Fortune's Favorites by Colleen McCullough

  He had told Sulla a tale of three hideous years spent as a prisoner at the court of one who was the most militant of heterosexuals; Mithridates, who genuinely believed womanish men could be "cured," had subjected young Ptolemy Alexander to an endless series of humiliations and degradations designed to disenchant the poor fellow of his chosen proclivities. It had not worked. Thrown into bed with Pontine courtesans and even common whores, Ptolemy Alexander had been able to do no more than hang his head over the edge of the bed and vomit; forced to don armor and go on route marches with a hundred sneering soldiers, he had wept and collapsed; beaten with fists and then with lashes, he had only betrayed the fact that he found such treatment highly stimulating; set on a tribunal in the marketplace of Amisus in all his finery and paint, and there subjected to rains of rotten fruit, eggs, vegetables and even stones, he had dumbly endured without contrition.

  His chance had come when Mithridates began to reel under Sulla's competent conduct of the war with Rome, and the court disintegrated. Young Ptolemy Alexander had escaped.

  "My two bastard cousins preferred to remain in Amisus, of course," he lisped to Sulla. "The atmosphere of that abominable court has suited them beautifully! They both went into marriage eagerly-to daughters of Mithridates by his part-Parthian, part-Seleucid wife, Antiochis. Well, they can keep Pontus and all of the King's daughters! I hate the place!"

  "And what do you want of me?" Sulla had asked.

  "Asylum. Shelter within Rome when you return there. And, when Lathyrus Chickpea dies, the Egyptian throne. He has a daughter, Berenice, who is reigning with him as his Queen. But he cannot marry her, of course-he could only marry an aunt, a cousin, or a sister, and he has none of any available. In the natural way of things Queen Berenice will survive her father. The Egyptian throne is matrilineal, which means the king becomes the king through marriage to the queen or to the eldest-born princess of the line. I am the only legitimate Ptolemy left. The Alexandrians-who have the sole say in the matter since the Macedonian Ptolemies established their capital there rather than in Memphis-will want me to succeed Lathyrus Chickpea, and will consent to my marrying Queen Berenice. So when Lathyrus Chickpea dies I want you to send me to Alexandria to claim the throne-with Rome's blessing."

  For some moments Sulla considered this, eyeing Ptolemy Alexander in amusement. Then he said, “You may marry the Queen, but will you be able to get children by her?"

  "Probably not," said the prince with composure.

  "Then is there any point to the business?" Sulla smirked at his own pun.

  Ptolemy Alexander apparently did not see the point. "I want to be Pharaoh of Egypt, Lucius Cornelius," he said solemnly. "The throne is rightfully mine. What happens to it after my death is immaterial."

  "So who else is there in line for the throne?"

  “Only my two bastard cousins. Who are now the minions of Mithridates and Tigranes. I was able to escape when a messenger came from Mithridates that all three of us were to be sent south to Tigranes, who is extending his kingdom in Syria. The purpose of this removal, I gather, was to keep us from Roman custody if Pontus should fall."

  "Your bastard cousins may not be in Amisus, then."

  "They were when I left. Beyond that I do not know."

  Sulla had put his pen down and stared with cold goat's eyes at the sullen, bedizened person before him. "Very well, Prince Alexander, I will grant you asylum. When I return to Rome you may accompany me. As to your eventual assumption of the Double Crown of Egypt-best perhaps to discuss that when the time comes."

  But the time had not yet come when Sulla trudged out to the inn at the first milestone on the Via Appia, and he could now foresee certain difficulties anent Ptolemy Alexander the Younger. There was a scheme in the back of his mind, of course; had it not occurred to him on the occasion of his first meeting with Ptolemy Alexander he would simply have sent the young man to his uncle Lathyrus Chickpea in Alexandria, and washed his hands of the whole affair. But the scheme had occurred to him, and now he could only hope that he lived long enough to see it bear fruit; Lathyrus Chickpea was much older than he was, yet apparently still enjoyed the best of health. Alexandria had a salubrious climate, so they said.

  "However, Prince Alexander," he said when he had been shown into the inn's best parlor, "I cannot house you at Rome's expense for however many years it will take your uncle to die. Even in a place like this."

  Outrage flared in the dark eyes; Ptolemy Alexander drew himself up like a striking snake. "A place like this? I'd rather be back in Amisus than remain in a place like this!"

  "In Athens," said Sulla coldly, "you were housed royally at the expense of the Athenians, purely due to your uncle's gifts to that city after I was obliged to sack a part of it and did some little damage. Well, that was the prerogative of Athens. You cost me nothing. Here you're likely to cost me a fortune Rome cannot spare. So I'm offering you two choices. You may take ship at Rome's expense for Alexandria, and make your peace with your uncle Lathyrus Chickpea. Or you may negotiate a loan with one of this city's bankers, hire a house and servants on the Pincian or some other acceptable place outside the pomerium, and remain until your uncle dies."

  It was difficult to tell if Ptolemy Alexander lost color, so heavy was his maquillage, but Sulla rather fancied that he did; certainly the fight went out of him.

  "I can't go to Alexandria, my uncle would have me killed!"

  "Then negotiate a loan."

  "All right, I will! Only tell me how!"

  "I'll send Chrysogonus to tell how. He knows everything." Sulla had not sat down, but he moved now to the door. "By the way, Prince Alexander, under no circumstances can you cross the sacred boundary of Rome into the city."

  "I shall die of boredom!"

  Came the famous sneer. "I doubt that, when it's known you have money and a nice house. Water always finds its level. Alexandria is a long way from Rome, and I must assume that you will be its lawful king the moment Lathyrus Chickpea dies. Which neither you nor I can know until word reaches Rome. Therefore, as Rome will tolerate no ruling sovereign within her boundary, you must stay outside it. I mean that. Flout me, and you won't need to go to Alexandria to meet a premature death."

  Ptolemy Alexander burst into tears. "You're a horrible, hateful person!"

  Off went Sulla down the road to the Capena Gate, giving voice to an occasional neigh of laughter. What a horrible, hateful person Ptolemy Alexander was! But-how very useful he might prove to be if only Lathyrus Chickpea had the grace and good sense to die while Sulla was still the Dictator! And he gave a little skip of pleasure at the thought of what he was going to do when he heard that the throne of Egypt was vacant.

  Oblivious to the fact that his laughter and his skip and that crabbed gait had become portents of terror to every man and woman who chanced to see him, whose mind was in fabled Alexandria.

  2

  It was religion, however, which chiefly occupied Sulla's mind. Like most Romans, he didn't think of the name of a god, close his eyes and immediately visualize a human person-that was to be a Greek. These days it was a sign of culture and sophistication to show Bellona as an armed goddess, Ceres as a beautiful matron carrying a sheaf of wheat, Mercury with winged hat and winged sandals, because a Hellenized society was superior, because a Hellenized society despised more numinous gods as primitive, unintellectual, incapable of behavior as complex as human behavior. To the Greeks, their gods were essentially human beings owning superhuman powers; they could not conceive a being more complex than a man. So Zeus, who was king of their pantheon, functioned like a Roman censor-powerful but not omnipotent-and handed out jobs to the other gods, who took delight in tricking him, blackmailing him, and behaving a bit like tribunes of the plebs.

  But Sulla, a Roman, knew the gods were far less tangible than the Greeks would have them: they weren't humanoid and they didn't have eyes in their heads or hold conversations, nor did they wield superhuman powers, nor go through the integration and differentiation of thought p
rocesses akin to a man's. Sulla, a Roman, knew that the gods were specific forces which moved specific events or controlled other forces inferior to themselves. They fed on life-forces, so they liked to be offered living sacrifices; they needed order and method in the living world as much as they did in their own, because order and method in the living world helped maintain order and method in the world of forces.

  There were forces pervaded storage cupboards and barns and silos and cellars, liked to see them full-they were called Penates. There were forces kept ships sailing and crossroads together and a sense of purpose among inanimate objects- they were called Lares. There were forces kept the trees right-thinking, obliged them to grow their branches and leaves up into the air and their roots down into the earth. There were forces kept water sweet and rivers going from on high all the way down to the sea. There was a force gave a few men luck and good fortune, but gave most men less, and a few men nothing-it was called Fortuna. And the force called Jupiter Optimus Maximus was the sum total of all other forces, the connective tissue which bound them all together in a way logical to forces, if mysterious to men.

  It was clear to Sulla that Rome was losing contact with her gods, her forces. Why else had the Great Temple burned down? Why else had the precious records gone up in smoke? The prophetic books? Men were forgetting the secrets, the strict formulae and patterns which channeled godly forces. To have the priests and augurs elected disturbed the balances within the priestly colleges, obviated the delicate adjustments only possible when the same families filled the same religious positions time out of mind, forever and ever.

  So before he turned his energies toward rectifying Rome's creaky institutions and laws, he must first purify Rome's aether, stabilize her godly forces and allow them to flow properly. How could Rome expect good fortune when a man could be so lost as to what was fitting that he could stand and holler out her secret name? How could Rome expect to prosper when men plundered her temples and murdered her priests? Of course he didn't remember that he himself had once wanted to plunder her temples; he only remembered that he had not, though he was going to fight a true enemy. Nor did he remember quite how he had felt about the gods in those days before illness and wine had made a shambles of his life.

  In the burning of the Great Temple there was an implicit message, so much he knew in his bones. And it had been given to him to halt the chaos, correct the present drift toward utter disorder. If he did not, then doors supposed to be shut would fly open, and doors supposed to be open would slam shut.

  He summoned the priests and augurs to him inside Rome's oldest temple, Jupiter Feretrius on the Capitol. So ancient that it had been dedicated by Romulus and was built of tufa blocks without plaster or decoration, it had only two square columns to support its portico, and it contained no image. On a plain square pedestal of equal age there rested a straight electrum rod as long as a man's hand and arm to the elbow, and a silica flint brooding black and glassy. The only light admitted to its interior came through the door, and it smelled of incredible age-mouse droppings, mildew, damp, dust. Its one room was a mere ten feet by seven feet, so Sulla was grateful for the fact that neither the College of Pontifices nor the College of Augurs was anywhere near full membership.

  Sulla himself was an augur. So too were Marcus Antonius, the younger Dolabella and Catilina. Of priests, Gaius Aurelius Cotta had been in the college the longest; Metellus Pius was not far behind, nor Flaccus the Master of the Horse and Princeps Senatus, who was also the flamen Martialis. Catulus, Mamercus, the Rex Sacrorum Lucius Claudius of the only branch of the Claudii with the first name of Lucius-and a very uneasy pontifex, Brutus the son of Old Brutus, who clearly wondered if and when he was going to be proscribed.

  "We have no Pontifex Maximus," Sulla began, "and our company is thin. I could have found a more comfortable place for us to meet, but I suspect a little discomfort may not be displeasing to our gods! For some time now we have thought of ourselves ahead of our gods, and our gods are unhappy. Dedicated in the same year as our Republic was born, our temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus did not burn down by accident. I am sure it burned down because Jupiter Best and Greatest feels the Roman Senate and People have cheated him of his due. We are not so callow and credulous that we subscribe to barbarian beliefs in godly wrath-bolts of lightning that strike us dead or pillars that squash us flat are natural events-they merely indicate a man's personal ill luck. But portents do indicate unhappy gods, and the burning of our Great Temple is a terrible portent. If we still had the Sibylline Books we might discover more about it. But the Sibylline Books burned, along with our fasti of the consuls, the original Twelve Tables, and much else."

  There were fifteen men present, and not enough room to allow a proper arrangement of speaker and audience; Sulla just stood in their midst and spoke in normal tones. “It is my task as Dictator to return Rome's religion to its old form, and to make all of you work toward that end. Now I can enact the laws, but it is up to all of you to implement them. On one point I am adamant, for I have had dreams, I am an augur, and I know I am right. Namely, I will invalidate the lex Domitia de sacerdotiis which our Pontifex Maximus of some years ago, Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus, took so much pleasure in foisting upon us. Why did he? Because he felt his family had been insulted and himself overlooked. Those are reasons founded in personal pride, not in a true religious spirit. I believe Ahenobarbus Pontifex Maximus displeased the gods, especially Jupiter Best and Greatest. So there will be no more elections for Religious. Not even for the office of Pontifex Maximus."

  "But the Pontifex Maximus has always been elected!" cried Lucius Claudius the Rex Sacrorum, astonished. "He is the High Priest of the Republic! His appointment must be democratic!"

  "I say, no. From now on, he too will be chosen by his fellow members of the College of Pontifices," said Sulla in a tone which brooked no argument. "I am right about this."

  "I don't know...." Flaccus began, then trailed off when he met Sulla's awful eyes.

  "I do know, so that will be the end of it!" Sulla's gaze traveled from one distressed face to another, and quelled all further protest. “I also think it is displeasing to our gods that there are not enough of us to go around, so I intend to give each priestly college-most of the minor as well as the major-fifteen members each instead of the old ten or twelve. No more of this squeezing two jobs in for every one man! Besides, fifteen is a lucky number, the fulcrum upon which thirteen and seventeen-the unlucky ones-turn. Magic is important. Magic creates pathways for the godly forces to travel. I believe that numbers have great magic. So we will work magic for Rome's benefit, as is our sacred duty."

  "Perhaps," ventured Metellus Pius, "wuh-wuh-we could set up only wuh-wuh-one candidate for Pontifex Maximus? That wuh-wuh-way, we could at least have an election process."

  "There will be no election process!" Sulla spat.

  Silence fell. No one so much as shifted a foot.

  After some time had passed Sulla began to speak again. "There is one priest who sits ill with me, for a number of good reasons. I refer to our flamen Dialis, the young man Gaius Julius Caesar. Upon the death of Lucius Cornelius Merula he was chosen to be Jupiter's special priest by Gaius Marius and his bought-and-paid-for minion, Cinna. The men who chose him alone are ominous enough! They contravened the usual selection process, which ought to involve the entire gamut of colleges. Another reason for my disquiet concerns my own ancestors, for the first Cornelius to be cognominated Sulla was flamen Dialis. But the burning of the Great Temple is by far the most ominous reason. So I began to make enquiries about this young man, and have learned that he flatly refused to observe the regulations surrounding his flaminate until he assumed the toga virilis. His behavior since has been orthodox, as far as I can find out. Now all this could well have been a symptom of his youth. But what I think is not important. What does Jupiter Optimus Maximus think? That is important! For, my fellow priests and augurs, I have learned that Jupiter's temple fire finally went out two days before the Ides
of Quinctilis. On that exact same day of the year, the flamen Dialis was born. An omen!"

  "It could be a good omen," said Cotta, who cared about the fate of this particular flamen Dialis.

  "Indeed it could," said Sulla, "but that is not for me to say. As Dictator, I feel free to determine the method whereby our priests and augurs are appointed, I feel free to abolish the elections. But the flamen Dialis is different. All of you must decide his fate. All of you! Fetials, pontifices, augurs, the priests of the sacred books, even the epulones and the salii. Cotta, I am putting you in charge of the investigation, as you are the longest-serving pontifex. You have until the Ides of December, when we will meet again in this temple to discuss the religious position of the present flamen Dialis." He looked at Cotta sternly. "No word of this must get round, especially to young Caesar himself."

  Home he went, chuckling and rubbing his hands together in transports of delight. For Sulla had thought of the most wonderful joke! The kind of joke Jupiter Optimus Maximus would find a terrific boost to his force pathways. An offering! A living sacrificial victim for Rome-for the Republic, whose High Priest he was! He had been invented to supplant the Rex Sacrorum, ensure that the Republic outranked the Kings, all of whom had been Rex Sacrorum as well as King. Oh, a superb joke! he cried to himself, literally crying-with laughter. I will offer the Great God a victim who will go consenting to the sacrifice, and continue to sacrifice himself until his death! I will dower the Republic and the Great God with the best segment of one man's life-I will offer up his suffering, his distress, his pain. And all with his consent. Because he will never refuse to be sacrificed.

  The next day Sulla published the first of his laws aimed at regulating the State religion by fixing them to the rostra and the wall of the Regia. At first the rostra perusers presumed it was a new proscription list, so the professional bounty hunters clustered quickly, only to turn away with exclamations of disgust: it turned out to be a list of the men who were now members of the various priestly colleges, major and minor. Fifteen of each, somewhat haphazardly divided between patricians and plebeians (with the plebeians in the majority), and beautifully balanced between the Famous Families. No unworthy names on this list! No Pompeius or Tullius or Didius! Julii, Servilii, Junii, Aemilii, Cornelii, Claudii, Sulpicii, Valerii, Domitii, Mucii, Licinii, Antonii, Manlii, Caecilii, Terentii. It was also noted that Sulla had given himself a priesthood to complement the augurship he held already-and that he was the only man to hold both.