Caesar (51 page)

“So it seems to everyone.”

“Does he belong to Caesar, do you think?”

“I doubt it.”

“Yet the only person who might benefit from Curio's bill would be Caesar,” said Servilia thoughtfully. “If he loses his provinces and his imperium on the Kalends of March, Curio's bill would provide him with another proconsulship and his imperium would continue. Not so?”

“Yes.”

“Then Curio belongs to Caesar.”

“I really do doubt that.”

“He's suddenly free of debt.” Pontius Aquila laughed, head thrown back, and looked magnificent. “He also married Fulvia. Not before time, if the gossips are right. She's very round in the belly for a newly wedded woman.”

“Poor old Sempronia! A daughter who goes from one demagogue to another.”

“I haven't seen any evidence that Curio is a demagogue.”

“You will,” said Servilia cryptically.

For over two years the Senate had been deprived of its ancient meeting house, the Curia Hostilia, yet no one had volunteered to rebuild it. So ingrained was the Treasury's parsimoniousness that the State would not foot the bill; tradition held that some great man should undertake the task, and no great man had so far been willing. Including Pompey the Great, who seemed indifferent to the Senate's plight.“ You can always use the Curia Pompeia,” he said.“ Typical of him!” snapped Gaius Marcellus Major, stumping out to the Campus Martius and Pompey's stone theater on the Kalends of March. “He wants to compel the Senate to hold all its heavily attended meetings in something he built in days when we didn't need it. Typical!”

“Yet one more extraordinary command of a sort,” said Cato, striding along at a pace Gaius Marcellus Major found difficult.“ Why do we have to hurry, Cato? Paullus holds the fasces for March, and he'll take his time.”

“Which is why Paullus is a pudding,” said Cato. The complex Pompey had built upon the green sward of the Campus Martius not far from the Circus Flaminius was most imposing; a vast stone theater which could accommodate five thousand people reared high above the sparse structures which had existed here for much longer than a mere five years. Very shrewdly Pompey had incorporated a temple to Venus Victrix at the top of the cavea, and thus turned what would otherwise have been an impious structure into something entirely in keeping with the mos maiorum. Rome's customs and traditions deplored theater as a malign moral influence on the people, so until Pompey's stone edifice had gone up five years ago, the theater which pervaded all games and public feasts had been conducted in temporary wooden premises. What made Pompey's theater permissible was the temple to Venus Victrix. Behind the auditorium Pompey had built a vast peristyle garden surrounded by a colonnade containing exactly one hundred pillars, each fluted and adorned with the fussy Corinthian capitals Sulla had brought back from Greece, each painted in shades of blue and lavishly gilded. The red walls along the back of the colonnade were rich with magnificently painted murals, unfortunately marred by the peculiarity of their blood-soaked subject matter. For Pompey owned a great deal more money than good taste, and nowhere did it show more than in his hundred-pillared colonnade and garden stuffed with fountains, fish, frills, frights. At the rear of the peristyle Pompey had erected a curia, a meeting house which he had ensured was religiously inaugurated in order to house meetings of the Senate. It was very adequate in size, and in layout resembled the ruined Curia Hostilia, being a rectangular chamber containing three tiers down either side of a space ending in the dais upon which the curule magistrates sat. Each shelflike tier was broad enough to accommodate a senator's stool; upon the highest tier sat the pedarii, the senators who were not senior enough to speak in debate because they had never held a magistracy or won a Grass Crown or a Civic Crown for valor. The two middle tiers held senators who had attained a minor magistracy—tribune of the plebs, quaestor or plebeian aedile—or were military heroes, and the two bottom tiers were reserved for those who had been curule aediles, praetors, consuls or censors. Which meant that those who sat on the bottom or middle tiers had more room to spread their feathers than the pedarii up at the top. The old Curia Hostilia had been uninspiring within: the tiers had been blocks of unrendered tufa, the walls drably painted with a few red curliques and lines on a beige background, the curule dais more tufa stone, and the central space between the two banks of tiers tessellated in black and white marble so old it had long lost polish or majesty. In glaring contrast to this antique simplicity, Pompey's Curia was entirely done in colored marbles. The walls were purple and rose tiles laid in complicated patterns between gilded pilasters; the back tier on either side was faced in brown marble, the middle tier in yellow marble, the bottom tier in cream marble, and the curule dais in a lustrous, shimmering blue-white marble brought all the way from Numidia. The space between the two banks of tiers had been paved in patterned wheels of purple and white. Light poured in through high clerestory windows well sheltered by a wide eave on the non-colonnade side, and each aperture was covered by a gilded grille. Though the interior of the Curia Pompeia provoked many a sniff because of its ostentation, the interior was not what really offended. That was the statue of himself which Pompey had erected at the back of the curule dais. Exactly his own height (therefore not an insult to the Gods), it limned him as he had been at the time of his first consulship twenty years ago: a graceful, well-knit man of thirty-six with a shock of bright gold hair, brilliantly blue eyes, and a demure, round, distinctly un-Roman face. The sculptor had been the best, so too the painter who had colored in the tones of Pompey's flesh, hair, eyes, maroon senatorial shoes fastened with the crescent buckles of the consul. Only the toga and what showed of the tunic had been done in the new way: not painted but made of highly polished marble, white for the fabric of toga and tunic, purple for the border of the toga and the latus clavus stripe on the tunic. As he had caused the statue to be placed on a plinth four feet tall, Pompey the Great towered over everyone and inarguably presided over any meeting of the Senate conducted there. The arrogance! The insufferable hubris!Almost all the four hundred senators present in Rome came to the Curia Pompeia and this long-awaited meeting on the Kalends of March. To some extent Gaius Marcellus Major had been right in thinking that Pompey wanted to force the Senate to meet in his curia because the Senate had ignored his curia's existence until its own beloved chamber burned down; but Marcellus Major had neglected to take .his reasoning one step further, to the fact that these days the Senate had no option other than to meet outside Rome's sacred boundary for any session likely to draw a full House. Which meant that Pompey could attend these meetings in person while comfortably retaining his imperium as governor of the Spains; as his army was in Spain and he was also curator of the grain supply, he enjoyed the luxury of living just outside Rome and traveling freely throughout Italia, two things normally forbidden to the governors of provinces. Dawn was just paling the sky above the Esquiline Mount when the senators began to straggle into the peristyle garden, where most of them chose to linger until the convening magistrate, Lucius Aemilius Lepidus Paullus, chose to appear. They clustered in small groups of like political thinking, talking with more animation than they could usually summon up so early in the day; this promised to be a momentous meeting, and anticipation was high. Everyone likes to be present to see the idol topple, and today everyone was convinced that Caesar, idol of the People, would topple. The leaders of the boni stood on the rear colonnade itself outside the Curia Pompeia doors: Cato, Ahenobarbus, Metellus Scipio, Marcus Marcellus (the junior consul of last year), Appius Claudius, Lentulus Spinther, Gaius Marcellus Major (the junior consul this year), Gaius Marcellus Minor (predicted to be consul next year), Faustus Sulla, Brutus, and two tribunes of the plebs.“ A great, great day!” barked Cato in his harsh voice.“ The beginning of the end of Caesar,” said Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, beaming.“ He's not without support,” Brutus ventured timidly. “I see Lucius Piso, Philippus, Lepidus, Vatia Isauricus, Messala Rufus and Rabirius Postumus huddled together. They look confident.”

“Rabble!” said Marcus Marcellus disdainfully.“ But who knows how the backbenchers will feel when it comes to the vote?” asked Appius Claudius, under some strain thanks to the fact that his trial for extortion was still going on.“ More of them will vote for us than for Caesar,” said the haughty Metellus Scipio. At which moment the senior consul, Paullus, appeared behind his lictors and entered the Curia Pompeia. The senators streamed inside after him, each with his servant carrying his folded stool, some with scribes hovering in attendance to take private verbatim records of this historic meeting. The prayers were said, the sacrifice made, the omens deemed to be auspicious; the House settled down on its stools, the curule magistrates on their ivory chairs atop the blue-white marble dais dominated by the statue of Pompey the Great. Who sat on the bottom tier to the left of the dais in his purple-bordered toga and looked directly at the dais, eyes dwelling on the face of his effigy, lips faintly smiling at the delicious irony of it. What a wonderful day this one would be! The only man who seemed likely to eclipse him was going to have the feet cut out from under him. And all without one word from him, Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus. No one would be able to point the finger at him and accuse him of conspiring to unseat Caesar; it was going to happen without his needing to do more than be here. Naturally he would vote to strip Caesar of his provinces, but so would most of the House. Speak on the subject he would not, were he to be asked. The boni were quite capable of doing all the oratory necessary. Paullus, holding the fasces during the month of March, sat with his curule chair slightly forward of Gaius Marcellus Major's, the eight praetors and two curule aediles ranked behind them. Just below the front of the curule dais stood a very long, stout, highly polished wooden bench. On this sat the ten tribunes of the plebs, the men elected by the Plebs to safeguard their interests and keep the patricians in their place. Or so it had been at the dawn of the Republic, a time when the patricians had controlled the Senate, the consulship, the courts, the Centuriate Assembly and all aspects of public life. But that state of affairs hadn't lasted long once the Kings of Rome were dispensed with. The Plebs had risen high, held more and more of the money, and wanted a much bigger say in government. For one hundred years the duel of wits and wills between the Patriciate and the Plebs had persisted, the Patriciate fighting a losing battle. At the end of it, the Plebs had won the right to have at least one of the two consuls a plebeian, half the places in the pontifical colleges, and the right to call plebeian families noble once a member attained the rank of praetor, and had established the College of the Tribunes of the Plebs, sworn to guard plebeian interests even at the price of lives. Over the centuries since, the role of the tribunes of the plebs had changed. Gradually their assemblage of Roman men, the Plebeian Assembly, had usurped the major share of lawmaking and moved from blocking the power of the Patriciate to protecting the interests of the knight-businessmen who formed the nucleus of the Plebeian Assembly and dictated policy to the Senate. Then a special kind of tribune of the plebs began to emerge, culminating in the careers of two great plebeian noblemen, the brothers Tiberius and Gaius Sempronius Gracchus. Who used their office and the Plebeian Assembly to strip power from the Plebs as well as the Patriciate and give a trifle of it to those of lower status and little wealth. They had both died hideously for their pains, but their memory lived on and on. And they were followed by other great men in the job, as different in aims and ideals as Gaius Marius, Saturninus, Marcus Livius Drusus, Sulpicius, Aulus Gabinius, Titus Labienus, Publius Vatinius, Publius Clodius and Gaius Trebonius. But in Gabinius, Labienus, Vatinius and Trebonius a new phenomenon became absolutely established: they belonged to one particular man who dictated their policy; Pompey in the case of Gabinius and Labienus, Caesar in the case of Vatinius and Trebonius. Almost five hundred years of the tribunate of the plebs was embodied in the ten men who sat on that long wooden bench on this first day of March, each clad in a plain white toga, none entitled to lictors, none constrained by the religious rituals which ringed all other Roman executives round. Eight of them had been in the Senate for two or three years before running for the tribunate of the plebs; two of them had entered the Senate upon being elected. And nine of them were nonentities, men whose names and faces would not last beyond their tenure of office. That was not so of Gaius Scribonius Curio, who, as President of the College, occupied the middle of the tribunician bench. He looked the part of a tribune of the plebs, with that urchinish and freckled countenance, that unruly thatch of bright red hair, that vivid aura of huge energy and enthusiasm. A brilliant speaker known to be conservative in his political leanings, Curio was the son of a man who had been censor as well as consul, and young Curio had been one of Caesar's most telling opponents during the year of Caesar's consulship, even though he had not been old enough to enter the Senate at that time. Some of his laws since entering office on the tenth day of the previous December were puzzling, seemed to hint that the bug of tribunician radical extremism had bitten him more deeply than had been expected. First he had tried, unsuccessfully, to introduce a bill endowing a new curator of roads with a five-year proconsular imperium; many suspicious boni deemed this a ploy to give Caesar another, if unmilitary, command. Then as a pontifex he had tried to persuade the College of Pontifices to intercalate an extra twenty-two days into the year at the end of February. Which would have postponed the arrival of the Kalends of March and discussion of Caesar's provinces by twenty-two enormously valuable days. Again he was defeated. The road bill he had shrugged off as unimportant, but the intercalation of a Mercedonius month he clearly regarded as a very serious matter, for when the College of Pontifices kept on adamantly refusing, Curio was so irate he told them exactly what he thought of them. A reaction which provoked Cicero's great friend Caelius to write to Cilicia and inform Cicero that he thought Curio belonged to Caesar. Luckily this shrewd guess was not arrived at by anyone else with an influential ear to whisper into, so on this day Curio sat looking as if he was interested in the scheduled proceedings, but not to any significant degree. The tribunes of the plebs had, after all, been muzzled by that unconstitutional decree forbidding them to veto discussion of Caesar's provinces in the House on pain of being automatically convicted of treason. Paullus handed the meeting to Gaius Claudius Marcellus Major as soon as he had declared the House in session.“ Honored senior consul, censors, consulars, praetors, aediles, tribunes of the plebs, quaestors and Conscript Fathers,” said Gaius Marcellus Major, on his feet, “this meeting has been convoked to deal with the proconsulship of Gaius Julius Caesar, governor of the three Gauls and Illyricum, in accordance with the law the consuls Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus and Marcus Licinius Crassus passed five years ago in the Popular Assembly. As stipulated in the lex Pompeia Licinia, today this House may freely discuss what to do with Gaius Caesar's tenure of office, his provinces, his army and his imperium. Under the law as it existed at the time the lex Pompeia Licinia was passed, the House on this day would have debated which of the senior magistrates in office this year it preferred to send to govern Gaius Caesar's provinces in March of next year, the latest date provided for under the lex Pompeia Licinia. However, during the sole consulship of Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus two years ago, the law was changed. It is now possible for the House to debate in a new and different way. Namely, that there is a small group of men sitting here who have been praetors or consuls, but who declined to govern a province following their tenure of office. With full legality this House may decide to utilize those reserves and appoint a new governor or governors for Illyricum and the three Gauls immediately. The consuls and praetors in office this year are disbarred from going to govern a province for five years, but we cannot possibly permit Gaius Caesar to continue to govern for five more years, can we?” Gaius Marcellus Major paused, his dark, not unattractive face reflecting his enjoyment. No one spoke, so he pressed on.“ As all of us present here today know, Gaius Caesar has wrought wonders in his provinces. Eight years ago he started out with Illyricum, Italian Gaul and a Further Gaul which consisted of the Roman Gallic Province. Eight years ago he started out with two legions stationed in Italian Gaul and one in the Province. Eight years ago he started out to govern three provinces at peace, as they had been for a very long time. And during his first year the Senate approved of his acting to prevent the migrating tribe of the Helvetii from entering the Province. It did not authorize him to enter that region known as Gallia Comata to make war on one King Ariovistus of the Suebic Germani, titled Friend and Ally of the Roman People. It did not authorize him to recruit more legions. It did not authorize him, having subdued King Ariovistus, to march further into Gaul of the Long-hairs and pursue a war against tribes having no alliances with Rome. It did not authorize him to set up colonies of so-called Roman citizens beyond the Padus River in Italian Gaul. It did not authorize him to recruit and number his legions of non-citizen Italian Gauls as proper, fully Roman legions. It did not authorize him to make war, peace, treaties or accommodations in Gaul of the Long-hairs. It did not authorize him to maltreat ambassadors in good standing from certain Germanic tribes.”