The First Man in Rome by Colleen McCullough
“Well, today we’ve seen something none of us has ever seen before,” he began. “Frightening, isn’t it?”
“I don’t think they mean any harm,” said Sulla.
“Nor do I,” said Marius. “But they’re still the gigantic bull who doesn’t know his own strength.” He beckoned to his chief scribe. “Find someone to run up the Forum, will you? I want the president of the College of Lictors here at once.”
“What do you suggest we do?” asked Scaurus. “Postpone the plebeian elections?”
“No, we may as well get them over and done with,” Marius said positively. “At the moment our crowd-bull is a docile beast, but who knows how angry he might become as the famine worsens? Let’s not wait until he has to have hay wrapped round his horns to signify he gores, because it will be one of our chests he plugs if we do wait. I’ve sent for the head lictor because I think our bull will be bluffed tomorrow by a fence he could easily walk through. I’ll have the public slaves work all night to set up a harmless-looking barricade all the way around the well of the Comitia and the ground between the Comitia and the Senate steps—just the usual sort of thing we erect in the Forum to fence off the area of combat from the spectators during funeral games, because they’ll know the look of that, and not see it as a manifestation of fear on our part. Then I’ll put every lictor Rome possesses on the inside of the barricade—all in crimson tunics, not togate, but unarmed except for staves. Whatever we do, we mustn’t give our bull the dangerous idea that he’s bigger and stronger than we are—bulls can think, you know! And tomorrow we hold the tribunician elections—I don’t care if there are only thirty-five men there to vote. Which means all of you will go visiting on your ways home today, and command the senators in your vicinity to turn up ready to vote tomorrow. That way, we’ll be sure to have at least one member of each of the tribes. It may be a skinny vote, but a vote it will be nonetheless. Understood, everyone?”
“Understood,” said Scaurus.
“Where was Quintus Lutatius today?” asked Sulla of Scaurus.
“Ill, I believe,” said Scaurus. “It would be genuine—he doesn’t lack courage.”
Marius looked at Metellus Caprarius the censor. “You, Gaius Caecilius, have the worst job tomorrow,” he said, “for when Equitius declares himself a candidate, I’m going to have to ask you if you will allow him to stand. How will you say?”
Caprarius didn’t hesitate. “I’ll say no, Gaius Marius. A man who was a slave, to become a tribune of the plebs? It’s unthinkable.”
“All right, that’s all, thank you,” Marius said. “Be on your way, and get all our quivering fellow members here tomorrow. Lucius Cornelius, stay. I’m putting you in charge of the lictors, so you’d better be here when their head man comes.”
*
The crowd was back in the Forum at dawn, to find the well of the Comitia cordoned off by the simple portable post-and-rope fencing they saw every time the Forum became the site of someone’s gladiatorial funeral games; a crimson-tunicked lictor holding a long thick stave was positioned every few feet on the inside of the barricade’s perimeter. Nothing nasty in that. And when Gaius Marius stepped forward and shouted his explanation, that he wanted no one inadvertently crushed, he was cheered as loudly as on the previous day. What the crowd couldn’t see was the group inside the Curia Hostilia, positioned there well before dawn by Sulla: his fifty young members of the First Class, all clad in cuirasses and helmets, swords and daggers belted on, and carrying shields. An excited Caepio Junior was only their deputy leader, however, for Sulla was in command himself.
“We move only if I say we move,” Sulla said, “and I mean it. If anyone moves without an order from me, I’ll kill him.”
On the rostra everyone was set to go; in the well of the Comitia a surprisingly large number of regular voters clustered along with perhaps half the Senate, while the patrician senators stood as always on the Senate steps. Among them was Catulus Caesar, looking ill enough to have been provided with a chair; also among them was the censor Caprarius, another whose plebeian status should have meant he went into the Comitia, but who wanted to be where everyone could see him.
When Saturninus declared his candidacy once more, the crowd cheered him hysterically; clearly his laying-on-of-hands visit on the previous day had worked wonders. As before, the rest of the candidates were greeted with silence. Until in last place came Lucius Equitius.
Marius swung to face the Senate steps, and lifted his one mobile eyebrow in a mute question to Metellus Caprarius; and Metellus Caprarius shook his head emphatically. To have spoken the question was impossible, for the crowd went on cheering Lucius Equitius as if it never intended to stop.
The heralds sounded their trumpets, Marius stepped forward, silence fell. “This man, Lucius Equitius, is not eligible for election as a tribune of the plebs!” he cried as loudly as he could. “There is an ambiguity about his citizen status which the censor must clarify before Lucius Equitius can stand for any public office attached to the Senate and People of Rome!”
Saturninus brushed past Marius and stood on the very edge of the rostra. “I deny any irregularity!”
“I declare on behalf of the censor that an irregularity does exist,” said Marius, unmoved.
So Saturninus turned to appeal to the crowd. “Lucius Equitius is as much a Roman as any of you!” he shrieked. “Look at him, only look at him! Tiberius Gracchus all over again!”
But Lucius Equitius was staring down into the well of the Comitia, a place below the vision of the crowd, even those in its forefront. Here senators and sons of senators were pulling knives and cudgels from beneath their robes, and moved as if to drag Lucius Equitius down into their midst.
Lucius Equitius, brave veteran of ten years in the legions—according to his own story, anyway—shrank back, turned to Marius, and clutched his free right arm. “Help me!” he whimpered.
“I’d like to help you with the toe of my boot, you silly troublemaker,” growled Marius. “However, the business of the day is to get this election over and done with. You can’t stand, but if you stay on the rostra someone’s going to lynch you. The best I can do to safeguard your hide is put you in the cells of the Lautumiae until everyone’s gone home.”
Two dozen lictors stood on the rostra, a dozen of them carrying the fasces because they belonged to the consul Gaius Marius; the consul Gaius Marius formed them around Lucius Equitius and had him marched away toward the Lautumiae, his progress through the crowd marked by a kind of parting of the people-ocean in response to the authority inherent in those simple crimson-corded bundles of rods.
I don’t believe it, thought Marius, eyes following the parting of the people-ocean. To hear them cheer, they adore the man the way they adore no gods. To them it must look as if I’ve put the creature under arrest. But what are they doing? What they always, always do whenever they see a line of lictors marching-along with fasces on their shoulders and some purple-bordered toga strutting at their rear— they’re standing aside to permit the majesty of Rome the right of way. Not even for a Lucius Equitius will they destroy the power of the rods and the purple-bordered toga. There goes Rome. What’s a Lucius Equitius, when all is said and done? A pathetic facsimile of Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus, whom they loved, loved, loved. They’re not cheering Lucius Equitius! They’re cheering the memory of Tiberius Gracchus.
And a new kind of pride-filled emotion welled up in Gaius Marius as he continued to watch that lictorial dorsal fin cleave the ocean of Roman lowly—pride in the old ways, the customs and traditions of six hundred and fifty-four years, so powerful still that it could turn a tide greater than the German invasion with no more effort than the shouldering of a few bundles of sticks. And I, thought Gaius Marius, stand here in my purple-bordered toga, unafraid of anything because I wear it, and know myself greater than any king who ever walked this globe. For I have no army, and inside their city I have no axes thrust into the rods, nor a bodyguard of swords; and yet they stand aside for the
Back came the lictors from the Lautumiae, and shortly thereafter back came Lucius Equitius, whom the crowd gently rescued from the cells and popped back on the rostra with a minimum of fuss—almost, it seemed to Marius, apologetically. And there he stood, a shivering wreck, wishing himself anywhere but where he was. To Marius the crowd’s message was explicit: fill my bucket, I’m hungry, don’t hide my food.
In the meantime Saturninus was proceeding with his election as quickly as he could, anxious to make sure he got himself returned before anything untoward could happen. His head was filled with dazzled dreams of the future, the might and majesty of that crowd, the way it showed its adoration of him. Did they cheer Lucius Equitius, just because he looked like Tiberius Gracchus? Did they cheer Gaius Marius, broken old idiot that he was, because he’d saved Rome from the barbarians? Ah, but they didn’t cheer Equitius or Marius the way they cheered him! And what material to work with—no rabble out of the Suburan stews, this crowd! This crowd was made up of respectable people whose bellies were empty yet whose principles remained intact.
One by one the candidates stepped forward, and the tribes voted, while the tally clerks scribbled busily and both Marius and Saturninus kept watch; until the moment when, in last place of all, it came time to deal with Lucius Equitius. Marius looked at Saturninus. Saturninus looked at Marius. Marius looked across to the Senate steps.
“What do you wish me to say this time, Gaius Caecilius Metellus Caprarius Censor?” Marius called out. “Do you wish me to continue denying this man the right to stand for election, or do you withdraw your objection?”
Caprarius looked helplessly at Scaurus, who looked at the grey-faced Catulus Caesar, who looked at Ahenobarbus Pontifex Maximus, who refused to look at anyone. A long pause ensued; the crowd watched in silence, fascinated, not having the remotest idea what was going on.
“Let him stand!” shouted Metellus Caprarius.
“Let him stand,” said Marius to Saturninus.
And when the results were tallied, Lucius Appuleius Saturninus came in in first place for a third term as a tribune of the plebs; Cato Salonianus, Quintus Pompeius Rufus, Publius Furius, and Sextus Titius were elected; and, in second place, only three or four behind Saturninus, the ex-slave Lucius Equitius was returned as a tribune of the plebs.
“What a servile college we’re going to have this year!” said Catulus Caesar, sneering.’ ‘Not only a Cato Salonianus, but an actual freedman!”
“The Republic is dead,” said Ahenobarbus Pontifex Maximus, with a look of loathing for Metellus Caprarius.
“Well, what else could I do?” bleated Metellus Billy Goat.
Other senators were coming up, and Sulla’s armed guard, divested of its accoutrements, emerged from the interior of the Curia. The Senate steps seemed the safest place, though it was becoming obvious that the crowd, having seen its heroes elected, was going home.
Caepio Junior spat in the direction of the crowd. “Goodbye to the rabble for today!” he said, face contorted. “Look at them! Thieves, murderers, rapists of their own daughters!”
“They’re not rabble, Quintus Servilius,” said Marius sternly. “They’re Roman and they’re poor, but not thieves or murderers. And they’re fed up with millet and turnips already. You’d better hope that friend Lucius Equitius doesn’t stir them up. They’ve been very well behaved throughout these wretched elections, but that could change as the millet and turnips get dearer and dearer in the markets.”
“Oh, there’s no need to worry about that!” said Gaius Memmius cheerfully, pleased that the tribunes of the plebs were duly elected and his joint candidacy with Marcus Antonius Orator for the consulship looked more promising than ever. “Things will improve in a few days. Marcus Antonius was telling me that our agents in Asia Province managed to buy in a great deal of wheat from way up at the north of the Euxine somewhere. The first of the grain fleets should arrive in Puteoli any day.”
Everyone was staring at him, openmouthed.
“Well,” said Marius, forgetting that he could not smile in sweet irony anymore, and so producing a terrifying grimace, “all of us are aware that you seem to have a gift for seeing the future of the grain supply, but how exactly do you happen to be privy to this information when I—the senior consul!—and Marcus Aemilius here—Princeps Senatus as well as curator annonae!—are not privy to it?”
Some twenty pairs of eyes were fixed on his face; Memmius swallowed. “It’s no secret, Gaius Marius. The subject came up in conversation in Athens when Marcus Antonius returned from his last trip to Pergamum. He saw some of our grain agents there, and they told him.”
“And why hasn’t Marcus Antonius seen fit to apprise me, the curator of our grain supply?” asked Scaurus icily.
“I suppose because—like me, really—he just assumed you knew. The agents have written, why wouldn’t you know?”
“Their letters haven’t arrived,” said Marius, winking at Scaurus. “May I thank you, Gaius Memmius, for bearing this splendid news?”
“Indeed,” said Scaurus, temper evaporating.
“We had better hope for all our sakes that no tempest blows up and sends the grain to the bottom of the Middle Sea,” Marius said, deciding the crowd had now dispersed enough for him to walk home, and not averse to talking with some of its members. “Senators, we meet here again tomorrow for the quaestorian elections. And the day after that, we will all go out to the Campus Martius to see the candidates for consuls and praetors declare themselves. Good day to you.”
“You’re a cretin, Gaius Memmius,” said Catulus Caesar crushingly from his chair.
Gaius Memmius decided he didn’t need an argument with one of the high aristocracy, and walked off in Gaius Marius’s wake, having decided he would visit Marcus Antonius in his hired villa on the Campus Martius and apprise him of the day’s events. As he strode out briskly he saw how he and Marcus Antonius could pick up additional merit with the electors. He would make sure their agents went among the Centuries as they gathered to witness the declaration of the curule candidates the day after tomorrow; they could spread the news of the coming grain fleets as if he and Marcus Antonius were responsible. The First and Second Classes might deplore the cost of cheap grain to the State, but having seen the size of the crowd in the Forum, Memmius thought they might be very grateful to think of Roman bellies full of bread baked from cheap grain.
At dawn on the day of the presentation of candidates in the saepta, he set off to walk from the Palatine to the Campus Martius, accompanied by an elated throng of clients and friends, all sure he and Antonius would get in. Buoyant and laughing, they walked briskly through the Forum Romanum in the cold breeze of a fine late-autumn morning, shivering a little when they passed through the deep shade of the Fontinalis Gate, but positive that down on the sunny plain spread beneath the Arx lay victory. Gaius Memmius would be consul.
Other men were walking to the saepta too, in groups, couples, trios, but rarely alone; a man of the classes important enough to vote in the curule elections liked company in public, for it added to his dignitas.
Where the road coming down from the Quirinal ran into the Via Lata, Gaius Memmius and his companions encountered some fifty men escorting none other than Gaius Servilius Glaucia.
Memmius stopped in his tracks, astounded. “And where do you think you’re going dressed like that?” he asked, eyeing Glaucia’s toga Candida. Specially bleached by days hanging in the sun, then whitened to blinding purity by copious applications of powdered chalk, the toga Candida could be worn only by one who was standing for election to a public office.
“I’m a candidate for the consulship,” said Glaucia.
“You’re not, you know,” said Memmius.
“Oh yes I am!”
“Gaius Mari
“Gaius Marius said I couldn’t stand,” Glaucia mimicked in a namby-pamby voice, then ostentatiously turned his back on Memmius and began to speak to his followers in a loud voice which dripped homosexual overtones. “Gaius Marius said I couldn’t stand! Well! I must say it’s a bit stiff when real men can’t stand, but pretty little pansies can!”
The exchange had gathered an audience, not unusual under the circumstances, for part of the general enjoyment of the proceedings were the clashes between rival candidates; that this clash had occurred before the open field of the saepta had been reached made little difference to the audience, swelling as more and more men came along the Via Lata from town.
Painfully aware of the audience, Gaius Memmius writhed. All his life he had suffered the curse of being too good-looking, with its inevitable taunts—he was too pretty, he couldn’t be trusted, he liked boys, he was a lightweight—on and on and on. Now Glaucia saw fit to mock him in front of all these men, these voters. Oh, he didn’t need to have them reminded of the old homosexual tag on this day above all others!
And understandably Gaius Memmius saw red. Before anyone with him could anticipate his intention, he stepped forward, put his hand on Glaucia’s left shoulder, and ripped the pristine toga off it. Then as Glaucia spun round to see who was assaulting him, Memmius swung a wild punch at Glaucia’s left ear, and connected. Down went Glaucia, Memmius on top of him, both pristine togas now grimed and smeared. But Glaucia’s men had concealed clubs and cudgels about their persons; out they came swinging; Glaucia’s men waded into the stunned ranks of Memmius’s companions, laying about with furious glee. The Memmius entourage disintegrated at once, its members flying in all directions crying for help.