The First Man in Rome by Colleen McCullough
The whole of Rome went mad with joy, its streets filled with weeping, dancing, cheering, embracing hordes of people, from slaves to the most august. And Gaius Marius was voted senior consul for the next year in absentia, with Manius Aquillius his junior colleague. The Senate voted him a thanksgiving of three days, and the People two days more..
“Sulla referred to it,” Catulus Caesar remarked to Metellus Numidicus after the fuss died down.
“Oho! You “don’t like our Lucius Cornelius! ‘Sulla,’ eh? What did he refer to?”
“He said something to the effect that the tallest tree in the world couldn’t be cut down by anyone. He has all the luck, Gaius Marius. I couldn’t persuade my army to fight, while he defeats a whole nation and hardly loses a man doing it,” said Catulus Caesar gloomily.
“He’s always had the luck,” said Metellus Numidicus.
“Luck, nothing!” said the eavesdropping Publius Rutilius Rufus vigorously. “Give credit where credit’s due!”
Which left them with little more to say [wrote Rutilius Rufus to Gaius Marius]. As you well know, I cannot condone all these consecutive consulships, nor some of your more wolfy friends. But I do confess to exasperated annoyance when I am faced with envy and spite from men who ought to be big enough to be magnanimous. Aesop summed them up nicely—sour grapes, Gaius Marius. Did you ever hear such nonsense as attributing your success and their lack of success to luck? A man makes his luck, and that’s the truth of it. I could spit when I hear them depreciating your wonderful victory.
Enough about that, I’ll give myself an apoplexy. Speaking of your more wolfy friends, Gaius Servilius Glaucia—having entered into his tribunate of the plebs eight days ago—is already stirring up a nice little storm in the Comitia. He has called his first contio to discuss a new law he proposes to promulgate, his intent being to undo the work of that hero of Tolosa, Quintus Servilius Caepio, may his exile in Smyrna last forever. I do not like that man; I never did like that man! Glaucia is going to give the extortion court back to the knights, with all sorts of frills attached to it too. From now on—if the law is passed, which I suppose it will be— the State will be able to recover damages or misappropriated property or peculated funds from their ultimate recipients as well as from the original culprits. So where before a rapacious governor could sign his ill-gotten gains over to his Auntie Liccy or his wife’s tata Lucius Tiddlypuss or even someone as obvious as his son, under Glaucia’s new law Auntie Liccy and Lucius Tiddlypuss and the son will have to cough up as well.
I suppose there is some justice in it, but where does legislation like this lead, Gaius Marius? It gives the State too much power, not to mention too much money! It breeds demagogues and bureaucrats, that’s what! There is something terribly reassuring about being in politics to enrich oneself. It’s normal. It’s human. It’s forgivable. It’s understandable. The ones to watch are the ones who are in politics to change the world. They do the real damage, the power-men and the altruists. It isn’t healthy to think about other people ahead of oneself. Other people are not as deserving. Did I tell you I was a Skeptic? Well, I am. Though sometimes— just sometimes!—I wonder if I’m not becoming a little bit of a Cynic too.
We hear that you’ll be back in Rome briefly. I cannot wait! I want to see Piggle-wiggle’s face at the instant he first sets eyes on you. Catulus Caesar has been made proconsul of Italian Gaul, as you might have expected, and has already gone to rejoin his army in Placentia. Watch him, he’ll try to take the credit of the next victory off you if he can. I hope your Lucius Cornelius Sulla is as loyal as he used to be, now Julilla’s dead.
On the diplomatic front, Battaces and his priests have finally seen fit to go home, and the wails from various highborn ladies can be heard at least as far as Brundisium. Now we are playing host to a much less awesome and infinitely more ominous embassage. It’s come from none other than that very dangerous young man who has managed to collar most of the territory around the Euxine Sea—King Mithridates of Pontus. He’s asking for a treaty of friendship and alliance. Scaurus is not in favor. I wonder why? Could it possibly have something to do with the fierce lobbying of the agents of King Nicomedes of our friendly allied Bithynia? Edepol, edepol, there goes that dreadful Skeptic streak again! No, Gaius Marius, it is not a Cynical streak! Not yet, anyway.
To conclude, a little gossip and personal news. The Conscript Father Marcus Calpurnius Bibulus has a little son and heir, giving rise to great expressions of joy on the part of various Domitii Ahenobarbi and Servilii Caepiones, though I note the Calpurnii Pisones have managed to maintain their air of indifference. And while it may be the fate of some venerable elders to marry schoolgirls, it is a more usual fate to yield to the arms of Death. Our very own literary giant Gaius Lucilius is dead. I’m quite sorry about it, really. He was a horrible bore in the flesh, but oh he was witty on paper! I am also sorry—and with deep sincerity this time—that your old Syrian seer Martha is dead. No news to you, I know Julia wrote, but I shall miss the old harridan. Piggle-wiggle used to foam at the mouth whenever he saw her being toted around Rome in her lurid purple litter. Your dear wonderful Julia vows she’ll miss Martha too. I hope you appreciate the treasure you married, by the way. It isn’t every wife I know would grieve at the passing of a houseguest who came for a month and stayed for the duration, especially a houseguest who thought it etiquette to spit on the floor and piss in the fishpond.I close by echoing your own remark. How could you, Gaius Marius? “Long live Rome!” indeed! What a conceit!
THE
TENTH YEAR
101 - 100 B.C.
IN THE CONSULSHIP OF
GAIUS MARIUS (V)
AND
MANIUS AQUILLIUS
THE
ELEVENTH YEAR
100 B.C.
IN THE CONSULSHIP OF
GAIUS MARIUS (VI)
AND
LUCIUS VALERIUS FLACCUS
1
Sulla was right: the Cimbri weren’t even interested in crossing the Padus. Like cows let loose in a huge river-flat pasture, they browsed contentedly across the eastern half of Italian Gaul-across-the-Padus, surrounded by so much agricultural and pastoral plenty that they took no heed of the exhortations of their king. Alone among them Boiorix worried; alone among them Boiorix was deeply depressed when he got the news of the defeat of the Teutones at Aquae Sextiae. When to this was joined the news that the Tigurini-Marcomanni-Cherusci had grown discouraged and turned back toward their original homelands, Boiorix despaired. His grand strategy had been ruined by a combination of Roman superiority in arms and German fecklessness, and now he was beginning to doubt his ability to control his people, the Cimbri.
He still felt they, the most numerous of the three divisions, could conquer Italy unaided—but only if he could teach them the priceless lessons of collective unity and individual self-discipline.
All through the winter following Aquae Sextiae he kept to himself, understanding that he could accomplish nothing until his people either tired of this place, or ate it out. Since they were not farmers, the second possibility was a probability, but nowhere on his travels had Boiorix seen such fertility, such a capacity to feed, and keep on feeding. If Italian Gaul-across-the-Padus was in the fief of the Romans, no wonder Rome was so great. Unlike Long-haired Gaul, here no vast forests were left standing; instead, carefully culled stands of oaks provided a bounteous crop of acorns for many thousands of pigs let loose to graze among them during the winter. The rest of the countryside was tilled: millet where the Padus made the ground too boggy, wheat where the ground was dry enough; chick-peas and lentils, lupines and beans in every kind of soil. Even when in the spring the farmers were either fled or too afraid to sow their crops, still the crops came up, so many seeds already lay dormant on the ground.
What Boiorix failed to understand was the physical structure of Italy; had he done so, he might have elected after all to announce that here in Gaul-across-the-Padus was the new Cimbric homeland; and had he done that, it
As it was, Boiorix regained his purpose when spring slid into summer and the first tiny evidences of an eaten-out land began to appear. Crops had indeed sown themselves, but they were thin and did not seem to be forming ears or pods or tufts; crafty in the extreme, being intelligent creatures, the pigs conserved their dwindling numbers by disappearing completely; and the half-million beasts the Cimbri themselves had brought with them had trampled what they hadn’t grazed into chaffy dust.
It was time to move on; when Boiorix went among his thanes and stirred them up, they in turn went among the people, stirring. And so in early June the cattle were driven in, the horses mustered, the wagons hitched up. The Cimbri, united once more into a single vast mass, moved westward upstream along the north bank of the Padus, heading for the more Romanized regions around the big town of Placentia.
*
In Placentia lay the Roman army, fifty-four thousand strong. Marius had donated two of his legions to Manius Aquillius, who had gone to Sicily early in the year to deal with the slave-king Athenion; so thoroughly had the Teutones been vanquished that it was not even necessary to leave any soldiers behind to garrison Gaul-across-the-Alps.
The situation had certain parallels to the command situation at Arausio: again the senior commander was a New Man, again the junior commander was a formidable aristocrat. But the difference between Gaius Marius and Gnaeus Mallius Maximus was enormous; the New Man Marius was not the man to take any nonsense from the aristocrat Catulus Caesar. Catulus Caesar was brusquely told what to do, where to go, and why he was doing and going. All that was required of him was that he obey, and he knew exactly what would happen if he didn’t obey, because Gaius Marius had taken the time to tell him. Very frankly.
“You might say I’ve drawn a line for you to tread, Quintus Lutatius. Put one toe either side of it, and I’ll have you back in Rome so fast you won’t know how you got there,” said Marius. “I’ll have no Caepio tricks played on me! I’d much prefer to see Lucius Cornelius in your boots anyway, and that’s who will go into them if you so much as think of deviating from your line. Understood?”
“I am not a subaltern, Gaius Marius, and I resent being treated like one,” said Catulus Caesar, a crimson spot burning in each cheek.
“Look, Quintus Lutatius, I don’t care what you feel!” said Marius with exaggerated patience. “All I care about is what you do. And what you do is what I tell you to do, nothing else.”
“I do not anticipate any difficulty following your orders, Gaius Marius. They’re as specific as they are detailed,” said Catulus Caesar, curbing his temper. “But I repeat, there is no need to speak to me as if I were a junior officer! I am your second-in-command.”
Marius grinned unpleasantly. “I don’t like you either, Quintus Lutatius,” he said. “You’re just another one of the many upper-class mediocrities who think they’ve got some sort of divine right to rule Rome. My opinion of you as an individual is that you couldn’t run a wine bar sitting between a brothel and a men’s club! So this is how you and I are going to collaborate—I issue the instructions; you follow them to the letter.”
“Under protest,” said Catulus Caesar.
“Under protest, but do it,” said Marius.
“Couldn’t you have been a little more tactful?” asked Sulla of Marius later that day, having endured Catulus Caesar striding up and down his tent ranting about Marius for a full hour.
“What for?” asked Marius, genuinely surprised.
“Because in Rome he matters, that’s what for! And he also matters here in Italian Gaul!” snapped Sulla. His spurt of anger died, he looked at the unrepentant Gaius Marius and shook his head. “Oh, you’re impossible! And getting worse, I swear.”
“I’m an old man, Lucius Cornelius. Fifty-six. The same age as our Princeps Senatus, whom everybody calls an old man.”
“That’s because our Princeps Senatus is a bald and wrinkled Forum fixture,” said Sulla. “You still represent the vigorous commander in the field, so no one thinks of you as old.”
“Well, I’m too old to suffer fools like Quintus Lutatius gladly,” said Marius. “I do not have the time to spend hours smoothing down the ruffled feathers of cocks-on-dungheaps just to keep them thinking well of themselves.”
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you!” said Sulla.
*
By the second half of Quinctilis the Cimbri were massed at the foot of the western Alps, spread across a plain called the Campi Raudii, not far from the small town of Vercellae.
“Why here?” asked Marius of Quintus Sertorius, who had been mingling with the Cimbri off and on as they moved westward.
“I wish I knew, Gaius Marius, but I’ve never managed to get close to Boiorix himself,” said Sertorius. “The Cimbri seem to think they’re going home to Germania, but a couple of the thanes I know think Boiorix is still determined to go south.”
“He’s too far west,” said Sulla.
“The thanes think he’s trying to placate the people by leading them to believe they’ll be crossing the Alps back into Long-haired Gaul very soon, and next year will be home again in the Cimbrian Chersonnese. But he’s going to keep them in Italian Gaul just long enough to close the alpine passes, and then present them with a pretty poor alternative—stay in Italian Gaul and starve through the winter, or invade Italy.”
“That’s a very complicated maneuver for a barbarian,” said Marius skeptically.
“The three-pronged fish spear into Italian Gaul wasn’t your typical barbarian strategy either,” Sulla reminded him.
“They’re like vultures,” said Sertorius suddenly.
“How?” asked Marius, frowning.
“They pick the bones of wherever they are clean, Gaius Marius. That’s really why they keep moving, it seems to me. Or maybe a plague of locusts is a better comparison. They eat everything in sight, then move on. It will take the Aedui and the Ambarri twenty years to repair the ravages of playing host to the Germans for four years. And the Atuatuci were looking very dismayed when I left, I can tell you.”
“Then how did they manage to stay in their original homeland without moving for so long?” asked Marius.
“There were less of them, for one thing. The Cimbri had their huge peninsula, the Teutones all the land to the south of it, the Tigurini were in Helvetia, the Cherusci were along the Visurgis in Germania, and the Marcomanni lived in Boiohaemum,” said Sertorius.
“The climate is different,” said Sulla when Sertorius fell silent. “North of the Rhenus, it rains all year round. So the grass grows very quickly, and it’s juicy, sweet, tender grass. Nor are the winters so very hard, it seems—at least as close to Oceanus Atlanticus as the Cimbri, the Teutones, and the Cherusci were. Even at dead of winter they get more rain than snow and ice. So they can graze rather than grow. I don’t think the Germans live the way they do because it’s their nature. I think the Germans live the way their original homelands dictated.”
Marius looked up from beneath his brows. “So if, for instance, they fetched up long enough in Italy, they’d learn to farm, you think?”
“Undoubtedly,” said Sulla.
“Then we’d better force a conclusive fight this summer, and make an end to it—and them. For nearly fifteen years Rome has been living under their shadow. I can’t rest peacefully in my bed if the last thing I think of before I close my eyes is half a million Germans wandering around E
“I agree,” said Sulla.
“And I,” said Sertorius.
“Haven’t you got a sprog among the Cimbri somewhere?” asked Marius of Sertorius.
“I have.”
“Do you know where?”
“Yes.”
“Good. After it’s over, you can send the sprog and his mother wherever you want, even Rome.”
“Thank you, Gaius Marius. I’ll send them to Nearer Spain,” said Sertorius, smiling.
Marius stared. “Spain? Why Spain?”
“I liked it there, when I was learning to be a Celtiberian. The tribe I stayed with will look after my German family.”
“Good! Now, good friends, let’s see how we can bring on a battle with the Cimbri.”
*
Marius brought on his battle; the date was the last day of Quinctilis by the calendar, and it had been formally fixed at a conference between Marius and Boiorix, For Marius was not the only one fed up with years of indecision. Boiorix too was keen to see an end to it.
“To the victor goes Italy,” said Boiorix.
“To the victor goes the world,” said Marius.
As at Aquae Sextiae, Marius fought an infantry engagement, his scant cavalry drawn up to protect two massive infantry wings made up of his own troops from Gaul-across-the-Alps, split up into two lots of fifteen thousand. Between them he put Catulus Caesar and his twenty-four thousand less experienced men to form the center; the veteran troops in the wings would keep them steady and contained. He himself commanded the left wing, Sulla the right wing, and Catulus Caesar the center.
Fifteen thousand Cimbric cavalry began the battle, magnificently clad and equipped, and riding the huge northern horses rather than little Gallic ponies. Each German trooper wore a towering helmet shaped like a mythical monster’s head with gaping jaws, stiff tall feathers on either side to give the rider even more height; he wore an iron breastplate and a long-sword, and carried a round white shield as well as two heavy lances.