FIELDS OF MARS

by S. J. A. Turney

‘Ah, good,’ Caesar smiled, striding into the atrium in a similar toga. ‘You look every inch the senator, my fine Remi friend.’

  ‘I feel like an idiot. Or an armour stand, under all this weight. I feel like both. An idiotic armour stand.’

  ‘You need to become used to it,’ Caesar said, quietly, but earnestly. ‘This is no joke and no temporary measure. Those men who formerly filled the ranks of the senate but fled when we crossed the Rubicon are no longer viable senators. Many will now be marshalling with the consuls in Dyrrachium and others have retired to their country villas. In order to have a functioning senate to govern the republic, we need more than a handful of senators. Last year, when you and Fronto came to me, I told you I would make you one of the equites, and perhaps even a senator. Never let it be said I am not a man of my word. There is property across the river that will be in your name before the month is out, and you now have the right to raise your voice in the senate and help steer our republic. What man could have a better right to wed into the Falerii, eh?’

  Galronus nodded, still unconvinced.

  ‘Come. All that is required is your vote on certain matters, and as a senator of Rome, you should be above corruption, so I shall not ask you how you intend to vote on any issue. And Fronto? Get your toga on too. Your voice counts.’

  ‘I’m not a senator,’ Fronto snorted.

  ‘Oh, but you are. Toga, Fronto.’

  And leaving Fronto staring, Caesar departed, ushering Galronus on.

  ‘Would you like a hand donning your toga, Domine,’ the slave asked quietly.

  ‘Oh shut up.’

  * * *

  The Janiculum temple was too small to host a true meeting of the senate, but with the vastly reduced number of senators in the city, it would be more than adequate. Fronto stumped up the hill irritably in his heavy toga, Galronus ambling along at his side with a thoughtful expression. Other figures in pristine white were converging on the temple, and Fronto caught as many faces as he could. There was not one he recognised. Of course, he’d spent little time in Rome in the last ten… twenty years? Was it that long? But he would know the famous faces. Those figures who had made the senate their home and driven the ship of state for years. And none of them were there. That in itself was telling. But there was something even more interesting to be observed if one looked closely and knew what one was looking at.

  Almost half those senators he could see converging on the meeting looked exactly as any Roman senator should. But beneath their toga, the cut and material of their tunics, or the manufacture of their boots, betrayed them. They were not Italian. In fact, with Fronto’s long experience of the region and given the general’s clear connections, it was not much of a leap in logic to identify them as men of Cisalpine Gaul. Those men who belonged to towns that had only been granted citizenship in the past few years and only at Caesar’s order.

  This was Caesar’s senate. It might look to the world like any other, but there was no doubt in Fronto’s mind what this was. It was Caesar granting himself legitimacy. Half the senate had been installed by him and the other half were the ones who did not oppose him enough to flee the city, or perhaps were not influential enough to even worry about.

  The interior of the temple had been expanded by the addition of bench seats raised on three sides in steps to allow more seating than would realistically be required. Despite the brightness of the day, the interior remained gloomy due to the height and size of the windows, and it took Fronto and Galronus time to let their sight adjust upon entry. The occupants had already polarised. Caesar’s new senators from Gaul were seated along one wall, with the few remaining old senators glaring at them from across the room, as though they had stolen someone’s seat. Which, in some respect, they had, of course. And along the end wall, as though a barrier between the two, sat those of Caesar’s officers who could claim or had been granted senatorial status which, through Caesar’s careful organisation, was all of them barring Ingenuus, who, with his armed horsemen, had formed a cordon around the summit and the temple upon it, to prevent ‘interruptions to the meeting’.

  Fronto and Galronus joined Brutus, Trebonius and the others on the end wall and took a seat. Caesar was, of course, one of the last few to enter. In a move perhaps designed to relieve some of the pressure in the room, he strode across and stood against the wall beside the old senators’ seats. The last man to enter was Marcus Antonius, and Fronto smiled at the realisation that, with the consuls and censors absent, Antonius as tribune of the plebs had as much right as any city Praetor to preside over such a meeting.

  Caesar’s lictors had shuffled in barely noticed among the crowd and lined the fourth wall behind Antonius. Notably, because here they were outside the pomerium, each carried an axe inside his rod bundle, and that fact had not escaped the worried notice of more than one wavering senator. One of the lictors, at a nod from Caesar, rapped his rods with his palm several times until the low murmuring stopped.

  ‘Thank you for your attendance,’ Antonius said, his voice strong and rich in the high, echoing hall. ‘I realise that this extraordinary session of the senate is unexpected and possibly unwelcome, and we all have much we should be doing. We have begun late and therefore I intend to move proceedings along as fast as possible. Firstly, I would like to invite Gaius Julius Caesar, Proconsul of both Gauls, to put to you the case he has been desirous of so doing for more than a year, while being blocked by those who have since fled our august presence.’

  There was silence. Well, who was going to argue now?

  Caesar stepped forward, and Fronto was in truth only half listening to what the man said. He’d heard the arguments and the rhetoric so often over the months he could almost have given the speech himself. He did not want war. The bitter moves of his political enemies had pushed him into it. All he wished for was the position and authority granted him by the tribunes but denied by the senators. And though in his opinion the consuls had effectively resigned their position by their flight and abandonment of the city, he would not push for his wished for consulate. He would remain proconsul for the remainder of this year and stand for the consulate for the following. If the senate wished to find some practical solution, then he would willingly lay down his Proconsular powers. Of course, Fronto knew that Caesar was hoping the senate would declare the consuls enemies and vote him in as a replacement, but one look at the assembled faces of the old guard suggested this was unlikely. Still, the general’s back up plan kept him safe and empowered until such time as he could legitimately stand for consul, and no one was going to try and take Gaul from him now.

  There were various bits of miscellanea touched upon, and Fronto had almost dozed off when the first surprise came.

  ‘And so I have two requests to put to the senate for debate today,’ Caesar announced. ‘Firstly the dispatch of senatorial envoys to Pompey and the consuls in Dyrrachium in a last attempt at reconciliation…’

  Clever old bastard. Even with his new senate, the old-fashioned extant senators had been resistant, but this crumb of humility and the seeming desire for peace went to work on them instantly, and Fronto could see it glowing in their eyes.

  ‘And I would ask the senate’s blessing in drawing money from the public treasury to pay the legions of the Roman state who I have had cause to raise in the interest of the security of the Roman people.’

  ‘You want our money for your legions?’

  The speaker was Lucius Caecilius Metellus, the other tribune of the plebs along with Antonius. In the old days such tribunes would have been forbidden from the senate, but such days were long gone. Antonius gave his colleague a hard stare, but Metellus was defiant as he rose to his feet. Caesar simply shrugged.

  ‘When I was considered a threat to the republic, which has been proved repeatedly to be false, did you not open your vaults to Pompey to raise legions against me? Am I to be afforded less honour and accommodation than the man who fled Rome and left you defenceless? Had I actually been a Sulla for our times, bent on
bringing my army to Rome, what use would your money have done you in his hands. But now, as he begins to form a solid threat across the water, my new legions have been raised with the sole premise that men will be required to protect Italian soil from invasion. These are the units for which I seek financial support.’

  ‘Never,’ snapped Marcellus.

  ‘One man’s voice counts only as a note in the chorus of the senate,’ said Antonius meaningfully. A vote must be taken on both matters.’

  ‘I thank you for your time and consideration,’ Caesar said, with a bow, stepping aside.

  Fronto watched proceedings with interest for the next hour as senator after senator spoke on the merits and flaws of both questions, each man who cared to speak having his opportunity in descending order of importance. It did not escape Fronto’s impressed notice once more that with the most senior senators absent and Caesar’s new additions being clearly the most junior, those older senators who had always been at the bottom of the heap suddenly found themselves being the first to address, and their pomp and self-importance blossomed, clearly boosting Caesar’s chances with even them.

  The vote to send envoys to Pompey was a close thing. Despite the motion being Caesar’s own, the officers of his corps were split in how they voted, as were the old guard, who felt as much betrayed by Pompey’s flight as they were worried by Caesar’s presence. In the end his new Gallic senators carried the vote by an acceptable margin, which kicked off a second discussion about who would be sent. It would have to be a high official. And now the only high officials in Rome were in this very room, given that the others were with Pompey already. But no matter how many times the question was asked, no names were put forward. No one wanted to go to Pompey. The debate finally fizzled out. Everyone wanted a deputation sent, but no one wanted to be a deputation.

  The second debate was considerably less close. While undoubtedly few of the senators truly liked the idea of Caesar digging into the city treasury, many of them owed not only their sudden new prosperity but perhaps even their ongoing existence to the proconsul, and failing to pay his armies might be an utterly self-defeating move. And with those eleven hard-looking lictors and their shiny axes at the rear of the room, the incentive to do right by the general was higher than ever. The vote was carried with only six against.

  Fronto watched as the senate’s business was allowed to run fully through its traditional cycle. It reaffirmed Fronto’s opinion of the institution. It needed to exist, and it needed to be free, but it would never be for him. His mother would have had him on this bench much of his life. Of course he might have ended up consul? Proconsul? Might right now have been skulking in Illyria worrying about what Caesar was doing with his city? He shook his head in irritation and felt Galronus watching him.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Are you ill? You look ill.’

  ‘Politics. It does that. Do you think we can leave yet?’

  But Caesar was now strolling around the edge of the room, leaving the discussions to the white-clad pilots of government and making quietly for their bench.

  ‘Fronto?’

  ‘Yes, Caesar.’

  ‘In the morning, I would like you to go to the aerarium treasury at the temple of Saturn and empty it.’

  Fronto blinked. ‘Empty it?’

  ‘Yes. Pompey will already have taken the lion’s share for his army. We will require what is left. If the city runs short, the senate will have to start declaring some of the absent antagonists enemies of the republic and impounding all their estates and money. They’ll soon fill it up again. They could fund the city for a year on Cicero’s estate alone.’

  ‘You devious bas…’ began Fronto, then caught the general’s expression. ‘Yes, General.’

  Galronus punched Fronto on the arm and called him something unkind in his own language.

  * * *

  The next morning dawned grey and overcast, a good deal colder than the previous one, and Fronto shivered as he stumped through the Velabrum on his way to the forum, cloak wrapped tightly around himself. Galronus traipsed along next to him, his expression blank and unreadable. The steady, rhythmic tromp of military boots echoed behind them, as well as the creaking of cart wheels. The idea of bringing soldiers into the forum to essentially rob the state for the military did not sit well with him, and images of the city running red following Sulla’s march on Rome filled his head repeatedly. At least none of them were armed on this occasion, other than the centurion with his vine stick and the optio with his staff.

  The populace of Rome, while used to being wary in the streets due to the modern prevalence of violent criminals and political disturbances, were not used to seeing armour and uniforms, even if those men had left their weapons behind. People pushed back into doorways and alleys, keeping well out of the way of the small military column as it crunched and rumbled along the Vicus Tuscus.

  The slope of the Palatine rose to their right and the heights of the Capitoline, towering above the Tarpeian Rock from which traitors were traditionally thrown, lay to the left. That rather bleak reminder did little to quiet his conscience over his current mission. Ahead: basilicas, temples, the curia, columns and shrines. The political and spiritual heart of the Roman world.

  Fronto felt less and less happy with what he was doing as they reached the Basilica Sempronia and turned, making for the great rectangular shape of the Temple of Saturn which sat at the head of the forum beneath the Capitol. A white fortress of piety and wealth with a frontage of six grand columns atop a lofty staircase. Fronto glanced back at the soldiers as they moved swiftly across the forum toward the place.

  ‘Centurion? Line the carts at the foot of the staircase. Half your century will have to stand guard with them while the others do the hard work, I’m afraid.’

  The centurion nodded his head in acknowledgement and, as they reached the base of that flight of steps, the legionaries secured the carts and wedged the wheels, affixed feedbags to the horse’s heads and prepared everything.

  ‘Is that a door?’ Galronus murmured, pointing at a man-sized rectangular aperture in the base, facing the forum.

  ‘It was, once. Now it’s barred off thickly. Access only through the temple these days.’

  ‘Will there be a priest?’ the Remi asked quietly as he looked up at the temple steps. It struck Fronto that while his friend had become Roman in so many ways, he had never seen Galronus go to a temple without him. Did he acknowledge the Roman gods? Fronto hadn’t truly noticed.

  ‘Actually, probably not,’ he replied conversationally. ‘Saturn doesn’t have a priest of his own. His temple is served by the Rex Sacrorum, who’s sort of the head of the whole Roman priesthood. No one else has enough authority. And the current Rex Sacrorum is one of so many who have fled the city. Where he is no one seems to know, but my money is on Dyrrachium with the consuls. There are staff who maintain the temple, of course, but they’re all just workers and they won’t be here when he isn’t. And then there’s the quaestors who have responsibility for the treasury itself, but-‘

  ‘But they’re in Dyrrachium?’ Galronus hazarded.

  ‘More than likely. Come on.’

  Puffing a little with the effort, Fronto climbed the thirty two steps of the grand staircase to the imposing building at the top. Taking the most common Roman form of temple, it consisted of a solid rectangular cella of heavy stone with a pillared portico in front. As they reached the top, Fronto paused, grasping his knees with his hands and bending, finding his breath once more. Galronus, beside him, cleared his throat.

  ‘Who’s that?’

  Fronto straightened. A shadowy figure in the gloom beneath the portico was almost invisible in front of the great bronze doors.

  ‘Don’t know. Come on.’

  He strode between the columns and approached the figure. Lucius Caecilius Metellus, tribune of the plebs, stood in his toga in the deep shadow, his face stony and bleak. In his hand was a knife. Not a small eating knife, but perhaps not quite big eno
ugh to be classed as a weapon of war and break the sacred laws. He waved the knife at them.

  ‘Caecilius.’

  ‘Go back, Marcus Falerius Fronto. You’ll not take the state’s money.’

  ‘You’re going to be disappointed, Caecilius. Out of the way.’

  ‘You are a nobleman of Rome, Fronto. Patrician blood flows in your veins. You can’t do this. Rape your own republic to strengthen the army of a would-be despot?’

  ‘Did you not know, Caecilius? He’s no enemy of Rome now. The senate confirmed his Proconsular powers until the end of the year. You do have a terrible memory, Caecilius, as I know you were there.’

  ‘The man who makes his own senate can grant himself anything, Fronto. It doesn’t make him right, though.’

  ‘Enough banter, Caecilius. Get out of the way.’

  ‘It’ll do you no good anyway, Fronto. There are only two keys to the temple. One belongs to the Rex Sacrorum and is still with him, and the one for the quaestors is in Pompey’s hands now. These bronze doors are rightly locked against you.’

  ‘’Wooden doors, Caecilius. They might be coated with bronze, but no bugger would be able to pull them open if they were solid metal. I suspect you’ll find that half a century of veteran legionaries can make short work of a door, no matter how impressive.’

  Caecilius glared at him. ‘You would break into Rome’s most hallowed temple like some sacrilegious thief?’

  ‘And I will break you in half to get to them if you don’t get out of the way, Caecilius. This has been agreed by the senate of Rome. You are in the wrong, no matter what you believe. And don’t think for a minute that little toothpick is going to make me shit myself, let alone my friend here or the centurion behind me. We’ve stood knee deep in blood and bone while German women tried to put barbed spears through us. We’re in the right here, Caecilius.’

  But somewhere in Fronto’s soul, he felt the corrosion taking hold even as he spoke. Just a little sacrilege here, a little trick there. It might not seem much, but he found himself suddenly wondering how his father’s descent into drink and misery during the last dictator’s rule had begun. He remembered as a boy being forced to study his Polybius and scoffing at the very idea of history coming in cycles. And yet here he was in oddly similar circumstances to his father, wondering whether he had just set off down that self-same path.