Caesar's Women by Colleen McCullough
"Fool!" she growled with every blow. "Fool! Fool! Fool!"
He didn't attempt to fight back, nor to appeal to his sisters, who stood watching in anguished satisfaction.
"Why?" asked Clodia when Fulvia was done.
It was some time before he could answer, when the bleeding was staunched and the tears ceased to flow. Then he said, "I wanted to make Aurelia and Fabia suffer."
"Clodius, you've blighted Rome! We are accursed!" cried Fulvia.
"Oh, what's the matter with you?" he yelled. "A parcel of women getting rid of their resentment of men, what's the sense in that? I saw the whips! I know about the snakes! It's a lot of absolute nonsense!"
But that only made matters worse; all three women flew at him, Clodius was slapped and punched again.
"Bona Dea," said Clodilla between her teeth, "is not a pretty Greek statue! Bona Dea is as old as Rome, she is ours, she is the Good Goddess. Every woman who was there to be a part of your defilement and who is pregnant will have to take the medicine."
"And that," said Fulvia, beginning to weep, "includes me!"
"No!"
"Yes, yes, yes!" cried Clodia, administering a kick. “Oh, Clodius, why? There must be thousands of ways to revenge yourself on Aurelia and Fabia! Why commit sacrilege? You're doomed!"
"I didn't think, it seemed so perfect!" He tried to take Fulvia's hand. "Please don't harm our child!"
"Don't you understand yet?" she shrieked, wrenching away. "You harmed our child! It would be born deformed and monstrous, I must take the medicine! Clodius, you are accursed!"
"Get out!" Clodilla shouted. "On your belly like a snake!"
Clodius crawled away on his belly, snakelike.
"There will have to be another Bona Dea," said Terentia to Caesar when she, Fabia and Aurelia came to see him in his study. "The rites will be the same, though with the addition of a piacular sacrifice. The girl Doris will be punished in a certain way no woman can reveal, even to the Pontifex Maximus."
Thank all the Gods for that, thought Caesar, having no trouble in imagining who would constitute the piacular sacrifice. "So you need a law to make one of the coming comitial days nefasti, and you are asking the Pontifex Maximus to procure it from the Religious Assembly of seventeen tribes?"
"That is correct," said Fabia, thinking she must speak if Caesar were not to deem her dependent upon two women outside the Vestal College. "Bona Dea must be held on dies nefasti, and there are no more until February."
"You're right, Bona Dea can't remain awake until February. Shall I legislate for the sixth day before the Ides?"
"That would be excellent," said Terentia, sighing.
"Bona Dea will go happily to sleep," comforted Caesar. "I'm sorry that any woman at the feast who is newly pregnant will have to make a harder and a very special sacrifice. I say no more, it is women's business. Remember too that no Roman woman was guilty of sacrilege. Bona Dea was profaned by a man and a non-Roman girl."
"I hear," Terentia announced, rising, "that Publius Clodius likes revenge. But he will not like Bona Dea's revenge."
Aurelia remained seated, though she did not speak until after the door had closed behind Terentia and Fabia.
"I've sent Pompeia packing," she said then.
"And all her possessions too, I hope?"
"That's being attended to this moment. Poor thing! She wept so, Caesar. Her sister-in-law doesn't want to take her, Cornelia Sulla refuses—it's so sad."
"I know."
" 'Caesar's wife, like all Caesar's family, must be above suspicion,' " Aurelia quoted.
"Yes."
"It seems wrong to me to punish her for something she knew nothing about, Caesar."
"And wrong to me, Mater. Nevertheless, I had no choice."
"I doubt your colleagues would have objected had you elected to keep her as your wife."
"Probably not. But I objected."
"You're a hard man."
"A man who isn't hard, Mater, is under the thumb of some woman or other. Look at Cicero and Silanus."
"They say," said Aurelia, expanding the subject, "that Silanus is failing fast."
"I believe it, if the Silanus I saw this morning is anything to go by."
"You may have cause to regret that you will be divorced at the same moment as Servilia is widowed."
“The time to worry about that is when my ring goes on her wedding finger."
"In some ways it would be a very good match," she said, dying to know what he really thought.
"In some ways," he agreed, smiling inscrutably.
"Can you do nothing for Pompeia beyond sending her dowry and possessions with her?"
"Why should I?"
“No valid reason, except that her punishment is undeserved, and she will never find another husband. What man would espouse a woman whose husband suspects she connived at sacrilege?"
"That's a slur on me, Mater."
"No, Caesar, it is not! You know she isn't guilty, but in divorcing her you have not indicated that to the rest of Rome."
"Mater, you are fast outwearing your welcome," he said gently.
She got up immediately. "Nothing?" she asked.
"I will find her another husband."
"Who could be prevailed upon to marry her after this?"
"I imagine Publius Vatinius would be delighted to marry her. The granddaughter of Sulla is a great prize for one whose own grandparents were Italians."
Aurelia turned this over in her mind, then nodded. "That," she said, "is an excellent idea, Caesar. Vatinius was such a doting husband to Antonia Cretica, and she was at least as stupid as poor Pompeia. Oh, splendid! He will be an Italian husband, keep her close. She'll be far too busy to have time for the Clodius Club."
"Go away, Mater!" said Caesar with a sigh.
The second Bona Dea festival passed off without a hitch, but it took a long time for feminine Rome to settle down, and there were many newly pregnant women throughout the city who followed the example of those present at the first ceremony; the Vestals dispensed the rye medicine until their stocks were very low. The number of male babies abandoned on the shards of the Mons Testaceus was unprecedented, and for the first time in memory no barren couples took them to keep and rear; every last one died unwanted. The city ran with tears and put on mourning until May Day, made worse because the seasons were so out of kilter with the calendar that the snakes would not awaken until later, so who would know whether the Good Goddess had forgiven?
Publius Clodius, the perpetrator of all this misery and panic, was shunned and spat upon. Time alone would heal the religious crisis, but the sight of Publius Clodius was a perpetual reminder. Nor would he do the sensible thing, quit the city; he brazened it out, protesting that he was innocent, that he had never been there.
It also took time for Fulvia to forgive him, though she did after the ordeal of aborting her pregnancy had faded, but only because she saw for herself that he was as grief stricken about it as she. Then why?
"I didn't think, I just didn't think!" he wept into her lap. "It seemed such a lark."
"You committed sacrilege!"
"I didn't think of it like that, I just didn't!" He lifted his head to gaze at her out of red-rimmed, swollen eyes. "I mean, it's only some silly old women's binge—everyone gets stinking drunk and makes love or masturbates or something—I just didn't think, Fulvia!"
"Clodius, the Bona Dea isn't like that. It's sacred! I can't tell you what exactly it is, I'd shrivel up and give birth to snakes for the rest of time if I did! Bona Dea is for us! All the other Gods of women are for men too, Juno Lucina and Juno Sospita and the rest, but Bona Dea is ours alone. She takes care of all those women's things men can't know, wouldn't want to know. If she doesn't go to sleep properly she can't wake properly, and Rome is more than men, Clodius! Rome is women too!"
"They'll try me and convict me, won't they?"
"So it seems, though none of us wants that. It means men are sneaking in where men do not belong, they a
"There's not enough money in Rome to buy off this jury."
But Fulvia simply smiled. "There will be enough money when the time comes. We women don't want it. Perhaps if it can be averted, Bona Dea will forgive. What she won't forgive is the world of men taking over her prerogatives."
* * *
Just returned from his legateship in Spain, Publius Vatinius jumped at the chance to marry Pompeia.
"Caesar, I am very grateful," he said, smiling. "Naturally you couldn't keep her as your wife, I understand that. But I also know that you wouldn't offer her to me if you thought her a party to the sacrilege."
"Rome may not be so charitable, Vatinius. There are many who think I divorced her because she was intriguing with Clodius."
"Rome doesn't matter to me, your word does. My children will be Antonii and Cornelii! Only tell me how I can repay you."
"That," said Caesar, "will be easy, Vatinius. Next year I go to a province, and the year after I'll be standing for consul. I want you to stand for the tribunate of the plebs at the same elections." He sighed. "With Bibulus in my year, there is a strong possibility that I'll have him as my consular colleague. The only other nobleman of any consequence in our year is Philippus, and I believe that for the time being the Epicurean will outweigh the politician in his case. He hasn't enjoyed his praetorship. The men who have been praetor earlier are pathetic. Therefore I may well need a good tribune of the plebs, if Bibulus is to be consul too. And you, Vatinius," Caesar ended cheerfully, "will be an extremely able tribune of the plebs."
"A gnat versus a flea."
"The nice thing about fleas," said Caesar contentedly, "is that they crack when one applies a thumbnail. Gnats are far more elusive creatures."
"They say Pompeius is about to land in Brundisium."
"They do indeed."
"And looking for land for his soldiers."
"To no avail, I predict."
"Mightn't it be better if I ran for the tribunate of the plebs next year, Caesar? That way I could get land for Pompeius, and he would be very much in your debt. The only tribunes of the plebs he has this year are Aufidius Lurco and Cornelius Cornutus, neither of whom will prevail. One hears he'll have Lucius Flavius the year after, but that won't work either."
"Oh no," Caesar said softly, "let's not make things too easy for Pompeius. The longer he waits the more heartfelt his gratitude will be. You're my man corpus animusque, Vatinius, and I want our hero Magnus to understand that. He's been a long time in the East, he's used to sweating."
The boni were sweating too, though they had a tribune of the plebs just entering office who was more satisfactory than Aufidius Lurco and Cornelius Cornutus. He was Quintus Fufius Calenus, who turned out to be more than a match for the other nine put together. At the start of his year, however, it was difficult to see that, which accounted for some of the despondency of the boni.
"Somehow we have to get Caesar," said Gaius Piso to Bibulus, Catulus and Cato.
"Difficult, considering the Bona Dea," said Catulus, shivering. "He behaved absolutely as he ought, and all of Rome knows it. He divorced Pompeia without claiming her dowry, and that remark about Caesar's wife having to be above suspicion was so apt it's passed into Forum lore already. A brilliant move! It says he thinks she's innocent, yet protocol demands that she go. If you had a wife at home, Piso—or you, Bibulus!—you'd know there's not a woman in Rome will hear Caesar criticized. Hortensia dins in my ear as hard as Lutatia dins in Hortensius's. Quite why is beyond me, but the women don't want Clodius sent for public trial, and they all know Caesar agrees with them. Women," Catulus finished gloomily, "are an underestimated force in the scheme of things."
"I'll have another wife at home shortly," said Bibulus.
"Who?"
"Another Domitia. Cato has fixed me up."
"More like you're fixing Caesar up," snarled Gaius Piso. "If I were you, I'd stay single. That's what I'm going to do."
To all of which Cato vouchsafed no comment, simply sat with his chin on his hand looking depressed.
The year had not turned out to be a wonderful success for Cato, who had been compelled to learn yet another lesson the hard way: that to exhaust one's competition early on left one with no adversaries to shine against. Once Metellus Nepos left to join Pompey the Great, Cato's term as a tribune of the plebs dwindled to insignificance. The only subsequent action he took was not a popular one, especially with his closest friends among the boni; when the new harvest saw grain prices soar to a record high, he legislated to give grain to the populace at ten sesterces the modius—at a cost of well over a thousand talents to the Treasury. And Caesar had voted for it in the House, where Cato had most correctly first proposed it. With a very graceful speech suggesting a huge change of heart in Cato, and thanking him for his foresight. How galling to know that men like Caesar understood perfectly that what he had proposed was both sensible and ahead of events, whereas men like Gaius Piso and Ahenobarbus had squealed louder than pigs. They had even accused him of trying to become a bigger demagogue than Saturninus by wooing the Head Count!
"We'll have to get Caesar attached for debt," said Bibulus.
"We can't do that with honor," said Catulus.
"We can if we don't have anything to do with it."
"Daydreams, Bibulus!" from Gaius Piso. "The only way is to prevent the praetors of this year from having provinces, and when we attempted to prorogue the present governors we were howled down."
"There is another way," said Bibulus.
Cato lifted his chin from his hand. "How?"
"The lots for praetorian provinces will be drawn on New Year's Day. I've spoken to Fufius Calenus, and he's happy to veto the drawing of the lots on the grounds that nothing official can be decided until the matter of the Bona Dea sacrilege is dealt with. And," said Bibulus contentedly, "since the women are nagging that no action be taken and at least half the Senate is highly susceptible to nagging women, that means Fufius Calenus can go on vetoing for months. All we have to do is whisper in a few moneylending ears that this year's praetors will never go to provinces."
"There's one thing I have to say for Caesar," Cato barked, "and that is that he's sharpened your wits, Bibulus. In the old days you wouldn't have managed."
It was on the tip of Bibulus's tongue to say something rude to Cato, but he didn't; he just smiled sickly at Catulus.
Catulus reacted rather strangely. "I agree to the plan," he said, "on one condition—that we don't mention it to Metellus Scipio."
"Whyever not?" asked Cato blankly.
"Because I couldn't stand the eternal litany—destroy Caesar this and destroy Caesar that, but we never do!"
"This time," said Bibulus, "we can't possibly fail. Publius Clodius will never come to trial."
"That means he'll suffer too. He's a newly elected quaestor who won't get duties if the lots aren't drawn," said Gaius Piso.
The war in the Senate to try Publius Clodius broke out just after the New Year's Day fiasco in the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus (much improved inside since last year—Catulus had taken Caesar's warning seriously). Perhaps because business ground to a halt, it was decided to elect new censors; two conservatives in Gaius Scribonius Curio and Gaius Cassius Longinus were returned, which promised a fairly co-operative censorship—provided the tribunes of the plebs left them alone, which was not a foregone conclusion with Fufius Calenus in office.
The senior consul was a Piso Frugi adopted into the Pupius branch from the Calpurnius branch of the family, and he was one of those with a nagging wife. He therefore adamantly opposed any trial for Publius Clodius.
"The cult of Bona Dea is outside the province of the State," he said flatly, "and I question the legality of anything beyond what has already been done—a pronouncement by the College of Pontific
A statement which did not sit at all well with his junior colleague, Messala Niger. “I will not rest until Publius Clodius is tried!" he declared, and sounded as if he meant it. “If there is no law on the tablets, then I suggest we draft one! It isn't good enough to bleat that a guilty man can't be tried because our laws don't have a pigeonhole to fit his crime! It's easy enough to make room for Publius Clodius, and I move that we do so now!"
Only Clodius, thought Caesar in wry amusement, could manage to sit on the back benches looking as if the subject concerned everyone save him, while the argument raged back and forth and Piso Frugi came close to blows with Messala Niger.
In the midst of which Pompey the Great took up residence on the Campus Martius, having disbanded his army because the Senate couldn't discuss his triumph until the problem of the Bona Dea was solved. His bill of divorcement had preceded him by many days, though no one had seen Mucia Tertia. And rumor said Caesar was the culprit! It therefore gave Caesar great pleasure to attend a special contio in the Circus Flaminius, a venue permitting Pompey to speak. Very poorly, as Cicero was heard to say tartly.
At the end of January, Piso Frugi began to retreat when the new censors joined the fray, and agreed to draft a bill to enable the prosecution of Publius Clodius for a new kind of sacrilege.
"It's a complete farce," Piso Frugi said, "but farces are dear to every Roman heart, so I suppose it's fitting. You're fools, the lot of you! He'll get off, and that puts him in a far better position than if he continued to exist under a cloud."
A good legal draftsman, Piso Frugi prepared the bill himself, which was a severe one if looked at from the point of view of the penalty—exile for life and full forfeiture of all wealth—but also contained a curious clause to the effect that the praetor chosen to preside over the special court had to hand-pick the jury himself—meaning that the court president held Clodius's fate in his hands. A pro-Clodian praetor meant a lenient jury. A pro-conviction praetor meant the harshest jury possible.