The First Man in Rome (77 page)
New priests were co-opted by the surviving members of the college, a plebeian being replaced by a plebeian, and a patrician by a patrician; the colleges of priests and of augurs normally stood at half-plebeian, half-patrician. According to tradition, the new priest would belong to the same family as the dead priest, thus enabling priesthoods and augurships to pass from father to son, or uncle to nephew, or cousin to cousin. The family honor and
dignitas
had to be preserved. And naturally Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus Junior, now the head of his branch of the family, expected to be asked to take his father's place as a priest.
However, there was a problem, and the problem's name was Scaurus. When the College of Pontifices met to co-opt its new member, Scaurus announced that he was not in favor of giving the dead Ahenobarbus's place to his son. One of his reasons he did not mention aloud, though it underlay everything he said, and loomed equally large in the minds of the thirteen priests who listened to him; namely, that Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus had been a pigheaded, argumentative, irascible, and unlikable man, and had sired a son who was even worse. No Roman nobleman minded the idiosyncrasies of his peers, and every Roman nobleman was prepared to put up with quite a gamut of the less admirable character traits; provided, that is, that he could get away from these fellows. But the priestly colleges were close-knit and met within the cramped confines of the Regia, the little office of the Pontifex Maximus—and young Ahenobarbus was only thirty-three years old. To those like Scaurus who had suffered his father for many years, the idea of suffering the son was not at all attractive. And, as luck would have it, Scaurus had two valid reasons to offer his fellow priests when moving that the new place not go to young Ahenobarbus.
The first was that when Marcus Livius Drusus the censor had died, his priesthood had not gone to his son, nineteen at the time. This had been felt to be just a little too underage. The second was that young Marcus Livius Drusus was suddenly displaying alarming tendencies to abandon his natural inheritance of intense conservatism; Scaurus felt that if he was given his father's priesthood, it would draw him back into the fold of his tradition-bound ancestors. His father had been an obdurate enemy of Gaius Gracchus, yet the way young Drusus was carrying on in the Forum Romanum, he sounded more like Gaius Gracchus! There were extenuating circumstances, Scaurus argued, particularly the shock of Arausio. So, what nicer and better way could there be than to co-opt young Drusus into his father's priestly college?
The thirteen other priests, including Dalmaticus Pontifex Maximus, thought this was a splendid way out of the Ahenobarbus dilemma, particularly because old Ahenobarbus had secured an augurship for his younger son, Lucius, not long before he died. The family could not therefore argue that it was utterly devoid of priestly clout.
But when Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus the younger heard that his expected priesthood was going to Marcus Livius Drusus, he was not pleased. In fact, he was outraged. At the next meeting of the Senate he announced that he was going to prosecute Marcus Aemilius Scaurus Princeps Senatus on charges of sacrilege. The occasion had been the adoption of a patrician by a plebeian, this complicated affair needing a sanction from the College of Pontifices as well as the Lictors of the Thirty Curiae; young Ahenobarbus alleged that Scaurus had not attended to the requirements properly. Well aware of the real reason behind this sudden espousal of sacerdotal punctiliousness, the House was not a bit impressed. Nor was Scaurus, who simply got to his feet and looked down his nose at the puce-faced Ahenobarbus.
"Do you, Gnaeus Domitius—not even a
pontifex
!—accuse me, Marcus Aemilius,
pontifex
and Leader of the House, of
sacrilege
?
"
asked Scaurus in freezing tones. "Run away and play with your new toys in the Plebeian Assembly until you finally grow up!"
And that seemed the end of the matter. Ahenobarbus flounced out of the House amid roars of laughter, catcalls, cries of "Sore loser!"
But Ahenobarbus wasn't beaten yet. Scaurus had told him to run away and play with his new toys in the Plebeian Assembly, so that was precisely what he would do! Within two days he had tabled a new bill, and before the old year was done he had pushed it through the discussion and voting processes into formal law. In future, new members for priesthoods and for augurships would not be co-opted by the surviving members, said the
lex Domitia de sacerdotiis;
they would be elected by a special tribal assembly, and anyone would be able to stand.
"Ducky," said Metellus Dalmaticus Pontifex Maximus to Scaurus. "Just ducky!"
But Scaurus only laughed and laughed. "Oh, Lucius Caecilius, admit he's twisted our pontifical tails beautifully!" he said, wiping his eyes. "I like him the better for it, I must say."
"The next one of us to pop off, he's going to be running for election," said Dalmaticus Pontifex Maximus gloomily.
"And why not? He's earned it," said Scaurus.
"But what if it's me? He'd be Pontifex Maximus as well!"
"What a wonderful comeuppance for all of us that would be!" said Scaurus, impenitent.
"I hear he's after Marcus Junius Silanus now," said Metellus Numidicus.
"That's right, for illegally starting a war with the Germans in Gaul-across-the-Alps," said Dalmaticus Pontifex Maximus.
"Well, he can have the Plebeian Assembly try Silanus for that, where a treason charge means going to the Centuries," said Scaurus, and whistled. "He's good, you know! I begin to regret that we didn't co-opt him to take his father's place."
"Oh, rubbish, you do not!" said Metellus Numidicus. "You are enjoying every moment of this ghastly fiasco."
"And why shouldn't I?" asked Scaurus, feigning surprise. "This is
Rome,
Conscript Fathers! Rome as Rome ought to be! All of us noblemen engaged in healthy competition!"
"Rubbish, rubbish, rubbish!" cried Metellus Numidicus, still seething because Gaius Marius would be consul very soon. "Rome as we know it is dying! Men elected consul a second time within three years and who weren't even present in Rome to show themselves in the
toga Candida
— the Head Count admitted into the legions—priests and augurs elected—the Senate's decisions about who will govern what overturned by the People—the State paying out fortunes to field Rome's armies—New Men and recent arrivals running things—tchah!"
THE SEVENTH YEAR (104 - 102 B.C.)
IN THE CONSULSHIP OF GAIUS MARIUS (II)
AND GAIUS FLAVIUS FIMBRIA
THE EIGHTH YEAR
IN THE CONSULSHIP OF GAIUS MARIUS (III)
AND LUCIUS AURELIUS ORESTES
THE NINTH YEAR (102 B.C.)
IN THE CONSULSHIP OF GAIUS MARIUS (IV)
AND QUINTUS LUTATIUS CATULUS CAESAR
1
It had been left to Sulla to organize Marius's triumphal parade; he followed orders scrupulously despite his inner misgivings, these being due to the result of Marius's instructions.
"I want the triumph over and done with quick-smart," Marius had said to Sulla in Puteoli when they had first landed from Africa. "Up on the Capitol by the sixth hour of day at the very latest, then straight into the consular inaugurations and the meeting of the Senate. Rush through the lot, because I've decided it's the
feast
must be memorable. After all, it's my feast twice over, I'm a triumphing general as well as the new senior consul. So I want a first-class spread, Lucius Cornelius! No hard-boiled eggs and run-of-the-mill cheeses, d'you hear? Food of the best and most expensive sort, dancers and singers and musicians of the best and most expensive sort, the plate gold and the couches purple."
Sulla had listened to all this with a sinking heart. He will never be anything but a peasant with social aspirations, Sulla thought; the hurried parade and hasty consular ceremonies followed by a feast of the kind he's ordered is poor form. Especially that vulgarly splashy feast!
However, he followed instructions to the letter. Carts carrying clay tanks waxed inside to make them waterproof trundled trays of Baiae oysters and Campanian crayfish and Crater Bay shrimps into Rome, while other carts similarly fitted out trundled freshwater eels and pikes and bass from the upper reaches of the Tiber; a team of expert licker-fishermen were stationed around Rome's sewer outlets; fattened on a diet of honey cakes soaked in wine, capons and ducks, piglets and kids, pheasants and baby deer were sent to the caterers for roasting and stuffing, forcing and larding; a big consignment of giant snails had come from Africa with Marius and Sulla, compliments of Publius Vagiennius, who wanted a report on Roman gourmet reactions.
So Marius's triumphal parade Sulla kept businesslike and brisk, thinking to himself that when
his
triumph came, he'd make it so big it took three days to travel the ancient route, just like Aemilius Paullus. For to expend time and splendor upon a triumph was the mark of the aristocrat, anxious to have the people share in the treat; whereas to expend time and splendor upon the feast in the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus that followed was the mark of the peasant, anxious to impress a privileged few.
Nevertheless, Sulla succeeded in making the triumphal parade memorable. There were floats showing all the highlights of the African campaigns, from the snails of Muluchath to the amazing Martha the Syrian prophetess; she was the star of the pageant displays, reclining on a purple-and-gold couch atop a huge float arranged as a facsimile of Prince Gauda's throne room in Old Carthage, with an actor portraying Gaius Marius, and another actor filling Gauda's twisted shoes. On a lavishly ornamented flat-topped dray, Sulla caused all of Marius's personal military decorations to be carried. There were cartloads of plunder, cartloads of trophies consisting of enemy suits of armor, cartloads of important exhibits—all of these arranged so that the onlookers could see and exclaim over individual items—plus cartloads of caged lions, apes and bizarre monkeys, and two dozen elephants to walk flapping their vast ears. The six legions of the African army were all to march, but had to be deprived of spears and daggers and swords, carrying instead wooden staves wreathed in victory laurels.
"And pick up your heels and march, you
cunni
!
"
cried Marius to his soldiers on the scuffed sward of the Villa Publica as the parade was ready to move off. "I have to be on the Capitol by the sixth hour myself, so I won't be able to keep an eye on you. But no god will help you if you disgrace me—hear me
, fellatores
?
'
They loved it when he talked to them obscenely; but then, reflected Sulla, they loved him no matter how he talked to them.
Jugurtha marched too, clad in his kingly purple robes, his head bound for the last time with the tasseled white ribbon called the diadem, all his golden jeweled necklaces and rings and bracelets flashing in the early sun, for it was a perfect winter's day, neither unspeakably cold nor inconveniently windy. Both Jugurtha's sons were with him, purple clad too.
When Marius had returned Jugurtha to Rome Jugurtha could hardly believe it, so sure had he been when he and Bomilcar quit Rome that he would never, never be back.
The terracotta city of the brilliant colors—painted columns, vivid walls, statues everywhere looking so lifelike the observer expected them to start orating or fighting or galloping or weeping. Nothing whitely African about Rome, which did not build much in mud brick anymore, and never whitewashed its walls, but painted them instead. The hills and cliffs, the parklike spaces, the pencil cypresses and the umbrella pines, the high temples on their tall podiums with winged Victories driving four-horsed
quadrigae
on the very crests of the pediments, the slowly greening scar of the great fire on the Viminal and upper Esquiline. Rome, the city for sale. And what a tragedy, that he'd not been able to find the money to buy it! How differently things might have turned out, had he.
Quintus Caecilius Metellus Numidicus had taken him in, an honored houseguest who yet was not permitted to step outside the house. It had been dark when they smuggled him in, and there for months he had remained, disbarred from the loggia which overlooked the Forum Romanum and the Capitol, limited to pacing up and down the peristyle-garden like the lion he felt himself. His pride would not let him go to seed; every day he ran in one spot, he touched his toes, he shadowboxed, he lifted himself up until his chin touched the bough he had chosen as a bar. For when he walked in Gaius Marius's triumphal parade, he wanted them to admire him, those ordinary Romans—wanted to be sure they took him for a formidable opponent, not a flabby Oriental potentate.
With Metellus Numidicus he had kept himself aloof, declining to pander to one Roman's ego at the expense of another's—a great disappointment to his host, he sensed at once. Numidicus had hoped to gather evidence that Marius had abused his position as proconsul. That Numidicus got nothing instead was a secret pleasure to Jugurtha, who knew which Roman he had feared, and which Roman he was glad had been the one to beat him. Certainly Numidicus was a great noble, and had integrity of a sort, but as a man and a soldier he couldn't even reach up to touch Gaius Marius's bootlaces. Of course, as far as Metellus Numidicus was concerned, Gaius Marius was little better than a bastard; so Jugurtha, who knew all about bastardy, remained committed to Gaius Marius in a queer and pitiless comradeship.
On the night before Gaius Marius was to enter Rome in triumph and as consul for the second time, Metellus Numidicus and his speech-bereft son had Jugurtha and his two sons to dinner. The only other guest was Publius Rutilius Rufus, for whom Jugurtha had asked. Of those who had fought together at Numantia under Scipio Aemilianus, only Gaius Marius was absent.
It was a very odd evening. Metellus Numidicus had gone to enormous lengths to produce a sumptuous feast—for, as he said, he had no intention of eating at Gaius Marius's expense after the inaugural meeting of the Senate in the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus.
"But there's scarcely a crayfish or an oyster left to buy, or a snail, or anything extra-special," said Numidicus as they prepared to dine. "Marius cleaned the markets out."
"Can you blame him?" asked Jugurtha, when Rutilius Rufus would not.
"I blame Gaius Marius for everything," said Numidicus.
"You shouldn't. If you could have produced him from your own ranks of the high nobility, Quintus Caecilius, well and good. But you could not.
Rome
produced Gaius Marius. I don't mean Rome the city or Rome the nation—I mean Roma, the immortal goddess, the genius of the city, the moving spirit. A man is needed. A man is found," said Jugurtha of Numidia.
“There are those of us with the right birth and background who could have done what Gaius Marius has done," said Numidicus stubbornly. "In fact, it ought to have been me. Gaius Marius stole my imperium, and tomorrow is reaping my rewards." The faint look of incredulity on Jugurtha's face annoyed him, and he added, a little waspishly, "For instance, it wasn't really Gaius Marius who captured
you,
King. Your captor had the right birth and ancestral background—Lucius Cornelius Sulla. It could be said—and in the form of a valid syllogism!—that Lucius Cornelius ended the war, not Gaius Marius." He drew a breath, and sacrificed his own claim to pre-eminence upon the more logical aristocratic altar named Lucius Cornelius Sulla. "In fact, Lucius Cornelius has all the earmarks of a right-thinking, properly Roman Gaius Marius."
"No!" scoffed Jugurtha, aware that Rutilius Rufus,. was watching him fixedly. "He's a pard with very different spots, that one. Gaius Marius is
straighter,
if you know what I mean."
"I don't have the remotest idea what you mean," said Numidicus stiffly.
"I know exactly what you mean," said Rutilius Rufus, and smiled delightedly.
Jugurtha grinned the old Numantia grin at Rutilius Rufus. "Gaius Marius is a freak," he said, "a perfect fruit from an overlooked and ordinary tree growing just outside the orchard wall. Such men cannot be stopped or deflected, my dear Quintus Caecilius. They have the heart, the guts, the brains, and the streak of immortality to surmount every last obstacle set in their way. The gods
love
them! On them, the gods lavish all of Fortune's bounty. So a Gaius Marius travels straight, and when he is compelled to walk crookedly, his path is still straight."
"How right you are!" said Rutilius Rufus.
"Luh-Luh-Lucius Cor-Cor-Cornelius is buh-buh-buh-better!" young Metellus Piglet said angrily.
"No!" said Jugurtha, shaking his head for emphasis. "Our friend Lucius Cornelius has the brains . .. and the guts .. . and maybe the heart.. . but I don't think he has the streak of immortality inside his mind. The crooked way feels natural to him; he sees it as the straighter way. There's no war elephant about a man who's happier astride a mule. Oh, brave as a bull! In a battle, there's no one quicker to lead a charge, or form up a relief column, or dash into a gap, or turn a fleeing century around. But Lucius Cornelius doesn't hear Mars. Where Gaius Marius never not hears Mars. I presume, by the way, that 'Marius' is some Latin distortion of 'Mars'? The son of Mars, perhaps? You don't know? Nor do you want to know, Quintus Caecilius, I suspect! A pity. It's an extremely powerful-sounding language, Latin. Very crisp, yet rolling."
"Tell me more about Lucius Cornelius Sulla," said Rutilius Rufus, choosing a piece of fresh white bread and the plainest-looking egg.
Jugurtha was wolfing down snails, not having tasted one since his exile began. "What's to tell? He's a product of his class. Everything he does, he does well. Well enough that nine out of ten witnesses will never be able to fathom whether he's a natural at what he's doing, or just a very intelligent and thoroughly schooled unnatural. But in the time I spent with him, I never got a spark out of him that told me what was his natural bent—or his proper sphere, for that matter. Oh, he will win wars and run governments, of that I have no doubt—but never with the spirit side of his mind." The garlic-and-oil sauce was slicked all over the guest of honor's chin; he ceased talking while a servant scrubbed and polished shaven and bearded parts, then belched enormously, and continued. "He'll always choose expedience, because he's lacking in the sticking power only that streak of immortality inside the mind can give a man. If two alternatives are presented to Lucius Cornelius, he'll pick the one he thinks will get him where he wants to be with the least outlay. He's just not as thorough as Gaius Marius—or as clear-sighted, I suspect."
"Huh-huh-huh-how duh-duh-do you know so muh-muh-muh-much about Luh-Luh-Luh-Lucius Cornelius?" asked Metellus Piglet.
"I shared a remarkable ride with him once," said Jugurtha reflectively, using a toothpick. "And then we shared a voyage along the African coast from Icosium to Utica. We saw a lot of each other." And the way he said that made all the others wonder just how many meanings it contained. But no one asked.
The salads came out, and then the roasts. Metellus Numidicus and his guests set to again, and with relish, save for the two young princes Iampsas and Oxyntas.
"They want to die with me," Jugurtha explained to Ru-tilius Rufus, low-voiced.
"It wouldn't be countenanced," said Rutilius Rufus.
"So I've told them."
"Do they know where they're going?"
"Oxyntas to the town of Venusia, wherever that might be, and Iampsas to Asculum Picentum, another mystery town."
"Venusia's south of Campania, on the road to Brundisium, and Asculum Picentum is northeast of Rome, on the other side of the Apennines. They'll be comfortable enough."
"How long will their detention last?" Jugurtha asked.
Rutilius Rufus pondered that, then shrugged. "Hard to tell. Some years, certainly. Until the local magistrates write a report to the Senate saying they're thoroughly indoctrinated with Roman attitudes, and won't be a danger to Rome if they're sent home."
"Then they'll stay for life, I'm afraid. Better they die with me, Publius Rutilius!"
"No, Jugurtha, you can't say that with complete assurance. Who knows what the future holds for them?"
"True."
The meal went on through more roasts and salads, and ended with sweetmeats, pastries, honeyed confections, cheeses, the few fruits in season, and dried fruits. Only Iampsas and Oxyntas failed to do the meal justice.