1. First Man in Rome Read online

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  Gaius Marius had bought himself a tribune of the plebs, and picked himself a good man at that. For Titus Manlius Mancinus didn't sell his tribunician favors entirely for money. Mancinus was out to make a splash as a tribune of the plebs, and needed a cause better than the only one which mattered to him the casting of every impediment he could think of in the path of the patrician Manlius family, of which he was not a member. His hatred of the Manliuses, he found, easily spread to encompass all the great aristocratic and noble families, including the Caecilius Metelluses. So he was able to accept Marius's money with a clear conscience, and espouse Marius's plans with premonitory glee. The ten new tribunes of the plebs went into office on the third day before the Ides of December, and Titus Manlius Mancinus wasted no time. On that very day he introduced a bill into the Assembly of the Plebs that purported to remove the African command from Quintus Caecilius Metellus, and give it instead to Gaius Marius. "The People are sovereign!" Mancinus shouted to the crowd. "The Senate is the servant of the People, not the People's master! If the Senate enacts its duties with proper respect for the People of Rome, then by all means it should be allowed to go on doing so. But when the Senate enacts its duties to protect its own leading members at the expense of the People, it must be stopped. Quintus Caecilius Metellus has proven derelict in his command, he has accomplished precisely nothing! Why then has the Senate extended his command for a second time, into this coming year? Because, People of Rome, the Senate is as usual protecting its own leading lights at the expense of the People. In Gaius Marius, duly elected consul for this coming year, the People of Rome have a leader worthy of that name. But according to the men who run the Senate, Gaius Marius's name isn't good enough! Gaius Marius, People of Rome, is a mere New Man an upstart a nobody, not a noble!" The crowd was rapt; Mancinus was a good speaker, and felt passionately about senatorial exclusivity. It was some time since the Plebs had tweaked the Senate's nose, and many of the unelected but influential leaders of the Plebs were worried that their arm of Rome's government was losing ground. So on that day at that moment in time, everything ran in Gaius Marius's favor public sentiment, knightly disgruntlement, and ten tribunes of the plebs in a mood to tweak the Senate's nose, not one of them on the Senate's side. The Senate fought back, marshaling its best orators of plebeian status to speak in the Assembly, including Lucius Caecilius Metellus Dalmaticus Pontifex Maximus ardent in his young brother Piggle-wiggle's defense and the senior consul-elect, Lucius Cassius Longinus. But Marcus Aemilius Scaurus, who might have tipped the scales in the Senate's favor, was a patrician, and therefore could not speak in the Plebeian Assembly. Forced to stand on the steps of the Senate House looking down into the jam-packed tiered circular well of the Comitia, in which the Plebeian Assembly met, Scaurus could only listen impotently. "They'll beat us," he said to the censor Fabius Maximus Eburnus, another patrician. "Piss on Gaius Marius!" Pissed on or not, Gaius Marius won. The remorseless letter campaign had succeeded brilliantly in turning the knights and the middle classes away from Metellus, smearing his name, quite destroying his political clout. Of course in time he would recover; his family and connections were too powerful. But at the moment the Plebeian Assembly, ably led by Mancinus, took his African command off him, his name in Rome was muddier than the pigsty of Numantia. And take his African command off him the People did, passing a precedent-setting law which replaced him with Gaius Marius by name. And once the law strictly, a plebiscite was engraved on the tablets, it lay in an archive under a temple as an example and a recourse for others in the future to try the same thing others who might perhaps not have either the ability of Gaius Marius, or his excellent reasons. "However," said Marius to Sulla as soon as the law was passed, "Metellus will never leave me his soldiers." Oh, how many things were there to learn, things he, a patrician Cornelius, ought to know, yet didn't? Sometimes Sulla despaired of learning enough, but then would contemplate his luck in having Gaius Marius as his commander, and rest easier. For Marius was never too busy to explain things to him, and thought no less of him for his ignorance. So now Sulla increased his knowledge by asking, "But don't the soldiers belong to the war against King Jugurtha? Oughtn't they stay in Africa until the war is won?" "They could stay in Africa but only if Metellus wanted them to stay. He would have to announce to the army that it had signed on for the duration of the campaign, and therefore his removal from the command did not affect its fate. But there's nothing to stop him taking the position that he recruited them, and that their term finishes simultaneously with his. Knowing Metellus, that's the position he'll take. So he'll discharge them, and ship them straight back to Italy." "Which means you'll have to recruit a new army," said Sulla. "I see." Then he asked, "Couldn't you wait until he brings his army home, then re-enlist it in your name?" "I could," said Marius. "Unfortunately I won't get the chance. Lucius Cassius is going to Gaul to deal with the Germans at Tolosa. A job which has to be done we don't want half a million Germans sitting within a hundred miles of the road to Spain, and right on the borders of our own province. So I would imagine that Cassius has already written to Metellus and asked him to re-enlist his army for the Gallic campaign before it even departs from Africa.'' "So that's how it works," said Sulla. "That's how it works. Lucius Cassius is the senior consul, he takes precedence over me. Therefore he has first choice of whatever troops are available. Metellus will bring six highly trained and seasoned legions back to Italy with him. And they will be the troops Cassius takes to Gaul-across-the-Alps, no doubt of it. And that means I am going to have to start from the beginning recruit raw material, train it, equip it, fill it with enthusiasm for the war against Jugurtha." Marius pulled a face. "It will mean that in my year as consul I won't be given enough time to mount the kind of offensive against Jugurtha I could mount if Metellus left his troops behind for me. In turn, that means I'll have to make sure my own command in Africa is extended into the following year, or I'll fall flat on my arse and wind up looking worse than Piggle-wiggle." "And now there's a law on the tablets that creates a precedent for someone to take your command off you exactly as you took the command off Metellus." Sulla sighed. "It isn't easy, is it? I never dreamed of the difficulties a man could face just ensuring his own survival, let alone advancing the majesty of Rome." That amused Marius; he laughed delightedly, and clapped Sulla on the back. "No, Lucius Cornelius, it isn't ever easy. But that's what makes it so worth doing! What man of true excellence and worth honestly wants a smooth path? The rougher the path, the more obstacles in the way, the more satisfaction there is." This constituted an answer on a personal plane, perhaps, but it didn't solve Sulla's main problem. "Yesterday you told me Italy is completely exhausted," he said. "So many men have died that the levies can't be filled among the citizens of Rome, and Italian resistance to the levies is hardening day by day. Where then can you possibly find enough raw material to form into four good legions? Because as you've said yourself you can't defeat Jugurtha with fewer than four legions." "Wait until I'm consul, Lucius Cornelius, and you'll see," was all Sulla could get out of him.

  It was the feast of the Saturnalia undid Sulla's resolutions. In the days when Clitumna and Nicopolis had shared the house with him, this time of holiday and merrymaking had been a wonderful end to the old year. The slaves had lain around snapping their fingers while the two women had run giggling to obey their wishes, everyone had drunk too much, and Sulla had yielded up his place in the communal bed to whichever slaves fancied Clitumna and Nicopolis on condition that he enjoyed the same privileges elsewhere in the house. And after the Saturnalia was over, things went back to normal as if nothing untoward had ever happened. But this first year of his marriage to Julilla saw Sulla experience a very different Saturnalia: he was required to spend the waking hours of it next door, in the midst of the family of Gaius Julius Caesar. There too for the three days the festival lasted, everything was upside down the slaves were waited on by their owners, little gifts changed hands, and a special effort was exerted to provid
e food and wine as delectable as plentiful. But nothing really changed. The poor servants lay as stiff as statues on the dining couches and smiled shyly at Marcia and Caesar as they hurried back and forth between triclinium and kitchen, no one would have dreamed of getting drunk, and certainly no one would have dreamed of doing or saying anything which might have led to embarrassment when the household reverted to normal. Gaius Marius and Julia attended also, and seemed to find the proceedings perfectly satisfactory; but then, thought Sulla resentfully, Gaius Marius was too anxious to be one of them to contemplate putting a foot wrong. "What a treat it's been," said Sulla as he and Julilla said their farewells at the door on the last evening, and so careful had he become that no one, even Julilla, realized he was being heavily sarcastic. "It wasn't too bad at all," said Julilla as she followed Sulla into their own house, where in lieu of the master and mistress's presence the slaves had simply been given a three-day rest. "I'm glad you think so," said Sulla, bolting the gate. Julilla sighed and stretched. "And tomorrow is the dinner for Crassus Orator. I must say I'm looking forward to that." Sulla stopped halfway across the atrium and turned to stare at her. "You're not coming," he said. "What do you mean?" "Just what I said." . "But but I thought wives were invited too!" she cried, face puckering. "Some wives," said Sulla. "Not you." "I want to go! Everyone's talking about it, all my friends are so envious I told them I was going!" "Too bad. You're not going, Julilla." One of the house slaves met them at the study door, a little drunk. "Oh, good, you're home!" he said, staggering. "Fetch me some wine, and be quick about it!" "The Saturnalia is over," said Sulla very softly. "Get out, you fool." The slave went, suddenly sober. "Why are you in such a beastly mood?" Julilla demanded as they entered the master's sleeping cubicle. "I'm not in a beastly mood," he said, and went to stand behind her, slip his arms about her. She pulled away. "Leave me alone!" "Now what's the matter?" "I want to go to Crassus Orator's dinner!" "Well, you can't." "Why?" "Because, Julilla," he said patiently, "it isn't the kind of party your father would approve of, and the few wives who are going are not women your father approves of." "I'm not in my father's hand anymore, I can do anything I like," she said. "That's not true, and you know it. You passed from your father's hand to my hand. And I say you're not going." Without a word Julilla picked up her clothes from the floor, and flung a robe about her thin body. Then she turned and left the room. "Please yourself!" Sulla called after her. In the morning she was cold to him, a tactic he ignored, and when he left for Crassus Orator's dinner, she was nowhere to be found. "Spoiled little baggage," he said to himself. The tiff ought to have been amusing; that it wasn't had nothing to do with the tiff, but came from somewhere much deeper within Sulla than the space Julilla occupied. He wasn't the slightest bit excited at the prospect of dining at the opulent mansion of the auctioneer Quintus Granius, who was giving the dinner party. When he had first received the invitation, he had been quite absurdly pleased, interpreting it as an overture of friendship from an important young senatorial circle; then he heard the gossip about the party, and understood that he had been invited because he had a shady past, would add a touch of the exotic to liven the aristocratic male guest list. Now as he plodded along he was in better case to gauge what kind of trap had closed about him when he married Julilla and entered the ranks of his natural peers. For it was a trap. And there was no relief from its jaws while he was forced to live in Rome. All very well for Crassus Orator, so entrenched he could be party to a party deliberately designed to defy the sumptuary edict of his own father, so secure in his tenure of Senate and a new tribunate of the plebs that he could afford even the luxury of pretending to be vulgar and underbred, accept the blatant favor currying of a mushroom like Quintus Granius the auctioneer. When he entered Quintus Granius's vast dining room, he saw Colubra smiling at him from over the top of a jeweled golden beaker, saw her pat the couch beside her invitingly. I was right, I'm here as a freak, he said silently, gave Colubra a brilliant smile, and yielded up his person to the attentions of a crowd of obsequious slaves. No intimate function, this! The dining room was filled with couches sixty guests would recline to celebrate Crassus Orator's entry upon the tribunate of the plebs. But, thought Sulla as he climbed up beside Colubra, Quintus Granius doesn't have the slightest idea how to throw a real party. When he left six hours later which meant he left well ahead of any other guest he was drunk, and his mood had plummeted from acceptance of his lot to the kind of black depression he had thought he would never experience again once he entered his rightful sphere. He was frustrated, powerless and, he realized suddenly, intolerably lonely. From his heart to his head to his fingers and toes he ached for congenial and loving company, someone to laugh with, someone free from ulterior motives, someone entirely his. Someone with black eyes and black curls and the sweetest arse in the world. And he walked, gifted with wings on his feet, all the way out to the apartment of Scylax the actor without once allowing himself to remember how fraught with peril this course was, how imprudent, how foolish, how it didn't matter! For Scylax would be there; all he'd be able to do was sit and drink a cup of watered wine, and mouth inanities with Scylax, and let his eyes feast upon his boy. No one would be in a position to say a thing. An innocent visit, nothing more. But Fortune still smiled. Metrobius was there alone, left behind as punishment when Scylax departed to visit friends in Antium. Metrobius was there alone. So glad to see him! So filled with love, with hunger, with passion, with grief. And Sulla, the passion and hunger sated, put the boy on his knees and hugged him, and almost wept. "I spent too long in this world," he said. "Ye gods, how I miss it!" "How I miss you!" said the boy, snuggling down. A silence fell; Metrobius could feel Sulla's convulsive swallows against his cheek, and yearned to feel Sulla's tears. But them, he knew, he would not feel. "What's the matter, dear Lucius Cornelius?" he asked. "I'm bored," said Sulla's voice, very detached. "These people at the top are such hypocrites, so deadly dull! Good form and good manners on every public occasion, then furtively dirty pleasures whenever they think no one's watching I'm finding it hard tonight to disguise my contempt." "I thought you'd be happy," said Metrobius, not displeased. "So did I," said Sulla wryly, and fell silent again. "Why come tonight?" "Oh, I went to a party." "No good?" "Not by your or my lights, lovely lad. By theirs, it was a brilliant success. All I wanted to do was laugh. And then, on the way home, I realized I had no one to share the joke with. No one!" "Except me," said Metrobius, and sat up straight. "Well then, aren't you going to tell me?" "You know who the Licinius Crassuses are, don't you?" Metrobius studied his nails. "I'm a child star of the comedy theater," he said. "What do I know about the Famous Families?" "The family Licinius Crassus has been supplying Rome with consuls and the occasional Pontifex Maximus for oh, centuries! It's a fabulously rich family, and it produces men of two sorts the frugal sort, and the sybaritic sort. Now this Crassus Orator's father was one of the frugal sort, and put that ridiculous sumptuary law on the tablets you know the one," said Sulla. "No gold plate, no purple cloths, no oysters, no imported wine is that the one?" "It is. But Crassus Orator who it seems didn't get on with his father adores to be surrounded by every conceivable luxury. And Quintus Granius the auctioneer needs a political favor from Crassus Orator now that he's a tribune of the plebs, so Quintus Granius the auctioneer threw a party tonight in honor of Crassus Orator. The theme," said Sulla, a little expression creeping into his voice, "was 'Let's ignore the lex Licinia sumptuaria!'" "Was that why you were invited?" asked Metrobius. "I was invited because it appears in the highest circles the circles of Crassus Orator, that is, even if not of Quintus Granius the auctioneer I am regarded as a fascinating fellow life as low as birth was high. I think they thought I'd strip off all my clothes and sing a few dirty ditties while I humped the daylights out of Colubra." "Colubra?" "Colubra." Metrobius whistled. "You are moving in exalted circles! I hear she charges a silver talent for irrumatio." "She might, but she offered it to me for nothing," said Sulla, grinning. "I declined." Metrobius shivered. "Oh, Lucius Cornel
ius, don't go making enemies now that you're in your rightful world! Women like Colubra wield enormous power." An expression of distaste settled upon Sulla's face. "Tchah! I piss on them!" "They'd probably like that," said Metrobius thoughtfully. It did the trick; Sulla laughed, and settled down to tell his story more happily. "There were a few wives there the more adventurous kind, with husbands pecked almost to death two Claudias, and a lady in a mask who insisted on being called Aspasia, but who I know very well is Crassus Orator's cousin Licinia you remember, I used to sleep with her occasionally?" "I remember," said Metrobius a little grimly. "The place absolutely dripped gold and Tyrian purple," Sulla went on. "Even the dishrags were Tyrian purple oversewn with gold! You should have seen the dining steward waiting until his master wasn't looking, and then whipping out an ordinary dishrag to mop up someone's spilled Chian wine the gold-and-purple rags were useless, of course." "You hated it," said Metrobius. "I hated it," said Sulla, sighed, and resumed his story. "The couches were encrusted with pearls. They really were! And the guests fiddled and plucked until they managed to denude the couches of their pearls, popped them into a corner of the gold-and-purple napkins, knotted the corner up carefully and there wasn't one among the men at least who couldn't have bought what he stole without noticing the expense." "Except you," said Metrobius softly, and pushed the hair off Sulla's white brow. "You didn't take any pearls." "I'd sooner have died," said Sulla. He shrugged. "They were only little river blisters, anyway." Metrobius chuckled. "Don't spoil it! I like it when you're insufferably proud and noble." Smiling, Sulla kissed him. "That bad, am I?" "That bad. What was the food like?" "Catered. Well, not even Granius's kitchens could have turned out enough food for sixty ooops, fifty-nine! of the worst gluttons I've ever seen. Every hen egg was a tenth egg, most of them double-yolked. There were swan eggs, goose eggs, duck eggs, seabird eggs, and even some eggs with gilded shells. Stuffed udders of nursing sows fowls fattened on honey cakes soaked in vintage Falernian wine snails specially imported from Liguria oysters driven up from Baiae in a fast gig the air was so redolent with the most expensive peppers that I had a sneezing fit." He needed to talk very badly, Metrobius realized; what a strange world Sulla's must be now. Not at all as he had imagined it, though how exactly he had imagined it before it happened was something Metrobius did not know. For Sulla was not a talker, never had been a talker. Until tonight. Out of nowhere! The sight of that beloved face was a sight Metrobius had reconciled himself never to see again, save at a distance. Yet there on the doorstep he'd stood, looking ghastly. And needing love. Needing to talk. Sulla! How lonely he must be, indeed. "What else was there?" Metrobius prompted, anxious to keep him talking. Up went one red-gold brow, its darkening of stibium long gone. "The best was yet to come, as it turned out. They bore it in shoulder-high on a Tyrian purple cushion in a gem-studded golden dish, a huge licker-fish of the Tiber with the same look on its face as a flogged mastiff. Round and round the room they paraded it, with more ceremony than the twelve gods are accorded at a lectisternium. A fish!" Metrobius knitted his brows. "What sort of fish was it?" Sulla pulled his head back to stare into Metrobius's face. "You know! A licker-fish." "If I do, I don't remember." Sulla considered, relaxed. "I daresay you mightn't, at that. Licker-fish are a far cry from a comics' feast. Let me just say, young Metrobius, that every gastronomic fool in Rome's upper stratum passes into a swoon of ecstasy at the very thought of a licker-fish of the Tiber. Yet there they cruise between the Wooden Bridge and the Pons Aemilius, laving their scaly sides in the outflow from the sewers, and so full from eating Rome's shit that they can't even be bothered nosing a bait. They smell of shit and they taste of shit. Eat them, and, in my opinion, you're eating shit. But Quintus Granius and Crassus Orator raved and drooled as if a licker-fish of the Tiber was a compound of nectar and ambrosia instead of a shit-eating drone of a freshwater bass!" Metrobius couldn't help himself; he gagged. "Well said!" cried Sulla, and began to laugh. "Oh, if you could only have seen them, all those puffed-up fools! Calling themselves Rome's best and finest, while Rome's shit dribbled down their chins " He stopped, sucked in a hissing breath. "I couldn't take it another day. Another hour." He stopped again. "I'm drunk. It was that awful Saturnalia." "Awful Saturnalia?" "Boring awful it doesn't matter. A different upper stratum than Crassus Orator's party crowd, Metrobius, but just as dreadful. Boring. Boring, boring, boring!" He shrugged. "Never mind. Next year I'll be in Numidia, with something to sink my teeth into. I can't wait! Rome without you––without my old friends I can't bear it." A shiver rolled visibly down him. "I'm drunk, Metrobius. I shouldn't be here. But oh, if you knew how good it is to be here!" "I only know how good it is to have you here," said Metrobius loudly. "Your voice is breaking," said Sulla, surprised. "And not before time. I'm seventeen, Lucius Cornelius. Luckily I'm small for my age, and Scylax has trained me to keep my voice high. But sometimes these days I forget. It's harder to control. I'll be shaving soon." "Seventeen!" Metrobius slid off Sulla's lap and stood looking down at him gravely, then held out one hand. "Come! Stay with me a little while longer. You can go home before it's light.'' Reluctantly Sulla got up. "I'll stay," he said, "this time. But I won't be back." "I know," said Metrobius, and lifted his visitor's arm until it lay across his shoulders. "Next year you'll be in Numidia, and you'll be happy."