The October Horse: A Novel of Caesar and Cleopatra Read online

  “Your degree of self-knowledge is merciless,” Sextus said. He leaned forward, hazel eyes sparkling eagerly. “But tell me, dear Cato, do I have the gift of command? My heart says that I do, but after listening to all those fools squabble about talents the biggest moron can see they do not own, am I wrong?”

  “No, Sextus, you’re not wrong. Go with your heart.”

  * * *

  Within the space of two nundinae Utica fell into a new, more martial routine and seemed not to resent it, but on that second nundinae Lucius Gratidius appeared, looking worried.

  “There’s something going on, Marcus Cato,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Morale isn’t nearly as high as it should be—my young men are gloomy, keep telling me that all this effort will go for naught. Though I can discover no truth in it, they insist that Utica is secretly Caesarean in sympathies, and that these Caesareans are going to destroy everything.” He looked grimmer. “Today I found out that our Numidian friend, King Juba, is so convinced of this nonsense that he’s going to attack Utica and raze it to the ground to punish it. But I think it’s Juba responsible for the rumors.”

  “Ahah!” Cato exclaimed, getting to his feet. “I agree with you entirely, Gratidius. It’s Juba plotting, not nonexistent Caesareans. He’s making trouble to force Metellus Scipio into giving him a co-command. He wants to lord it over Romans. Well, I’ll soon scotch his ambitions! The cheek of him!”

  Off went Cato in a temper and a hurry to the royal palace at Carthage where once Prince Gauda, a claimant to the Numidian throne, had moped and whined while Jugurtha warred against Gaius Marius. The premises were far grander than the governor’s palace in Utica, Cato noted as he emerged from his two-mule gig, his purple-bordered toga praetexta folded immaculately. Preceded by six lictors in crimson tunics and bearing the axes in their fasces as the signal of his imperium, Cato marched up to the portico, gave the guards a curt nod, and swept inside as if he owned the place.

  It works every single time, he thought: one look at lictors bearing the axes and the purple border on the toga behind them, and even the walls of Ilium would crumble.

  Inside was spacious and deserted. Cato instructed his six lictors to remain in the vestibule, then marched onward into the depths of a house designed to envelop its denizens in a degree of luxury that he found nauseating. The invasion of Juba’s privacy was not an issue; Juba had tampered with Rome’s mos maiorum, he was a criminal.

  The first person Cato encountered was the King, lying on a couch in a beautiful room with a splashing fountain and a vast window looking onto a courtyard, the sun streaming in delightfully. Walking across the mosaic floor in front of Juba in a demure parade were perhaps two dozen scantily clad women.

  “This,” barked Cato, “is a disgraceful sight!”

  The King seemed to have a convulsion, stiffening and jerking as he levered himself off the couch to face the invader in shaking outrage, while the women shrieked and blundered, squalling, into any corner, there to huddle and hide their faces.

  “Get out of here, you—you pervert!” Juba roared.

  “No, you get out of here, you Numidian backstabber!” roared Cato at a volume that diminished the King’s to a comparative whisper. “Get out, get out, get out! Quit Africa Province this very day, do you hear me? What do I care about your disgusting polygamy or your women, poor creatures devoid of any freedom? I am a monogamous Roman with a wife who manages her own business, can read and write, and is expected to conduct herself virtuously without the need for eunuchs and imprisonment! I spit on your women, and I spit on you!” Cato illustrated his point by spitting, not like a man getting rid of phlegm, but like a furious cat.

  “Guards! Guards!” Juba yelled.

  They piled into the room, the three Numidian princes hard on their heels. Masinissa, Saburra and young Arabion stood stunned at the sight of Cato with a dozen spears pressed against chest, back, sides. Spears Cato took absolutely no notice of, nor retreated an inch.

  “Kill me, Juba, and you’ll reap havoc! I am Marcus Porcius Cato, senator and propraetore commander of Utica! Do you think that you can intimidate me, when I have stood up to men like Caesar and Pompeius Magnus? Look well at this face, and know that it belongs to one who cannot be deflected from his course, who cannot be corrupted or suborned! How much are you paying Varus, that he stomachs the likes of you in his province? Well, Varus may do as his purse dictates, but don’t even think of producing your moneybags to bribe me! Get out of Africa Province today, Juba, or I swear by Sol Indiges, Tellus and Liber Pater that I will go to our army, mobilize it in one hour, and give every last one of you the death of a slave—crucifixion!”

  He pushed the spears aside contemptuously, turned on his heel and walked out.

  By evening, King Juba and his entourage were on their way to Numidia. When appealed to, Governor Attius Varus had shivered and said that when Cato was in that sort of mood, the only thing to do was as one had been told.

  The departure of Juba marked the end of Utica’s attack of nerves; the city settled down to worship the ground Cato walked on, though had he known that, he would have assembled the entire populace and served it a diatribe on impiety.

  For himself, he was happy. The civilian job suited him, he knew it was one he could do superbly well.

  But where is Caesar? he asked himself as he strolled down to the harbor to watch the ceaseless comings and goings. When will he appear? Still no word of his whereabouts, and the crisis in Rome grows more dangerous every day. Which means that when he does pop into existence, he will have to deal with affairs in Rome as soon as he’s evicted Pharnaces from Anatolia. His arrival is still months off; by the time he reaches Africa, we will be stale. Is that his trick? No one knows better than Caesar how divided our high command is. So it is up to me to keep all those stiff-necked fools from one another’s throats for at least the next six months. While simultaneously damping down the savagery of barbarian Labienus, and depressing the intentions of our cunning King Juba. Not to mention a governor whose main ambition may well be to act as lord high chamberlain for a Numidian foreigner.

  In the midst of these cheerless musings, he became aware that a young man was walking toward him with a hesitant smile on his face. Eyes narrowed (he was finding it hard to see at a distance since the march), he studied the familiar form until recognition burst on him like a bolt of lightning. Marcus! His only son.

  “What are you doing here instead of skulking in Rome?” he asked, ignoring the outstretched arms.

  The face, so like Cato’s own, yet lacking its set planes of grim determination, twisted and crumpled.

  “I thought, Father, that it was time I joined the Republican effort instead of skulking in Rome,” young Cato said.

  “A right act, Marcus, but I know you. What exactly provoked this tardy decision?”

  “Marcus Antonius is threatening to confiscate our property.”

  “And my wife? You left her to Antonius’s tender mercies?”

  “It was Marcia insisted I come.”

  “Your sister?”

  “Porcia is still living in Bibulus’s house.”

  “My own sister?”

  “Aunt Porcia’s convinced that Antonius is about to confiscate Ahenobarbus’s property, so she’s bought a little house on the Aventine just in case. Ahenobarbus invested her dowry splendidly, she says—it’s been accruing interest for thirty years. She sends her love. So do Marcia and Porcia.”

  How ironic, thought Cato, that the more able and intelligent of my two children should be the girl. My martial and fearless Porcia is soldiering on. What did Marcia say in that last letter I read? That Porcia is in love with Brutus. Well, I tried to match them for marriage, but Servilia wouldn’t have it. Her dear precious emasculated son, marry his cousin, Cato’s daughter? Hah! Servilia would kill him first.

  “Marcia begs that you write to her,” young Cato said.

  His father’s answer was oblique. “You’d best come home w
ith me, boy, I have room for you. Do you still clerk well?”

  “Yes, Father, I still clerk well.” So much for the hope that once his father saw him again, he might be forgiven for his flaws. His failings. Impossible. Cato had no flaws, no failings. Cato never swerved from the path of the righteous. How terrible it is to be the son of a man without weaknesses.

  III

  Putting Things Right

  in Asia Minor

  From JUNE until SEPTEMBER of 47 B.C.

  1

  Matters had not gone well for Judaea since the death of old Queen Alexandra in the same year Cleopatra had been born; the widow of the formidable Alexander Jannaeus, she managed to rule sitting in a disintegrating Syria. Among her own Jewish people, however, her efforts were not universally admired or appreciated, for her sympathies were entirely Pharisaic; whatever she did was unacceptable to the Sadducees, the schismatic Samaritans, the heretical up-country Galilaeans, and the non-Jewish population of the Decapolis. Judaea was in a state of religious flux.

  Queen Alexandra had two sons, Hyrcanus and Aristobulus. After her husband’s death she chose the elder, Hyrcanus, to succeed her, probably because he wouldn’t give her any arguments. She made him high priest at once, but died before she could cement his power. No sooner was she buried than his younger brother seized both the high priesthood and the throne.

  But the most naturally able man at the Jewish court was an Idu-maean, Antipater; a great friend of Hyrcanus’s, he had a long-standing feud with Aristobulus, so when Aristobulus usurped power, he rescued Hyrcanus and the pair of them fled. They took refuge with King Aretas in the Arab country of Nabataea, enormously rich because of its trade with the Malabar coast of India and the island of Taprobane. Antipater was married to King Aretas’s niece, Cypros; it had been a love match that cost Antipater any chance of assuming the Jewish throne himself, for it meant that his four sons and one daughter were not Jewish.

  The war between Hyrcanus/Antipater and Aristobulus raged on and on, complicated by the sudden appearance of Rome as a power in Syria; Pompey the Great arrived to make Syria a Roman province in the aftermath of the defeat of Mithridates the Great and his Armenian ally, Tigranes. The Jews rose and put Pompey’s temper out dreadfully; he had to march on Jerusalem and take it instead of wintering comfortably in Damascus. Hyrcanus was appointed high priest, but Judaea itself was made a part of the new Roman Syrian province, stripped of all autonomy.

  Aristobulus and his sons continued to make trouble, assisted by a series of ineffectual Roman governors of Syria. Finally there arrived Aulus Gabinius, a friend and supporter of Caesar’s and no mean military man himself. He confirmed Hyrcanus as high priest and dowered him with five regions as an income—Jerusalem, Galilaean Sepphora, Gazara, Amathus and Jericho. An outraged Aristobulus contested him, Gabinius fought a short, sharp and effective war, and Aristobulus and one son found themselves on a ship for Rome a second time. Gabinius set out for Egypt to put Ptolemy Auletes back on his throne, fervently helped by Hyrcanus and his aide Antipater. Thanks to them, Gabinius had no difficulty forcing the Egyptian frontier north of Pelusium, whose Jewish population did not oppose him.

  Marcus Licinius Crassus, boon companion of Caesar’s and the next governor of Syria, inherited a peaceful province, even around Judaea. Alas for the Jews, Crassus was no respecter of local religions, customs and entitlements; he marched into the Great Temple and removed everything of value it contained, including two thousand talents of gold stored in the Holy of Holies. High priest Hyrcanus cursed him in the name of the Jewish god, and Crassus perished shortly thereafter at Carrhae. But the loot from the Great Temple was never returned.

  Then came the unofficial governorship of a mere quaestor, Gaius Cassius Longinus, the only survivor of any importance from Carrhae. Despite his ineligibility, Cassius calmly assumed the reins of government in Syria, and started to tour the province to shore it up against certain Parthian invasion. In Tyre he met Antipater, who tried to explain the complications of religion and race in southern Syria, and why the Jews perpetually fought on two fronts—between religious factions, and against any foreign power which sought to impose discipline. When Cassius managed to round up two legions, he blooded them on an army of Galilaeans intent on destroying Hyrcanus. Shortly after that, the Parthians did invade, and the thirty-year-old quaestor Gaius Cassius was the only general between the Parthian army and its conquest of Syria. Cassius acquitted himself brilliantly, beat the Parthian hordes decisively, and drove Prince Pacorus of the Parthians out.

  So when Caesar’s boni enemy Marcus Calpurnius Bibulus finally deigned to arrive to govern Syria not long before the civil war broke out, Bibulus found a province at peace and all its books in order. How dare a mere quaestor do what Cassius had done? How dare a mere quaestor govern a province? In boni lights, a mere quaestor should have sat and twiddled his thumbs until the next governor arrived, no matter what happened to the province, including Jewish insurrections and Parthian invasions. Such was the mind-set of the boni. In consequence, Bibulus’s manner was glacially cold toward Cassius, to whom he tendered no word of thanks. Rather, he ordered Cassius to quit Syria forthwith, but only after serving him a homily about taking things upon himself that were not a part of a quaestor’s duties according to the mos maiorum.

  * * *

  Why then did Cassius choose the boni side in the civil war? Certainly not from love of his brother-in-law Brutus, though he adored Brutus’s mother, Servilia. But she was neutral in the conflict, had close relatives on both sides. One reason lay in Cassius’s instinctive antipathy toward Caesar: they were not unalike, in that both had taken military command upon themselves at an early age without the governor’s approval—Caesar at Tralles in Asia Province, Cassius in Syria—and that both were physically brave, vigorous, no-nonsense men. To Cassius, Caesar had accreted too much glory to himself with that stunning nine-year war in Long-haired Gaul—how could Cassius, when his time came, find anything half as glamorous to do? Though that was nothing compared to the fact that Caesar had marched on Rome just as Cassius was entering on his tribunate of the plebs, scattered routine government to the winds, and ruined his chances of making a big splash in that most controversial and immortal of magistracies. Another reason compounded Cassius’s detestation: Caesar was the natural father of Cassius’s wife, Servilia’s third daughter, Tertulla. Legally she was Silanus’s daughter and came with a huge dowry from Silanus’s fortune, but half of Rome—including Brutus—knew whose child Tertulla really was. Cicero had the temerity to make jokes about it!

  After plundering a few temples to help fund the Republican war against Caesar, Cassius found himself sent to Syria to raise a fleet for Pompey. Sailing the high seas suited him a great deal more than being an insignificant member of Pompey’s command chain; he found that his military talents extended to war on the sea, and ignominiously defeated a Caesarean fleet outside Sicilian Messana. Then off Vibo, in the Tuscan Sea, he intercepted the Caesarean admiral Sulpicius Rufus—and would have beaten him too, had it not been for Fortuna! A legion of Caesar’s veterans were sitting on the shore watching the battle, and got fed up with Sulpicius’s ineptitude. So they commandeered the local fishing fleet, rowed out to charge into the mass of dueling warships, and thrashed Cassius so soundly that he had to flee for his life aboard a strange ship—his own went down.

  Licking his spiritual wounds, Cassius decided to retire east to revictual and raise a few more ships to replace those Caesar’s veterans had demolished. But as he crossed the sea-lanes from Numidia his luck returned; he encountered a dozen merchantmen loaded with lions and leopards intended for sale in Rome. What a windfall! Worth a huge fortune! With the merchantmen in his custody, he called in to Greek Megara to take on water and food. Megara was a fanatically loyal Republican town, and promised to care for Cassius’s lions and leopards until he could find somewhere more remote to conceal them; after Pompey was victorious, he would sell them to Pompey for his victory games. The caged felines ashore, Cass
ius sailed with a dozen empty merchantmen to donate to Gnaeus Pompey as transports.

  At his next stop he learned of the defeat at Pharsalus. Stunned, he fled to Apollonia in Cyrenaica, where he found many refugees from Pharsalus—Cato, Labienus, Afranius, Petreius among them. None, however, was disposed to take any notice of a blooming young tribune of the plebs thrown out of office by civil war. So Cassius sailed off in high dudgeon, refusing to donate his ships to the Republican cause in Africa Province. They can shove Africa Province up their arses! I want no part of a campaign that involves Cato or Labienus! Or that toplofty turd Metellus Scipio!

  Back he went to Megara to pick up his lions and leopards, only to find them gone. Quintus Fufius Calenus had come along to take the town for Caesar; the Megarans opened the cages and let the lions and leopards loose to eat Calenus’s men. Instead, the lions and leopards ate the Megarans! Fufius Calenus rounded the beasts up, put them back into their cages and shipped them off to Rome for Caesar’s victory games! Cassius was devastated.

  He did learn one interesting fact in Megara, however: that Brutus had surrendered to Caesar after Pharsalus, had been freely pardoned, and was at present sitting in the governor’s palace at Tarsus while Caesar himself had gone off in search of Pompey, and Calvinus and Sestius had marched to Armenia Parva to face Pharnaces.

  Thus, with no better place to go, Gaius Cassius sailed for Tarsus. He would surrender his fleet to Brutus, his brother-in-law and coeval—they were the same age within four months. If he couldn’t stay in Tarsus, he could at least find out from Brutus what was real and what confabulation. Then perhaps he could more coolly decide what to do with the rest of his ruined life.