Caesar (66 page)

“No,” said Caesar levelly. “The real enemy of Rome, it would appear, is the tribunician veto, and the real traitors the tribunes of the plebs. How like Sulla the boni are! The enemy is never without, always within. And the tribunes of the plebs must be muzzled.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Move,” said Caesar.“ Move?”

“South. To Ariminum. Antonius, Quintus Cassius, Curio and Caelius are traveling the Via Flaminia at this moment, though not as fast as their messenger. I imagine they'll reach Ariminum within two days, counting this one just arrived.”

“Then you still have your imperium. If you move to Ariminum, Caesar, you have to cross the Rubicon into home territory.”

“By the time I do, Hirtius, I imagine I will be a privatus, and at full liberty to go wherever I want. Sheltered by their ultimate decree, the Senate will strip me of everything at once.”

“So you won't take the Thirteenth with you to Ariminum?” Hirtius asked, conscious that relief hadn't followed in the wake of Caesar's answer. He looked so relaxed, so tranquil, so much as he always did—the man in absolute control, never plagued by doubt, always in command of himself and events. Was that why his legates loved him? By definition he ought not to have been a man capable of inspiring love, yet he did. Not because he needed it. Because—because—oh, why? Because he was what all men wanted to be?“ Certainly I will take the Thirteenth,” said Caesar. He got to his feet. I “Have them ready to move within two hours. Full baggage train, every-thing with them including artillery.”

“Are you going to tell them where they're heading?” The fair brows rose. “Not for the time being. They're boys from across the Padus. What does the Rubicon mean to them?”

Junior legates like Gaius Asinius Pollio flew everywhere, barking orders at military tribunes and senior centurions; within those two hours the Thirteenth had struck camp and was lined up in column ready to move out. Its legionaries were fit and well rested, despite the route march Caesar had sent them on to Tergeste under the command of Pollio. They had conducted intensive military maneuvers there, then had returned to Ravenna in time for a final furlough long enough to bring them to peak fighting pitch. The pace Caesar set was a leisurely one; the Thirteenth went into a properly fortified camp still well north of the river Rubicon, the official boundary between Italian Gaul and Italia. Nothing was said, but everyone, including the legionaries and their centurions, was aware that the Rubicon loomed. They belonged to Caesar completely, and were overjoyed that he was not going to take it lying down, that he was marching to defend his hideously insulted dignitas, which was also the dignitas of everyone who served under him, from his legates to the noncombatants.“ We're marching into history,” said Pollio to his fellow junior legate, Quintus Valerius Orca; Pollio liked history.“ No one can say he didn't try to avoid this,” said Orca, and laughed. “But isn't it like him, to march with only one legion? How does he know what he'll find once he's crossed into Picenum? There might be ten legions drawn up against us.”

“Oh no, he's too clever for that,” said Pollio. “Three or four legions, maybe, but not more. And we'll beat them hollow.”

“Especially if two of them are the Sixth and the Fifteenth.”[Caesar 442.jpg]“True.” On the tenth day of January, fairly late in the afternoon, the Thirteenth reached the Rubicon. Its men were ordered to cross without pausing; camp was to be made on the far side. Caesar and his little band of legates remained on the north bank, and there took a meal. At this autumnal time of year the rivers which flowed their shortish courses from the Apennines to the Adriatic Sea were at ebb; the snows had long melted, rain was unusual. Thus despite its long course, its sources almost literally a knife edge from those of the westward-flowing Arnus in the high mountains, the Rubicon's broad stream in autumn was at most knee-deep, no obstacle to any man or beast. Little was said, though what Caesar did say was dampening in that it was so ordinary. He ate his usual plain and sparing fare—a little bread, a few olives, a hunk of cheese—then washed his hands in a bowl a servant tendered, and got up from his ivory curule chair, which he had not, it was noted, abandoned.“ To your horses,” he said. But the horse his groom led up for Caesar to mount was not one of his several beautiful, highly strung road animals; it was Toes. Like the two other Toes he had ridden into battle since Sulla gifted him with the original animal, this Toes—the veteran of the years in Gaul—was a sleek chestnut with long mane and tail and pretty dish face, an appropriately well-bred mount for any general who didn't (like Pompey) prefer a splashy white horse. Except that its feet were cloven into three genuine toes, each ending in a tiny hoof, behind which it had a footpad. Mounted, the legates watched, enthralled; they had waited for a statement of war to no avail, but now they had it. When Caesar rode Toes, he was going into battle. He nudged the animal into the lead and rode at a sedate pace across the yellowed, autumnal grass between the trees toward the sparkling stream. And there, on the vestigial bank, paused. It is here. I can still turn back. I have not yet abandoned legality, constitutionality. But once I cross this undistinguished river I pass from servant of my country to an aggressor against her. Yet I know all this. I've known it for two years. I've gone through everything—thought, planned, schemed, striven mightily. I've made incredible concessions. I would even have settled for Illyricum and one legion. But for every step of the way, I have known and understood that they would not yield. That they were determined to spit on me, to shove my face into the dust, to make a nothing out of Gaius Julius Caesar. Who is not a nothing. Who will never consent to be a nothing. You wanted it, Cato. Now you can have it. You've forced me to march against my country, to turn my face against the legal way. And, Pompeius, you are about to discover what it's like to face a competent enemy. The moment Toes wets his feet, I am an outlaw. And in order to remove the slur of outlaw from my name, I will have to go to war, fight my own countrymen—and win. What lies across the Rubicon? How many legions have they managed to get together? How much real preparation? I am basing my entire campaign on a hunch, that they have done nothing. That Pompeius doesn't know how to start a war, and that the boni don't know how to fight one. He's never once started a war, Pompeius, for all those special commands. He's the expert at mopping up. Whereas the boni have no skill at anything beyond starting a war. Once the fighting begins, how will Pompeius manage to coexist with the boni, who will retard him, harangue him, criticize him, attempt to constrain him? They've thought of this as a game, as a hypothesis. Never as an actuality. Still, I suppose it is a game. And I have the luck as well as the genius. Suddenly he threw his head back and laughed, remembering a line from his favorite poet, Menander.“ Let the dice fly high!” he cried out in the original Greek, kicked Toes gently in the ribs, and rode across the Rubicon into Italia and rebellion.

Ariminum was in no mood to fight; when Caesar and the Thirteenth reached that prosperous town at the top of the Via Flaminia, its populace turned out armed with autumn garlands, adorned the troops and cheered Caesar deafeningly. It came, Caesar had to admit, as something of a surprise, for Ariminum lay at the top of Pompey's dominions and could well have chosen Pompey and the Senate. In which case, wondered Caesar, how much fighting might there be? He learned that Thermus was in Iguvium, Lucilius Hirrus in Camerinum, Lentulus Spinther in Ancona, and Varus in Auximum. Lentulus Spinther had succeeded in raising the most troops, about ten cohorts; the others had five cohorts each. Not very fearsome odds for the Thirteenth. Especially if the ordinary folk of Italia were on Caesar's side. Suddenly that seemed likely, a great comfort. Blood wasn't what Caesar was after; the less of it he had to spill, the better. Antony, Quintus Cassius, Curio and Caelius reached the camp outside Ariminum early on that eleventh day of January. A sorry sight in torn and bloodied togas, faces bruised and cut, the two tribunes of the plebs were perfect for Caesar's purpose. He called the Thirteenth into assembly and presented Antony and Quintus Cassius to them in all their glory.“ This is why we're here!” said Caesar. “This is what we have marched into Italia to prevent! No body of Roman men, no matter how ancient or august, has the right to violate the sacred persons of the tribunes of the plebs, who came into being to protect the lot of the ordinary people, the vast numbers of the Plebs from the Head Count through Rome's soldiers to her business people and civil servants! For we cannot call the plebeians of the Senate anything other than would-be patricians! In treating two tribunes of the plebs the way the Senate's plebeians have treated Marcus Antonius and Quintus Cassius, they have abrogated their plebeian status and heritage!”

The person of a tribune of the plebs is inviolable, and his right to veto inalienable. Inalienable! All Antonius and Cassius did was to veto a scurrilous decree aimed at them and, through them, aimed at me. I have offended them, those would-be patricians of the Senate, by raising Rome's image in the eyes of the rest of the world and adding vast riches to Rome's purse. For I am not one of them. I have never been one of them. A senator, yes. A magistrate, yes. Consul, yes. But never one of that petty, small-minded, vindictive little group who call themselves the Good Men, the boni! Who have embarked upon a program designed to destroy the right of the People to a say in government, who have embarked upon a program to ensure that the only governing body left in Rome is the Senate. Their Senate, boys, not my Senate! My Senate is your servant. Their Senate wants to be your master. It wants to decide how much you are paid, when your service with generals like me is to be terminated, whether or not you are to receive a little parcel of land to settle on when you retire. It wants to regulate the size of your bonuses, your percentage of the booty, how many of you will walk in a triumphal parade. It even wants to decide whether or not you're entitled to the citizenship, whether or not your backs, which have bowed down serving Rome, are to be jellied by the barbed lash. It wants you, Rome's soldiers, to acknowledge it your master. It wants you cowed and sniveling like the meanest beggar in a Syrian street!"

Hirtius huffed contentedly. “He's away,” he said to Curio. “It's going to be one of his best speeches.”

“He can't lose,” said Curio. Caesar swept on. “This little group of men and the Senate they manipulate have impugned my dignitas, my right and entitlement to public honor through personal endeavor. All that I have done they want to destroy, calling what I have done treasonous! And in wanting to destroy my dignitas, in calling me treasonous, they are destroying your dignitas, calling what you have done treasonous!”

Think of them, boys! All those weary miles—those nundinae of empty bellies—those sword cuts, arrow punctures, spear rents—those deaths in the front line, so noble, so brave!—think of them! Think of where we've been—think of what we've done—think of the work, the sweat, the privation, the loneliness! Think of the colossal glory we've amassed for Rome! And to what avail? So that our tribunes of the plebs can be punched and kicked, so that our achievements can be sneered at, dismissed, shit upon by a precious little clique of would-be patricians! Poor soldiers and worse generals, every last one of them! Who ever heard of Cato the general? Ahenobarbus the conqueror?“ Caesar paused, grinned, shrugged. ”But who among you even knows the name Cato? Ahenobarbus, maybe—his great-grandfather wasn't a bad soldier! So, boys, I'll give you a name you do know—Gnaeus Pompeius who awarded himself the cognomen of Magnus! Yes, Gnaeus Pompeius, who ought to be fighting for me, fighting for you! But who, in his fat and torpid old age, has elected to hold a sponge on a stick to clean the arses of his boni friends! Who has turned his back on the concept of the army! Who has supported this campaign against me and my boys from its very beginning! Why? Why did he do that? Because he's outfought, outgeneraled, outclassed and outraged! Because he's not 'Great' enough to admit that someone else's army is better than any army he ever commanded! Who is there to equal my boys? No one! No one! You're the best soldiers who ever picked up a sword and a shield in Rome's name! So here I am, and here you are, on the wrong side of a river and on our way to avenge our mangled, our despised dignitas!"

I would not go to war for any reason less. I would not oppose those senatorial idiots for any reason less. My dignitas is the center of my life; it is everything I have ever done! I will not let it be taken from me! Nor see your dignitas taken from you. Whatever I am, you are! We've marched together to cut off all three of Cerberus's heads! We've suffered through snow and ice, hail and rain! We've crossed an ocean, climbed mountains, swum mighty rivers! We've beaten the bravest peoples in the world to their knees! We've made them submit to Rome! And what can poor old has-been Gnaeus Pompeius say in answer to that? Nothing, boys, nothing! So what has he chosen to do? Try to strip it all from us, boys—the honor, the fame, the glory, the miracle! Everything we lump together and call dignitas!"

He stopped, held out his arms as if to embrace them. “But I am your servant, boys. I exist because of you. It's you who must make the final decision. Do we march on into Italia to avenge our tribunes of the plebs and recover our dignitas? Or do we about-face and return to Ravenna? Which is it to be? On or back?” No one had moved. No one had coughed, sneezed, whispered a comment. And for a long moment after the General ceased speaking, that immense silence continued. Then the primipilus centurion opened his mouth.“ On!” he roared. “On, on!”

The soldiers took it up. “On! On! On! On!”

Caesar stepped down from his dais and walked into the ranks, smiling, holding out his hand to shake every hand proffered to him, until he was swallowed up in a mail-clad mass.“ What a man!” said Pollio to Orca.

But that afternoon over dinner, the four fugitives from Rome bathed and clad in leather armor, Caesar held a council of war.“ Hirtius, was my speech recorded verbatim?” he asked.“ It's being copied now, Caesar.”