Fortune's Favorites (50 page)

He spun round to face the silent assemblage, and said in loud, stern, unstammering voice, “I am your Pontifex Maximus! That I speak without stammer or stumble is evidence enough that Jupiter Optimus Maximus is using me as his vessel, and that I am gifted with his tongue. I say that the wife of this man is unclean, that her presence in his life and house is an affront to our gods, and that she must be removed from his life and his house immediately. I do not require a vote. If any man here disagrees with me, let him say so now.”

The silence was profound, as if no men stood there at all.

Metellus Pius swung back to face the Dictator. “We direct you, Lucius Cornelius Sulla, to instruct your servants to carry your wife, Caecilia Metella Dalmatica, out of your house and convey her to the temple of Juno Sospita, where she must remain until she dies. On no account must you set eyes upon her. And after she has been taken away, I direct the Rex Sacrorum and the flamen Martialis in lieu of the flamen Dialis to conduct the purification rites in Lucius Cornelius's house.”

He pulled his toga over his head. “O Celestial Twins, you who are called Castor and Pollux, or the Dioscuri, or the Dei Penates, or any other name you might prefer-you who may be gods or goddesses or of no sex at all-we have come together in your temple because we have need of your intercession with the mighty Jupiter Optimus Maximus-whose offspring you may or may not be-and with the triumphator Hercules Invictus. We pray that you will testify before all the gods that we are sincere, and have striven to right whatever wrong it is that has been done. In accordance with our contractual agreements, which go back to the battle at Lake Regillus, we hereby promise you a sacrifice of twin white foals as soon as we can find such a rare offering. Look after us, we beg you, as you have always done.”

The auspices were taken, and confirmed the decision of the Pontifex Maximus. The clear morning light, which struck the interior of the temple through its open doorway, turned suddenly darker when the sun moved toward its zenith, and a chill breath of some strange wind came whistling softly in the sunlight's stead.

“One final matter before we go,” said Sulla.

The feet stilled at once.

“We must replace the Sibylline Books, for though we have the Book of Vegoe and Tages still safe in the temple of Apollo, that work is unhelpful in any situation wherein foreign gods are involved, as is Hercules Invictus. There are many sibyls throughout the world, and some who are closely connected to the Sibyl of Cumae who wrote her verses on palm leaves and offered them to King Tarquinius Priscus so long ago. Pontifex Maximus, I wish you to depute someone to organize a search throughout the world for the verses which were contained in our prophetic books.”

“You are right, Lucius Cornelius, it must be done,” said Metellus Pius gravely. “I will find a man fit for the purpose.”

The Dictator and the Pontifex Maximus walked back to Sulla's house together.

“My daughter won't take it kindly,” said the Dictator, “but if she hears it from you, she may not blame me for it.”

“I am very sorry for this mess.”

“So,” said Sulla unhappily, “am I!”

Cornelia Sulla did believe her father, a fact which surprised her as much as it did him.

“Insofar as you're able, Father, I think you do love her, and I don't think so badly of you that I credit you with wanting to be rid of her.”

“Is she dying?” asked Metellus Pius, smitten with a qualm because it had been his idea to place Dalmatica in the temple of Juno Sospita for however much longer she had to live.

“Very soon now, Lucius Tuccius says. She's full of a growth.”

“Then let us get it over and done with.”

Eight sturdy litter-bearers took Dalmatica from her sickbed, but not in dignified silence; the forbearance with which Sulla's wife had conducted her life to date vanished in the moment she was informed of the priests' decision, and realized she would never see Sulla again. She screamed, she wept, she shrieked his name over and over and over as they carried her away, while Sulla sat in his study with his hands over his ears and the tears coursing down his face. One more price to pay. But did he have to pay it for Fortune's sake-or for the sake of Metrobius?

There were four temples in a row outside the Servian Walls in the vegetable markets: Pietas, Janus, Spes, and Juno Sospita. Though this Juno was not one of the primary goddesses who looked after gravid women, she was simultaneously a warrior offshoot of the Great Mother of Pessinus, Juno of Snakes from Lanuvium, Queen of Heaven, and Savior of Women. Perhaps because of this last aspect in her makeup, it had long been the custom for women safely delivered of a child to bring the afterbirth to Juno Sospita and leave it in her temple as an offering.

At the time of the Italian War, when money had been short and temple slaves few, the Metella Balearica who had been wife to Appius Claudius Pulcher had dreamed that Juno Sospita appeared to her complaining bitterly that her temple was so filthy she couldn't live in it. So Balearica had gone to the consul, Lucius Caesar, and demanded that he help her scrub it out. They had found more than rotting placentas; the place was green and runny with the detritus of dead women, dead bitches, dead babies, rats. Herself pregnant at the time she and Lucius Caesar had performed their stomach-turning labor, Caecilia Metella Balearica had died two months later after giving birth to her sixth child, Publius Clodius.

But the temple had been beautifully kept ever since; the offered afterbirths were placed in an ooze-proof basket and taken away regularly to be ritually burned by the flaminica Dialis (or, in these days, by her designated replacement), and no temple floor was cleaner or temple interior sweeter-smelling. Cornelia Sulla had prepared a place for Dalmatica's bed, to which the litter-bearers transferred her in an agony of terror, men brought into a woman's precinct. She was still crying out for Sulla, but weakly, near her end, and seemed not to recognize her surroundings.

A painted statue of the goddess stood upon a plinth; she wore shoes with upturned toes, brandished a spear, and faced a rearing snake, but the most striking aspect of her image was the real goatskin draped about her shoulders, tied at her waist, and with its head and horns perched atop the goddess's dark brown hair like a helmet. There beneath this outlandish creature sat Cornelia Sulla and Metellus Pius, each holding one of Dalmatica's hands to help her surmount the mortal barriers of pain and loss. The wait was one of hours only, a spiritual rather than a physical ordeal. The poor woman died still asking to see Sulla, apparently deaf to the reasonable answers both Cornelia Sulla and Metellus Pius gave her.

When she was dead the Pontifex Maximus had the undertakers set up her lectus funebris inside the temple, as she could not be taken home to lie in state. Nor could she be displayed; she sat in the traditional upright position completely covered by a black, gold-edged cloth, hedged in by the keening professional mourners, and had for her background that strange goddess with goatskin and rearing snake and spear.

“When one has written the sumptuary law,” said Sulla afterward, “one can afford to ignore it.”

As a result, Caecilia Metella Dalmatica's funeral cost one hundred talents, and boasted over two dozen chariot-borne actors who wore the ancestral wax masks of the Caecilii Metelli and two patrician families, Aemilius Scaurus and Cornelius Sulla. But the crowd which thronged the Circus Flaminius (it had been decided that to bring her body inside the pomerium would be imprudent, given her unclean status) appreciated so much luster less than they did the sight of Dalmatica's three-year-old twins, Faustus and Fausta, clad in black and carried by a black-festooned female giant from Further Gaul.

On the Kalends of September the real legislating began, an onslaught of such dimensions that the Senate reeled.

“The present law courts are clumsy, time-consuming and not realistic,” said Sulla from his curule chair. “No comitia should hear civil or criminal charges-the procedures are too long, too liable to political manipulation, and too influenced by the fame or popularity of the accused-not to mention his defending advocates. And a jury which might be as large as several thousand electors is as unwieldy as it is injudicious.”

Having thus neatly disposed of a trial process in one of the Assemblies, Sulla went on. “I will give Rome seven permanent standing courts. Treason, extortion, embezzlement, bribery, forgery, violence, and murder. All of these except the last one involve the State or the Treasury in some way, and will be presided over by one of the six junior praetors, according to the lots. The murder court will try all cases of murder, arson, magic, poison, perjury, and a new crime which I will call judicial murder-that is, exile achieved through the agency of a court. I expect that the murder court will be the busiest, though the simplest. And I will see it presided over by a man who has been aedile, though not yet praetor. The consuls will appoint him.”

Hortensius sat horrified, for his greatest victories had been fought in one of the Assemblies, where his style and his ability to sway a big crowd had made of him a legend; juries of the size staffing a court were too intimate to suit him.

“Genuine advocacy will die!” he cried.

“What does that matter?” asked Sulla, looking astonished. “More important by far is the judicial process, and I intend to take that off the Assemblies, Quintus Hortensius, make no mistake about it! However, from the Assembly of the People I will seek a law to sanction the establishment of my standing courts, and by the provisions of that law all three Assemblies will formally hand over their juridical duties to my standing courts.”

“Excellent!” said the historian Lucius Cornelius Sisenna. “Every man tried in court will therefore be tried by the consent of the Assemblies! That means a man will not be able to appeal to an Assembly after the court has delivered its verdict.”

“Exactly, Sisenna! It renders the appeal process null and void, and eliminates the Assemblies as judges of men.”

“That is disgusting!” shouted Catulus. “Not only disgusting, but absolutely unconstitutional! Every Roman citizen is entitled to an appeal!”

“Appeal and trial are one and the same, Quintus Lutatius,” said Sulla, “and part of Rome's new constitution.”

“The old constitution was good enough in matters like this!”

“In matters like this history has shown us all too clearly that the provisions of the old constitution led to many a man who ought to have been convicted getting off because some Assembly was persuaded by some trick rhetoric to overturn a legal court decision. The political capital made out of such Assembly trials and appeals was odious, Quintus Lutatius. Rome is too big and too busy these days to be mired down in customs and procedures invented when Rome was little more than a village. I have not denied any man a fair trial. I have in fact made his trial fairer. And made the procedure simpler.”

“The juries?'' asked Sisenna.

“Will be purely senatorial-one more reason why I need a pool of at least four hundred men in the Senate. Jury duty was a burden, and will be a burden when there are seven courts to staff. However, I intend to reduce the size of juries. The old fifty-one-man jury will be retained only in cases of the highest crimes against the State. In future jury size will depend on the number of men available to sit, and if for any reason there is an even number of men on a jury, then a tied decision will count as an acquittal. The Senate is already divided into decuries of ten men, each headed by a patrician senator. I will use these decuries as the jury base, though no decury will be permanently seconded to duty in one particular court. The jury for each individual trial in any court will be selected by lot after the trial date has been set.”

“I like it,” said the younger Dolabella.

“I hate it!” cried Hortensius. “What happens if my decury is drawn for jury duty while I myself am occupied in acting for a defendant in another trial?”

“Why, then you'll just have to learn to fit both in,” said Sulla, smiling mirthlessly. “Whores do it, Hortensius! You ought to be able to.”

“Oh, Quintus, shut your mouth!” breathed Catulus.

“Who decides the number of men to staff a particular jury?” asked the younger Dolabella.

“The court president,” said Sulla, “but only to a limited extent. The real determination will depend upon the number of decuries available. I would hope to see a figure between twenty-five and thirty-five men. Not all of a decury will be seconded at once-that would keep jury numbers even.”

“The six junior praetors will be each given presidency of a court by lot,” said Metellus Pius. “Does that mean the old system will still prevail to decide who will be urban and who foreign praetor?”

“No, I will abolish giving urban praetor to the man at the top of the poll, and foreign praetor to the man who comes in second,” said Sulla. “In future, all eight jobs will be decided purely by the lots.”

But Lepidus wasn't interested in which praetor would get what; he asked the question he already knew the answer to, just to make Sulla say it. “You therefore intend to remove all court participation from the knights?”

“Absolutely. With one brief intermission, the control of Rome's juries has rested with the knights since the time of Gaius Gracchus. That will stop! Gaius Gracchus neglected to incorporate a clause in his law which allowed a corrupt knight juror to be prosecuted. Senators are fully liable under the law, I will make sure of that!”

“So what is left for the urban and foreign praetors to do?” asked Metellus Pius.

“They will be responsible for all civil litigation,” said Sulla, “as well as, in the case of the foreign praetor, criminal litigation between non-Romans. However, I am removing the right of the urban and foreign praetor to make a judgment in a civil case himself-instead, he will pass the case to a single judge drawn by lot from a panel of senators and knights, and that man will act as iudex. His decision will be binding on all of the parties, though the urban or foreign praetor may elect to supervise the proceedings.”

Catulus now spoke because Hortensius, still red-faced and angry at Sulla's gibe, would not ask. “As the constitution stands at the moment, Lucius Cornelius, only a legally convoked Assembly can pass a sentence of death. If you intend to remove all trials from the Assemblies, does this mean you will empower your courts to levy a death sentence?”