Fortune's Favorites (98 page)

“You can't do this to a Julia!”

“I dislike the family implication, Mater, but there is no direct involvement of a Julia.”

“The Julii Caesares have allied themselves in marriage with the Antonii! That is reason enough!”

“No, it is not! And more fool the Julii Caesares for seeking an alliance with the Antonii! They're boors and wastrels! For I tell you, Mater, that I would not let a Julia of my own family marry any Antonius,” said Caesar, turning his shoulder.

“Reconsider, Caesar, please! You will be condemned.”

“I will not reconsider.”

The result of this confrontation was an uncomfortable meal that afternoon. Helpless to contend with two such steely opponents as her husband and her mother-in-law, Cinnilla fled back to the nursery as soon as she could, pleading colic, teething, rashes, and every other baby ailment she could think of. Which left Caesar, chin up, to ignore Aurelia, chin up.

Some did voice disapproval, but Caesar was by no means setting a precedent in taking this case; there had been many others in which consanguinity was in much higher degree than the technical objections men like Catulus raised in the prosecution of Gaius Antonius Hybrida.

Of course Hybrida could not ignore the summons, so he was waiting at the foreign praetor's tribunal with a retinue of famous faces in attendance, including Quintus Hortensius and Caesar's uncle, Gaius Aurelius Cotta. Of Marcus Tullius Cicero there was no sign, even in the audience; until, Caesar noticed out of the corner of his eye, the moment in which Cethegus opened the hearing. Trust Cicero not to miss such scandalous goings-on! Especially when the legal option of a civil suit had been chosen.

Hybrida was uneasy, Caesar saw that at once. A big, muscular fellow with a neck as thick as a corded column, Hybrida was a typical Antonius; the wiry, curly auburn hair and red-brown eyes were as Antonian as the aquiline nose and the prominent chin trying to meet across a small, thick mouth. Until he had heard about Hybrida's atrocities Caesar had dismissed the brutish face as that of a lout who drank too much, ate too much, and was overly fond of sexual pleasures. Now he knew better. It was the face of a veritable monster.

Things got off to a bad start for Hybrida when Hortensius elected to take a high hand and demanded that the suit forthwith be dismissed, alleging that if the matter was one-tenth as serious as the suit indicated, it should be heard before a criminal court. Varro Lucullus sat expressionless, unwilling to intervene unless his judge asked for his advice. Which Cethegus was not about to do. Sooner or later his turn would have come up to preside over this court, and he had not looked forward to some monotonous argument about a purse of moneys. Now here he was with a veritable plum of a case-one which might repel him, but would at least not bore him. So he dealt smartly with Hortensius and got things under way with smooth authority.

By noon Cethegus was ready to hear the witnesses, whose appearance created a sensation. Iphicrates and his companions had chosen the victims they had brought all the way from Greece with an eye to drama as well as to pity. Most moving was a man who could not testify on his own behalf at all; Hybrida had removed most of his face-and his tongue. But his wife was as articulate as she was filled with hatred, and a damning witness. Cethegus sat listening to her and looking at her poor husband green-faced and sweating. After their testimony concluded he adjourned for the day, praying he got home before he was sick.

But it was Hybrida who tried to have the last word. As he left the area of the tribunal he grasped Caesar by the arm and detained him.

“Where did you collect this sorry lot?” he asked, assuming an expression of pained bewilderment. “You must have had to comb the world! But it won't work, you know. What are they, after all? A handful of miscreant misfits! That's all! A mere handful anxious to take hefty Roman damages instead of existing on piddling Greek alms!”

“A mere handful?” roared Caesar at the top of his voice, and stilling the noise of the dispersing crowd, which turned to hear what he said. “Is that all? I say to you, Gaius Antonius Hybrida, that one would be too many! Just one! Just one man or woman or child despoiled in this frightful way is one too many! Just one man or woman or child plundered of youth and beauty and pride in being alive is one too many! Go away! Go home!”

Gaius Antonius Hybrida went home, appalled to discover that his advocates had no wish to accompany him. Even his brother had found an excuse to go elsewhere. Though he did not walk alone; beside him trotted a small plump man who had become quite a friend in the year and a half since he had joined the Senate. This man's name was Gaius Aelius Staienus, and he was hungry for powerful allies, hungry to eat free of charge at someone else's table, and very hungry for money. He had had some of Pompey's money last year, when he had been Mamercus's quaestor and incited a mutiny-oh, not a nasty, bloody mutiny! And it had all worked out extremely well in the end, with not a whiff of suspicion stealing his way.

“You're going to lose,” he said to Hybrida as they entered Hybrida's very nice mansion on the Palatine.

Hybrida was not disposed to argue. “I know.”

“But wouldn't it be nice to win?” asked Staienus dreamily. “Two thousand talents to spend, that's the reward for winning.”

“I'm going to have to find two thousand talents, which will bankrupt me for more years than I have left to live.”

“Not necessarily,” said Staienus in a purring voice. He sat down in Hybrida's cliental chair, and looked about. “Have you any of that Chian wine left?'' he asked.

Hybrida went to a console table and poured two undiluted goblets from a flagon, handed one to his guest, and sat down. He drank deeply, then gazed at Staienus. “You've got something boiling in your pot,” he said. “What is it?”

“Two thousand talents is a vast sum. In fact, one thousand talents is a vast sum.”

“That's true.” The gross little mouth peeled its thick lips back to reveal Hybrida's small and perfect white teeth. “I am not a fool, Staienus! If I agree to split the two thousand talents equally with you, you'll guarantee to get me off. Is that right?”

“That's right.”

“Then I agree. You get me off, and one thousand of those Greek talents are yours.”

“It's simple, really,” said Staienus thoughtfully. “You have Sulla to thank for it, of course. But he's dead, so he won't care if you thank me instead.”

“Stop tormenting me and tell me!”

“Oh, yes! I forgot that you prefer to torment others than be tormented yourself.” Like many small men suddenly given a position of power, Staienus was incapable of concealing his pleasure at owning power, even though this meant that when the affair was over, so was his friendship with Hybrida. No matter how successful his ploy. But he didn't care. A thousand talents was reward enough. What was friendship with a creature like Hybrida anyway?

“Tell me, Staienus, or get out!”

“The ius auxilii ferendi" was what Staienus said.

“Well, what about it?”

“The original function of the tribunes of the plebs, and the only function Sulla didn't take off them-to rescue a member of the plebs from the hands of a magistrate.”

“The ius auxilii ferendi!” cried Hybrida, amazed. For a moment his pouting face lightened, then darkened again. “They wouldn't do it,” he said.

“They might,” said Staienus.

“Not Sicinius! Never Sicinius! All it takes is one veto within the college and the other nine tribunes of the plebs are powerless. Sicinius wouldn't stand for it, Staienus. He's a wretched nuisance, but he's not bribable.”

“Sicinius,” said Staienus happily, “is not popular with any of his nine colleagues. He's made such a thorough nuisance of himself-and stolen their thunder in the Forum!- that they're sick to death of him. In fact the day before yesterday I heard two of them threaten to throw him off the Tarpeian Rock unless he shut up about restoring their rights.”

“You mean Sicinius could be intimidated?”

“Yes. Definitely. Of course you'll have to find a goodly sum of cash between now and tomorrow morning, because none of them will be in it unless they're well rewarded. But you can do that-especially with a thousand talents coming in because of it.”

“How much?'' asked Hybrida.

“Nine times fifty thousand sesterces. That's four hundred and fifty thousand. Can you do it?”

“I can try. I'll go to my brother, he doesn't want scandal in the family. And there are a few other sources. Yes, Staienus, I believe I can do it.”

And so it was arranged. Gaius Aelius Staienus had a busy evening bustling from the house of one tribune of the plebs to another-Marcus Atilius Bulbus, Manius Aquillius, Quintus Curius, Publius Popillius, and on through nine of the ten. He did not go near the house of Gnaeus Sicinius.

The hearing was due to recommence two hours after dawn; by then the Forum Romanum had already experienced high drama, so it promised to be quite a day for the Forum frequenters, who were ecstatic. Just after dawn his nine fellow tribunes of the plebs had ganged up on Gnaeus Sicinius and physically hauled him to the top of the Capitol, where they beat him black and blue, then held him over the end of the overhanging ledge called the Tarpeian Rock and let him look down at the needle-sharp outcrop below. No more of this perpetual agitating to see the powers of the tribunate of the plebs restored! they cried to him as he dangled, and got an oath from him that he would in future do as his nine colleagues told him. Sicinius was then packed off home in a litter.

And not more than a very few moments after Cethegus opened the second day's proceedings in the suit against Hybrida, nine tribunes of the plebs descended upon Varro Lucullus's tribunal shouting that a member of the Plebs was being detained against his will by a magistrate.

“I appeal to you to exercise the ius auxilii ferendi!” cried Hybrida, arms extended piteously.

“Marcus Terentius Varro Lucullus, we have been appealed to by a member of the Plebs to exercise the ius auxilii ferendi!” said Manius Aquillius. “I hereby notify you that we so exercise it!”

“This is a manifest outrage!” Varro Lucullus shouted, leaping to his feet. “I refuse to allow you to exercise that right! Where is the tenth tribune?”

“At home in bed, very sick,” sneered Manius Aquillius, “but you can send to him if you like. He won't veto us.”

“You transgress justice!” yelled Cethegus. “An outrage! A shame! A scandal! How much has Hybrida paid you?”

“Release Gaius Antonius Hybrida, or we will take hold of every last man who objects and throw him from the Tarpeian Rock!” cried Manius Aquillius.

“You are obstructing justice!” said Varro Lucullus.

“There can be no justice in a magistrate's court, as you well know, Varro Lucullus,” said Quintus Curius. “One man is not a jury! If you wish to proceed against Gaius Antonius, then do so in a criminal court, where the ius auxilii ferendi does not apply!”

Caesar stood without moving, nor did he try to object. His clients huddled in his rear, shivering. Face stony, he turned to them and said softly, “I am a patrician, and not a magistrate. We must let the praetor peregrinus deal with this. Say nothing!”

“Very well, take your member of the Plebs!” said Varro Lucullus, hand on Cethegus's arm to restrain him.

“And,” said Gaius Antonius Hybrida, standing in the midst of nine tribunes of the plebs bent on war, “since I have won the case, I will take the sponsio lodged by our Greek-loving Caesar's clients here.”

The reference to Greek love was a deliberate slur which brought back to Caesar in one red flash all the pain of that accusation concerning King Nicomedes. Without hesitating, he walked through the ranks of the tribunes of the plebs and took Hybrida's throat between his hands. Hybrida had always considered himself a Hercules among men, but he could neither break the hold nor manage to come at his taller assailant, whose strength he would not have believed were he not its victim. It took Varro Lucullus and his six lictors to drag Caesar off him, though some men in the crowd wondered afterward at the inertia of the nine tribunes of the plebs, who made no move to help Hybrida at all.

“This case is dismissed!” bawled Varro Lucullus at the top of his lungs. “There is no suit! I, Marcus Terentius Varro Lucullus, so declare it! Plaintiffs, take back your sponsio! And every last mother's son of you go home!”

“The sponsio! The sponsio belongs to Gaius Antonius!” cried another voice: Gaius Aelius Staienus.

“It does not belong to Hybrida!” Cethegus yelled. “The case has been dismissed by the praetor peregrinus, in whose jurisdiction it lies! The sponsio returns to its owners, there is no wager!”

“Will you take your member of the Plebs and quit my tribunal!” said Varro Lucullus through his teeth to the tribunes of the plebs. “Go, get out of here, all of you! And I take leave to tell you that you have done the cause of the tribunate of the plebs no good by this scandalous miscarriage of its original purpose! I will do my utmost to keep you muzzled forever!”

Off went the nine men with Hybrida, Staienus trailing after them howling for the lost sponsio, Hybrida tenderly feeling his bruised throat.

While the excited crowd milled, Varro Lucullus and Caesar looked at each other.

“I would have loved to let you strangle the brute, but I hope you understand that I could not,” said Varro Lucullus.

“I understand,” said Caesar, still shaking. “I thought I was well in control! I'm not a hot man, you know. But I don't care for excrement like Hybrida calling me a deviate.”

“That's obvious,” said Varro Lucullus dryly, remembering what his brother had had to say on the subject.

Caesar too now paused to recollect whose brother he was with, but decided that Varro Lucullus was quite capable of making up his own mind.

“Do you believe,” said Cicero, rushing up now that the violence appeared to be at an end, “the gall of that worm? To demand the sponsio, by all the gods!”

“It takes a lot of gall to do that,” said Caesar, pointing to the mutilated man and his spokeswoman wife.

“Disgusting!” cried Cicero, sitting down on the steps of the tribunal and mopping his face with his handkerchief.