The First Man in Rome Read online

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  About the Author

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  Also by Colleen McCullough

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  www.headofzeus.com

  For

  Frederick T. Mason,

  dear friend, splendid colleague, honest man,

  with love and gratitude

  The author begs the indulgence of Latinate readers, who will find some Latin words kept in the nominative case when dative, genitive or other cases are in actual fact correct: and who will find family names (particularly in the first half of the book) Anglicized in the plural. This has been done in order to make reading less confusing for those without Latin.

  A note to the reader: to shed light on the world of ancient Rome, several maps and illustrations have been included throughout this book. Their locations are noted on page xi. A list of the main characters begins here. An author’s note appears here. If you would like to know more about the historical background of The First Man in Rome, click here for a glossary explaining some Latin words and unfamiliar terms. Readers who are interested in the pronunciations of Roman masculine names will find a guide here. A guide to the pronunciations of other names and terms begins here.

  LIST OF MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS

  Maps

  Roma Urbs

  Mundus Romanus

  Pars Mediana Romae

  Africa

  Gallia Comata et Provincia Romana

  Africa in Relation to the Mediterranean World at the Time of Gaius Marius

  Regiones Italiae

  The Trek of the Germans

  The Germans—Invasion of Italy

  Illustrations

  Gaius Marius

  Lucius Cornelius Sulla

  Gaius Julius Caesar

  Quintus Caecilius Metellus Numidicus

  Quintus Sertorius

  Publius Rutilius Rufus

  Aurelia

  Aurelia’s Insula

  House of Marcus Livius Drusus

  Quintus Lutatius Catulus Caesar

  Marcus Aemilius Scaurus

  Roman Magistrates

  Shape of Toga

  Caesar’s Dining Room

  THE MAIN CHARACTERS

  Caepio

  Quintus Servilius Caepio, consul 106 B.C.

  Quintus Servilius Caepio Junior, his son

  Servilia Caepionis, his daughter

  Caesar

  Gaius Julius Caesar, senator

  Marcia of the Marcii Reges, his wife, mother of:

  Sextus Julius Caesar, his older son

  Gaius Julius Caesar Junior, his younger son

  Julia Major (Julia), his older daughter

  Julia Minor (Julilla), his younger daughter

  Cotta

  Marcus Aurelius Cotta, praetor (date unknown)

  Rutilia, his wife; her first husband: his brother, Lucius

  Aurelius Cotta, consul 118 B.C. (died straight after)

  Aurelia, his stepdaughter and niece

  Lucius Aurelius Cotta, his stepson and nephew

  Gaius, Marcus, and Lucius Aurelius Cotta, his sons by Rutilia

  Decumius

  Lucius Decumius, custodian of a crossroads college

  Drusus

  Marcus Livius Drusus Censor, consul 112 B.C., censor 109 B.C. (died in office)

  Cornelia Scipionis, his estranged wife, mother of:

  Marcus Livius Drusus, his older son

  Mamercus Aemilius Lepidus Livianus, his younger

  son, adopted out as a child

  Livia Drusa, his daughter

  Glaucia

  Gaius Servilius Glaucia, tribune of the plebs 102 B.C., praetor 100 B.C.

  Jugurtha

  Jugurtha, King of Numidia, bastard son of Mastanabal Bomilcar, his half brother and baron

  Marius

  Gaius Marius

  Grania from Puteoli, his first wife

  Martha of Syria, a prophetess

  Metellus

  Lucius Caecilius Metellus Dalmaticus Pontifex Maximus, consul 119 B.C., older brother of:

  Quintus Caecilius Metellus Numidicus, consul 109 B.C., censor 102 B.C.

  Quintus Caecilius Metellus Pius, son of Numidicus

  Caecilia Metella Dalmatica, niece and ward of Numidicus, daughter of Dalmaticus

  Rutilius Rufus

  Publius Rutilius Rufus, consul 105 B.C.

  Livia of the Drusi, his deceased wife, sister of Marcus Livius Drusus Censor

  Rutilia of the Rufi, his sister, widow of Lucius Aurelius Cotta, wife of Marcus Aurelius Cotta

  Saturninus

  Lucius Appuleius Saturninus, tribune of the plebs 103 and 100 B.C.

  Scaurus

  Marcus Aemilius Scaurus Princeps Senatus, consul

  115 B.C., censor 109 B.C.

  Marcus Aemilius Scaurus Junior, his son by his first wife

  Sertorius

  Quintus Sertorius, cadet and military tribune

  Ria of the Marii, his mother, cousin of Gaius Marius

  Sulla

  Lucius Cornelius Sulla, quaestor 107 B.C., legate

  Clitumna from Umbria, his stepmother, aunt of Lucius Gavius Stichus

  Nicopolis the freedwoman, his mistress

  Metrobius, an adolescent child star of the comedy theater

  THE

  FIRST YEAR

  110 B.C

  IN THE CONSULSHIP OF

  MARCUS MINUCIUS RUFUS

  AND

  SPURIUS POSTUMIUS ALBINUS

  1

  Having no personal commitment to either of the new consuls, Gaius Julius Caesar and his sons simply tacked themselves onto the procession which started nearest to their own house, the procession of the senior consul, Marcus Minucius Rufus. Both consuls lived on the Palatine, but the house of the junior consul, Spurius Postumius Albinus, was in a more fashionable area. Rumor had it Albinus’s debts were escalating dizzily, no surprise; such was the price of becoming consul.

  Not that Gaius Julius Caesar was worried about the heavy burden of debt incurred while ascending the political ladder; nor, it seemed likely, would his sons ever need to worry on that score. It was four hundred years since a Julius had sat in the consul’s ivory curule chair, four hundred years since a Julius had been able to scrape up that kind of money. The Julian ancestry was so stellar, so august, that opportunities to fill the family coffers had passed the succeeding generations by, and as each century finished, the family of Julius had found itself ever poorer. Consul? Impossible! Praetor, next magistracy down the ladder from consul? Impossible! No, a safe and humble backbencher’s niche in the Senate was the inheritance of a Julius these days, including that branch of the family called Caesar because of their luxuriantly thick hair.

  So the toga which Gaius Julius Caesar’s body servant draped about his left shoulder, wrapped about his frame, hung about his left arm, was the plain white toga of a man who had never aspired to the ivory curule chair of high office. Only his dark red shoes, his iron senator’s ring, and the five-inch-wide purple stripe on the right shoulder of his tunic distinguished his garb from that of his sons, Sextus and Gaius, who wore ordinary shoes, their seal rings only, and a thin purple knight’s stripe on their tunics.

  Even though dawn had not yet broken, there were little ceremonies to usher in the day. A short prayer and an offering of a salt cake at the shrine to the gods of the house in the atrium, and then, when the servant on door duty called out that he could see the torches coming down the hill, a reverence to Janus Patulcius, the god who permitted safe opening of a door.

  Father and sons passed out into the narrow cobbled alley, there to separate. While the two young men joined the rank
s of the knights who preceded the new senior consul, Gaius Julius Caesar himself waited until Marcus Minucius Rufus passed by with his lictors, then slid in among the ranks of the senators who followed him.

  *

  It was Marcia who murmured a reverence to Janus Clusivius, the god who presided over the closing of a door, Marcia who dismissed the yawning servants to other duties. The men gone, she could see to her own little expedition. Where were the girls? A laugh gave her the answer, coming from the cramped little sitting room the girls called their own; and there they sat, her daughters, the two Julias, breakfasting on bread thinly smeared with honey. How lovely they were!

  It had always been said that every Julia ever born was a treasure, for the Julias had the rare and fortunate gift of making their men happy. And these two young Julias bade fair to keep up the family tradition.

  Julia Major—called Julia—was almost eighteen. Tall and possessed of grave dignity, she had pale, bronzy-tawny hair pulled back into a bun on the nape of her neck, and her wide grey eyes surveyed her world seriously, yet placidly. A restful and intellectual Julia, this one.

  Julia Minor—called Julilla—was half past sixteen. The last child of her parents’ marriage, she hadn’t really been a welcome addition until she became old enough to enchant her softhearted mother and father as well as her three older siblings. She was honey-colored. Skin, hair, eyes, each a mellow gradation of amber. Of course it had been Julilla who laughed. Julilla laughed at everything. A restless and unintellectual Julia, this one.

  “Ready, girls?” asked their mother.

  They crammed the rest of their sticky bread into their mouths, wiggled their fingers daintily through a bowl of water and then a cloth, and followed Marcia out of the room.

  “It’s chilly,” said their mother, plucking warm woolen cloaks from the arms of a servant. Stodgy, unglamorous cloaks.

  Both girls looked disappointed, but knew better than to protest; they endured being wrapped up like caterpillars into cocoons, only their faces showing amid fawn folds of homespun. Identically swaddled herself, Marcia formed up her little convoy of daughters and servant escort, and led it through the door into the street.

  They had lived in this modest house on the lower Germalus of the Palatine since Father Sextus had bestowed it upon his younger son, Gaius, together with five hundred iugera of good land between Bovillae and Aricia—a sufficient endowment to ensure that Gaius and his family would have the wherewithal to maintain a seat in the Senate. But not, alas, the wherewithal to climb the rungs of the cursus honorum, the ladder of honor leading up to the praetorship and consulship.

  Father Sextus had had two sons and not been able to bear parting with one; a rather selfish decision, since it meant his property—already dwindled because he too had had a sentimental sire and a younger brother who also had to be provided for—was of necessity split between Sextus, his elder son, and Gaius, his younger son. It had meant that neither of his sons could attempt the cursus honorum, be praetor and consul.

  Brother Sextus had not been as sentimental as Father Sextus; just as well! He and his wife, Popillia, had produced three sons, an intolerable burden for a senatorial family. So he had summoned up the necessary steel to part with his eldest boy, given him up for adoption to the childless Quintus Lutatius Catulus, thereby making a fortune for himself as well as ensuring that his eldest son would come into a fortune. Old Catulus the adopter was fabulously wealthy, and very pleased to pay over a huge sum for the chance to adopt a boy of patrician stock, great good looks, and a reasonable brain. The money the boy had brought Brother Sextus—his real father—had been carefully invested in land and in city property, and hopefully would produce sufficient income to allow both of Brother Sextus’s younger sons a chance at the senior magistracies.

  Strong-minded Brother Sextus aside, the whole trouble with the Julius Caesars was their tendency to breed more than one son, and then turn sentimental about the predicament more than one son embroiled them in; they were never able to rule their hearts, give up some of their too-profuse male offspring for adoption, and see that the children they kept married into lots of money. For this reason had their once-vast landholdings shrunk with the passing of the centuries, progressively split into smaller and smaller parcels to provide for two and three sons, and some of it sold to provide dowries for daughters.

  Marcia’s husband was just such a Julius Caesar—a sentimentally doting parent, too proud of his sons and too enslaved by his daughters to be properly, Romanly sensible. The older boy should have been adopted out and both girls should have been promised in marriage to rich men years ago; the younger son should also have been contracted to a rich bride. Only money made a high political career possible. Patrician blood had long become a liability.

  *

  It was not a very auspicious sort of New Year’s Day. Cold, windy, blowing a fine mist of rain that slicked the cobbles dangerously and intensified the stale stench of an old burning in the air. Dawn had come, late because sunless, and this was one Roman holiday the ordinary people would prefer to spend in a cramped confinement indoors, lying on their straw pallets playing the ageless game they called Hide the Sausage.

  Had the weather been fine, the streets would have been thronged with people from all walks of life going to a favorite vantage point from which to view the pomp in the Forum Romanum and on the Capitol; as it was, Marcia and her daughters found it easy walking, their servant escort not needing to use brute force in making a way for the ladies.

  The tiny alley in which the house of Gaius Julius Caesar lay opened onto the Clivus Victoriae not far above the Porta Romulana, the ancient gate in the ancient Palatine city’s walls, vast blocks of stone laid down by Romulus himself, now overgrown or built upon or carved up with the graffitic initials of six hundred years of tourists. Turning right to ascend the Clivus Victoriae toward the corner where the Palatine Germalus looked down upon the Forum Romanum, the ladies reached their destination five minutes later, a piece of vacant land occupying the best spot of all.

  Twelve years earlier one of the finest houses in Rome had stood there. Nowadays the site bore little evidence of its previous dwelling, just an occasional stone half-buried in grass. The view was splendid; from where the servants set up campstools for Marcia and the two Julias, the women had an unobstructed vista before them of Forum Romanum and Capitol, with the seething declivity of the Subura adding definition to the northern hills of the city’s horizon.

  “Did you hear?” asked that Caecilia who was the wife of the merchant banker Titus Pomponius. Very pregnant, she was sitting nearby with her Aunt Pilia; they lived next but one down the street from the Caesars.

  “No, what?” asked Marcia, leaning forward.

  “The consuls and priests and augurs started just after midnight, to make sure they’d finish the prayers and rites in time—”

  “They always do that!” said Marcia, interrupting. “If they make a mistake, they have to start all over again.”

  “I know, I know, I’m not that ignorant!” said Caecilia tartly, annoyed because she knew she was being put in her place by a praetor’s daughter. “The thing is, they didn’t make a mistake! The auspices were bad. Lightning four times on the right, and an owl inside the augural place screeching as if being murdered. And now the weather— it’s not going to be a good year, or a good pair of consuls.’’

  “Well, I could have told you that without benefit of owls or lightning,” said Marcia, whose father had not lived to be consul, but as praetor urbanus had built the great aqueduct which brought sweet fresh water into Rome, and kept his memory green as one of the all-time greats in government. “A miserable assortment of candidates to begin with, and even then the electors couldn’t pick the best of such a shabby lot. I daresay Marcus Minucius Rufus will try, but Spurius Postumius Albinus! They’ve always been inadequate.”

  “Who?” asked Caecilia, who wasn’t very bright.

  “The Postumius Albinus clan,” said Marcia, her eyes dartin
g to her daughters to make sure they were all right; they had spotted four girls belonging to two of the Claudius Pulchers—such a tribe of them, it was never possible to keep them all straight! And they usually weren’t straight. But these girls gathered on the site of the Flaccus househad all gone to school together as children, and it was impossible to erect social barriers against a caste almost as aristocratic as the Julius Caesars. Especially when the Claudius Pulchers also perpetually battled the enemies of the old nobility, too many children allied to dwindling land and money. Now her two Julias had moved their campstools down to where the other girls sat unsupervised—where were their mothers? Oh. Talking to Sulla. Shady! That settled it.

  “Girls!” Marcia called sharply.

  Two draped heads turned to look at her.

  “Come back here,” she said, and added, “at once.”

  They came.

  “Mama, please can’t we stay with our friends?” asked young Julilla, eyes pleading.

  “No,” said Marcia, in the tone which indicated That Was That.

  Down below in the Forum Romanum the procession was forming, as the long crocodile which had wended its way from the house of Marcus Minucius Rufus met up with the equally long crocodile originating at the house of Spurius Postumius Albinus. The knights came first, not as many as on a fine sunny New Year’s Day, but a respectable enough gathering of seven hundred or so; as the light improved but the rain grew a trifle harder, they moved off up the slope of the Clivus Capitolinus to where, at the first bend in this short and hilly track, the priests and slaughtermen waited with two flawless white bulls on spangled halters, their horns gilded and their dewlaps garlanded. At the rear of the knights strolled the twenty-four lictors of the new consuls. After the lictors came the consuls themselves, and after them the Senate, those who had held senior magistracies in purple-bordered togas, the rest of the House in plain white togas. And last of all came those who did not by rights belong there, sightseers and a host of the consuls’ clients.