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

  Two days later the army marched for Pergamum, which greeted it with cheers and cascades of flowers. The threat of Pharnaces was no more, Asia Province could sleep peacefully. Though forty-two years had gone by, no one in Asia Province could forget the hundred thousand people Mithridates the Great had massacred when he invaded.

  “I’ll be sending Asia Province a very good governor as soon as I return to Rome,” Caesar told Archelaus, the son of Mithridates of Pergamum, in a private interview. “He’ll come knowing what has to be done to set the province on its feet. The days of the tax farming publicani are over for good. Each district will collect its own taxes and pay them directly to Rome after the five-year moratorium on taxes is over. However, none of that is why I asked to see you.”

  Caesar leaned forward, clasped his hands together on his desk. “I’ll be writing to your father in Alexandria, yet Pergamum should know its fate now. I plan to shift the governor’s seat to Ephesus—Pergamum is too far north, too out of things. So all of Pergamum will become the Kingdom of Pergamum, and be ruled as a client-state by your father. It won’t be as large a realm as the one the last Attalus bequeathed to Rome in his will, but it will be larger than it currently is. I’m adding western Galatia, to give Pergamum sufficient land for growing and grazing. My feeling is that the provinces of Rome are becoming too bureaucratically necessary to Rome, perpetuating additional expenses from layers of middlemen and superfluous paperwork. Whenever I find a good, capable family of local citizens fit to rule a client-state, I shall create that client-state. You will pay taxes and tributes to Rome, but Rome won’t have the bother of collection.”

  He cleared his throat. “There is a price. Namely, to hold Pergamum for Rome at all costs and against all foes. To remain not only Caesar’s personal clients, but also the personal clients of Caesar’s heir. To rule wisely and increase local prosperity for all your citizens, not merely the upper echelons.”

  “I’ve always known that my father is a wise man, Caesar,” said the young man, amazed at this incredible gift, “but the wisest thing he ever did was to aid you. We are—oh, grateful is an inadequate word!”

  “I’m not after gratitude,” Caesar said crisply. “I’m after a more precious thing—loyalty.”

  From there it was north to Bithynia, the state along the southern shores of the Propontis, a vast lake forming a precursor to the mighty Euxine Sea, which filled it up through the straits of the Thracian Bosporus, upon which sat the ancient Greek city of Byzantium. The Propontis in its turn flowed south into the Aegean Sea through the straits of the Hellespont, thus linking the vast rivers of the Sarmatian and Skythian steppes with Our Sea.

  Nicomedia lay upon a long, calm inlet of the Propontis that had the trick of forming a mirror for the world above it, from the cloud-puffed sky in its depths to the perfectly reversed images of trees, hills, people, animals—a place wherein the world seemed to go on as much below as above, like a miniature globe seen from its inside. To Caesar, it was one of the places he loved the most, for it was filled with heart-warming memories of an octogenarian king who wore a curled wig and elaborate face paint, kept an army of effeminate slaves to fulfill his every wish. No, they had never been lovers, the third King Nicomedes and Caesar! They had been something far better—dear friends. And big, booming old Queen Oradaltis, whose dog, Sulla, had bitten her on her behind the day a twenty-year-old Caesar had arrived. Their only child, Nysa, had been kidnaped by Mithridates the Great and held for years. Lucullus had freed her, aged fifty, and sent her back to her mother; the old king was dead then. When Rome made Bithynia a province, Caesar had diddled the governor, Juncus, by transferring Oradaltis’s funds to a bank in Byzantium and moving her to a nice mansion in a fishing village on the Euxine coast. There Oradaltis and Nysa had lived out their days very happily, fishing with hand-lines from the pier and taking walks with their new dog, named Lucullus.

  All dead now, of course. The palace he remembered so well had long been the governor’s residence; its most priceless items had been removed by the first governor, Juncus, but the gilt and the purple marble were still in evidence. Juncus, Caesar reflected, had been the start of his determination to end gubernatorial peculations and looting. Well, Verres first, but he had not been a governor. Verres was in a class all his own, as Cicero proved.

  Men went out to govern provinces and make their fortunes at the expense of the provincials—sold the citizenship, sold tax exemptions, confiscated fortunes, regulated the grain prices, took every work of art they could put their hands on, took bribes from the publicani and loaned their lictors, even their troops, to Roman moneylenders collecting debts.

  Juncus had done very well out of Bithynia, but some deity had taken offense at him or at his actions; he and his ill-gotten gains went to the bottom of Our Sea on the way home. Which does not put the statues and paintings back where they belong.

  Oh, Caesar, you are old! That was another time, and the many memories playing around these walls have the shape and content of lemures, creatures of the underworld let loose two nights a year. Too much has happened far too fast. What Sulla did lives on, and Caesar is its latest victim. No man can be happy who has marched on his own country. Caesar’s kindnesses are conscious, done for Caesar’s benefit, and Caesar no longer sees the world as a place wherein magical things can occur. Because they can’t. Men and women ruin it with their impulses, desires, thoughtlessness, lack of intelligence, cupidity. A Cato and a Bibulus can bring down good government. And a Caesar can get very tired of trying to put good government back together again. The Caesar who dueled wits with that naughty old king was a different man from this Caesar, who has become cold, cynical, utterly weary. This man has no passions. This man just wants to get through each day with his image unimpaired. This man grows dangerously close to being tired of the act of living. How can one man put Rome back together again? Especially a man who has turned fifty-three?

  However, the days had to be gotten through, like it or not. One of Caesar’s most promising protégés, Gaius Vibius Pansa, was appointed the governor of Bithynia; whereas, Caesar decided, for the moment Pontus should have its own governor rather than be ruled in tandem with Bithynia. He appointed another promising man, Marcus Coelius Vinicianus, governor of Pontus; it would be his task to repair the ravages of Pharnaces.

  When the dispositions were finally completed, he shot the bolt on his study door and wrote letters: to Cleopatra and Mithridates of Pergamum in Alexandria, Publius Servilius Vatia Isauricus in Rome, Marcus Antonius his Master of the Horse, and, last but not least, to the oldest of his friends, Gaius Matius. They were the same age. Matius’s father had rented the other ground-floor apartment of Aurelia’s insula in the Subura, so the two boys had played together in the beautiful garden Matius’s father had created at the bottom of the insula’s light well. The son had inherited Matius Senior’s genius for ornamental horticulture, and designed, in his nebulous spare time, Caesar’s pleasure gardens across the Tiber. Matius had invented the art of topiary, and seized eagerly upon any chance to trim box and privet into birds, animals, wonderful shapes.

  Caesar embarked upon this letter with his defenses down, for this recipient above all others had no axes to grind.

  VENI, VIDI, VICI.

  I came, I saw, I conquered. I am thinking of adopting that as my motto, it seems to happen so regularly, and the phrase itself is so succinct. At least this last episode of coming, seeing, and conquering has been against a foreigner.

  Things in the East have been put right. What a mess! Thanks to rapacious governors and invading kings, Cilicia, Asia Province, Bithynia and Pontus are on their knees and groaning. I feel less sympathy for Syria. I’ve followed in the footsteps of that other dictator, Sulla—simply revived all his relief measures, which were remarkably perceptive. Since you’re not in the tax farming business, my reforms in Asia Minor won’t hurt you, but the fur will fly among the publicani and other Asian speculators when I reach Rome—I have clipped their wings back to stumps. D
o I care? No, I do not. The trouble with Sulla was that he didn’t know his political A B C. He resigned from his dictatorship without first making sure that his new constitution couldn’t be overthrown. Believe me, Caesar won’t make that mistake.

  The last thing I want is a Senate stuffed with my own creatures, but I fear that is what must happen. You might think it sensible to have a compliant Senate, but it isn’t, Matius, it isn’t. While ever there is healthy political competition, the more feral among my adherents can be kept in order. But once governmental institutions are composed entirely of my own adherents, what is to stop a younger, more ambitious man than I from stepping over my carcass into the dictator’s chair? Government must have opposition! What government does not need is the boni, who oppose for the sake of opposing, who don’t understand what it is that they oppose. Therefore boni opposition was irrational, rather than soundly based in genuine, thoughtful analysis. Note that I switched to the past tense. The boni are no more, Africa Province will see to that. What I had hoped to see was the right kind of opposition: now I am afraid that all a civil war actually achieves is the murder of opposition. I am in a cleft stick.

  From Tarsus onward I have had the dubious pleasure of the company of Marcus Junius Brutus and Gaius Cassius. Both now pardoned and working indefatigably for—themselves. No, not for Rome, and certainly not for Caesar. A potential healthy senatorial opposition, then? No, I fear not. Neither man cares more for his country than for his own personal agenda. Though being with that pair has had its entertaining side, and I have learned a lot about moneylending.

  I have just concluded the rearrangement of Anatolia’s client-kingdoms, chiefly Galatia and Cappadocia. Deiotarus needed a lesson, so I gave him one. Originally I had meant to pare Galatia back to a small area around Ancyra, but oh, oh, oh! Brutus suddenly roared like a lion and went to war to protect Deiotarus, who owes him millions upon millions. How dare I strip such a splendid fellow of three-quarters of his territories and turn a steady income into a permanent bad debt? Brutus just wouldn’t have it. The eloquence, the rhetorical devices! Truly, Matius, had Cicero heard Brutus in full flight, he would have been tearing his hair out and gnashing his teeth in envy. With Cassius contributing his mite too, I add. They are more than mere brothers-in-law and old school chums.

  In the end I let Deiotarus keep a great deal more than I had intended, but he lost western Galatia to the new client-kingdom of Pergamum, and Armenia Parva to Cappadocia. Brutus may not want much, but what he does want, he wants desperately. Namely, the preservation of his fortune.

  Brutus’s motives are as clear as Anatolian spring water, but Cassius is a far murkier individual. Arrogant, conceited and hugely ambitious. I shall never forgive him for that scurrilous report he sent back to Rome after Crassus died at Carrhae, extolling his own virtues and turning poor Crassus into nothing more than a money-grubber. I admit his weakness for money, but he was genuinely a great man.

  What irked Cassius about my client-kingdom arrangements was that I did them by my dictate—without any debates in the House, without any laws on the tablets, without considering anybody’s wishes save my own. In that respect it is terrific to be the Dictator—saves huge amounts of time in dealing with matters I know I’ve fixed in exactly the fairest and most proper way. But it doesn’t please Cassius. Or put it this way: it would only please Cassius if he were the Dictator.

  I am the father of a son. The Queen of Egypt presented me with a boy last June. Naturally he isn’t a Roman, but his destiny is to rule Egypt, so I’m not complaining. As for the mother of my boy—meet her and decide for yourself. She insists upon coming to Rome after the Republicans—what a misnomer!—have gone down to final defeat. Her agent, one Ammonius, is going to come to you and ask that she be granted a tract of land next door to my Janiculan gardens, thereon to build a palace for her stay in Rome. When you deal with the conveyancing, put it in my name, though she can pay for it.

  I have no intention of divorcing Calpurnia to marry her. That would be too churlish. Piso’s daughter has been an exemplary wife. I may not have been in Rome for more than a few days since shortly after I married her, but I have my spies. Calpurnia is all that Caesar’s wife must be—above suspicion. A nice girl.

  I know I sound hard, a trifle facetious, somewhat cagey. But I have changed out of all recognition, Matius. It is not meet that a man should rise so far above his equals that he has no equal, and I fear that that is what has happened to me. The very men who might have given me a run for my money are all dead. Publius Clodius. Gaius Curio. Marcus Crassus. Pompeius Magnus. I feel like the lighthouse on Pharos—nothing stands half so tall. Which is not the way I would have it, did I have a choice.

  When I crossed the Rubicon into Italy and marched on Rome, something broke in me. It isn’t fair that they should have pushed me into that—did they genuinely think I would not march? I am Caesar, my dignitas is dearer to me than my very life. Caesar, to be convicted of a nonexistent treason and sent into an irreversible exile? Unthinkable. If I had it all to do again, I would do it all again. Yet something in me broke. I can never be what I wanted to be—consul for the second time in my year, Pontifex Maximus, elder statesman whose opinion is asked for first in the House after the consuls-elect and the consuls, Military Man without peer.

  Now I am a god in Ephesus and a god in Egypt, I am Dictator of Rome and ruler of the world. But they are not my choice. You know me well enough to understand what I am saying. Few men do. They interpret my motives in the light of what their own motives would be were they in my place.

  It came as a grievous shock to hear of Aulus Gabinius’s death in Salona. A good man exiled for a wrong cause. Old Ptolemy Auletes didn’t have ten thousand talents to pay him, I doubt Gabinius ever got more than two thousand for the job. If Lentulus Spinther had gotten off his arse in Cilicia quickly enough to beat Gabinius to that particular contract, would he have been prosecuted? Of course not! He was boni, whereas Gabinius voted for Caesar. That is what has to stop, Matius—one law for one man, another law for another man.

  On one subject my inimicus Gaius Cassius remains silent. When I told him that his brother Quintus had raped Further Spain, loaded his plunder on a ship and sailed for Rome before Gaius Trebonius arrived to govern, Cassius said not one word. Nor when I told him that the ship, very overloaded, capsized and sank in the Iberus estuary, and Quintus Cassius was drowned. I am not sure whether Gaius Cassius’s silence is due to the fact that Quintus was my man, or that Quintus made the Cassii look bad.

  I shall be in Rome around the end of September.

  Caesar had written one letter from Zela straight after the battle, and sent it to Asander in Cimmeria. It repeated what the ambassador had been told: that Cimmeria owed Pontus four thousand gold talents, and the Treasury of Rome two thousand more. It also informed Asander that his father had fled to Sinope, apparently en route for home.

  Just before Caesar left Nicomedia, he received an answer from Asander. It thanked him for his consideration, and was pleased to be able to tell Caesar Dictator that Pharnaces, having arrived in Cimmeria, had been put to death. Asander was now King of Cimmeria, and most desirous of being enrolled in Caesar’s clientele. As evidence of good faith, the missive was accompanied by two thousand talents of gold; four thousand more had been sent to the new governor of Pontus, Vinicianus.

  So when Caesar sailed down through the Hellespont, his ship held seven thousand talents of gold and a great number of crowns.

  His first stop was the island of Samos, where he sought out one of the more moderate among his opponents, the great patrician consular Servius Sulpicius Rufus, who greeted him with pleasure and confessed that he was as unhappy as he was penitent.

  “We wronged you, Caesar, and I am sorry for that. Sincerely, I never dreamed that matters would go so far,” Sulpicius said.

  “It wasn’t your fault that they did. What I hope is that you’ll return to Rome and resume your seat in the Senate. Not to suck up to me, but to consider my l
aws and measures in the light of their intrinsic worth.”

  Here on Samos, Caesar lost Brutus, whom Caesar had promised a priesthood; as Servius Sulpicius was a great authority on priestly law and procedure, Brutus wanted to stay and study with the expert. Caesar’s only regret in leaving him behind was that he still had Gaius Cassius.

  From Samos he sailed to Lesbos, where sat a far more obdurate opponent, the consular Marcus Claudius Marcellus. Who vehemently rebuffed all Caesar’s overtures.

  The next stop was Athens, which had been ardently Pompeian in its sympathies; it did not fare well at Caesar’s hands. He imposed a huge fine, then spent most of his time in taking a trip to Corinth, on the isthmus dividing the Greek mainland from the Peloponnese. Gaius Mummius had sacked it generations before, and Corinth had never recovered. Caesar poked through its deserted buildings, climbed the great rearing citadel of the Akrocorinth; Cassius, ordered to accompany him, couldn’t make out why the Great Man was so fascinated.

  “The place is begging for a canal through the isthmus,” the Great Man remarked, standing on the narrow spit of solid rock high above the water. “If there were a canal, ships wouldn’t have to sail around Cape Taenarum at the mercy of its storms. They could go straight from Patrae to the Aegean. Hmmm.”

  “Impossible!” Cassius snorted. “You’d have to cut down two hundred and more feet.”

  “Nothing is impossible,” Caesar said mildly. “As for the old city, it’s begging for new settlers. Gaius Marius wanted to repopulate it with veterans from his legions.”

  “And failed,” said Cassius shortly. He kicked at a stone, watched it bounce. “I’m planning to stay in Athens.”

  “I’m afraid not, Gaius Cassius. You’ll go to Rome with me.”

  “Why?” Cassius demanded, stiffening.