Caesar (68 page)

“Spinther,” said Pompey, showing his teeth, “was still busy dithering over sending troops to Egypt after Gabinius had already restored Ptolemy Auletes to his throne. So let's not get our hopes up by expecting great things from Spinther. I'll send word to Ahenobarbus to join up with him and Attius Varus. Then we'll see.” But every scrap of news over the next three days was dismal: Caesar had taken Ariminum, then he had taken Pisaurum, then he had taken Fanum Fortunae. With cheers and garlands, not opposition. And that was the real worry. No one had thought of the people of rural Italia and the smaller cities, the many towns. Particularly in Picenum, Pompey's own purlieu. To discover now that Caesar was advancing unopposed—with a mere two cohorts!—paying for what he ate and harming no one, was appalling news. Capped in the afternoon of the seventeenth day of January by two messages: the first, that Lentulus Spinther and his ten cohorts had quit Ancona to retreat to Asculum Picentum; and the second, that Caesar had been cheered into Ancona. The Senate met at once.“ Incredible!” shouted that famous fence-sitter Philippus. “With five thousand men, Spinther wouldn't stay to meet Caesar and a thousand men! What am I doing here in Rome? Why am I not taking myself to grovel at Caesar's feet this moment? The man's got you bluffed! You're exactly what he always calls you—couch generals! And that goes for you too these days, Pompeius Magnus!”

“I am not responsible for deputing Spinther to defend Ancona!” Pompey roared. “That, Philippus, if you remember, was the decision of this House! And you voted for it!”

“I wish I'd voted to make Caesar the King of Rome!”

“Shut your seditious mouth!” shrieked Cato.“ And you, you pokered-up bag of meaningless political cant, can shut yours!” Philippus shouted back.“ Order!” said Gaius Marcellus Minor in a tired voice. Which seemed to work better than a holler; Philippus and Cato sat down, glaring at each other.“ We are here to decide on a course of action,” Marcellus Minor went on, “not to bicker. How much bickering do you think is going on at Caesar's headquarters? The answer to that, I imagine, is none. Caesar wouldn't tolerate it. Why should Rome's consuls?”

“Because Rome's consuls are Rome's servants, and Caesar has refused to be anyone's servant!” said Cato.“ Oh, Marcus Cato, why do you persist in being so difficult, so obstructive? I want answers, not irrelevant statements or silly questions. How do we proceed to deal with this crisis?”

“I suggest,” said Metellus Scipio, “that this House confirm Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus in command of all our troops and legates.”

“I agree, Quintus Scipio,” said Cato. “Those who precipitate great crises should be the ones to put an end to them. I hereby nominate Gnaeus Pompeius as commander-in-chief.”

“Listen,” growled Pompey, acutely aware that Cato had refrained from using Magnus, “you said that to me the other day, and I resent it! I didn't cause this 'great crisis,' Cato! You did! You and all the rest of your boni confederates! I'm just the one you expect to get you out of the shit! But don't blame me for dropping us into it! You did, Cato, you did!”

“Order!” sighed Marcellus Minor. “We have a motion, but I doubt a division is necessary. I'll see hands and hear ayes.” The House voted overwhelmingly to appoint Pompey commander-in-chief of the Republic's forces and legates. Marcus Marcellus rose to his feet. “Conscript Fathers,” he said, “I hear through Marcus Cicero that recruitment in Campania is atrociously slow. How can we speed matters up? We have to lay our hands on more soldiers.”

“Ha ha ha!” sneered Favonius, smarting because Pompey had chastised his beloved Cato. “Who was it always used to say that all he had to do to raise troops in Italia was stamp his foot on the ground? Who was that?”

“You, Favonius, have four legs, whiskers and a long, naked tail!” snarled Pompey. “Tace!”

“Speak as a result of the motion, Gnaeus Pompeius,” said Gaius Marcellus Minor.“ Very well then, I will!” snapped Pompey. “If recruitment in Campania is proceeding at a snail's pace, one can only blame those doing the recruiting. Like Marcus Cicero, whose head is probably in some obscure manuscript when it ought to be bent over the enlistment books. There are many thousands of soldiers to be had, Conscript Fathers, and you have just made it my job—my job!—to produce them. I will produce them. But a lot faster if the rats who skitter around Rome's sewers get out of my way!”

“Are you calling me a rat?” yelled Favonius, leaping up.“ Oh, sit down, you dullard! I called you a rat ages ago!” said Pompey. “Attend to business, Marcus Favonius, and try to use what passes for your mind!”

“Order!” said Marcellus Minor wearily.“ That's the trouble with this wretched body!” Pompey went on wrathfully. “You all think you're entitled to your say! You all think you're entitled to run things! You all think every decision made has to be a democratic one! Well, let me tell you something! Armies can't be run on democratic principles. If they are, they founder. There's a commander-in-chief, and his word is law! LAW! I am now the commander-in-chief, and I won't be harassed and frustrated by a lot of incompetent idiots!”

He got to his feet and walked to the middle of the floor. “I hereby declare a state of tumultus! On my say-so, not your vote! We are at war! And the last vote you made was the one that gave me the high command! I am assuming it! You will do as you are told! Hear me? Hear me? You will do as you are told!”

“That depends,” drawled Philippus, grinning. A comment Pompey chose to ignore. “It is my command that every senator leave Rome immediately! Any senator who remains in Rome beyond tomorrow will be regarded as a partisan of Caesar's, and be treated accordingly!”

“Ye Gods,” said Philippus with a huge sigh, “I hate Campania with winter coming on! Why shouldn't I remain in nice, snug Rome?”

“By all means do so, Philippus!” said Pompey. “You are, after all, husband to Caesar's niece!”

“And father-in-law to Cato,” purred Philippus.

* * *

The state of absolute confusion which followed upon Pompey's order only made things worse for those in Rome below the level of senator. From the time the fleeing Conscript Fathers had broadcast the news that Caesar had crossed the Rubicon, the city had spun into a panic. The word the knights used most frequently was that frightful word which had come into existence under the dictatorship of Sulla: “proscription.” The emblazoning of one's name on a list pinned to the rostra, which meant that one was declared an enemy of Rome and the dictatorship, that any person seeing one could kill one, that one's property and money was confiscate to the State. Two thousand senators and knights had died, and Sulla had filled his empty treasury on the profits. For everyone with much to lose assumed as a matter of course that Caesar would follow in Sulla's footsteps—wasn't it exactly like that time after Sulla landed in Brundisium and marched up the peninsula? With the common folk cheering and throwing flowers? He too had paid for every leaf, sheaf, root and shoot his army ate. What was the difference between a Cornelian and a Julian, after all? They existed on a plane far above knight-businessmen, who were less to them than the dust beneath their feet. Only Balbus, Oppius, Rabirius Postumus and Atticus tried to stem the panic, explain that Caesar was no Sulla, that all he was after was the vindication of his battered dignitas, that he was not about to assume the dictatorship and slaughter people indiscriminately. That he had been forced to march by the senseless, obdurate opposition of a small clique within the Senate, and that as soon as he had forced that clique to recant its policies and its decrees, he would revert to ordinary behavior. It did little good; no one was calm enough to listen and common sense had flown away. Disaster had struck; Rome was about to be plunged into yet another civil war. Proscriptions would follow—hadn't everyone heard that Pompey too had spoken angrily of proscriptions, of thousands being thrown off the Tarpeian Rock? Oh, caught between a harpy and a siren! Whichever side won, the knights of the Eighteen were sure to suffer!Most of the senators, packing trunks, trying to explain to wives, making new wills, had no idea exactly why they had been ordered to leave Rome. Not requested: ordered. If they stayed they would be regarded as Caesar's partisans, that was all they really understood. Sons over the age of sixteen were demanding to come too; daughters with a wedding date fixed shrilled and fluttered; bankers and accountants ran from one noble senatorial client to another, explaining feverishly that cash was in short supply, now was not the time to sell land, sleeping partnerships were worth nothing when business had slumped. Little wonder, perhaps, that the most important thing of all was entirely overlooked. Not Pompey, not Cato, not any of the three Marcelli, not Lentulus Crus nor anyone else had so much as thought of emptying the Treasury. On the eighteenth day of January, amid overladen baggage carts trundling in hundreds through the Capena Gate en route to Neapolis, Formiae, Pompeii, Herculaneum, Capua and other Campanian destinations, the two consuls and almost all the Senate fled out of Rome. Leaving the Treasury stuffed to the rafters with money and bullion, not to mention various emergency hoards of bullion in the temples of Ops, Juno Moneta, Hercules Olivarius and Mercury, and thousands of chests of money in Juno Lucina, Iuventus, Venus Libitina and Venus Erucina. The only man who had thought to draw money from the tribuni aerarii in charge of the Treasury had been Ahenobarbus some days earlier; he had asked for and received six million sesterces to pay the many troops he confidently expected to obtain among the Marsi and Paeligni. The public fortune of Rome remained inside Rome. Not every senator left. Lucius Aurelius Cotta, Lucius Piso Censor and Lucius Marcius Philippus were among those who stayed. Perhaps to reinforce this decision in each other, they met for dinner on the nineteenth at Philippus's house.“ I'm a newly married man with a baby son,” said Piso, his bad teeth showing. “A perilous enough situation for a man of my age without rushing off like a Sardinian bandit after a sheep!”

“Well,” said Cotta, smiling gently, “I stayed because I do not believe Caesar will lose. He's my nephew, and I've never known him to act without caution, despite his reputation. It's all thought out very carefully.”

“And I stayed because I'm too lazy to uproot myself. Huh!” Philippus snorted. “Fancy haring off to Campania with winter in the offing! Villas shut up, no staff to light the braziers, the fish sleepy and the diet endless plates of cabbage.” Which struck everyone as funny; the meal proceeded merrily. Piso had not brought his new wife, and Cotta was a widower, but Philippus's wife attended. So did her thirteen-year-old son, Gaius Octavius.“ And what do you think of it all, young Gaius Octavius?” asked Cotta, his great-great-uncle. The boy, whom he knew from many visits (Atia worried about her great-uncle, who lived alone), fascinated him. Not in the same way as Caesar had when a child, though there were similarities. The beauty, certainly. What good luck for young Gaius Octavius, however, that his ears stuck out! Caesar had had no flaw at all. The boy was very fair too, though his eyes were more widely opened and a luminous grey—not eerie eyes like Caesar's. Frowning, Cotta sought for the correct word to describe their expression, and settled upon “careful.” Yes, that was it. They were careful. At first one thought them innocent and candid, until one realized that they never really told one what the mind behind them was thinking. They were permanently veiled and never passionate.“ I think, Uncle Cotta, that Caesar will win.”

“In which we agree. Why do you think so?”

“He's better than they are.” Young Gaius Octavius found a bright red apple and sank his even white teeth into it. “In the field he has no equal—Pompeius is second rate as a general. A good organizer. If you look at his campaigns, he always won because of that. There are no brilliant battles, battles wherein his strategy and tactics will inspire another Polybius. He wore his opponents down; that was his strength. Uncle Caesar has done that too, but Uncle Caesar can boast of a dozen brilliant battles.”

“And one or two, like Gergovia, that were not brilliant.”

“Yes, but he didn't go down in them either.”

“All right,” said Cotta, “that's the battlefield. What else?”

“He understands politics. He knows how to manipulate. He doesn't tangle himself in lost causes or associate with men who do. He's quite as efficient as Pompeius off the battlefield. A better speaker, a better lawyer, a better planner.” Listening to this analysis, Lucius Piso became conscious that he disliked its author. Not proper for a boy of that age to speak like a teacher! Who did he think he was? And so pretty. Far too pretty. Another year, and he'd be offering his arse; he had that smell about him. A very precious boy.

Pompey, the consuls and a good part of the Senate reached Teanum Sidicinum in Campania on the twenty-second day of January, and here halted to bring a little order out of the chaos of evacuating the capital. Not all the senators had tacked themselves onto Pompey's cometish tail; some had scattered to invade their shut-up villas on the coast, some preferred to be anywhere other than wherever Pompey was. Titus Labienus was waiting; Pompey greeted him like a long-lost brother, even embraced him and kissed him on the cheek.“ Where have you come from?” Pompey asked, surrounded by his senatorial watchdogs—Cato, the three Marcelli and Lentulus Crus—and bolstered by a mournful Metellus Scipio.“ Placentia,” said Labienus, leaning back in his chair. Though all present knew Labienus by sight and remembered his activities as tribune of the plebs, it was ten years since any of them (including Pompey) had set eyes on him, for he had left Rome to take up duties in Italian Gaul while Caesar was still consul. They gazed at him now in some dismay; Labienus had changed. In his early forties, he looked exactly what he had become: a hard-bitten, ruthlessly authoritarian military man. His tight black curls were peppered with grey; his thin, liver-colored mouth bisected his lower face like a scar; the great hooked nose with its flaring nostrils gave him the look of an eagle; and his black eyes, narrow and contemptuous, gazed upon all of them, even upon Pompey, with the interest of a cruel boy in a group of insects owning potentially detachable wings.“ When did you leave Placentia?” asked Pompey.“ Two days after Caesar crossed the Rubicon.”