Fortune's Favorites (116 page)

All through the month of May the Roman army tracked down Spartacani in the fastnesses of Lucania and Bruttium, ideal locations for brigandry which made it imperative that every surviving Spartacanus be captured. Caesar had estimated those who escaped southward at about nine or ten thousand, but all he and the other hunting details managed to find were some six thousand six hundred all told. The rest would probably become brigands, contribute to the perils of journeying down the Via Popillia to Rhegium without an armed escort.

“I can keep on going,” he said to Crassus on the Kalends of June, “though the catch will become progressively smaller and harder to snare.”

“No,” said Crassus with decision. “I want my army back in Capua by the next market day. Including the consuls' legions. The curule elections are due next month and I intend to be back in Rome in plenty of time to stand for the consulship.”

That was no surprise; Caesar in fact did not consider it worthy of comment. Instead he continued on the subject of the fugitive Spartacani. “What about the six thousand or so who fled northeast into Apulia?”

“They got as far as the border of Italian Gaul, actually,” said Crassus. “Then they ran into Pompeius Magnus and his legions returning from Spain. You know Magnus! He killed the lot.”

“So that only leaves the prisoners here. What do you want to do with them?”

“They'll go with us as far as Capua.” The face Crassus turned upon his senior tribune of the soldiers was its usual phlegmatic self, but the eyes held an obdurate coldness. “Rome doesn't need these futile slave wars, Caesar. They're just one more drain on the Treasury. Had we not been lucky, five eagles and five sets of fasces might have been lost forever, a stain on Rome's honor I for one would have found unendurable. In time men like Spartacus might be blown up out of all proportion by some enemy of Rome's. Other men might strive to emulate him, never knowing the grubby truth. You and I know that Spartacus was a product of the legions, far more a Quintus Sertorius than a maltreated slave. Had he not been a product of the legions he could never have gone as far as he did. I do not want him turning into some sort of slave hero. So I will use Spartacus to put a stop to the whole phenomenon of slave uprisings.”

“It was far more a Samnite than a slave uprising.”

“True. But the Samnites are a curse Rome will have to live with forever. Whereas slaves must learn their place. I have the means to teach them their place. And I will. After I finish with the remnants of the Spartacani, there will be no more slave uprisings in our Roman world.”

Used to thinking so quickly and summing men up so well that he had arrived at the answer long before anyone else, Caesar found himself absolutely unable to guess what Crassus was up to.

“How will you accomplish that?” he asked.

The accountant took over. “It was the fact that there are six thousand six hundred prisoners gave me the idea,” Crassus said. “The distance between Capua and Rome is one hundred and thirty-two miles, each of five thousand feet. That is a total of six hundred and sixty thousand feet. Divided by six thousand six hundred, a distance of one hundred feet. I intend to crucify one Spartacanus every hundred feet between Capua and Rome. And they will remain hanging from their crosses until they rot away to bare bones.”

Caesar drew a breath. “A terrible sight.”

“I have one question,” said Crassus, his smooth and un-lined brow creasing. “Do you think I ought to put all the crosses on one side of the road, or alternate between both sides?”

“One side of the road,” said Caesar instantly. “Definitely on one side of the road only. That is, provided by road you mean the Via Appia rather than the Via Latina.”

“Oh yes, it has to be the Via Appia. Straight as an arrow for miles and miles, and not as many hills.”

“Then one side of the road. The eye will take the sight in better that way.” Caesar smiled. “I have some experience when it comes to crucifixion.”

“I heard about that,” said Crassus seriously. “However, I can't give you the job. It's not a fitting one for a tribune of the soldiers. He's an elected magistrate. By rights it belongs to the praefectus fabrum.”

As the praefectus fabrum-the man who looked after all the technical and logistic factors involved in army supply- was one of Crassus's own freedmen and brilliant at his work, neither Caesar nor Crassus doubted that it would be a smooth operation.

Thus it was that at the end of June when Crassus, his legates, his tribunes of the soldiers and his own appointed military tribunes rode up the Via Appia from Capua escorted by a single cohort of troops, the left-hand side of the ancient and splendid road was lined with crosses all the way. Every hundred feet another Spartacanus slumped from the ropes which cruelly bound arms at the elbow and legs below the knees. Nor had Crassus been kind. The six thousand six hundred Spartacani died slowly with unbroken limbs, a soughing of moans from Capua to the Capena Gate of Rome.

Some people came to sightsee. Some brought a recalcitrant slave to look upon Crassus's handiwork and point out that this was the right of every master, to crucify. But many upon looking turned immediately to go home again, and those who were obliged to travel on the Via Appia anywhere between Capua and Rome were grateful that the crosses adorned only one side of the road. As the distance rendered the sight more bearable, the popular spot for those who lived in Rome to see was from the top of the Servian Walls on either side of the Capena Gate; the view extended for miles, but the faces were blurs.

They hung there for eighteen months enduring the slow cycle of decay that took them from living skin and muscle to clacking bones, for Crassus would not permit that they be taken down until the very last day of his consulship.

And, thought Caesar in some wonder, surely no other military campaign in the whole history of Rome had been so rounded, so neat, so finite: what had begun with a decimation had ended with a crucifixion.

When Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus reached the border at the Rubico River, he didn't halt his army. That part of the Ager Gallicus he owned lay in Italy, and to Italy he would go, no matter what Sulla's laws said. His men were starved to see their homes, and there were still more among them who were his Picentine and Umbrian veterans than there were others. Outside Sena Gallica he put them into a vast camp under orders not to stray without leave from a tribune and proceeded then to Rome with a cohort of foot to escort him down the Via Flaminia.

The answer had come to him shortly after he began the long march from Narbo to his new pass across the Alps, and he wondered then at his denseness in not seeing it sooner. Three times he had been given a special commission: once by Sulla, twice by the Senate; twice with propraetorian status, once with proconsular status. He was, he knew, undoubtedly the First Man in Rome. But he also knew that no one who mattered would ever admit the fact. So he would have to prove it to everyone, and the only way he could do that was to bring off some coup so staggering in its audacity and so glaringly unconstitutional that after it was done all men would have to accord him his rightful title of the First Man in Rome.

He who was still a knight would force the Senate to make him consul.

His opinion of the Senate grew progressively lower, and his liking for that body remained nonexistent. The members of it could be bought as easily as cakes from a bakery, and its inertia was so monumental that it could hardly move out of the way of its own downfall. When he had begun to march his men from Tarentum to Rome in order to force Sulla to give him a triumph, Sulla had backed down! At the time he hadn't seen it that way-such was Sulla's effect on people- but he now understood that indeed the affair had been a victory for Magnus, not for Sulla. And Sulla had been a far more formidable foe than ever the Senate could be.

During his last year in the west he had followed the news about the successes of Spartacus with sheer disbelief; even though he owned the consuls Gellius and Clodianus, still he found it impossible to credit the degree of their incompetence in the field-and all they could do to excuse themselves was to harp about the poor quality of their soldiers! It had been on the tip of his pen to write and tell them that he could have generaled an army of eunuchs better, but he had refrained; there was no point in antagonizing men one had paid a long price for.

The two further items he had learned about in Narbo only served to reinforce his incredulity. The first item came in letters from Gellius and Clodianus: the Senate had stripped them of the command in the war against Spartacus. The second item came from Philippus: after blackmailing the Senate into procuring a law from the Assembly of the People, Marcus Licinius Crassus had deigned to accept the command, together with eight legions and a good amount of cavalry. Having campaigned with Crassus, Pompey deemed him mediocre in the extreme, and his troops mediocre too. So Philippus's news only served to make him shake his head in a quiet despair. Crassus wouldn't defeat Spartacus either.

Just as he left Narbo there arrived the final verification of his impression of the war against Spartacus-so poor was the quality of Crassus's troops that he had decimated them! And that, as every commander knew from history and his manuals of military method, was a last measure doomed to failure-it utterly destroyed morale. Nothing could stiffen the backbones of men so cowardly that they had earned the punishment of decimation. Yet wasn't it just like big, lumbering Crassus to believe decimation could cure his army's ailments?

He began to toy with the thought of arriving back in Italy in time to clean up Spartacus, and out of that like a thunderclap had burst THE IDEA. Of course the Senate would beg him on bended knee to accept yet another special commission- the extirpation of the Spartacani. But this time he would insist that he be made consul before he took on the job. If Crassus could blackmail the Conscript Fathers into a command legalized by the People, then what hope did the Conscript Fathers have of withstanding Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus? Proconsul (non pro consule, sed pro consulibus) was just not good enough anymore! Was he to become the Senate's perpetual workhorse perpetually palmed off with an imperium outside of true senatorial power? No! Never again! He didn't at all mind the idea of entering the Senate if he could do so as consul. To the best of his recollection, no one had ever managed to do that. It was a first, a mighty big first-and it would demonstrate to the whole world that he was the First Man in Rome.

Right across the miles of the Via Domitia he had indulged in one fantasy after another, so happy and affable that Varro (to name only one) couldn't understand what was going through his mind. At times Pompey had been tempted to say something, then would sheer away, resolve to hug this delicious scheme to himself. Varro and the rest would find out soon enough.

The mood of joyous anticipation continued to prevail after the new pass had been surveyed and paved and the army descended the Vale of the Salassi into Italian Gaul. Down the Via Aemilia, and still Pompey whistled and chirped blithely. Then at the little town of Forum Popillii, well inside Italy, the awful blow fell. He and his six legions literally ran into a jostling mob of draggled men armed in a nonissue manner which betrayed that they were Spartacani. To round them up and kill them all was easy; what came hard was to learn that Marcus Crassus had annihilated the army of Spartacus in a battle fought less than a month before. The war against Spartacus was over.

His chagrin was obvious to every last one of his legates, who all assumed that he had whistled and chirped his way down the Via Aemilia because he had expected to go straight into another campaign. That he had planned to demand to be made consul because of this campaign occurred to no one. For several days he gloomed; even Varro avoided his company.

Oh, Pompey was thinking, why didn't I hear this while I was still in Gaul-across-the-Alps? I will have to use the threat of my undischarged army, but I have brought that army inside the borders of Italy contrary to Sulla's constitution. And Crassus still has an army in the field. If I was in Gaul-across-the-Alps I could skulk there until Crassus celebrated his ovation and his troops returned to civilian life. I could have used my tame senators to block the curule elections until I made my move. As it is, I'm in Italy. So it will have to be the threat of my army.

Those several gloomy days, however, were succeeded by a new mood; Pompey led his men into their camp at Sena Gallica not whistling and chirping exactly, but not glooming either. Reflection had led him to ask himself a very important question: what were the men of Crassus's army anyway? Answer: the scum of Italy, too craven to stand and fight. Why should the fact that Crassus had won change that? The six thousand fugitives he had encountered at Forum Popillii were pathetic. So perhaps decimation had stiffened the backbones of Crassus's men a bit-but could it last? Could it match the splendid courage and perseverance of men who had slogged through the Spanish heat and cold for years without pay, without booty, without decent food, without thanks from the precious Senate? No. The final answer was a loud and definite NO!

And as Rome grew closer Pompey's mood gradually soared back toward its earlier happiness.

“What exactly are you thinking?” Varro demanded as he and Pompey rode together down the middle of the road.

“That I am owed a Public Horse. The Treasury never paid me for my dear dead Snowy.”

“Isn't that your Public Horse?” asked Varro, pointing at the chestnut gelding Pompey bestrode.

“This nag?” Pompey snorted contemptuously. “My Public Horse has to be white.”

“Actually it's not a nag, Magnus,” said the owner of part of the rosea rura, an acknowledged expert on horseflesh. “It's really an excellent animal.”

“Just because it belonged to Perperna?”

“Just because it belongs to itself!”

“Well, it's not good enough for me.”

“Was that really what you were thinking about?”

“Yes. What did you think I was thinking about?”

“That's my question! What?”

“Why don't you hazard a guess?”

Varro wrinkled his brow. “I thought I had guessed when we ran across those Spartacani outside Forum Popillii-I thought you were planning on another special commission and were very disappointed when you discovered Spartacus was no more. Now-I just don't know!”

“Well, Varro, wonder on. I think in this I will keep my counsel for the present,” said Pompey.

* * *

The cohort Pompey had chosen to escort him to Rome was one made up of men whose homes were in Rome. This kind of common sense was typical of Pompey-why haul men off to Rome who would rather be elsewhere? So after he had got them into a small camp on the Via Recta, Pompey allowed them to don civilian garb and go into the city. Afranius, Petreius, Gabinius, Sabinus and the other legates quickly drifted off in their wake, as did Varro, anxious to see his wife and children.

That left Pompey alone in command of the Campus Martius-or at least his segment of it. To his left as he looked in the direction of the city but closer to it was another small camp. The camp of Marcus Crassus. Also, it would appear, escorted by about one cohort. Like Pompey, Crassus flew a scarlet flag outside his command tent to indicate that the general was in residence.

Unfortunate, unfortunate ... Why did there have to be another army inside Italy? Even an army of cowards? It was no part of Pompey's plans actually to fight a civil war; somehow he could never feel comfortable with that idea. It wasn't loyalty or patriotism made him reject the idea, it was more that he did not feel inside himself the emotions men like Sulla felt. To Sulla there had been absolutely no alternative. Rome was the citadel inside which dwelt his heart, his honor, his very source of life. Whereas Pompey's citadel always had been and always would be Picenum. No, he wouldn't fight a civil war. But he had to make it look as if he would.

He sat down to draft his letter to the Senate.

To the Senate of Rome:

I, Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus, received a special commission from you six years ago to put down the revolt of Quintus Sertorius in Nearer Spain. As you know, in conjunction with my colleague in the Further province, Quintus Caecilius Metellus Pius, I succeeded in putting that revolt down, and in bringing about the death of Quintus Sertorius. Also of his various legates, including the vile Marcus Perperna Veiento.

I am not the bearer of great spoils. There were no great spoils to be had in a country devastated by a long series of catastrophes. The war in Spain has been one war Rome has had to fight at a loss. Nevertheless I ask for a triumph, secure in the knowledge that I did as you commanded, and that many thousands of Rome's enemies are dead through me. I ask for this triumph to be awarded to me without any delay so that I can put myself up as a candidate for the consulship in the curule elections to be held in Quinctilis.

He had intended to draft the letter so that Varro could look it over and compose something fairer, more diplomatic. But after reading this very short note through several times, Pompey came to the conclusion that it could not be bettered. Hit 'em hard!

Philippus arrived just as he was sitting back, satisfied.

“Good!” cried Pompey, rising to his feet and shaking Philippus by the hand (a limp and sweaty exercise). “I have a letter for you to read. You can take it to the Senate for me.”

“Requesting your well-deserved triumph?” Philippus asked, sitting down with a sigh; he had walked out to the Via Recta because litters were so slow, but he had forgotten how far it was and how hot a June day could be, even if by the seasons it was still spring.

“A little more than that,” said Pompey, handing over his wax tablet with a grin.

“Something to drink first, my dear fellow, please?”

It took Philippus some time to decipher Pompey's dreadful schoolboy writing; he got the gist of the last sentence at exactly the same moment as he took his first big, thirsty gulp of well-watered wine, and choked. He was coughing and spluttering so badly that Pompey had to get up and thump him on the back, and it was some time before Philippus could compose himself sufficiently to comment.

But he didn't comment. Instead he looked at Pompey as if he had never seen him before. It was a genuinely exploratory gaze that took in the muscular frame still clad in cuirass and kilt, the fair and faintly freckled skin, the enormously attractive face with its dented chin and thatch of bright gold Alexandrian hair. And the eyes--wide, candid, eager, such a vivid blue! Pompeius Magnus, the New Alexander. Where did it come from, the gall which must have fueled this demand? The father had been a very strange man, yet the son always contrived to convince people that he was not strange at all. Oh, but the son was far stranger than the father! Few things came as a surprise to Lucius Marcius Philippus. But this was more than a mere surprise. This was the kind of shock could carry a man off!

“You're surely not serious?” he asked faintly.

“Why shouldn't I be serious?”

“Magnus, what you ask cannot be done! It-is-just- not-possible! It goes against every law, written and unwritten! No one can be consul without being in the Senate! Even Young Marius and Scipio Aemilianus were not elected consul until after they were in the Senate! You could I suppose argue that Scipio Aemilianus set a precedent by being consul before he was praetor, and Young Marius had never been so much as quaestor. But he was put into the Senate well ahead of the elections! And Sulla has absolutely eliminated all such precedents! Magnus, I beg of you, don't send that letter!”

“I want to be consul!” said Pompey, his small mouth growing thin and ringed with white.

“The gale of laughter it will provoke will waft your letter straight back to you! It cannot be done!”

Pompey sat down, swung one shapely leg over the arm of his chair and jiggled its booted foot. “Of course it can be done, Philippus!” he said sweetly. “I have six legions of the best and toughest troops in the world to say it can be done.”