Fortune's Favorites (17 page)

Young Marius's center had perished on the field almost to the last man, but his right wing, led by Ahenobarbus, succeeded in breaking off hostilities and making a run for Norba. This ancient stronghold of the Volsci, fanatically loyal to Carbo's cause, stood atop a mountain twenty miles to the southwest, and gladly opened the gates in its impregnable walls to receive Ahenobarbus's ten thousand men. But not to receive Ahenobarbus! Wishing his devastated soldiers the best of luck for the future, Ahenobarbus continued on for the coast at Tarracina and there took ship for Africa, the farthest place from Italy he could bear to think of with equanimity.

Unaware that his senior legate had slipped away, Young Marius was satisfied with his Praenestian shelter; from this city Sulla would find it extremely difficult-if not impossible-to dislodge him. Some twenty-three miles from Rome, Praeneste occupied the heights of a spur of the Apennines, a site which had enabled it to withstand many assaults on its frowning walls through the centuries before Young Marius availed himself of its defenses. No army could take it from behind, where the outcrop on which it stood joined higher, more precipitous mountains; yet it could be provisioned from this direction, which made it impossible to starve out. Of springs there were aplenty within the citadel, and in vast caverns below the mighty shrine to Fortuna Primigenia for which Praeneste was most famous, there lay many medimni of wheat and oil and wine, other imperishable foods like hard cheeses and raisins, as well as apples and pears from the previous autumn's picking.

Though its roots were Latin enough and its version of that language proudly held by its citizens to be the oldest and purest, Praeneste had never allied itself with Rome. It fought on the side of the Italian Allies during the Italian War, and still held defiantly that its citizenship was superior to Rome's-Rome was a parvenu place! Its fervent espousal of Young Marius was therefore logical enough; he seemed to the people of Praeneste the underdog facing Sulla's vengeful might, and being his father's son besides, was warmly welcomed. As thanks, he pressed his soldiers into forming forage parties and sent them out along the snake-paths behind the citadel to procure as much food as possible. Praeneste now had many extra mouths.

“By summer Sulla will have moved on from sheer necessity, and then you can leave,” said the city's chief magistrate.

A prophecy not to bear fruit; less than a market interval after the battle of Sacriportus, Young Marius and the inhabitants of Praeneste witnessed the beginnings of a siege investment too monumental to be anything less than iron determination to see Praeneste fall. The tributaries which ran off the spur in the direction of Rome all entered the Anio River, whereas those which ran off the spur in the opposite direction all eventually entered the Tolerus River: Praeneste was a watershed. And now, with a speed the imprisoned onlookers found incredible, a great wall and ditch began to grow from the Anio side of the spur all the way around to the Tolerus side. When these siegeworks were completed, the only way in or out of Praeneste would be the snake-paths through the mountains behind. Provided, that is, that they were left unguarded.

The news of Sacriportus flew to Rome before the sun had set upon that fatal day-but very secretly. General dissemination would have to wait upon hearsay. It came by special courier from Young Marius himself, for the moment he was inside Praeneste he dictated a hasty letter to Rome's urban praetor, Lucius Junius Brutus Damasippus. It said:

All is lost south of Rome. We must hope that Carbo in Ariminum wages the sort of war Sulla will not be able to deal with, if only because he grossly lacks Carbo's numbers. Carbo's troops are far better than mine were. Mine's lack of proper training and experience unsettled them so much they could not hold for an hour against Sulla's old retainers.

I suggest you try to prepare Rome for a siege, though that may be impossible in a place so huge and so divided in its loyalties. If you think Rome will refuse to undergo siege, then you must expect Sulla within the next market interval, for there are no troops to oppose him between here and Rome. Whether he intends to occupy Rome, I do not know. What I hope is that he intends to bypass it in favor of attacking Carbo. From what I have heard my father say about Sulla, it would be like him to be forming a pincer to crush Carbo, using Metellus Pius as his other jaw. I wish I knew. I do not know. Except that it would be premature for Sulla to occupy Rome at this time, and I do not see Sulla making that mistake.

It may be some time before I can leave Praeneste, which has taken me in willingly-its people have a great affection for Gaius Marius, and have not refused to succor his son. Rest assured that as soon as Sulla moves on to deal with Carbo, I will break out and come to Rome's aid. Perhaps if I am in Rome myself, her people will agree to withstand siege.

Further to that, it occurs to me that the time has come to destroy every last nest of Sullan vipers within our beloved city. Kill them all, Damasippus! Do not allow sentiment to soften your resolve. Living men who might decide to support Sulla will make it impossible for Rome to resist him. But if the great ones who might make trouble for us are dead, then all the little ones will knuckle under without demur. Every man who might be of military help to Carbo must leave Rome now. That includes you, Damasippus.

Here follow a very few names of Sullan vipers which spring to mind. I know I have missed dozens, so think of them all! Our Pontifex Maximus. The elder Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus. Carbo Arvina. Publius Antistius Vetus.

Brutus Damasippus followed orders. During the shortlived but comprehensive program of murder old Gaius Marius had perpetrated before he died, Quintus Mucius Scaevola the Pontifex Maximus had been stabbed, for no good reason anyone could discover. His would-be assassin (that Fimbria who had gone off with Flaccus the suffect consul to relieve Sulla of his command against King Mithridates, then murdered Flaccus) could produce no better excuse at the time than to laugh that Scaevola deserved to die. But Scaevola had not died, though the wound was severe. Tough and doughty, the Pontifex Maximus was back on his feet and about his public duties within two months. Now, however, there was to be no escape. Father-in-law of Young Marius though he was, he was cut down as he tried to seek asylum in the temple of Vesta. Of treachery to Young Marius he was quite innocent.

The elder Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, consul not long after his brother the reforming Pontifex Maximus, was executed in his home. And no doubt Pompey the Great would have beamed his full approval had he known that his father-in-law's blood need not now stain his own hands; Publius Antistius was murdered too, and his wife, demented with grief, took her own life. By the time Brutus Damasippus had worked his way through those he considered might endanger Carbo's Rome, some thirty heads adorned the rostra in the lower Forum Romanum; men who called themselves neutral (like Catulus, Lepidus and Hortensius) bolted the doors of their houses and refused to venture out in case one of Brutus Damasippus's minions decided they must die too.

His work done, Brutus Damasippus fled from Rome, as did his fellow praetor Gaius Albius Carrinas. Both of them joined Carbo. The minting praetor, Quintus Antonius Balbus, also left Rome at this time, but commanding a legion of troops; his task was to go to Sardinia and wrest that island off Philippus.

Strangest defection of all, however, was that of the tribune of the plebs Quintus Valerius Soranus. A great scholar and a known humanitarian, he found himself unable to condone this slaughter of men not even proven to be affiliated in any way with Sulla. But how to make a public protest which would impress the whole city? And how could one man destroy Rome? For Quintus Valerius Soranus had come to the conclusion that the world would be a better place if Rome ceased to exist. After some thought, he arrived at his solution. He went to the rostra, climbed upon it, and there, surrounded by the dripping trophies of Brutus Damasippus, he screamed aloud the secret name of Rome.

“AMOR!'' he cried, again and again.

Those who heard and understood ran with hands clapped over their ears away from his voice. Rome's secret name could never be uttered aloud! Rome and all she stood for would fall down like a shoddy building in an earthquake. Quintus Valerius Soranus himself believed that implicitly. So having told air and birds and horrified men Rome's secret name, Soranus fled to Ostia wondering why Rome still stood upon her seven hills. From Ostia he sailed for Sicily, a marked man to both sides.

Virtually bereft of government, the city did not fall down or fall apart. People went about their affairs as they always did; the neutral noblemen popped their heads from out of their front doors, sniffed the air, sallied out, said nothing. Rome waited to see what Sulla would do.

Sulla did enter Rome, but quietly, and without his army at his back to protect him.

There was no compelling reason why he should not enter Rome, but very many compelling reasons why he should. Matters like his imperium-and whether or not he relinquished it in the moment he crossed the sacred boundary of the pomerium into the city-he cared little about. Who was there in this rudderless Rome to gainsay him, or accuse him of illegalities, or religiously impugn him? If he came back to Rome it would be as Rome's conqueror and master, with whatever powers he needed to make all right concerning his past career. So he stepped across the pomerium without a qualm, and proceeded to give the city back some semblance of government.

The most senior magistrate left in Rome was one of the two brothers Magius from Aeclanum, a praetor; him Sulla put in charge, with the aediles Publius Furius Crassipes and Marcus Pomponius to assist him. When he heard about Soranus's uttering the secret name of Rome aloud he frowned direfully and shuddered, though the bristling fence of speared heads around the rostra he eyed with perfect equanimity, only ordering that they be taken down and given the proper rites. He made no speeches to the people, and called no meeting of the Senate. Less than a full day after he entered he was gone again, back to Praeneste. But behind him he left two squadrons of cavalry under the command of Torquatus-to assist the magistrates to maintain order, he said blandly.

He made no attempt to see Aurelia, who had wondered; when she heard that he was gone again she presented an indifferent front to her family, especially to Caesar, who knew his mother's meeting with Sulla outside Teanum had been fraught with all kinds of significance, but knew she wasn't going to enlighten him.

The legate in charge of the investment of Praeneste was the defector Quintus Lucretius Ofella, whose orders had come directly from Sulla.

“I want Young Marius penned up in Praeneste for the rest of his days,” Sulla had said to Ofella. “You'll build a wall thirty feet high all the way from the mountains behind on the Anio side to the mountains behind on the Tolerus side. The wall will contain a sixty-foot fortified tower every two hundred paces. Between the wall and the town you will dig a ditch twenty feet deep and twenty feet wide, and you will fix stimuli in its bottom as thick as reeds in the shallows of the Fucine Lake. When the investment is completed, you will station camps of men to guard every little track which leads from behind Praeneste across the high Apennines. No one will get in, and no one will get out. I want that arrogant pup to understand that Praeneste is now his home for as long as he has left to live.” A sour smile twisted the corners of Sulla's mouth, a smile which would have displayed those ferally long canines in the days when he had had teeth; it was still not a pretty phenomenon. “I also want the people of Praeneste to know that they have Young Marius for the rest of his life, so you will have heralds inform them of that fact six times a day. It is one thing to succor a lovely young man with a famous name, but quite another to realize that the lovely young man with the famous name has brought death and suffering into Praeneste with him.”

When Sulla moved on to Veii to the north of Rome, he left Ofella behind with two legions to carry out the work. And work they did. Luckily the area was rich in volcanic tufa, a curious stone which cut as easily as cheese, yet hardened to the consistency of rock after it was exposed to the air. With this to quarry, the wall went up at mushroom pace, and the ditch between it and Praeneste deepened daily. Earth from the ditch was piled into a second wall, and in the large No Man's Land which existed inside these siegeworks no tree or object tall enough to serve as a battering ram was left standing. On the mountains behind the town, every tree was also felled between the back walls and the camps of men who now guarded the snake-paths and prevented the Praenestians foraging.

Ofella was a hard taskmaster; he had a reputation to make with Sulla, and this was his chance. Thus no one paused to rest, or so much as had the time to complain about a sore back or aching muscles. Besides, the men too had a reputation to make with Sulla; one of the legions was the one which had deserted Young Marius at Sacriportus, and the other had belonged to Scipio Asiagenus. Loyalty was suspect, so a well-built wall and well-excavated ditch would show Sulla they were worthy. All they had to work with were their hands and their legionary's digging tools; but there were over ten thousand pairs of hands and more than sufficient tools, and their centurions taught them the shortcuts and knacks in building siegeworks. To organize a task of such monumental size was no great trouble to Ofella, a typical Roman when it came to methodical execution.

In two months the wall and ditch were finished. They were over eight miles in length and bisected both the Via Praenestina and the Via Labicana in two places, thereby interrupting traffic on both these roads and rendering them useless beyond Tusculum and Bola. Those Roman knights and senators whose estates were affected by the fortifications could do nothing save glumly wait for the siege to be over-and curse Young Marius. On the other hand, the smallholders of the region rejoiced as they eyed the tufa blocks; when the siege was over the wall would come down and they would have an inexhaustible supply of material for field fences, buildings, barns, byres.