The First Man in Rome by Colleen McCullough
“Come!” called Marius, glad of the interruption.
It was the little Greek physician from Sicily, Athenodorus. “Domine, your wife is asking to see you,” he said to Marius, ‘ ‘and I think it would do her good if you came.’’
Down hurtled the contents of Marius’s chest into his belly; he drew a sobbing breath, his hand going out. Caesar had jumped to his feet, and was staring at the doctor painfully.
“Is she—is she—?” Caesar couldn’t finish.
“No, no! Rest easy, domine, she’s doing well,” said the Greek soothingly.
Gaius Marius had never been in the presence of a woman in labor, and now found himself terrified. It wasn’t hard to look on those killed or maimed in battle; they were comrades of the sword, no matter which side they belonged to, and a man always knew he might but for Fortune be one of them. In Julia’s case the victim was dearly beloved, someone to be shielded and protected, spared all possible pain. Yet now Julia was no less his victim than any enemy, put into her bed of pain because of him. Disturbing thoughts for Gaius Marius.
However, all looked very normal when he walked into the confinement chamber. Julia was indeed lying in a bed. The childing stool—the special chair on which she would be seated when she went into the final stage of her labor— was decently covered up in a corner, so he didn’t even notice it. To his vast relief, she didn’t look either worn out or desperately ill, and the moment she saw him she smiled at him radiantly, holding out both hands.
He took them and kissed them. “Are you all right?” he asked, a little foolishly.
“Of course I am! It’s just going to take a long time, they tell me, and there’s a bit of bleeding. But nothing to be worried about at this stage.” A spasm of pain crossed her face; her hands closed on his with a strength he hadn’t known she possessed, and clung there for perhaps a minute before she began to relax again. “I just wanted to see you,” she resumed, as if there had been no interruption. “May I see you from time to time, or will it be too distressing for you?”
“I would much rather see you, my little love,” he said, bending to kiss the line where brow and hair met, and a few fine, fluffy curls clustered. They were damp, his lips informed him, and her skin was damp too. Poor, sweet darling!
“It will be all right, Gaius Marius,” she said, letting go of his hands. “Try not to worry too much. I know everything will be all right! Is tata still with you?”
“He is.”
Turning to leave, he encountered a fierce glare from Marcia, standing off to one side in the company of three old midwives. Oh, ye gods! Here was one who wouldn’t forgive him in a hurry for doing this to her daughter!
“Gaius Marius!” Julia called as he reached the door.
He looked back.
“Is the astrologer here?” she asked.
“Not yet, but he’s been sent for.”
She looked relieved. “Oh, good!”
*
Marius’s son was born twenty-four hours later, in a welter of blood. He almost cost his mother’s life, but her will to survive was very strong, and after the doctors packed her solid with swabs and elevated her hips the haemorrhaging slowed down, and eventually stopped.
“He will be a famous man, dominus, and his life will be full of great events and great adventures,” said the astrologer, expertly ignoring those unpalatable aspects the parents of new sons never wished to hear about.
“Then he will live?” asked Caesar sharply.
“Undoubtedly he will live, dominus.” One long and rather grimy finger rested across a major Opposition, blocking it from sight. “He will hold the highest office in the land—it is here in his chart for all the world to see.” Another long and grimy finger pointed to a Trine.
“My son will be consul,” said Marius with huge satisfaction.
“Assuredly,” said the astrologer, then added, “But he will not be as great a man as his father, says the Quincunx.”
And that pleased Marius even more.
Caesar poured two goblets of the best Falernian wine, unwatered, and gave one to his son-in-law, beaming with pride. “Here’s to your son and my grandson, Gaius Marius,” he said. “I salute you both!”
*
Thus, when at the end of March the consul Quintus Caecilius Metellus sailed for the African province with Gaius Marius, Publius Rutilius Rufus, Sextus Julius Caesar, Gaius Julius Caesar Junior, and four promising legions, Gaius Marius could sail in the happy knowledge that his wife was out of all danger, and his son was thriving. Even his mother-in-law had deigned to speak to him again!
“Have a talk to Julilla,” he said to Julia just before he departed. “Your father’s very worried about her.”
Feeling stronger and bursting with joy because her son was a magnificently large and healthy baby, Julia mourned but one thing: she was not yet well enough to accompany Marius to Campania, to have a few more days with him before he quit Italy.
“I suppose you mean this ridiculous starvation business,”said Julia, leaning more comfortably into Marius’s embrace.
“Well, I don’t know any more than your father told me, but I did gather it was about that,” said Marius. “You’ll have to forgive me, I’m not really interested in young girls.”
His wife, a young girl, smiled secretly; she knew he never thought of her as young, but rather as a person of his own age, equally mature and intelligent.
“I’ll talk to her,” said Julia, lifting her face for a kiss. “Oh, Gaius Marius, what a pity I’m not well enough to try for a little brother or sister for Young Marius!”
But before Julia could gird herself to talk to her ailing sister, the news of the Germans burst upon Rome, and Rome flew into a gabbling panic. Ever since the Gauls had invaded Italy three hundred years before, and almost vanquished the fledgling Roman state, Italy had lived in dread of barbarian incursions; it was to guard against them that the Italian Allied nations had chosen to link their fates to Rome’s, and it was to guard against them that Rome and her Italian Allies fought perpetual border wars along the thousand miles of Macedonian frontier between the Adriatic Sea and the Thracian Hellespont. It was to guard against them that Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus had forged a proper land route between Italian Gaul and the Spanish Pyrenees a mere ten years ago, and subdued the tribes which lived along the river Rhodanus with a view to weakening them by exposing them to Roman ways and putting them under Roman military protection.
Until five years ago, it was the barbarian Gauls and Celts had loomed largest in Roman fears; but then the Germans first came on the scene, and suddenly by comparison the Gauls and Celts seemed civilized, tame, tractable. Like all bogeys, these fears arose not out of what was known, but out of what was not known. The Germans had popped out of nowhere (during the consulship of Marcus Aemilius Scaurus), and after inflicting a hideous defeat upon a huge and superbly trained Roman army (during the consulship of Gnaeus Papirius Carbo) disappeared again as if they had never been. Mysterious. Incalculable. Oblivious to the normal patterns of behavior as understood and respected by all the peoples who dwelled around the margins of the Middle Sea. For why, when that ghastly defeat had spread the whole of Italy out before them as helpless as a woman in a sacked city, did the Germans turn away, disappear? It made no sense! But they had turned away, they had disappeared; and as the years since Carbo’s hideous defeat accumulated, the Germans became little more than a Lamia, a Mormolyce—a bogey to frighten children. The old, old fear of barbarian invasion lapsed back into its normal condition, somewhere between a shiver of apprehension and a disbelieving smile.
And now, out of nowhere again, the Germans were back, pouring in their hundreds of thousands into Gaul-across-the-Alps where the river Rhodanus flowed out of Lake Lemanna; and the Gallic lands and tribes which owed Rome tribute—the lands of the Aedui and the Ambarri—were awash in Germans, all ten feet tall, pallidly pale, giants out of legends, ghosts out of some northern barbarian underworld. Down into the warm, fertile valley of the Rh
The news reached Rome just days too late to recall the consul Quintus Caecilius Metellus and his army, already landed in Africa Province. Thus, fool though he was, the consul Marcus Junius Silanus, kept in Rome to govern there where he could do least harm, now became the best the Senate could produce under the twin weights of custom and law. For a consul in office could not be passed over in favor of some other commander, if he indicated he was willing to undertake a war. And Silanus expressed himself delighted to undertake a war against the Germans. Like Gnaeus Papirius Carbo five years before him, Silanus envisioned German wagons loaded down with gold, and coveted that gold.
After Carbo had provoked the Germans into attacking him and gone down to crushing defeat, the Germans had failed to pick up the arms and armor the vanquished Romans had left behind, on their dead, or abandoned by those still living to accelerate the pace of their flight. Thus canny Rome rather than the oblivious Germans sent teams to collect every vestige of arms and gear, and bring it all back to Rome and store it. This military treasure trove still lay in warehouses all over the city, waiting to be used. The limited resources of manufactories to supply arms and gear at the start of the campaigning season had been exhausted by Metellus and his African expedition, so it was lucky indeed that Silanus’s hastily levied legions could be equipped from this cache; though of course the recruits lacking arms and a set of armor had to buy them from the State, which meant that the State actually made a little profit from Silanus’s new legions.
Finding troops to give Silanus was far more difficult. The recruiters labored mightily, and under an oppressive sense of urgency. Often the property qualifications were winked at; men anxious to serve who didn’t own quite enough to qualify were hastily enlisted, their inability to arm and protect themselves rectified from Carbo’s old cache, its cost deducted from their absentee compensation pay. Veterans who had retired were lured out of bucolic inertia—mostly with little trouble, as bucolic inertia did not suit many of the men who had done their ten seasons under the colors and therefore could not be called up again.
And finally it was done. Marcus Junius Silanus set off for Gaul-across-the-Alps at the head of a splendid army a full seven legions strong, and with a large cavalry arm of Thracians mixed with some Gauls from the more settled parts of the Roman Gallic province. The time was late May, a bare eight weeks after the news of the German invasion had reached Rome; in that time Rome had recruited, armed, and partially trained an army of fifty thousand men including the cavalry and noncombatants. Only a bogey as enormous as the Germans could have stimulated such a heroic effort.
“But nonetheless it’s living proof of what we Romans can do when we’ve the will to do it,” said Gaius Julius Caesar to his wife, Marcia, on their return; they had journeyed out to see the legions start their march up the Via Flaminia toward Italian Gaul, a dazzling sight, and a cheering one.
“Yes, provided Silanus can do the job,” said Marcia, a true senator’s wife, actively interested in politics.
“You don’t think he can,” said Caesar.
“Nor do you, if you’d only admit it. Still, watching so many booted feet march across the Mulvian Bridge made me very glad that we have Marcus Aemilius Scaurus and Marcus Livius Drusus as censors now,” Marcia said with a sigh of satisfaction. “Marcus Scaurus is right—the Mulvian Bridge is tottering, and won’t survive another flood. Then what would we do if all of our troops were south of the Tiber and needed to march north in a hurry? So I’m very glad he was elected, since he’s vowed to rebuild the Mulvian Bridge. A wonderful man!”
Caesar smiled a little sourly, but said, trying to be fair, “Scaurus is becoming an institution, damn him! He’s a showman, a dazzling trickster—and three parts sham. However, the one part which isn’t sham just happens to be worth more than any other man’s whole—and for that I must forgive all, I suppose. Besides which, he’s right—we do need a new program of public works, and not only to keep employment levels up. All these penny-pinching perusers of the senatorial rolls we seem to have endured as censors for the last few years are hardly worth the cost of the paper they scribble out the census on! Give Scaurus his due: he intends to see to some items I know should have been attended to long ago. Though I cannot condone his draining of the fens around Ravenna, or his plans for a system of canals and dikes between Parma and Mutina.”
“Oh, come now, Gaius Julius, be generous!” said Marcia a little sharply. “It’s terrific that he’s going to curb the Padus! With the Germans invading Gaul-across-the-Alps, we don’t need to find our armies cut off from the alpine passes by the Padus in full spate!”
“I’ve already said I agree it’s a good thing,” said Caesar, then added with stubborn disapproval, “Yet I find it fascinating that on the whole he’s managed to keep his program of public works firmly in those parts where he has clients galore—and is likely to sextuple their numbers by the time he’s finished. The Via Aemilia goes all the way from Ariminum on the Adriatic to Taurasia in the foothills of the western Alps—three hundred miles of clients packed as solid as the paving stones in it!”
“Well, and good luck to him,” said Marcia, equally stubborn. “I suppose you’ll find something to deride about his surveying and paving the west coast road too!”
“You forgot to mention the branch to Dertona that will link up the west coast road with the Via Aemilia,” gibed Caesar. “And he gets his name on the whole lot into the bargain! The Via Aemilia Scauri. Tchah!”
“Sourpuss,” said Marcia.
“Bigot,” said Caesar.
“There are definitely times when I wish I didn’t like you so much,” said Marcia.
“There are times when I can say the same,” said Caesar.
At which point Julilla drifted in. She was extremely thin, but not quite skeletal, and had remained in much the same state now for two months. For Julilla had discovered an equilibrium which allowed her to look pitiable yet prevented her dropping to a point where death became a strong possibility, if not from pure starvation, then certainly from disease. Death was not part of Julilla’s master plan, nor was her spirit troubled.
She had two objectives: one was to force Lucius Cornelius Sulla to admit he loved her, and the other was to soften up her family to breaking point, for only then, she knew, did she stand the remotest chance of securing her father’s permission to marry Sulla. Very young and very spoiled though she was, she hadn’t made the mistake of overestimating her power when compared to the power vested in her father. Love her to distraction he might, indulge her to the top limit of his monetary resources he might; yet when it came to deciding whom she would marry, he would follow his own wishes without regard for hers. Oh, if she was tractable enough to approve of his choice of a husband for her—as Julia had done—he would glow with a natural and simple pleasure, and she knew too that he would look for someone he felt sure would take care of her, love her, always treat her well and respectfully. But Lucius Cornelius Sulla as her husband? Never, never, never would her father consent to it, and no reason she—or Sulla—could put forward would change her father’s mind. She could weep, she could beg, she could protest undying love, she could turn herself inside out, and still her father would refuse to give his consent. Especially now that she had a dowry of some forty talents— a million sesterces—in the bank, which made her eligible, and marred Sulla’s chances of ever persuading her father that he wished to marry her for herself alone. That is, when he admitted that he wished to marry her.
As a child Julilla had never displayed any sign that she owned a streak of enormous patience, but now, when it was needed, she had it to hand. Patient as a bird hatching a sterile egg, Julilla embarked upon her master plan fully aware that if she was to get what she wanted—a marriage to Sulla—she must outwait and outendure everyone else she knew, from her victim, Sulla, t
The master plan had evolved slowly, its nuclear germ the result of that first meeting, when he had derided her puppy fat and shooed her away. She had ceased to gobble sweeties, and lost a little weight, and had no reward from him for her pains. Then when he came back to Rome and was even ruder to her, her resolve had hardened, and she began to forsake food. At first it had been very difficult, but then she discovered that when she adhered to this semistarvation for long enough without once succumbing to the urge to stuff herself, her capacity to eat diminished, and the hunger pangs entirely went away.
So by the time that Lucius Gavius Stichus had died of his lingering illness eight months ago, Julilla’s master plan was more or less fully evolved; there remained only irritating problems to solve, from devising a way to keep herself in the forefront of Sulla’s mind to discovering a way to maintain herself in a weight equilibrium which would allow her to live.
Sulla she dealt with by writing him letters.
I love you, and I shall never tire of telling you so. If letters are the only way I can make you hear me, then letters there will be. Dozens. Hundreds. Thousands, if the years mount up. I will smother you in letters, drown you in letters, crush you in letters. What more Roman way is there than the writing of letters? We feed on them, as I feed upon writing to you. What does food mean, when you deny me the food my heart and spirit crave? My crudest, most merciless, and un-pitying beloved! How can you stay away from me? Break down the wall between our two houses, steal into my room, kiss me and kiss me and kiss me! But you will not. I can hear you saying it as I lie here too weak to leave my awful and hateful bed. What have I done to deserve your indifference, your coldness? Surely somewhere inside your white, white skin there curls the smallest of womannikins, my essence given into your keeping, so that the Julilla who lives next door in her awful and hateful bed is only a sucked-out and dried-up simulacrum growing steadily shadowier, fainter. One day I shall disappear, and all that will be left of me is that tiny womannikin under your white, white skin. Come and see me, look upon what you have done? Kiss me and kiss me and kiss me. For I love you.