Caesar's Women Page 35

  "I suppose," he said to Aurelia over dinner that afternoon, "that I can't introduce a busy little dog or a couple of needy mother cats into the Regia, it might contravene our religious laws. So how can I get rid of the rats?"

  "I would say their presence in the Regia contravened our religious laws quite as much as any dog or cat would,'' said Aurelia. "However, I do see what you mean. It is not a great difficulty, Caesar. The two old women who take care of the public latrine across the road from us in the Subura Minor can tell me the name of the man who makes their rat traps. Very clever! A sort of longish small box with a door on one end. The door is poised on a balance, and the balance is connected to a string, and the string is connected to a piece of cheese impaled on a hooked spike at the back of the box. When the rat tries to remove the cheese, the door falls down. The trick is to make sure that the fellow you depute to take the rats out of the box and kill them isn't afraid of them. If he is, they escape."

  "Mater, you know everything! May I leave the acquisition of a few rat traps to you?"

  "Certainly, '* she said, pleased with herself.

  "There were never any rats in your insula."

  "I should hope not! You know perfectly well that dear Lucius Decumius is never without a dog."

  "And every one of them named Fido."

  "And every one of them an excellent ratter."

  "I notice that our Vestals prefer to keep cats."

  "Very handy animals provided they are females." She looked mischievous. "One can of course understand why they keep no males, but it is the female cats which hunt, you know. Unlike dogs in that respect. Their litters are a nuisance, so Licinia tells me, but she is very firm, even with the children when they plead. The kittens are drowned at birth."

  "And Junia and Quinctilia drown in tears."

  "We must all," said Aurelia, "grow used to death. And to not getting the desire of our hearts."

  As this was inarguable, Caesar changed the subject. “I was able to rescue some twenty book buckets and their contents, a little mangled but reasonably intact. It would seem that my predecessors did think to put the contents into new buckets whenever the old ones started to disintegrate from the rats, but it would have been more sensible, surely, to have eliminated the rats. For the time being I'll keep the documents here in my study—I want to read them and catalogue them."

  "Archives, Caesar?"

  "Yes, but not of the Republic. They date back to some of the earliest kings."

  "Ah! I understand why they interest you so much. You've always had a passion for ancient laws and archives. But can you read them? Surely they're indecipherable."

  "No, they're in good sound Latin of the kind written about three hundred years ago, and they're on Pergamum parchment. I imagine one of the Pontifices Maximi of that era deciphered the originals and made these copies." He leaned back on his couch. "I also found stone tablets, inscribed in the same writing as that on the stele in the well of the Lapis Niger. So archaic one can hardly recognize the language as Latin. A precursor of it, I suppose, like the song of the Salii. But I shall decipher them, never fear!"

  His mother gazed at him fondly enough, yet with a little sternness too. "I hope, Caesar, that in the midst of all this religious and historical exploration you find the time to remember that you are standing for election as praetor this year. You must pay proper attention to the duties of the Pontifex Maximus, but you cannot neglect your career in the Forum."

  He had not forgotten, nor did the vigor and pace of his election campaign suffer because the lamps in his study burned until very late each night while he worked his way through what he had decided to call the Commentaries of the Kings. And thank all the Gods for that unknown Pontifex Maximus who had deciphered and copied them onto Pergamum parchment! Just where or what the originals were, Caesar did not know. They were certainly not in the Regia, nor were they similar to the stone tablets he had found. Those, he decided from his preliminary work, were annalistic and dated from the earliest kings, perhaps even from Numa Pompilius. Or Romulus? What a thought! Chilling. Nothing on parchment or stone was a history of the times, however. Both related to laws, rules, religious rites, precepts, functions and functionaries. At some moment soon they would have to be published; all of Rome must know what lay in the Regia. Varro would be ecstatic, and Cicero fascinated. Caesar would plan a dinner party.

  As if to cap what had been an extraordinary year of ups and downs for Caesar, when the curule elections were held early in Quinctilis, he came in at the top of the praetors' poll. Not one Century failed to name him, which meant he was able to rest secure long before the last man returned was sure he had been elected. Philippus, his friend from Mitylene days, would be a colleague; so too would Cicero's irascible younger brother, tiny Quintus Cicero. But, alas, Bibulus was a praetor too.

  When the lots were cast to decide which man should have which job, Caesar's victory was complete. His name was on the first ball out of the spout; he would be urban praetor, the most senior man among the eight. That meant Bibulus couldn't annoy him (he had received the Violence Court)—but he could certainly annoy Bibulus!

  Time to break Domitia's heart by discarding her. She had turned out to be discreet, so as yet Bibulus had no idea. But he would the moment she started weeping and wailing. They all did. Except Servilia. Perhaps that was why she alone had lasted.

  PART IV

  from JANUARY 1

  until DECEMBER 5 of 63 B.C.

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  It was Cicero's misfortune to enter upon his year as consul in the midst of a severe economic depression, and as economics was not his speciality, he faced his year of office in a rather gloomy mood. Not the sort of consulship he had hoped for! He wanted people to say of him after his year was over that he had given Rome the same kind of halcyon prosperity commonly attributed to the joint consulship of Pompey and Crassus seven years earlier. With Hybrida as his junior colleague, it was inevitable all the credit would go to him, which meant he wouldn't need to end on bad terms with Hybrida, as Pompey had with Crassus—and vice versa.

  Rome's economic troubles emanated from the East, which had been closed to Roman businessmen for over twenty years. First King Mithridates had conquered it, then when Sulla wrested it off him, Sulla introduced praiseworthy financial regulations there and thus prevented the knight community of Rome from going back to the old days of milking the East dry. Added to which, the problem of piracy on the high seas did not encourage business ventures east of Macedonia and Greece. Consequently those who farmed taxes, lent money, or traded in goods and commodities like wheat, wine and wool kept their capital at home; a phenomenon which increased when the war against Quintus Sertorius broke out in Spain and a series of droughts diminished the harvest. Both ends of Our Sea became risky or impracticable areas for business endeavors.

  All of these things had contrived to concentrate capital and investment within Rome and Italy for twenty years. No seductive overseas opportunities presented themselves to Rome's knight-businessmen, who as a result had little need to find large amounts of money. The borrowing interest rate was low, rents were low, inflation was high, and creditors were in no hurry to call in debts.

  Cicero's misfortune was to be laid entirely at Pompey's door. First the Great Man had cleaned up the pirates, then he chased Kings Mithridates and Tigranes out of those areas which used to be a part of Rome's business sphere. He also abolished Sulla's financial regulations, though Lucullus had persisted in retaining them—the sole reason why the knights had lobbied to remove Lucullus and give his command to Pompey. And so just as Cicero and Hybrida assumed office, a literal wealth of business opportunities was opening up in the East. Where once had been Asia Province and Cilicia were now four provinces; Pompey had added the new provinces of Bithynia-Pontus and Syria to the empire. He set them up the same way as the other two by giving the great companies of publicani based in Rome the right to farm their taxes, tithes and tributes. Private contracts let out by the censors saved
the State the burden of gathering taxes and prevented the proliferation of civil servants. Let the publicani have the headaches! All the Treasury wanted was its stipulated share of the profits.

  Capital flowed out of Rome and Italy in obedience to the new drive to obtain control of these eastern business ventures. As a result the interest rate went up dramatically, usurers suddenly called in old debts, and credit was hard to come by. In the cities rents soared; in the country farmers were strapped by mortgage repayments. Inevitably the price of grain—even that supplied by the State—increased. Huge amounts of money were pouring out of Rome, and nobody in government knew how to control the situation.

  Informed by friends like the knight plutocrat Titus Pomponius Atticus (who had no intention of letting Cicero in on too many commercial secrets) that the money drain was due to resident alien Jews in Rome sending the proceeds home, Cicero quickly brought in a law forbidding the Jews to send any money home. Of course it had little effect, but what else he could do the senior consul did not know—nor was Atticus about to enlighten him.

  It was not in Cicero's nature to turn his year as consul into a mission he now saw would be as vain as it would prove unpopular, so instead he turned his attention toward matters he regarded as well within his sphere of excellence; the economic situation would solve itself given time, whereas laws required a personal touch. His year meant that for once Rome had a legislating consul in office, so he would legislate.

  First he attacked the law the consul Gaius Piso had brought in four years earlier against electoral bribery in the consular polls. Himself guilty of massive bribery, Piso had been forced into legislating against it. Perhaps not illogically, what Piso passed leaked in all directions, but after Cicero patched up the worst of the holes it began to look quite presentable.

  And where to from that? Ah! Ah yes, men returning from a term governing a praetorian province who had extorted in that province and intended to wriggle out of prosecution by getting elected consul in absentia! Praetors sent out to govern provinces were more likely to extort than consul-governors; there were eight of them and only two consul-governors, which meant that the majority of them knew their only chance to make a fortune governing a province was as a praetor-governor. Yet how, after squeezing his province dry, was a returning praetor-governor to avoid prosecution for extortion? If he was a strong contender for the consulship, then the best way was to petition the Senate to be allowed to stand for the consular elections in absentia. No holder of imperium could be prosecuted. Provided a returning praetor-governor did not cross the sacred boundary into the city of Rome itself, he retained the imperium Rome had given him to govern his province. So he could sit on the Campus Martius just outside the city, imperium intact, petition the Senate to stand for consul in absentia, conduct his campaign from the Campus Martius, and then, if he was lucky enough to be elected consul, he walked straight into a fresh imperium. This ploy meant he managed to elude prosecution for two more years, by which time the wrathful provincials who had originally intended to prosecute him would have given up and gone home. Well, thundered Cicero in the Senate and Comitia, that sort of thing must cease! Therefore he and his junior colleague, Hybrida, proposed to forbid any returning praetor-governor standing for consul in absentia.

  Let him come inside Rome, take his chances with prosecution! And as the Senate and People deemed this excellent, the new law passed.

  Now what else could he do? Cicero thought of this and that, all useful little laws which would enhance his reputation. Though not, alas, make his reputation. As consul rather than as legal luminary. What Cicero needed was a crisis, and not an economic one.

  That the second half of his term as senior consul would give him that hungered-for crisis did not occur to Cicero even when the lots gave him the duty of presiding over the elections held in the month of Quinctilis. Nor did he at first fully appreciate the ramifications which were to emerge from his wife's invasion of his privacy not long before those elections.

  Terentia marched into his study with her customary lack of ceremony, and oblivious to the sanctity of his thought processes.

  "Cicero, stop that whatever-it-is you're doing!" she barked.

  The pen went down immediately; he looked up without being foolish enough to betray his creative distress. "Yes, my dear, what is it?" he enquired mildly.

  She dumped herself down in the client's chair, looking grim. However, as she always looked grim, he had no idea of the cause of this particular grimness; he just hoped devoutly that it was nothing he had done.

  "I had a visitor this morning," she said.

  It was on the tip of his tongue to ask whether having a visitor had tickled her fancy, but he kept that normally unruly organ silent; if no one else had the power to still it utterly, Terentia certainly did. So he merely assumed an air of interest and waited for her to go on.

  "A visitor," she repeated. She then sniffed. "Not one of my circle, I do assure you, husband! Fulvia."

  "Publius Clodius's wife?" he asked, astonished.

  "No, no! Fulvia Nobilioris."

  Which elucidation did not decrease his surprise, as the Fulvia she meant was distinctly shady. Of excellent family, but divorced in disgrace, lacking an income, and currently attached to that Quintus Curius who had been expelled from the Senate in the famous purge of Poplicola and Lentulus Clodianus seven years before. A most inappropriate visitor for Terentia to receive! Terentia was as renowned for her rectitude as she was for her sourness.

  "Goodness gracious me! What on earth did she want?"

  "I quite liked her, actually," said Terentia reflectively. "She is no more and no less than a Hapless Victim of Men."

  And how was he expected to answer that? Cicero compromised with an inarticulate bleat.

  "She came to see me because that is the correct procedure for a woman to adopt when she wishes to speak to a married man of your prominence."

  And a man married to you, Cicero added silently.

  “Naturally you will wish to see her for yourself, but I shall give you what information she gave me," said the lady whose glance could turn Cicero to stone. "It appears that her—her—her protector, Curius, has been behaving most oddly of late. Since his expulsion from the Senate his financial circumstances have been so embarrassed he can't even run for the tribunate of the plebs to get back into public life. Yet all of a sudden he's begun to talk wildly of coming into riches and a high position. This," Terentia went on in a voice of doom, "appears to stem from his conviction that Catilina and Lucius Cassius will be consuls next year."

  "So that's the way Catilina's wind blows, is it? Consul with a fat and torpid fool like Lucius Cassius," said Cicero.

  “Both of them will declare themselves candidates tomorrow when you open the election tribunal."

  "All very well, my dear, but I fail to see how a joint consulship of Catilina and Lucius Cassius can promote Curius to sudden wealth and eminence."

  "Curius is talking of a general cancellation of debts."

  Cicero's jaw dropped. "They wouldn't be such idiots!"

  "Why not?" asked Terentia, contemplating the matter coolly. "Only consider, Cicero! Catilina knows that if he doesn't get in this year, his chances are over. It looks like quite a battle if all the men who are thinking of standing do stand. Silanus is much improved in health and will definitely be running, so dear Servilia tells me. Murena is being backed by many influential people, and, so dear Fabia tells me, is using his Vestal connection through Licinia to the maximum. Then there's your friend Servius Sulpicius Rufus, highly favored by the Eighteen and the tribuni aerarii, which means he'll poll well in the First Class. What can Catilina and a running partner like Lucius Cassius offer against such an array of solid worth as Silanus, Murena and this Sulpicius? Only one of the consuls can be a patrician, which means the vote for a patrician will be split between Catilina and Sulpicius. If I had a vote, I'd be choosing Sulpicius ahead of Catilina."

  Frowning, Cicero forgot his terror of his wife and
spoke to her as he would have to a Forum colleague. "So Catilina's platform is a general cancellation of debts, is that what you're saying?"

  "No, that's what Fulvia is saying."

  "I must see her at once!" he cried, getting up.

  "Leave it to me, I'll send for her," said Terentia.

  Which meant, of course, that he would not be permitted to speak to Fulvia Nobilioris alone; Terentia intended to be there hanging on every word—and every look.

  The trouble was that Fulvia Nobilioris volunteered very little more than Terentia had already told him, just couched her story in a highly emotional and scatterbrained way. Curius was up to his ears in debt, gambling heavily, drinking a great deal; he was always closeted with Catilina, Lucius Cassius and their cronies, and would return home from one of these sessions promising his mistress all kinds of future prosperity.