also have to subdue Further Gaul somewhere along the way."

  Crassus looked thunderstruck. "Gaius, what you're talking about would take ten years, not five!"

  "I know."

  “The Senate and the People would crucify you! Pursue a war of aggression for ten years? No one has!"

  While they stood talking the crowd swirled around them in an ever-changing mass, quite a few among it with cheery greetings for Caesar, who answered with a smile and sometimes asked a question about a member of the family, or a job, or a marriage. That had never ceased to fascinate Crassus: how many people in Rome did Caesar know? Nor were they always Romans. Liberty-capped freedmen, skullcapped Jews, turbaned Phrygians, longhaired Gauls, shaven Syrians. If they had votes, Caesar would never go out of office. Yet Caesar always worked within the traditional forms. Do the boni know how much of Rome lies in the palm of Caesar's hand? No, they do not have the slightest idea. If they did, it wouldn't have been a sky watch. That dagger Bibulus sent to Vettius would have been used. Caesar would be dead. Pompeius Magnus? Never!

  "I've had enough of Rome!" Caesar cried. "For almost ten years I've been incarcerated here—I can't wait to get away! Ten years in the field? Oh, Marcus, what a glorious prospect that is! Doing something which comes more naturally to me than anything else, reaping a harvest for Rome, enhancing my dignitas, and never having to suffer the boni carping and criticizing. In the field I'm the man with the authority, no one can gainsay me. Wonderful!"

  Crassus chuckled. "What an autocrat you are."

  "So are you."

  "Yes, but the difference is that I don't want to run the whole world, just the financial side of it. Figures are so concrete and exact that men shy away from them unless they have a genuine talent for them. Whereas politics and war are vague. Every man thinks if he has luck he can be the best at them. I don't upset the mos maiorum and two thirds of the Senate with my brand of autocracy, it's as simple as that."

  Pompey and Julia returned more or less permanently to Rome in time to help Aulus Gabinius and Lucius Calpurnius Piso campaign for the curule elections on the eighteenth day of October. Not having set eyes on his daughter since her marriage, Caesar found himself a little shocked. This was a confident, vital, sparkling and witty young matron, not the sweet and gentle adolescent of his imagination. Her rapport with Pompey was astonishing, though who was responsible for it he could not tell. The old Pompey had vanished; the new Pompey was well read, entranced by literature, spoke learnedly of this painter or that sculptor, and displayed absolutely no interest in quizzing Caesar about his military aims for the next five years. On top of which, Julia ruled! Apparently totally unembarrassed, Pompey had yielded himself to feminine domination. No imprisonment in frowning Picentine bastions for Julia! If Pompey went somewhere, Julia went too. Shades of Fulvia and Clodius!

  "I'm going to build a stone theater for Rome," the Great Man said, “on land I bought out between the saepta and the chariot stables. This business of erecting temporary wooden theaters five or six times a year whenever there are major games is absolute insanity, Caesar. I don't care if the mos maiorum says theater is decadent and immoral, the fact remains that Rome falls over itself to attend the plays, and the ruder, the better. Julia says that the best memorial of my conquests I could leave Rome would be a huge stone theater with a lovely peristyle and colonnade attached, and a chamber big enough to house the Senate on its far end. That way, she says, I can get around the mos maiorum—an inaugurated temple for the Senate at one end, and right up the top of the auditorium a delicious little temple to Venus Victrix. Well, it has to be Venus, as Julia is directly descended from Venus, but she suggested we make her Victorious Venus to honor my conquests. Clever chicken!" Pompey ended lovingly, stroking the fashionably arranged mass of hair belonging to his wife. Who looked, thought a tickled Caesar, insufferably smug.

  "Sounds ideal," said Caesar, sure they wouldn't listen.

  Nor did they. Julia spoke. "We've struck a bargain, my lion and I," she said, smiling at Pompey as if they shared many thousands of secrets. "I am to have the choice of materials and decorations for the theater, and my lion has the peristyle, the colonnade and the new Curia."

  "And we're going to build a modest little villa behind it, alongside the four temples," Pompey contributed, "just in case I ever get stranded on the Campus Martius again for nine months. I'm thinking of standing for consul a second time one of these days."

  "Great minds think alike," said Caesar.

  "Eh?"

  "Nothing."

  "Oh, tata, you should see my lion's Alban palace!" cried Julia, hand tucked in Pompey's. "It's truly amazing, just like the summer residence of the King of the Parthians, he says." She turned to her grandmother. "Avia, when are you going to come and stay with us there? You never leave Rome!"

  "Her lion, if you please!" snorted Aurelia to Caesar after the blissful couple had departed for the newly decorated palace on the Carinae. "She flatters him shamelessly!"

  "Her technique," Caesar said gravely, "is certainly not like yours, Mater. I doubt I ever heard you address my father by any name other than his proper one, Gaius Julius. Not even Caesar."

  "Love talk is silly."

  "I'm tempted to nickname her Leo Domitrix."

  "The lion tamer." That brought a smile at last. "Well, she is obviously wielding the whip and the chair!"

  "Very lightly, Mater. There's Caesar in her, her blatancy is actually quite subtle. He's enslaved."

  "That was a good day's work when we introduced them. He'll guard your back well while you're away on campaign."

  "So I hope. I also hope he manages to convince the electors that Lucius Piso and Gabinius ought to be consuls next year."

  The electors were convinced; Aulus Gabinius was returned as senior consul, and Lucius Calpurnius Piso as his junior colleague. The boni had worked desperately to avert disaster, but Caesar had been right. So firmly boni in Quinctilis, public opinion was now on the side of the triumvirs. Not all the canards in the world about marriages of virgin daughters to men old enough to be their grandfathers could sway the voters, who preferred triumviral consuls to bribes, probably because Rome was empty of rural voters, who tended to rely on bribes for extra spending money at the games.

  Even lacking hard evidence, Cato decided to prosecute Aulus Gabinius for electoral corruption. This time, however, he did not succeed; though he approached every praetor sympathetic to his cause, not one would agree to try the case. Metellus Scipio suggested that he should take it directly to the Plebs, and convened an Assembly to procure a law charging Gabinius with bribery.

  "As no court or praetor is willing to charge Aulus Gabinius, it becomes the duty of the Comitia to do so!" shouted Metellus Scipio to the crowd clustered in the Comitia well.

  Perhaps because the day was chill and drizzling rain, it was a small turnout, but what neither Metellus Scipio nor Cato realized was that Publius Clodius intended to use this meeting as a tryout for h
is rapidly fruiting organization of the crossroads colleges into Clodian troops. The plan was to use only those members who had that day off work, and to limit their number to less than two hundred. A decision which meant that Clodius and Decimus Brutus had needed to avail themselves of two colleges only, the one tended by Lucius Decumius and the one tended by his closest affiliate.

  When Cato stepped forward to address the Assembly, Clodius yawned and stretched out his arms, a gesture which those who noticed him at all took to mean that Clodius was reveling in the fact that he was now a member of the Plebs and could stand in the Comitia well during a meeting of the Plebs.

  It meant nothing of the kind. As soon as Clodius had finished yawning, some one hundred and eighty men leaped for the rostra and tore Cato from it, dragged him down into the well and began to beat him unmercifully. The rest of the seven hundred Plebs took the hint and disappeared, leaving an appalled Metellus Scipio on the rostra with the three other tribunes of the plebs dedicated to the cause of the boni. No tribune of the plebs possessed lictors or any other kind of official bodyguard; horrified and helpless, the four of them could only watch.

  The orders were to punish Cato but leave him in one piece, and orders were obeyed. The men vanished into the soft rain, job well done; Cato lay unconscious and bleeding, but unbroken.

  "Ye gods, I thought you were done for!" said Metellus Scipio when he and Ancharius managed to bring Cato round.

  "What did I do?" asked Cato, head ringing.