Hardened cynic that I was, I stumbled at this news. “Are you serious?”
“I am always serious,” he said seriously.
“This is going a bit far,” I admitted. “Of course, you can expect something like this from a man who named himself ‘the Great’ when he was barely in his twenties.”
“A bit far? It is impious! An affront to the immortal gods! What next? A crown, perhaps?” Cato’s face had gone quite red. It looked as if apoplexy might snatch him from our midst, a prospect I was prepared to accept with philosophical resignation.
“Now Lucullus,” he said, calming, “is a general of the old Roman type. I cannot condone his taste for luxury, but the way he disciplines his legions is exemplary. His administration of the Asian cities was a model of honesty and efficiency.”
I had to agree with that. It was also merciful, but that was not something Cato would have perceived as virtuous. We were walking downhill, toward the river. While Lucullus had waited in his villa outside the city, his agents had purchased a piece of unused, marshy ground that had never produced anything but mosquitoes. They had drained it, laid out and planted the lovely garden, and erected the fine temple to the goddess of wisdom and patroness of craftsmen. At that date, she had not yet fully taken on the attributes of the Greek Athena, to become a patroness of war.
Images of all the state gods had been set up at the entrance to the garden, along with an altar to the unknown god. Cato insisted on stopping before each to toss a pinch of incense onto the coals glowing in braziers beneath them. As we walked into the grove, a leather-lunged herald announced us.
“Senator Marcus Porcius Cato and the Quaestor Decius Caecilius Metellus the Younger!” he bellowed. I tipped him and complimented him on his splendid volume.
“You’re the second Decius Metellus I’ve announced, sir,” he said.
“Oh, my father is here?”
“Yes, sir, and several of the Quintuses.”
Perhaps I should explain here. I come of a pestilentially numerous family, distinguished beyond words, one of the most important families in politics, but dreadfully unimaginative in the way of names. For generations, most of the males have been named Quintus. In that particular year, there were no fewer than five in public life, all named Quintus. Of Quintus Caecilius Metellus Creticus, waiting outside the walls for his triumph, I have already made mention. He was not granted permission until the next May. There was the Praetor Quintus Caecilius Metellus Celer. The Pontifex Maximus Quintus Caecilius Metellus Pius, under whom I had served in Spain, lay on his deathbed; and his adopted son, Quintus Caecilius Metellus Pius Scipio Nasica, was also a pontifex. Rounding out the lot was Pompey’s legate, Quintus Caecilius Metellus Nepos, who had that year returned from Asia and, like Cato, had won election to the next year’s Tribunate. For purposes of clarity, I shall henceforth refer to them as Creticus, Celer, Pius, Scipio and Nepos.
I took my leave of Cato and made my way into the crowd. All the most distinguished men in Rome were there, even Lucullus’s enemies. A triumph was, after all, a gesture of gratitude to the gods of the state, so it was not considered hypocritical to have a good time at your enemy’s victory banquet. Long tables had been set up between the rows of fragrant trees, some of them almost full-grown, that had been brought up the Tiber in barges, their roots balled in great masses of dirt. The planting of this garden had been a logistical feat on a par with building a pyramid.
A large number of women were there as well, many of them as important in the affairs of the city as their husbands, some merely infamous. It was a great time for infamous women. A troop of stately Vestals lent dignity to the occasion, one of them my aunt.
I made no attempt to greet the guests in any orderly fashion, as would have been expected at an ordinary gathering. I did seek out the Consuls. A junior official was expected to be able to find them in any size of crowd. The Consuls for that famous year were, as everyone remembers, even now, Marcus Tullius Cicero and Caius Antonius Hi-brida. I found them with Lucullus, greeting some of the throng of foreign ambassadors who always were honored guests at this sort of affair. It was thought a good idea to impress upon foreigners how inevitably preeminent we Romans were in war, and how magnanimous we could be. Some of the guests were former enemies who had surrendered on good terms, rather than prolonging their foolish resistance.
Cicero had achieved the height of his dignity. He was a man who had come from nowhere (that is to say, he was not from Rome but from Arpinum, a town that had enjoyed Roman citizenship for a mere 125 years), and had risen through the world of Roman politics with the speed and force of a stone hurled from a catapult. He was what we called novus homo in those days, a “new man” not belonging to one of the old political families. This did not sit well with a good many of his contemporaries, but few men win the consulship without acquiring enemies along the way.
His colleague, Hibrida, had been last among the candidates, but had won through Cicero’s support. This was the sort of political deal that went by the wonderfully apt name of coitio. As an Antonine, Hibrida had all that family’s famous combination of geniality and viciousness, of astuteness and childish impulsiveness. This dichotomy was even more pronounced in Caius Antonius than in most of his family. His odd cognomen, which refers to the offspring of a domestic sow and a wild boar, was bestowed in recognition of his half-savage nature.
He was in a good mood that evening and took my hand heartily. His face was flushed and he was well on his way to drunkenness, even at that early hour, another Antonine characteristic.
“Good to see you, Decius, my boy. Splendid triumph, today, eh?” I could see that the sight of all that gold had done him good. The Antonines were also famously greedy, although by way of compensation they spent as freely as they stole. They were fearsomely violent and rapacious, but nobody ever said they weren’t generous.
“A glorious occasion,” I agreed, “and well earned by the triumphator.”I nodded toward where Lucullus stood, in a plain toga now and with the red paint washed off, amid a crowd of well-wishers.
“It makes me eager to accomplish something of the sort myself,” Hibrida admitted. This, I thought, did not bode well for Macedonia, the proconsular province he would govern after his year in office.
Cicero greeted me as warmly, although with somewhat more formality. We had always got along well together, but at this time he had achieved the peak of public service and I was at the bottom. By this time he had acquired the vanity and self-importance that marred his otherwise admirable character. I had liked him better when he was younger.
The smells of the feast-in-preparation made my stomach grumble and I fought down the urge to grab one of the cups being passed so freely about. Brawny slaves strolled about with heavy amphorae balanced on their shoulders, making sure that the cups stayed full. If I were to start drinking too soon, I might not remember the banquet at all.
Standing beneath a lovely cypress was a very unlovely man. A great scar crossed his face, nearly halving his nose. This was my father, Decius Caecilius Metellus the Elder, but known to all and sundry as Cut-Nose, for obvious reasons. He was dressed in a snowy toga and immense dignity. He had recently returned from his proconsular province of transalpine Gaul, and had not yet recovered from the godlike status of that office. I went to speak to him and he greeted me in his usual fashion.
“Still sober, eh? Responsible office must have improved you. How goes it at the treasury?” He took it as a sign of my ineptitude and unpopularity that I hadn’t been given one of the better quaestorial assignments. He was right.
“Lucullus should have built us a new temple to Saturn,” I replied. “We’ll be stacking the loot on the roof soon.”
“You’ll find out soon enough that it flows out as fast as it comes in. Faster, more often.”His look was even more sour than usual, probably because he had never celebrated a triumph and now would probably never have the chance. His proconsulship had been without a decent war. He was scowling at a strange-looking
group of men who stood by an ornamental pond, admiring the carp, drinking heavily and appearing uncomfortable. A few were decently shorn and to-gaed, but most had long hair and mustaches and wore tunics with trousers, vividly colored in patterns of stripes and checks.
“Who are those?” I asked Father.
“Allobroges. They’re a pack of savages from the northern part of my former province. They’ve come to town to complain about extortion on the part of Roman officials. They’ll probably get some ambitious lawyer to bring me up on charges.”
“Complaining of Roman extortion has become a minor branch of philosophy,” I noted. “Any justice on their side?”
“They’re just born troublemakers who can’t stand to pay their taxes,” Father said. “Oh, I won’t say the local publicans haven’t turned the thumbscrews a bit too tight from time to time, but that’s to be expected. It’s nothing compared to what their old chiefs used to put them through. They’re just sulking because we won’t let them fight each other anymore.”
“Well, Father, now that you’re home,” I said, bored with the subject, “what do you plan to do?”
“Do? Why my usual duties as patron and friend, what else?” he said innocently. He looked as innocent as a man with a bloody dagger in his fist.
“There will be an election of Censors next year,” I reminded him, as if he needed it. “The office used to be a family tradition. No Metellan has held it in ages.”
“And why should I not stand for Consul again?” he said. “I will be eligible in seven years.”
“Father,” I said, finally taking one of the winecups being offered by the servers, “in seven years, all of our generals will be fighting for that office. They’ll have their armies camped outside the gates to remind the citizens how to vote. That’s no time for a moderate like you to be standing for Consul. The censorship, now, is the capstone of a political career. How many men have ever held every office, including that one?”
Father nodded as if he hadn’t been thinking the same thing for years. “True,” he grumbled. “And it is a family tradition.”
This set my mind at ease. He was not seriously considering a run for the consulship. The censorship, on the other hand, carried no imperium and thus was not coveted by generals. What it did carry was the power to purge the roll of Senators deemed unworthy. I was sure that Father was already at work on his list.
The wine, an excellent Caecuban, struck my senses with inspiration. “Father, why wasn’t 1 named Quintus?”
“Eh? Why, because you were named after me, idiot!”
“It’s just that it seems every other male in the family is named Quintus except for the odd Lucius.”
“Your grandfather, whose mask you pass every time you enter my house, was visited by the Dioscuri in a dream. They promised him victory over the Samnites the next day if he would name his firstborn son Decius, a name never before used in gens Caecilii.”
“Did he win?” I asked.
Father glared at me. It was something he did well. “This is a rather large banquet. I am sure there are many fools who would relish your company and conversation. And get a wreath.”
I went in search of more congenial company. Heeding Father’s warning, I took a wreath and a garland from a slave girl. Vine leaves, guaranteed to forestall drunkenness. In the center of the garden had been set up the paintings of Lu-cullus’s battles that had been carried in the triumph. I went to examine them while the light held. Soon the torches would be lit, providing excellent illumination for intrigue or seduction, but not the best for appreciating art.
These huge panels had been commissioned from the best studios of Athens and Rhodes. They depicted, with wonderful liveliness and detail, the greatest battles of the campaigns against Mithridates and Tigranes. Lucullus was always shown slightly outsized, in the middle of the action. The foreign kings were likewise larger than life, but were always depicted in terrified flight. In their usual fashion, the Greek artists had depicted the Roman soldiers armed like the warriors of Alexander’s day or even earlier, in muscled breastplate, high-plumed helmet and great, round shield and bearing a long pike. But the dead and dismembered barbarians littering the bottom of each panel were painted most realistically.
“Nicely executed, don’t you think?” The man who spoke was an old friend, the physician Asklepiodes, who treated the gladiators of the Statilian school. He had become famous for his writings about the human body and how to treat its wounds.
“Beautiful,” I said. “But the artists ought to take the trouble to find out what Roman soldiers look like before they try to paint them.”
“It would make no difference,” he said. “Greek artists are taught to revere the ideal and paint what is beautiful. Roman military equipment is ugly and functional, so they go back to the graceful designs of antiquity.”He leaned forward and peered at a picture of Lucullus. “You see, the general is shown here as a handsome young man, which is not how he looked when I spoke to him a few minutes ago.”
I leaned closer to see for myself. “You are right. He didn’t look that good in red paint and a purple robe.”I straightened and strolled down to another painting. “How goes your work?”
“I may remove to Capua for a while. The Statilian school in Rome will close down temporarily, until a new one is built.”
“Closing down? Why?”
“Haven’t you heard? General Pompey has bought the property. He plans to demolish the school and its ancillary buildings to erect a magnificent new theater with an attached meetinghouse for the Senate. It will be a permanent building of stone, in the Greek fashion.”
“Leave it to Pompey to come up with something outrageous like that,” I commented. About a century before this time, somebody had begun a permanent, Greek-style theater, but the Censors had ordered it demolished before it was completed in order to combat encroaching Greek laxness of morals. We had only had temporary, wooden theaters since that time, complete, now, with their fourteen infamous rows reserved for the equites. As it turned out, Pompey forestalled criticism by building his tremendous theater with a little temple to Venus Victrix atop it, so that he could say that the seats were actually steps to a temple. He was not without a sense of humor.
A bellow from the heralds announced the beginning of the feast, and I sought my place eagerly. A servant guided me to the central table, at the head of which reclined LucuUus himself. A single, long couch ran the length of the table, beyond which was a narrow space for the servers, and then a lovely pool at one end of which stood a statue of Juno with one of Venus at the other. In the water, performers costumed as Tritons and Nereids frolicked. This was the most distinguished table, with the Consuls and praetores, along with proconsuls and pontifices, further down the aediles and quaestores. As the least of these, I was well down toward the foot of the table, but it was nonetheless a great honor to lie at his table on such a day. I could almost have hit his couch with a javelin.
A slave took my sandals and I sprawled on the couch just as the servers began to set platters before us. Lucullus had always been noted for his taste for luxury, but this was the first of the banquets for which he became even more famed than for his victories. These were noted not only for the excellence of the food, but for their theatrical effects. The first platter set before me and the diners near me, for instance, consisted of hard boiled and baked eggs of many species of birds in a framework of pastry, ascending tier upon tier, forming a model of the great Pharos lighthouse at Alexandria. Perfumed oil burned in a bowl at its crest.
The succeeding dishes continued the nautical theme. A trireme sailed by rowed by roast suckling pigs, which slaves dressed as sailors transferred to the table. Roast fowl were brought, with their feathers replaced so that they appeared to be alive, but they had been cunningly joined to the bodies and tails of mullets, so that they looked like mythical, hybrid sea creatures.
Lest we starve between these imaginative servings, the tables were heaped with more prosaic eatables: breads, che
eses, nuts, olives, tiny grilled sausages and so forth. All of this was washed down with excellent wines, any one of which would have been the showpiece of an ordinary banquet. Besides the noble Falernian, Lucullus served the finest wines of Gaul and Judea, the Greek islands, Africa and Spain. For the adventurous, there were novelties such as date wine from Egypt and berry wines from Armenia, taken at the siege of Tigranocerta. One of the best was from nearer home; an unusually fine vintage from the slopes of Vesuvius.
“I think our host is confused,” said someone to my left. I twisted around so I could see who it was.
“Confused?” I said.
“Yes,” said a red-haired, red-faced man who examined the beautiful embossed figures decorating the bottom of his cup. Instantly, a slave filled it. “I think he should have built that temple to Bacchus, not Minerva.”
“Hello, Lucius,” I said. “I’ve been so busy gorging myself I didn’t notice who was near me.”
“We can always socialize. How often do we get a chance to eat like this?” He reached out and seized a grilled rib of a wild German aurochs. The whole rack of ribs had been formed into the likeness of Neptune’s crown.
This was Lucius Sergius Catilina, a man I knew slightly. He had sought the consulship more than once and the most recent time had come close to winning. There had been such hard feelings that Cicero had worn armor to the elections. Catilina could put up a jovial front, but inwardly he was consumed with envy for all who were richer and more successful.
“I never thought to see you at the same table as Cicero, even at such a distance.”It was not the most diplomatic thing to say, but I had been loath to waste all that splendid wine. Luckily, he took it with good humor.
“Even the sight of that face won’t spoil my appetite for a feast like this. Here, boy,” he called, holding up his cup, “more of that Judaean.”
“Too bad Cato doesn’t share your delight in this bounty,” I observed. Several places up from me, Cato was restricting himself to bread, cheese, olives, and occasional bits of grilled meat or fish. He drank as much as anyone else, though.
SPQR II: The Catiline Conspiracy Page 2
