The Grass Crown Read online

  "Can Quintus Mucius convince the Senate that he—and not the publicani—is in the right?" asked Marius.

  "What do you think?"

  Marius pondered, wishing he had spent more of his public career in Rome, rather than in the field. "I believe he will succeed," he said finally. "His reputation is peerless, and that will sway a lot of the backbenchers who might otherwise be tempted to support the publicani—or the Treasury. And he'll deliver a superb speech in the House. Crassus Orator will speak in his support, and do even better."

  "So I think too. But he was sorry to have to leave Asia Province, you know. I don't think he'll ever have another job he can enjoy the way he has this one. He has such a meticulous, precise mind, and his organization is unparalleled. It was my task to gather information from every district in the province, his to make firm decisions from the facts I gave him. With the result that, thirty-five years down the road, Asia Province has a realistic estimate of taxes at last, and the Treasury no excuse to demand more."

  "Of course, unless the consul arrives, within the province the governor's imperium can override any directive from Rome," said Marius. "However, you've flouted the censors as well as the Treasury, and the publicani can claim to have legal contracts, as can the Treasury. With new censors in, new contracts will have been let—did you manage to transmit your findings to Rome in time to influence the sums demanded in the new contracts?"

  "Unfortunately, no," said Rutilius Rufus. "That's yet another reason why Quintus Mucius had to go home now. He feels he can influence this pair of censors sufficiently to cause them to recall the Asia Province contracts, and reissue them."

  "Well, that shouldn't irritate the publicani—provided the Treasury agrees to the cut in its revenues," said Marius. "I predict that Quintus Mucius will have more trouble with the Treasury than with the tax-farmers. After all, the publicani will be in a better position to make a nice profit if they don't have to pay unrealistic sums to the Treasury, not so?"

  "Exactly," nodded Rutilius Rufus. "It's on that we pin our hopes, once Quintus Mucius gets it through the thick heads of the Senate and the tribunes of the Treasury that Rome cannot expect what she expects from Asia Province.''

  "Who do you think is going to squeal the loudest?"

  "Sextus Perquitienus, for one. He'll make a nice profit, but there won't be any more priceless works of art taken in default if the local people can afford to pay their taxes. Some of the leaders of the House who are heavily committed to knight lobbies—and who might have been acquiring an occasional priceless work of art themselves. Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus Pontifex Maximus, for one. Catulus Caesar. The Piglet, I imagine. Scipio Nasica. Some of the Licinii Crassi, but not the Orator."

  "What about our Leader of the House?"

  "I think Scaurus will support Quintus Mucius. Or so both of us hope, Gaius Marius. Give Scaurus his due, he's an upright Roman of the old kind." Rutilius Rufus giggled. "Besides, his clients are all in Italian Gaul, so he's not personally interested in Asia Province, he just likes to dabble in king-making and similar exercises. But tax-gathering? Sordid stuff! Nor is he a collector of priceless works of art."

  Leaving a much happier Publius Rutilius Rufus to rattle around the governor's palace on his own (for he refused to desert his post), Gaius Marius took his family south to Halicarnassus and their villa, and spent a very pleasant winter there, breaking the monotony with a trip to Rhodes.

  That they were able to sail from Halicarnassus to Tarsus was thanks solely to the efforts of Marcus Antonius Orator, who had put paid—at least for the time being—to the activities of the pirates of Pamphylia and Cilicia. Before the campaign of Antonius Orator, the very thought of a sea journey would have been the height of foolhardiness, as no captured cargo was more appreciated by the pirates than a Roman senator, particularly one of Gaius Marius's importance; they would have been able to put a ransom of twenty or thirty silver talents upon his person.

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  The ship hugged the coast, and the journey took over a month. The cities of Lycia played host to Marius and his family gladly, as did the big city of Attaleia in Pamphylia. Never had they seen such mountains in close proximity to the sea, even, said Marius, on his coastal march to far Gaul; their snow-covered heads scraped the sky, and their feet paddled in the water.

  The pine forests of the region were magnificent, never having been logged; Cyprus, only a short distance away, had more than enough timber to supply the needs of the entire area, including Egypt. But, thought Marius as the days went by and the Cilician coast unfolded, no wonder piracy had thrived here; every twist in the mighty mountains produced almost perfectly concealed little coves and harbors. Coracesium, which had been the pirate capital, was so right for this role it must have seemed a gift from the gods, with its towering fortress-crowned spur almost surrounded by the sea. It had fallen to Antonius by treachery from within; gazing up at its stark sides, Marius exercised his brain by working out a way to capture it.

  And then finally came Tarsus, a few miles up the placid stream of the Cydnus, and therefore sheltered from the open sea but able to function as a port. It was a walled and powerful city, and of course the palace was made available to these august visitors. Spring in this part of Asia Minor was early, so Tarsus was already hot; Julia began to drop hints that she wouldn't welcome being left in such a furnace when Marius began his journey inland to Cappadocia.

  A letter had come to Halicarnassus late in winter from the Cappadocian King, the seventh Ariarathes; it promised that he himself would be in Tarsus by the end of March, and would be very pleased and proud to escort Gaius Marius personally from Tarsus to Eusebeia Mazaca. Knowing the young King would be waiting, Marius had chafed when the voyage took so long, yet was reluctant to destroy Julia's pleasure in treats like disembarking in some enchanted cove to stretch her legs and swim. But when they did arrive in Tarsus halfway through April, the little King was not there, and no word had come from him.

  Several couriered letters to Mazaca failed to provide an answer; indeed, none of the couriers came back. And Marius began to worry. This he concealed from Julia and Young Marius, but it made his dilemma more difficult when Julia began to press to be included in the trip to Cappadocia. He could not take her with him, so much was apparent, nor could he leave her behind to become prostrated by the summer heat. Her plight was compounded by Cilicia's unenviably ambivalent position in that part of the world. Once an Egyptian possession, Cilicia had passed to Syria and then entered a period of neglect; during this time the pirate confederations had gradually usurped much of the power, even over the fertile flatlands called Pedia which lay to the east of Tarsus.

  The Seleucid dynasty of Syria was wearing itself out in a series of civil wars between brothers, and between kings and pretenders; at the present time there were two kings in northern Syria, Antiochus Grypus and Antiochus Cyzicenus, so busy fighting for possession of Antioch and Damascus that they had been obliged for years to leave the rest of the kingdom lying fallow. With the result that the Jews, the Idumaeans and the Nabataeans had all established independent kingdoms in the south, and Cilicia was quite forgotten.

  Thus when Marcus Antonius Orator had arrived in Tarsus with the intent of using the city as his base, he found Cilicia ripe for the picking, and—endowed with full imperium— declared Cilicia a province answering to Rome. But when he departed no governor was sent to replace him, and once more Cilicia entered into limbo. The Greek cities large enough and secure enough to have established themselves as economic entities survived well; Tarsus was one such. But between these centers were whole tracts where no one governed in anyone's name, or local tyrants held sway, or the people simply said they belonged now to Rome. Marius had very quickly come to the conclusion that not many years would go by before the pirates moved back in force. In the meantime, the local magistrates seemed happy to welcome the man they assumed was the new Roman governor.

  The longer he waited to hear from little King Ariarathes, the mo
re apparent it became to Marius that he might be called upon to do something desperate in Cappadocia, or something requiring a lengthy stretch of time. His wife and son had become Marius's greatest worry. Now I know why we leave them safely at home! he thought, grinding his teeth. To leave them in Tarsus, a prey to summer diseases, was out of the question; so too was taking them to Cappadocia; and whenever he decided to consign them to a sea voyage back to Halicarnassus, the image of Coracesium's unreduced fortress loomed, peopled in his imagination by the followers of a new pirate king. What to do, what to do? We know nothing about this part of the world, he thought, but it is clear to me that we must learn; the eastern end of the Middle Sea is rudderless, and some tempest is going to wreck it.

  When May was almost half over and there was still no word from King Ariarathes, Marius made up his mind.

  "Pack up," he said to Julia more curtly than was his wont. "I'm taking you and Young Marius with me, but not to Mazaca. As soon as we're high enough for the weather to be cooler and hopefully healthier, I intend to leave the pair of you with whatever people I can find, and go on alone into Cappadocia."

  She wanted to argue, but she didn't; though she had never seen Gaius Marius in the field, she often picked up echoes of his military autocracy; now too she caught faint echoes of some problem preying upon him. Something to do with Cappadocia.

  Two days later they moved out, escorted by a band of local militia commanded by a young Tarsian Greek to whom Marius had taken a strong fancy. So had Julia. Which was just as well, as things turned out. On this journey no one walked, for the way lay through the mountain pass called the Cilician Gates, and it was steep and hard. Perched sidesaddle on a donkey, Julia found the beauty of the climb worth its discomfort, for they plodded over thin tracks amid vast mountains, and the higher they climbed, the heavier the snow lying on them became. It was almost impossible to believe that only three days before, she had been panting from the coastal heat; now she dug into her boxes for warm wraps. The weather remained calm and sunny, but when the pine forests enveloped them they were chilled to the bone, and looked forward to those parts of the journey when pine forests gave way to sheer cliffs, and turbulent streams fed into a roaring river which dashed itself in great foaming waves against rocks and precipices.

  Four days out of Tarsus, the climb was more or less over. In a narrow valley Marius found an encampment of local people who had accompanied their flocks of sheep up from the plains for summer grazing, and here he left Julia and Young Marius behind, together with his escort of militia. The young Tarsian Greek, whose name was Morsimus, was instructed to care for them and protect them. A generous gift of money purchased immense good will from the nomads, and Julia found herself the owner of one of their big brown leather tents.

  "Once I get used to the smell, I'll be comfortable enough," she said to Marius before he departed. "Inside the tent is warm, and I gather some of the nomads have gone somewhere or other to buy extra grain and provisions. Off you go, and don't worry about me. Or Young Marius, who is planning to become a shepherd, I gather. Morsimus will care for us beautifully. I'm only sorry that we've become a burden to you, dearest husband."

  And so Gaius Marius rode off, accompanied only by two of his own slaves and a guide furnished by Morsimus, who looked as if he would rather have been traveling with Marius than staying behind. As far as Marius could gather, these inland valley bottoms and the occasional wider uplands he rode across lay at about five and a half thousand feet—not quite high enough to cause dizziness and headache, but quite high enough to make staying in the saddle hard work. They still had a long way to go to reach Eusebeia Mazaca, which, his guide told him, was the only urban settlement of any kind within Cappadocia.

  The sun had gone in the moment he crested the watershed between those rivers which flowed down to Pedian Cilicia and those rivers which contributed to the enormous length and volume of the Halys, and he found himself riding through sleet-showers, fog, and occasional rain. Cold, saddlesore, aching with fatigue, he endured the long hours of jogging along with his legs dangling uselessly, and could only be thankful that the skin of his inner thighs was tough enough not to break down under the constant chafing.

  On the third day the sun came out again. The ever-widening plains looked a perfect place for sheep and cattle, as they were grassy, relatively free of forests; Cappadocia, his guide told him, did not have the right kind of soil or climate for extensive woodlands, but it grew excellent wheat when the soil was tilled.

  "Why isn't it tilled, then?" asked Marius.

  The guide shrugged. "Not enough people. They grow what they need, plus a little to sell along the Halys, where some barges come to buy. But they cannot sell produce in Cilicia, the road is too difficult. And why should they bother? They eat well. They are content."

  That was almost the only conversation between Marius and his guide while they rode; even when they sought shelter at night within the brown leather tents of nomad shepherds, or within a mud-brick house belonging to some tiny village, they talked little. The mountains marched, now closer, now further away, but never seemed to grow smaller, or less green, or less snowy.

  And then, when the guide announced that Mazaca was only four hundred stades away (and Marius had translated this into fifty Roman miles), they entered a region so bizarre that Marius wished Julia could see it. The rolling plains persisted, but were broken up by twisting ravines filled with rounded, tapering towers which looked as if they had been carefully shaped out of multicolored clays, a vast toyland built by some demented giant child; in some areas the towers were all topped by huge flat rocks Marius fancied swayed, so precariously were they perched on the skinny necks of these round towers. And—wonder of wonders!—his eyes began to distinguish windows and doors in some of these unnatural natural structures.

  "That's why you don't see any more villages," said the guide. "It's cold up here, and the season is short. So the people of this area cut themselves dwellings inside the rock towers. In the summer they are cool. In the winter they are warm. Why should they build houses, when the Great Goddess Ma has already done so?"

  "How long have they been living inside the rocks?" asked Marius, fascinated.

  But the guide didn't know. "Since men were," he said vaguely. "At least that long. In Cilicia we say that the very first men came from Cappadocia, and lived then in the same way."

  They were still riding round these ravines of clay towers when Marius began to notice the mountain; it stood almost alone, the mightiest mountain he had ever seen, higher than Mount Olympus in Greece, higher even than the massifs hedging Italian Gaul around. Its main bulk was cone-shaped, but there were smaller cones on its flanks, and it was solidly white with snow, a brilliant presence against a cloudless sky. He knew which mountain it had to be, of course; Mount Argaeus, described by the Greeks, seen only by a handful of men out of the west. And at its foot, he knew, lay Eusebeia Mazaca, the only city in Cappadocia. The seat of the King.

  Unfortunately coming from Cilicia meant that Marius approached the mountain from the wrong direction; Mazaca lay on its north side, closest to the Halys, the great red river of central Anatolia, as the Halys represented Mazaca's best contact with the world.

  Thus it was just after noon when Marius saw the shapes of many buildings clustered together beneath Mount Argaeus, and was in the midst of a sigh of relief when he suddenly realized he was entering a battlefield. The most extraordinary sensation! To ride where men had fought and perished in their thousands not many days before, yet to have neither knowledge of the battle, nor a vested interest in it. For the first time in his life, he, Gaius Marius, the conqueror of Numidia and the Germans, was on a battlefield in the role of a tourist.

  He itched, he prickled, he burned; but on he rode toward the small city, looking about him no more than he had to. No effort of any kind had been made to tidy things up; bloated corpses denuded of armor and clothing lay decomposing everywhere, only spared flies in plague proportions by the inhospitably ic
y air, which also cut the stench of necrotic flesh to a bearable level. His guide was weeping, his two slaves were being sick, but Gaius Marius rode on as if he saw nothing untoward, his eyes busy searching for something far more ominous; the camp of a living, victorious army. And it was there, two miles away to the northeast, a huge collection of brown leather tents beneath a thin blue pall of smoke from many fires.

  Mithridates. It could be no one else. And Gaius Marius did not make the mistake of thinking that the army of dead men belonged to Mithridates. No, his was the living, victorious army; the field Marius rode across was strewn with Cappadocians. Poor rock-dwellers, nomad shepherds—and probably, he told himself, his practical streak reviving, the bodies of many Syrian and Greek mercenaries as well. Where was the little King? No need to ask. He hadn't come to Tarsus and he hadn't answered any of the couriered letters because he was dead. So too, no doubt, were the couriers.

  Perhaps another man would have turned his horse around and ridden away hoping his approach hadn't been detected; but not Gaius Marius. He had run King Mithridates Eupator to earth at last, though not on his own earth. And he actually kicked his tired mount in its trembling sides, urging it on to the meeting.

  When he realized that no one was watching—that no one had remarked his progress—that no one noticed him even when he rode through the main gate into the town, Gaius Marius was amazed. How secure the King of Pontus must feel! Pulling his sweating beast to a halt, he scanned the rising tiers of streets in search of an acropolis or citadel of some kind, and saw what he presumed to be the palace lying on the mountain flank at the rear of the city. It was evidently built of some soft or lightweight stone not fit to take the brunt of the local winter winds, for it had been plastered, and painted then in a rich deep blue, with red columns blazing, and Ionic capitals of a deeper red picked out in a glittering gold.