The Grass Crown (59 page)

“Getting into the Senate is never a backward step!” said Cicero, smarting. Young Titus’s words contained additional sting these days; Cicero had come to understand that the moment he said he came from Arpinum, he was immediately smeared with a little of the same ordure reserved for Arpinum’s most famous citizen, Gaius Marius. If Gaius Marius was an Italian with no Greek, what else could Marcus Tullius Cicero be than a better-educated version of Gaius Marius? The Tullii Cicerones had never been over-fond of the Marii, despite the occasional marriage between the clans; but since arriving in Rome, young Marcus Tullius Cicero had learned to loathe Gaius Marius. And to loathe his birthplace.

“Anyway,” said young Titus Pomponius, “when I am paterfamilias, I am going to be perfectly content with my knight’s lot. If the censors both get down on their knees to me, they’ll beg in vain! For I swear to you, Marcus Tullius, that I will never, never, never enter the Senate!”

In the meantime, Lucius Cotta’s despair was becoming more evident. It was therefore no surprise when the court reconvened the next day to learn that Lucius Aurelius Cotta had chosen to go into voluntary exile rather than wait for an inevitable verdict of CONDEMNO. This ploy at least enabled a man to gather most of his assets and take them with him into exile; if he waited and was convicted, his assets would be confiscated by the court, and the ensuing exile harder to bear because of lack of funds.

It was a bad time to have to liquidate capital assets, for, while the Senate vacillated in a mood of sheer disbelief and the Comitia were absorbed in the doings of Quintus Varius, the business community sniffed something nasty in the wind, and took appropriate measures. Money went into immediate hiding, shares tottered, the smaller companies held emergency meetings. Manufacturers and importers of luxury goods debated the possibility of strict sumptuary laws should a war ensue, and concocted schemes for switching their lines of goods to war essentials.

Nothing happened to convince the Senate that the Marsic declaration of war was sincere; no word came of an army on the march, no word came of any kind of martial preparations in any Italian nation. The only worrying thing, perhaps, was that Servius Sulpicius Galba, the praetor delegated to look into matters in the south of the peninsula, did not come to Rome. Instead, he had lapsed into complete silence.

The Varian Commission gathered impetus. Lucius Calpurnius Bestia was convicted and sent into exile, his property confiscated; so was Lucius Memmius, who went to Delos. Halfway through January Antonius Orator was arraigned, but gave such a magnificent speech—and was so cheered by the Forum crowds—that the jury prudently decided to acquit him. Angry at this fickle conduct, Quintus Varius retaliated by charging Marcus Aemilius Scaurus Princeps Senatus with treason.

Scaurus appeared totally unattended to answer the indictment, clad in his toga praetexta and positively radiating the awesome aura of his dignitas and auctoritas. Impassively he listened to Quintus Varius (who was conducting every prosecution himself) reel off the long list of his wrongdoings in regard to the Italians. When Varius finally stopped speaking, Scaurus snorted. He turned not to face the jury, but to face the crowd.

“Did you hear that, Quirites!” he thundered. “A half-breed upstart from Sucro in Spain accuses Scaurus, Princeps Senatus, of treason! Scaurus denies the charge! Whom do you believe?”

“Scaurus, Scaurus, Scaurus!” chanted the crowd. Then the jury joined in, and finally left its seats to chair Scaurus on its shoulders in a triumphant parade all around the lower Forum.

“The fool!” said Marius to Scaurus afterward. “Did he really think he could convict you of treason? Did the knights think it?”

“After the knights succeeded in convicting poor Publius Rutilius, I imagine they thought they could convict anyone if only they were given the chance,” said Scaurus, adjusting his toga, which had become a little disorganized during his ride.

“Varius should have started his campaign against the more formidable consulars with me, not you,” said Marius. “When Marcus Antonius got off, there was a strong message in it. A message now well and truly driven home! I predict Varius will suspend his activities for a few weeks, then start again—but with less august victims. Bestia doesn’t matter, everyone knows him for a wolfshead. And poor Lucius Cotta didn’t have enough clout. Oh, the Aurelii Cottae are powerful, but they don’t like Lucius—they like the boys his uncle Marcus Cotta bred from Rutilia.” Marius paused, eyebrows dancing wildly. “Of course, Varius’s real disadvantage is that he’s not a Roman. You are. I am. He’s not. He doesn’t understand.”

Scaurus refused to rise to the bait. “Nor do Philippus and Caepio understand,” he said scornfully.

The month which Silo and Mutilus had allowed for mobilization was ample. Yet at the end of it, not one Italian army marched. There were two reasons. One, Mutilus could see; the other drove him to the brink of despair. Dickering with the leaders of Etruria and Umbria proceeded at a snail’s pace, and nobody in the war council or the grand council wanted to start aggression before they had an idea what the results might be; that, Mutilus could see. But there was also a curious reluctance to be the first to march—not from fear, rather from an ingrained, centuries-old awe of Rome; and that, Mutilus deplored.

“Let us wait until Rome makes the first move,” said Silo in the war council.

“Let us wait until Rome makes the first move,” said Lucius Fraucus in the grand council.

When he learned that the Marsi had delivered a declaration of war to the Senate, Mutilus had been furious, thinking that Rome would mobilize at once. But Silo had remained unrepentant.

“It’s the proper thing to do,” he maintained. “There are laws governing war, just as there are laws governing every aspect of men’s conduct. Rome cannot say she wasn’t warned.”

And, following that, nothing Mutilus could say or do served to budge his fellow Italian leaders from their decision that Rome must be seen to be the first aggressor.

“If we marched now, we’d murder them!” Mutilus cried in the war council, even as his deputy Gaius Trebatius was saying the same thing in the grand council. “Surely you can see that the more time we give Rome to ready herself, the less likely we are to win this conflict! The fact that no one in Rome is taking any notice of us is our greatest advantage! We must march! We must march tomorrow! If we delay, we’ll lose!”

But all the others solemnly shook their heads save Marius Egnatius, Mutilus’s fellow Samnite on the war council; even Silo refused, though he admitted the logic of it.

“It wouldn’t be right” was the answer the Samnites kept getting, no matter how they pressed.

The massacre at Asculum Picentum made no impression either; Gaius Vidacilius of the Picentes refused to send a garrison force to the city to fend off Roman reprisals—Roman reprisals, he said, were proving long in coming, and might not come at all.

“We must march!” moaned Mutilus again and again. “The farmers are all saying it won’t be much of a winter, so there’s no reason to delay until spring! We must march!”

But no one wanted to march, and no one did march.

Thus it was that the first stirrings of revolt occurred among the Samnites. No one on either side considered Asculum Picentum evidence of revolt; the town had simply been tried beyond its endurance, and retaliated. Whereas, having simmered for generations, the huge Samnite population in Campania, inextricably mixed with Romans and Latins, began spontaneously to boil.

Servius Sulpicius Galba brought the first concrete news of it to Rome when he arrived, disheveled and minus his escort, during the month of February.

The new senior consul, Lucius Julius Caesar, summoned the Senate at once to listen to Galba’s report.

“I’ve been a prisoner in Nola for six weeks,” said Galba to a quiet House. “I had just sent off my note informing you that I was on my way home when I arrived in Nola. I hadn’t originally intended to visit Nola, but since I was in the vicinity and Nola does have a large Samnite population, I decided at the last moment to go there. I stayed with an old lady who was my mother’s best friend—a Roman, of course. And she informed me that there were peculiar things happening in Nola—all of a sudden, it was impossible for Romans and Latins to obtain service, goods in the market, even food! Her servants were obliged to take a cart to Acerrae for staples. When I moved through the town with my lictors and troopers I was booed and hissed continuously—yet it was never possible to see which men or women were responsible.”

Galba moved unhappily, aware that the tale of his adventures was not an inspiring one. “During the night after I arrived in Nola, the Samnites shut the city gates and took the place over completely. Every Roman and Latin was taken prisoner and held under restraint in their houses. Including my lictors, my troopers, and my clerks. I found myself locked into my hostess’s house, with a Samnite guard at front door and back gate. And there I remained until three days ago, when my hostess managed to lure the guards at the back gate away for long enough to enable me to slip out. Dressed as a Samnite merchant, I escaped through the city gates before the hunt got up.”

Scaurus leaned forward. “Did you see anyone of authority during your time as a prisoner, Servius Sulpicius?”

“No one,” said Galba. “I had some conversation with the men on guard at the front door, that’s all.”

“What did they have to say?”

“Only that Samnium was in revolt, Marcus Aemilius. I had no way to ascertain the truth of this, so when I did manage to escape I wasted a whole day hiding from anyone I saw in the distance who looked like a Samnite. It was only when I reached Capua that I found no one knew of this revolt, at least in that part of Campania. In fact, it seems no one knew what was going on in Nola! During the day the Samnite Nolans kept one gate open and pretended nothing was wrong. So when I told those in Capua what had happened to me, they were amazed. And alarmed, I add! The duumviri of Capua have asked me to forward instructions to them from the Senate.”

“Were you fed during your captivity? What about your hostess? Was she permitted to shop in Acerrae?” asked Scaurus.

“Of food, there was little. My hostess was allowed to shop in Nola, but only for limited provisions at extortionate prices. No one Latin or Roman was allowed out of the town,” said Galba.

This time the Senate was full; if the court of Varius had done nothing else, it had succeeded in uniting senatorial ranks—and driven the Senate to hunger for something dramatic enough to remove emphasis from the Varian Commission.

“May I speak?” asked Gaius Marius.

“If no one senior to you wants to speak,” said the junior consul, Publius Rutilius Lupus, coldly; he held the fasces during February, and was no partisan of Marius’s.

No one asked to speak ahead of Marius.

“If Nola has imprisoned its Roman and Latin citizens under circumstances of privation, then there can be no doubt of it—Nola is in revolt against Rome. Consider for a moment: in June of last year the Senate delegated two of its praetors to enquire into what our esteemed consular Quintus Lutatius called ’the Italian question.’ Nearly three months ago the praetor Quintus Servilius was murdered in Asculum Picentum, along with every Roman citizen in the town. Nearly two months ago the praetor Servius Sulpicius was captured and imprisoned in Nola, along with every Roman citizen in the town.

“Two praetors, one north and one south, and two atrocious incidents, one north and one south. The whole of Italy—even in its most backward parts!—knows and understands the significance, the importance, of the Roman praetor. Yet, Conscript Fathers, in the one case, murder was done. In the other case, a long-term detention was enforced. That we do not know the ultimate outcome of Servius Sulpicius’s detention is purely due to the lucky circumstance of his escaping. However, it would appear to me that Servius Sulpicius too would have died. Two praetors of Rome, each with a proconsular imperium! Attacked, it would seem, without fear of reprisal. And what does that tell me? Just one thing, my fellow senators! It tells me that Asculum Picentum and Nola were emboldened to do what they did feeling secure against reprisals! In other words, both Asculum Picentum and Nola are expecting a state of war to exist between Rome and their parts of Italy before Rome can retaliate.”

The House was sitting up straight now, and hanging on Marius’s every word. Pausing, he looked from one face to another, searching for particular men; Lucius Cornelius Sulla, for instance, whose eyes were glistening; and Quintus Lutatius Catulus Caesar, whose face registered a curious awe.

“I have been guilty of the same crime as the rest of you, Conscript Fathers. After Marcus Livius Drusus died I had no one to tell me there would be war. I began to think him wrong. When nothing more transpired after the march of the Marsian Silo upon Rome, I too began to deem it yet one more trick to gain the citizenship. When the Marsian delegate gave our Princeps Senatus a declaration of war, I dismissed it because it came from only one Italian nation, though eight nations were represented in the delegation. And—I admit it freely!—I could not believe in my heart that any Italian nation in this day and age would actually go to war against us.”

He paced up the floor until he stood in front of the closed doors, where he could see the entire House. “What Servius Sulpicius has told us today changes everything, and sheds new light upon the events at Asculum Picentum as well. Asculum is a town of the Picentes. Nola is a town of the Campanian Samnites. Neither is a Roman or a Latin colony. I think we must now assume that the Marsi, the Picentes, and the Samnites are leagued together against Rome. It may be that all eight nations who sent us that deputation some time ago are party to this league. It may be, I think, that in giving our Leader of the House a formal declaration of war, the Marsi were warning us of that event. Whereas the other seven nations did not care enough about us to warn us. Marcus Livius Drusus said time and time again that the Italian Allies were on the brink of war. I now believe him—except that I think the Italian Allies have stepped over the brink.”

“You do genuinely believe a state of war exists?” asked Ahenobarbus Pontifex Maximus.

“I do, Gnaeus Domitius.”

“Continue, Gaius Marius,” said Scaurus. “I would like to hear you out before I speak.”

“I have little else to say, Marcus Aemilius. Except that we must mobilize, and very quickly. That we must endeavor to find out the extent of the league against us. That we must move whatever troops we have under arms to protect our roads and our access to Campania. That we must discover how the Latins feel about us, and how our colony towns in hostile regions are going to fare if war does commence. As you know, I have huge lands in Etruria, as does Quintus Caecilius Metellus Pius, and some others among the various Caecilii. Quintus Servilius Caepio has equally large amounts of land in Umbria. And Gnaeus Pompeius Strabo and Quintus Pompeius Rufus dominate northern Picenum. For that reason, I think we might hold Etruria, Umbria, and northern Picenum in our camp—if we move immediately to negotiate with their local leaders. In the matter of northern Picenum, however, their local leaders are sitting here in the House today.”

Marius inclined his head toward Scaurus Princeps Senatus. “It goes without saying that I personally am Rome’s to command.”

Scaurus rose to his feet. “I agree absolutely with everything Gaius Marius has said, Conscript Fathers. We cannot afford to waste time. And though I am aware that this is the month of February, I move that the fasces be taken off the junior consul and given to the senior consul. It is the senior consul who must lead us in all matters as serious as this.”

Rutilius Lupus sat up indignantly, but his popularity within the House was small; though he insisted upon a formal division, it went against him by a large majority. He was forced, fuming, to yield the place of first prominence to Lucius Julius Caesar, the senior consul. Lupus’s friend Caepio was present, but his two other friends Philippus and Quintus Varius were not.

A delighted Lucius Julius Caesar soon demonstrated that the trust of the Leader of the House was not misplaced; within the space of that same day, the major decisions were taken. Both the consuls would take the field, leaving the urban praetor, Lucius Cornelius Cinna, to govern Rome. The provinces were got out of the way first, as this new crisis could not but alter the dispositions made earlier. As already arranged, Sentius would stay in Macedonia, and the Spanish governors too remained undisturbed. Lucius Lucilius would go to govern Asia Province. But, to give King Mithridates no opportunities while Rome was embroiled in a domestic furor, Publius Servilius Vatia was now sent to Cilicia to make sure that part of Anatolia stayed quiet. And—most important of all—the consular Gaius Coelius Caldus was given a special governorship, Gaul-across-the-Alps and Italian Gaul combined.

“For it is clear,” said Lucius Julius Caesar, “that if Italy is in revolt, we will not find sufficient fresh troops among those in the peninsula who remain faithful to us. Italian Gaul has many Latin and a few Roman colonies. Gaius Coelius will quarter himself in Italian Gaul and recruit and train soldiers for us.”

“If I might suggest,” rumbled Gaius Marius, “I would like to see the quaestor Quintus Sertorius go with Gaius Coelius. His duties are fiscal this year, and he is not yet a member of the Senate. But, as I’m sure all of us present here know, Quintus Sertorius is a true Military Man. Let him have his experience of the fiscus in as military a fashion as he can.”

“Agreed,” said Lucius Caesar instantly.

There were of course enormous financial problems to struggle with. The Treasury was solvent and had resources beyond normal demand to hand, but—

“If this war is wider than we currently think, or more protracted than we currently think, we will need more money than we have,” said Lucius Caesar. “I would rather we acted now than later. I suggest that we reimpose direct taxation upon all Roman citizens and holders of the Latin Rights.”

That, of course, provoked furious opposition from many quarters of the House, but Antonius Orator delivered a very fine speech, as did Scaurus Princeps Senatus, and in the end the measure was agreed to. The tributum had never been levied constantly, only in times of need; after the conquest of Perseus of Macedonia by the great Aemilius Paullus, it had been abolished and replaced by a tributum levied upon non-Romans.

“If we are required to keep more than six legions in the field, our foreign income will not be enough,” said the chief tribune of the Treasury. “The entire burden of arming them, feeding them, paying them, and keeping them in the field will now fall upon Rome and Rome’s Treasury.”

“Goodbye, Italian Allies!” said Catulus Caesar savagely.