Fortune's Favorites (64 page)

He had done what he could, and overlooked very little. The Senate was docile, the Assemblies virtually impotent, the tribunes of the plebs mere figureheads, his courts a popular as well as a practical success, and the future governors of provinces hamstrung. The Treasury was full, and its bureaucrats mercilessly obliged to fall into proper practices of accounting. If the Ordo Equester didn't think the loss of sixteen hundred knights who had fallen victim to Sulla's proscriptions was enough of a lesson, Sulla drove it home by stripping the knights of the Public Horse of all their social privileges, then directed that all men exiled by courts staffed by knight juries should come home.

He had crotchets, of course. Women suffered yet again when he forbade any female guilty of adultery to remarry. Gambling (which he abhorred) was forbidden on all events except boxing matches and human footraces, neither of which drew a crowd, as he well knew. But his chief crotchet was the public servant, whom he despised as disorganized, slipshod, lazy, and venal. So he regulated every aspect of the working lives of Rome's secretaries, clerks, scribes, accountants, heralds, lictors, messengers, the priestly attendants called calatores, the men who reminded other men of yet other men's names-nomenclatores-and general public servants who had no real job description beyond the fact that they were apparitores. In future, none of these men would know whose service they would enter when the new magistrates came into office; no magistrate could ask for public servants by name. Lots would be drawn three years in advance, and no group would consistently serve the same sort of magistrate.

He found new ways to annoy the Senate, having already banned every noisy demonstration of approbation or disapproval and changed the order in which senators spoke; now he put a law on the tablets which severely affected the incomes of certain needy senators by limiting the amount of money provincial delegations could spend when they came to Rome to sing the praises of an ex-governor, which meant these delegations could not (as they had in the past) give money to certain needy senators.

It was a full program of laws which covered every aspect of Roman public life as well as much Roman life hitherto private. Everyone knew the parameters of his lot-how much he could spend, how much he could take, how much he paid the Treasury, who he could marry, whereabouts he would be tried, and what he would be tried for. A massive undertaking executed, it seemed, virtually single-handed. The knights were down, but military heroes were up, up, up. The Plebeian Assembly and its tribunes were down, but the Senate was up, up, up. Those closely related to the proscribed were down, but men like Pompey the Great were up, up, up. The advocates who had excelled in the Assemblies (like Quintus Hortensius) were down, but the advocates who excelled in the more intimate atmosphere of the courts (like Cicero) were up, up, up.

“Little wonder that Rome is reeling, though I don't hear a single voice crying Sulla nay,” said the new consul, Appius Claudius Pulcher, to his colleague in the consulship, Publius Servilius Vatia.

“One reason for that,” said Vatia, “lies in the good sense behind so much of what he has legislated. He is a wonder!”

Appius Claudius nodded without enthusiasm, but Vatia didn't misinterpret this apathy; his colleague was not well, had not been well since his return from the inevitable siege of Nola which he seemed to have supervised on and off for a full ten years. He was, besides, a widower burdened with six children who were already notorious for their lack of discipline and a distressing tendency to conduct their tempestuous and deadly battles in public.

Taking pity on him, Vatia patted his back cheerfully. “Oh, come, Appius Claudius, look at your future more brightly, do! It's been long and hard for you, but you've finally arrived.”

“I won't have arrived until I restore my family's fortune,” said Appius Claudius morosely. “That vile wretch Philippus took everything I had and gave it to Cinna and Carbo- and Sulla has not given it back.”

“You should have reminded him,” said Vatia reasonably. “He has had a great deal to do, you know. Why didn't you buy up big during the proscriptions?”

“I was at Nola, if you remember,” said the unhappy one.

“Next year you'll be sent to govern a province, and that will set all to rights.”

“If my health holds up.”

“Oh, Appius Claudius! Stop glooming! You'll survive!”

“I can't be sure of that" was the pessimistic reply. “With my luck, I'll be sent to Further Spain to replace Pius.”

“You won't, I promise you,” soothed Vatia. “If you won't ask Lucius Cornelius on your own behalf, I will! And I'll ask him to give you Macedonia. That's always good for a few bags of gold and a great many important local contracts. Not to mention selling citizenships to rich Greeks.”

“I didn't think there were any,” said Appius Claudius.

“There are always rich men, even in the poorest countries. It is the nature of some men to make money. Even the Greeks, with all their political idealism, failed to legislate the wealthy man out of existence. He'd pop up in Plato's Republic, I promise you!”

“Like Crassus, you mean.”

“An excellent example! Any other man would have plummeted into obscurity after Sulla cut him dead, but not our Crassus!”

They were in the Curia Hostilia, where the New Year's Day inaugural meeting of the Senate was being held because there was no temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, and the size of the Senate had grown sufficiently to render places like Jupiter Stator and Castor's too small for a comfortable meeting that was to be followed by a feast.

“Hush!” said Appius Claudius. “Sulla is going to speak.”

“Well, Conscript Fathers,” the Dictator commenced, voice jovial, “basically it is all done. It was my avowed intention to set Rome back on her feet and make new laws for her that fulfilled the needs of the mos maiorum. I have done so. But I will continue as Dictator until Quinctilis, when I will hold the elections for the magistrates of next year. This you already know. However, I believe some of you refuse to credit that a man endowed with such power would ever be foolish enough to step down. So I repeat that I will step down from the Dictatorship after the elections in Quinctilis. This means that next year's magistrates will be the last personally chosen by me. In future years all the elections will be free, open to as many candidates as want to stand. There are those who have consistently disapproved of the Dictator's choosing his magistrates, and putting up only as many names for voting as there are jobs to fill. But-as I have always maintained!-the Dictator must work with men who are prepared to back him wholeheartedly. The electorate cannot be relied upon to return the best men, nor even the men who are overdue for office and entitled to that office by virtue of their rank and experience. So as the Dictator I have been able to ensure I have both the men I wish to work with and to whom office was morally and ethically owed. Like my dear absent Pontifex Maximus, Quintus Caecilius Metellus Pius. He continues to be worthy of my favor, for he is already on the way to Further Spain, there to contend with the outlawed felon, Quintus Sertorius.”

“He's rambling a bit,” said Catulus clinically.

“Because he has nothing to say,” said Hortensius.

“Except that he will stand down in Quinctilis.”

“And I am actually beginning to believe that.”

But that New Year's Day, so auspiciously begun, was to end with some long-delayed bad news from Alexandria.

Ptolemy Alexander the Younger's time had finally come at the beginning of the year just gone, the second year of Sulla's reign. Word had arrived then from Alexandria that King Ptolemy Soter Chickpea was dead and his daughter Queen Berenice now ruling alone. Though the throne came through her, under Egyptian law she could not occupy it without a king. Might, the embassage from Alexandria humbly asked, Lucius Cornelius Sulla grant Egypt a new king in the person of Ptolemy Alexander the Younger?

“What happens if I deny you?'' asked Sulla.

“Then King Mithridates and King Tigranes will win Egypt,” said the leader of the delegation. “The throne must be occupied by a member of the Ptolemaic dynasty. If Ptolemy Alexander is not made King and Pharaoh, then we will have to send to Mithridates and Tigranes for the elder of the two bastards, Ptolemy Philadelphus who was called Auletes because of his piping voice.”

“I can see that a bastard might be able to assume the title of King, but can he legally become Pharaoh?” asked Sulla, thus revealing that he had studied the Egyptian monarchy.

“Were he the son of a common woman, definitely not'' was the answer. “However, Auletes and his younger brother are the sons of Ptolemy Soter and Princess Arsinoe, the royal concubine who was the eldest legitimate daughter of the King of Nabataea. It has long been the custom for all the small dynasts of Arabia and Palestina to send their oldest daughters to the Pharaoh of Egypt as his concubines, for that is a more august and respectable fate than marriage to other small dynasts-and brings greater security to their fathers, who all need Egyptian co-operation to carry on their trading activities up the Sinus Arabicus and across the various deserts.”

“So you're saying that Alexandria and Egypt would accept one of the Ptolemaic bastards because his mother was royal?”

“In the event that we cannot have Ptolemy Alexander, that is inevitable, Lucius Cornelius.”

“Mithridatid and Tigranic puppets,” said Sulla thoughtfully.

“As their wives are the daughters of Mithridates, that too is inevitable. Tigranes is now too close to the Egyptian border for us to insist the Ptolemy bastards divorce these girls. He would invade in the name of Mithridates. And Egypt would fall. We are not militarily strong enough to deal with a war of that magnitude. Besides which, the girls have sufficient Ptolemaic blood to pass on the throne. In the event,” said the delegation's leader suavely, “that the child of Ptolemy Soter and his concubine the daughter of the King of Idumaea fails to grow up and provide Auletes with a wife of half-Ptolemaic blood.”

Sulla looked suddenly brisk and businesslike. “Leave it with me, I'll attend to the matter. We can't have Armenia and Pontus in control of Egypt!”

His own deliberations were already concluded long since, so without delay Sulla set off for the villa on the Pincian Hill and an interview with Ptolemy Alexander.

“Your day has arrived,” said the Dictator to his hostage, no longer such a very young man; he had turned thirty-five.

“Chickpea is dead?” asked Ptolemy Alexander eagerly.

“Dead and entombed. Queen Berenice rules alone.”

“Then I must go!” Ptolemy Alexander squawked, agitated. “I must go! There is no time to be wasted!”

“You can go when I say you can go, not a moment before,” said Sulla harshly. “Sit down, Your Majesty, and listen to me.”

His Majesty sat with his draperies flattening limply around him like a pricked puffball, his eyes very strange between the solid lines of stibium he had painted on both upper and lower lids, extended out toward the temples in imitation of the antique Eye of Egypt, the wadjet; as he had also painted in thick black brows and whitened the area between them and the black line of the upper lids, Sulla found it absolutely impossible to decide what Ptolemy Alexander's real eyes held. The whole effect, he decided, was distinctly sinister-and probably intended to be.

“You cannot talk to a king as to an inferior,” said His Majesty stiffly.

“There is no king in all the world who is not my inferior,” Sulla answered contemptuously. “I rule Rome! That makes me the most powerful man between the Rivers of Ocean and Indus. So you will listen, Your Majesty-and without interrupting me! You may go to Alexandria and assume the throne. But only upon certain conditions. Is that understood?”

“What conditions?”

“That you make your will and lodge it with the Vestal Virgins here in Rome. It need only be a simple will. In the event that you die without legitimate issue, you will bequeath the Kingdom of Egypt to Rome.”

Ptolemy Alexander gasped. “I can't do that!”

“You can do anything I say you must do-if you want to rule in Alexandria. That is my price. Egypt to fall to Rome if you die without legitimate issue.”

The unsettling eyes within their embossed ritual framework slid from side to side, and the richly carmined mouth- full and self-indulgent-worked upon itself in a way which reminded Sulla of Philippus. “All right, I agree to your price.” Ptolemy Alexander shrugged. “I don't subscribe to the old Egyptian religion, so what can it matter to me after I'm dead?”

“Excellently reasoned!” said Sulla heartily. “I brought my secretary with me so you'd be able to make out the document here and now. With every royal seal and your personal cartouche attached, of course. I want no arguments from the Alexandrians after you're dead.” He clapped for a Ptolemaic servant, and asked that his own secretary be summoned. As they waited he said idly, “There is one other condition, actually.”

“What?” asked Ptolemy Alexander warily.

“I believe that in a bank at Tyre you have a sum of two thousand talents of gold deposited by your grandmother, the third Queen Cleopatra. Mithridates got the money she left on Cos, but not what she left at Tyre. And King Tigranes has not yet managed to subdue the cities of Phoenicia. He's too busy with the Jews. You will leave those two thousand talents of gold to Rome.”

One look at Sulla's face informed His Majesty that there could be no argument; he shrugged again, nodded.

Flosculus the secretary came, Ptolemy Alexander sent one of his own slaves for his seals and cartouche, and the will was soon made and signed and witnessed.

“I will lodge it for you,” said Sulla, rising, “as you cannot cross the pomerium to visit Vesta.”

Two days later Ptolemy Alexander the Younger departed from Rome with the delegation, and took ship in Puteoli for Africa; it was easier to cross the Middle Sea at this point and then to hug the African coast from the Roman province to Cyrenaica, and Cyrenaica to Alexandria. Besides which, the new King of Egypt wanted to go nowhere near Mithridates or Tigranes, and did not trust to his luck.