Fortune's Favorites Page 24

  "Put the head on the rostra," said Sulla, straightened himself, and walked back into the chamber.

  Like automatons the senators followed.

  "Very well, where was I?" asked Sulla of his secretary, who leaned forward and muttered low-voiced. "Oh, yes, so I was! I thank you! I had finished with the consuls, and I was about to commence on the praetors. Clerk, your list!" And out went Sulla's hand. "Thank you! To proceed.. .. Mamercus Aemilius Lepidus Livianus. Marcus Aemilius Lepidus. Gaius Claudius Nero. Gnaeus Cornelius Dolabella the younger. Lucius Fufidius. Quintus Lutatius Catulus. Marcus Minucius Thermus. Sextus Nonius Sufenas. Gaius Papirius Carbo. I appoint the younger Dolabella praetor urbanus, and Mamercus praetor peregrinus."

  A truly extraordinary list! Clearly neither Lepidus nor Catulus, who might at a proper election have expected to come in at the top of the poll, was to be preferred to two men who had actively fought for Sulla. Yet there they were, praetors when loyal Sullans of senatorial status and the right age had been passed over! Fufidius was a relative nobody. And Nonius Sufenas was Sulla's sister's younger boy. Nero was a minor Claudius of no moment. Thermus was a good soldier, but so poor a speaker he was a Forum joke. And just to annoy all camps, the last place on the list of praetors had gone to a member of Carbo's family who had sided with Sulla but failed to distinguish himself!

  "Well, you're in," whispered Hortensius to Catulus. "All I can hope for is that I'm on next year's list-or the year after that. Ye gods, what a farce! How can we bear him?"

  "The praetors don't matter," said Catulus in a murmur. "They'll all flog themselves to shine-Sulla isn't fool enough to give the wrong job to the wrong man. It's Decula interests me. A natural bureaucrat! That's why Sulla picked him-had to, given that Dolabella had blackmailed him into a consulship! Our Dictator's policies will be meticulously executed, and Decula will love every moment of the execution."

  The meeting droned on. One after another the names of the magistrates were read out, and no voice was raised in protest. Done, Sulla handed his paper back to its custodian and spread his hands upon his knees.

  “I have said everything I want to say at this time, except that I have taken due note of Rome's paucity of priests and augurs, and will be legislating very soon to rectify matters. But hear this now!'' he suddenly roared out, making everyone jump. "There will be no more elected Religious! It is the height of impiety to cast ballots to determine who will serve the gods! It turns something solemn and formal into a political circus and enables the appointment of men who have no tradition or appreciation of priestly duties. If her gods are not served properly, Rome cannot prosper." Sulla rose to his feet.

  A voice was raised. Looking mildly quizzical, Sulla sank back into his ivory chair.

  "You wish to speak, Piglet dear?" he asked, using the old nickname Metellus Pius had inherited as his father's son.

  Metellus Pius reddened, but got to his feet looking very determined. Ever since his arrival in Rome on the fifth day of November, his stammer-almost nonexistent these days-had steadily and cruelly worsened. He knew why. Sulla. Whom he loved but feared. However, he was still his father's son, and Metellus Numidicus Piggle-wiggle had twice braved terrible beatings in the Forum rather than abrogate a principle, and once gone into exile to uphold a principle. Therefore it behooved him to tread in his father's footsteps and maintain the honor of his family. And his own dignitas.

  "Luh-Luh-Lucius Cornelius, wuh-wuh-will you answer wuh-wuh-one question?"

  "You're stammering!" cried Sulla, almost singing.

  "Truh-truh-true. Suh-suh-suh-sorry. I will try," he said through gritted teeth. "Are you aware, Luh-Luh-Lucius Cornelius, that men are being killed and their property confiscated thruh-thruh-throughout Italy as well as in Rome?"

  The whole House listened with bated breath to hear Sulla's answer: did he know, was he responsible?

  "Yes, I am aware of it," said Sulla.

  A collective sigh, a general flinching and huddling down on stools; the House now knew the worst.

  Metellus Pius went on doggedly. “I uh-uh-uh-understand that it is necessary to punish the guilty, but no man has been accorded a truh-truh-trial. Could you cluh-cluh-clarify the situation for me? Could you, for instance, tuh-tuh-tuh-tell me whereabouts you intend to draw the line? Are any men going to be accorded a trial? And who says these men have committed treason if they are nuh-nuh-not tried in a proper court?''

  "It is by my dictate that they die, Piglet dear," said the Dictator firmly. "I will not waste the State's money and time on trials for men who are patently guilty."

  The Piglet labored on. "Then cuh-cuh-can you give me some idea of whom you intend to spare?"

  "I am afraid I cannot," said the Dictator.

  "Then if yuh-yuh-yuh-you do not know who will be spared, can you tell me whom you intend to punish?"

  "Yes, dear Piglet, I can do that for you."

  "In which case, Luh-Luh-Lucius Cornelius, would you please share that knowledge with us?" Metellus Pius ended, sagging in sheer relief.

  "Not today," said Sulla. "We will reconvene tomorrow."

  Everyone came back at dawn on the morrow, but few looked as if they had enjoyed any sleep.

  Sulla was waiting for them inside the chamber, seated on his ivory curule chair. One scribe sat with his stylus and wax tablets, the other held a scroll of paper. The moment the House was confirmed in legal sitting by the sacrifice and auguries, out went Sulla's hand for the scroll. He looked directly at poor Metellus Pius, haggard from worry.

  "Here," Sulla said, "is a list of men who have either died already as traitors, or who will die shortly as traitors. Their property now belongs to the State, and will be sold at auction. And any man or woman who sets eyes upon a man whose name is on this list will be indemnified against retaliation if he or she appoints himself or herself an executioner." The scroll was handed to Sulla's chief lictor. "Pin this up on the wall of the rostra," said Sulla. "Then all men will know what my dear Piglet alone had the courage to ask to know."

  "So if I see one of the men on your list, I can kill him?" asked Catilina eagerly; though not yet a senator, he had been bidden by Sulla to attend meetings of the Senate.

  "You can indeed, my little plate-licker! And earn two talents of silver for doing so, as a matter of fact," said Sulla. "I will be legislating my program of proscriptions, of course-I will do nothing that has not the force of law! The reward will be incorporated into the legislation, and proper books will be kept of all such transactions so that Posterity will know who in our present day and age profited."

  It came out demurely, but men like Metellus Pius had no trouble in discerning Sulla's malice; men like Lucius Sergius Catilina (if in truth they discerned Sulla's malice) obviously did not care.

  The first list of proscribed was in the number of forty senators and sixty-five knights. The names of Gaius Norbanus and Scipio Asiagenus headed it, with Carbo and Young Marius next. Carrinas, Censorinus and Brutus Damasippus were named, whereas Old Brutus was not. Most of the senators were already dead. The lists, however, were basically intended to inform Rome whose estates were confiscate; they did not say who was already dead, who still alive. The second list went up on the rostra the very next day, to the number of two hundred knights. And a third list went up the day after that, publishing a further group of two hundred and fifteen knights. Sulla apparently had finished with the Senate; his real target was the Ordo Equester.

  His leges Corneliae covering proscription regulations and activities were exhaustive. The bulk of them, however, appeared over a period of a mere two days very early in December, and by the Nones of that month all was in a Deculian order, as Catulus had prophesied. Every contingency had been taken into account. All property in a proscribed man's family was now the property of the State, and could not be transferred into the name of some scion innocent of transgression; no will of a man proscribed was valid, no heir named in it could inherit; the proscribed man could legally be slain by any man or woman who saw him,
be he or she free, or freed, or still slave; the reward for murder or apprehension of a proscribed man was two talents of silver, to be paid by the Treasury from confiscated property and entered in the public account books; a slave claiming the reward was to be freed, a freedman transferred into a rural tribe; all men-civilian or military-who after Scipio Asiagenus had broken his truce had favored Carbo or Young Marius were declared public enemies; any man offering assistance or friendship to a proscribed man was declared a public enemy; the sons and grandsons of the proscribed were debarred from holding curule office and forbidden to repurchase confiscated estates, or come into possession of them by any other means; the sons and grandsons of those already dead would suffer in the same way as the sons and grandsons of those listed while still living. The last law of this batch, promulgated on the fifth day of December, declared that the whole process of proscription would cease on the first day of the next June. Six months hence.

  Thus did Sulla usher in his Dictatorship, by demonstrating that not only was he master of Rome, but also a master of terror and suspense. Not all the days of itching agony had been spent in mindless torment or drunken stupor; Sulla had thought of this and that and many things. Of how he would achieve mastery of Rome; of how he would proceed when he became master of Rome; of how he would create a mental attitude in every man and woman and child that would enable him to do what had to be done without opposition, without revolt. Not soldiers garrisoning the streets but shadows in the mind, fears which led to hope as well as to despair. His minions would be anonymous people who might be the neighbors or friends of those they sneaked up on and whisked away. Sulla intended to create a climate rather than weather. Men could cope with weather. But climates? Ah, climates could prove unendurable.

  And he had thought while he itched and tore himself to raw and bloody tatters of being an old and ugly and disappointed man given the world's most wonderful toy to play with: Rome. Its men and women, dogs and cats, slaves and freedmen, lowly and knights and nobles. All his cherished resentments, all his grudges grown cold and dark, he detailed meticulously in the midst of his pain. And took exquisite comfort from shaping his revenge.

  The Dictator had arrived.

  The Dictator had put his gleeful hands upon his new toy.

  PART II

  from DECEMBER 82 B.C.

  until MAY 81 B.C.

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  1

  Things, decided Lucius Cornelius Sulla early in December, were going very nicely. Most men still hesitated at the idea of killing someone proscribed on the lists, but a few like Catilina were already showing the way, and the amount of money and property confiscated from the proscribed was soaring. It was money and property, of course, which had directed Sulla's footsteps down this particular path; from somewhere had to come the vast sums Rome would need in order to become financially solvent again. Under more normal circumstances it would have come out of the coffers of the provinces, but given the actions of Mithridates in the east and the fact that Quintus Sertorius had managed to create enough trouble in both the Spains to curtail Spanish incomes, the provinces could not be squeezed of additional revenues for some time to come. Therefore Rome and Italy would have to yield up the money-yet the burden could not be thrust upon the ordinary people, nor upon those who had conclusively demonstrated their loyalty to Sulla's cause. Sulla had never loved the Ordo Equester-the ninety-one Centuries of the First Class who comprised the knight-businessmen, but especially the eighteen Centuries of senior knights who were entitled to the Public Horse. Among them were many who had waxed fat under the administration of Marius, of Cinna, of Carbo; and these were the men Sulla resolved would pay the bill for Rome's economic recovery. A perfect solution! thought the Dictator with gleeful satisfaction. Not only would the Treasury fill up; he would also eliminate all of his enemies.

  He had besides found the time to deal with one other pet aversion-Samnium, and this in the harshest way possible, by sending the two worst men he could think of to that hapless place. Cethegus and Verres. And four legions of good troops. "Leave nothing," he said. "I want Samnium brought so low that no one will ever want to live there again, even the oldest and most patriotic Samnite. Fell the trees, lay waste the fields, destroy the towns as well as the orchards"-he smiled dreadfully-"and lop off the head of every tall poppy."

  There! That would teach Samnium. And rid him of two men with considerable nuisance value for the next year. They would not be back in a hurry! Too much money to be made above and beyond what they would send to the Treasury.

  It was perhaps well for other parts of Italy that Sulla's family arrived in Rome at this moment to restore to him a kind of normality he had not realized he needed as well as missed. For one thing, he hadn't known that the sight of Dalmatica would fell him like a blow; his knees gave under him, he had to sit down abruptly and stare at her like a callow boy at the unexpected coming of the one unattainable woman.

  Very beautiful-but he had always known that-with her big grey eyes and her brown skin the same color as her hair- and that look of love that never seemed to fade or change, no matter how old and ugly he became. And she was there sitting on his lap with both arms wound about his scraggy neck, pushing his face against her breasts, caressing his scabby head and pressing her lips against it as if it was that glorious head of red-gold hair it used to flaunt-his wig, where was his wig? But then she was tugging his head up, and he could feel the loveliness of her mouth enfold his puckered lips until they bloomed again.... Strength flowed back into him, he rose lifting her in the same movement, and walked with her in triumph to their room, and there dealt with her in something more than triumph. Perhaps, he thought, drowning in her, I am capable of loving after all.

  "Oh, how much I have missed you!" he said.

  "And how much I love you," she said.

  "Two years ... It's been two years."

  "More like two thousand years."

  But, the first fervor of that reunion over, she became a wife, and inspected him with minute pleasure.

  "Your skin is so much better!"

  "I got the ointment from Morsimus."

  "It's ceased to itch?"

  "Yes, it's ceased to itch."

  After which, she became a mother, and would not rest until he accompanied her to the nursery, there to say hello to little Faustus and Fausta.

  "They're not much older than our separation," he said, and heaved a sigh. "They look like Metellus Numidicus."

  She muffled a giggle. "I know.... Poor little things!"

  And that set the seal upon what had been one of the happiest days of Sulla's life; she laughed with him!

  Not knowing why Mama and the funny old man were clutching each other in paroxysms of mirth, the twins stood looking up with uncertain smiles until the urge to join in could no longer be resisted. And if it could not be said that Sulla grew to love them in the midst of that burst of laughter, he did at least decide that they were quite nice little people- even if they did look like their great-uncle, Quintus Caecilius Metellus Numidicus Piggle-wiggle. Whom their father had murdered. What an irony! thought their father: is this some sort of retribution the gods have visited upon me? But to believe that is to be a Greek, and I am a Roman. Besides which, I will be dead long before this pair are old enough to visit retribution on anyone.

  The rest of the new arrivals were also well, including as they did Sulla's grown daughter, Cornelia Sulla, and her two children by her dead first husband. The little girl Pompeia was now eight years old and completely absorbed in her beauty, of which she was very aware. At six years of age the little boy Quintus Pompeius Rufus bade fair to living up to his last name, for he was red of hair, red of skin, red of eye, red of temper.

  "And," asked Sulla of his steward, Chrysogonus, whose task it had been to look after the family, "how is my guest who cannot cross the pomerium into Rome?"

  A little thinner than of yore (it could not have been an easy job to shepherd so many people of different and distinct natures, re
flected Sulla), the steward rolled his expressive dark eyes toward the ceiling and shrugged.

  “I am afraid, Lucius Cornelius, that he will not agree to remain outside the pomerium unless you visit him in person and explain exactly why. I tried! Indeed I tried! But he deems me an underling, beneath contempt-or credibility."

  That was typical of Ptolemy Alexander, thought Sulla as he trudged out of the city to the inn on the Via Appia near the first milestone where Chrysogonus had lodged the haughty and hypersensitive prince of Egypt, who, though he had been in Sulla's custody for three years, was only now beginning to be a burden.

  Claiming to be a refugee from the court of Pontus, he had turned up in Pergamum begging Sulla to grant him asylum; Sulla had been fascinated. For he was none other than Ptolemy Alexander the Younger, only legitimate son of the Pharaoh who had died trying to regain his throne in the same year as Mithridates had captured the son, living on Cos with his two bastard first cousins. All three princes of Egypt had been sent to Pontus, and Egypt had fallen firmly into the grasp of the dead Pharaoh's elder brother, Ptolemy Soter nicknamed Lathyrus (it meant Chickpea), who resumed the title of Pharaoh.

  From the moment he set eyes on Ptolemy Alexander the Younger, Sulla had understood why Egypt had preferred to be ruled by old Lathyrus the Chickpea. Ptolemy Alexander the Younger was womanish to the extreme of dressing like a reincarnation of Isis in floating draperies knotted and twisted in the fashion of the Hellenized goddess of Egypt, with a golden crown upon his wig of golden curls, and an elaborate painting of his face. He minced, he ogled, he simpered, he lisped, he fluttered; and yet, thought Sulla shrewdly, beneath all that effeminate facade lay something steely.