The First Man in Rome by Colleen McCullough
“Unless I close this meeting, they’ll all refuse to swear,” muttered Marius, rose to his feet, and dismissed the House. “I urge you to go home and think for three days about the serious consequences should you decide not to take the oath. It is easy for Quintus Caecilius—he has the money to pay his fine, and plenty to ensure a comfortable exile. But how many of you can say that? Go home, Conscript Fathers, and think for three days. This House will reconvene four days from now, and then you must make up your minds, for we must not forget there is a time limit built into the lex Appuleia agraria secunda.”
But you can’t talk to them like that, said Marius to himself as he walked the floor of his huge and beautiful house below the temple of Juno Moneta, while his wife watched helplessly and his normally saucy son hid himself in his playroom.
You just can’t talk to them like that, Gaius Marius! They are not soldiers. They are not even subordinate officers, despite the fact that I am consul and they are mostly backbenchers who will never know the feel of an ivory curule chair beneath their fat arses. To the last one, they really do think themselves my peers—I, Gaius Marius, six times consul of this city, this country, this empire! I have to beat them, I cannot leave myself open to the ignominy of defeat. My dignitas is enormously greater than theirs, say what they will to the contrary. And I cannot see it suffer. I am the First Man in Rome. I am the Third Founder of Rome. And after I die, they are going to have to admit that I, Gaius Marius, the Italian hayseed with no Greek, was the greatest man in the history of our Republic, the Senate and People of Rome.
Further than that his thoughts never got during the three days’ grace he had given the senators; round and round and round went his dread of the loss of his dignitas were he to go down in defeat. And at dawn on the fourth day he left for the Curia Hostilia determined he was going to win— and not having thought at all about what kind of tactics the Policy Makers might use to beat him. He had taken particular care with his appearance, unwilling to let the world see that he had walked the floor for three days, and he strode down the Hill of the Bankers with his twelve lictors preceding him as if indeed he truly did own Rome.
The House assembled with unusual quietness; too few stools scraped, too few men coughed, too few attendants scuffled and muttered. The sacrifice was made flawlessly and the omens were declared auspicious for the meeting.
A big man in perfect control, Marius rose to his feet in awesome majesty. Though he had given no thought to what possible tack the Policy Makers might take, he had worked out his own tack down to the finest detail, and the confidence he felt was written plainly upon him.
“I too have spent the last three days in thought, Conscript Fathers,” he began, his eyes fixed upon some space between the listening senators rather than upon any one face, friendly or inimical. Not that anyone could tell where Marius’s eyes were, for his eyebrows hid them from all but the closest scrutiny. He tucked his left hand around the front edge of his toga where it fell in many beautifully ordered folds from left shoulder to ankles, and stepped down from the curule dais to the floor. “One fact is patent.” He paced a few feet, and stopped. “If this law is valid, it binds all of us to swear to uphold it.” He paced a few feet more. “If this law is valid, we must all take the oath.” He paced to the doors, turned to face both sides of the House. “But is it valid?” he asked loudly.
The question dropped into a fathomless silence.
“That’s it!” whispered Scaurus Princeps Senatus to Metellus Numidicus. “He’s done for! He’s just killed himself!”
But Marius, up against the doors, didn’t hear. So he didn’t pause to think again; he just went on. “There are those among you who insist that no law passed in the circumstances attending the passage of the lex Appuleia agraria secunda can be valid. I have heard the law’s validity challenged on two separate grounds—one, that it was passed in defiance of the omens, and the other, that it was passed even though violence was done to the sacrosanct person of a legally elected tribune of the plebs.”
He began to walk down the floor, then stopped. “Clearly the future of the law is in doubt. The Assembly of the Plebeian People will have to re-examine it in the light of both objections to its validity.” He took one small pace, stopped. “But that, Conscript Fathers, is not the issue we face here today. The validity of the law per se is not our first concern. Our concern is more immediate.” One more little pace. “We have been instructed by the law in question to swear to uphold the law in question. And that is what we are here today to debate. Today is the last day upon which we can take our oaths to uphold it, so the matter of swearing is urgent. And today the law in question is a valid law. So we must swear to uphold it.”
He walked forward hastily, almost reached the dais, then turned and paced slowly to the doors again, where he turned to face both sides of the House again. “Today, Conscript Fathers, we will all take that oath. We are bound to do so by the specific instruction of the People of Rome. They are the lawmakers! We of the Senate are simply their servants. So—we will swear. For it can make no difference to us, Conscript Fathers! If at some time in the future the Assembly of the Plebeian People re-examines the law and finds it invalid, then our oaths are also invalid.” Triumph filled his voice. “That is what we must understand! Any oath we take to uphold a law remains an oath only as long as the law remains a law. If the Plebeian People decide to nullify the law, then they also nullify our oaths.”
Scaurus Princeps Senatus was nodding sapiently, rhythmically; to Marius it looked as if he was agreeing with every word spoken. But Scaurus was nodding sapiently, rhythmically, for quite a different reason. The movements of his head accompanied the words he was speaking low-voiced to Metellus Numidicus. “We’ve got him, Quintus Caecilius! We’ve got him at last! He backed down. He didn’t last the distance. We’ve forced him to admit to the whole House that there is a doubt about the validity of Saturninus’s law. We’ve outmaneuvered the Arpinate fox!”
Filled with elation because he was sure he had the House on his side, Marius walked back to the dais in real earnest, mounted it, and stood in front of his carved ivory curule chair to make his peroration. “I myself will take the oath first among us,” he said, voice distilled reason. “And if I, Gaius Marius, your senior consul for the past four years and more, am prepared to swear, what can it possibly cost anyone else here? I have conferred with the priests of the College of the Two Teeth, and the temple of Semo Sancus Dius Fidius has been made ready for us. It’s not such a very long walk! Come, who will join me?”
There was a sigh, a faint murmur, the hiss of shoes moving as men broke their immobility. The backbenchers began slowly to get up from their stools.
“A question, Gaius Marius,” said Scaurus.
The House stilled again. Marius nodded.
“I would like your personal opinion, Gaius Marius. Not your official opinion. Just your personal opinion.”
“If you value my personal opinion, Marcus Aemilius, then naturally you shall have it,” said Marius. “On what?”
“What do you think personally?” Scaurus asked, his voice projected to every corner of the Curia. “Is the lex Appuleia agraria secunda valid in the light of what happened when it was passed?”
Silence. Complete silence. No one breathed. Even Gaius Marius, who was too busy racing across the awful wastes of the regions where his over-confidence had put him to think of drawing a breath.
“Would you like me to repeat the question, Gaius Marius?” asked Scaurus sweetly.
Marius’s tongue flickered out, wet his hideously dry lips. Where to go, what to do? You’ve slipped at last, Gaius Marius. Fallen into a pit you cannot climb out of. Why didn’t I see that this question was bound to be asked, and asked by the only truly great brain among them? Am I suddenly blinded by my own cleverness? It was bound to be asked! And I never once thought of it. Never once in all those three long days.
Well, I have no choice. Scaurus has my scrotum in his hands, and I must dance to his t
He looked toward the tribunes’ bench, saw Lucius Appuleius Saturninus sitting forward, hands clenched, face set, lips curled back from his teeth.
I will lose this man who is so important to me if I say I think the law is invalid. And I’ll lose the greatest legal draftsman Rome has ever seen, Glaucia.... Together, we might have straightened the whole of Italy out in spite of the worst the Policy Makers could do. But if I say I think their law is invalid, I’ll lose them forever. And yet—and yet—I must say it. Because if I do not, these cunni won’t swear the oath and my soldiers won’t get their land. That’s all I can salvage out of the mess. Land for my men. I am lost. For I have lost.
When the leg of Glaucia’s ivory chair scraped across a marble tile, half the members of the Senate jumped; Glaucia looked down at his nails, lips pursed, face expressionless. But the silence continued, moment after moment.
“I think I had better repeat my question, Gaius Marius,” Scaurus said. “What is your personal opinion? Is this law a valid one, or is it not?”
“I think—” Marius stopped, frowning fiercely. “Personally I think the law improbably invalid,” he said.
Down came Scaurus’s hands on his thighs with a crack. “Thank you, Gaius Marius!” He rose and turned round to beam at those on the tiers behind him, then turned back to beam at those on the tiers opposite him. “Well, Conscript Fathers, if no less a man than our very own conquering hero Gaius Marius deems the lex Appuleia invalid, I for one am happy to swear the oath!” And he bowed to Saturninus, to Glaucia. “Come, fellow senators, as your Princeps Senatus I suggest that we all hurry to the temple of Semo Sancus immediately!”
“Stop!”
Everyone stopped. Metellus Numidicus clapped his hands. Down from the very back of the top tier came his servant, a bag burdening each hand so that he bent double and had to drag them across each of the six-foot-wide steps and down to the next with a crash and a chink. When the two bags rested near Metellus Numidicus’s feet, the servant went back to the top and carried another two down. Several of the backbencher senators looked at what was piled against the wall, and signed their servants to help. The work went on more swiftly then, until forty bags were piled all around Metellus Numidicus’s stool. He himself stood up.
“I will not take the oath,” he said. “Not for a thousand thousand assurances from the senior consul that the lex Appuleia is invalid will I swear! I hereby tender twenty talents of silver in payment of my fine, and declare that tomorrow at dawn I will proceed into exile on Rhodes.”
Pandemonium broke out.
“Order! Order! Order!” shouted Scaurus, shouted Marius.
When order did prevail, Metellus Numidicus looked behind him, and spoke over his shoulder to someone on the back tier. “Treasury quaestor, please come forward,” he said.
Down he came, a presentable-looking young man with brown hair and brown eyes, his white toga gleaming, every fold perfect; he was Quintus Caecilius Metellus the Piglet, son of Metellus Numidicus Piggle-wiggle.
“Treasury quaestor, I give these twenty talents of silver into your keeping as payment of the fine levied upon me for refusing to swear to uphold the lex Appuleia agraria secunda,” said Metellus Numidicus. “However, while the House is still in assembly, I demand that it be counted so that the Conscript Fathers can be sure the amount is not so much as one denarius short of the proper sum.”
“We are all willing to take your word for it, Quintus Caecilius,” said Marius, smiling without a vestige of amusement.
“Oh, but I insist!” said Metellus Numidicus. “No one is going to move from this place until every last coin is counted.” He coughed. “The total, I believe, should be one hundred and thirty-five thousand denarii.”
Everyone sat down with a sigh. Two clerks of the House fetched a table and set it up at Metellus Numidicus’s place; Metellus Numidicus himself stood with his left hand clasping his toga and his right hand extended to rest, fingertips lightly down, upon the table. The clerks opened one of the bags and lifted it up between them, then let its contents cascade in glittering clinking heaps near Metellus Numidicus’s hand. Young Metellus signed to the clerks to hold the empty bag openmouthed to his right side, and began counting the coins, pushing them quickly into his right hand, cupped beneath the edge of the table; when the hand was full, he dropped its contents into the bag.
“Wait!” said Metellus Numidicus.
Metellus Piglet stopped.
“Count them out loud, Treasury quaestor!”
There was a gasp, a sigh, a ghastly collective groan.
Metellus Piglet put all the coins back on the table, and began again. “Wuh-wuh-wuh-one... tuh-tuh-tuh-two... thruh-thruh-thruh-three... fuh-fuh-fuuh-four...”
At sundown Gaius Marius rose from his curule chair. “The day is over, Conscript Fathers. Our business is not over, but in this House no one sits in formal session after the sun has set. Therefore I suggest we go now to the temple of Semo Sancus and swear our oaths. It must be done before midnight, or we are in violation of a direct order from the People.” He looked across to where Metellus Numidicus still stood and his son still toiled at the counting—far from over, though his stammer had improved markedly when his nervousness evaporated.
“Marcus Aemilius Scaurus Princeps Senatus, it is your duty to remain here and supervise the rest of this long task. I expect you to do so. And I hereby grant you leave to take your own oath tomorrow. Or the day after, if the counting is still in progress tomorrow. “A glimmer of a smile was playing about the corners of Marius’s mouth.
But Scaurus did not smile. He threw his head back and went into peal after peal of joyous, full-throated laughter.
*
Late in the spring Sulla came back from Italian Gaul, and called to see Gaius Marius immediately after a bath and a change of clothing. Marius, he discovered, looked anything but well, a finding which did not surprise him. Even in the very north of the country the events surrounding the passing of the lex Appuleia had not suffered in the telling. Nor was it necessary for Marius to retell the story; they simply looked at each other wordlessly, and everything which needed to pass between them on a basic level did so wordlessly.
However, once the emotional rush abated a little and the first cup of good wine was finished, Sulla did broach the more unpalatable externals of the subject.
“Your credibility’s suffered shockingly,” he said.
“I know, Lucius Cornelius.”
“It’s Saturninus, I hear.”
Marius sighed. “Well, and can you blame him for hating me? He’s given half a hundred speeches from the rostra, and by no means all to properly convoked assemblies. Every one accusing me of betraying him. In fact, since he’s a brilliant speaker, the tale of my treachery hasn’t lost in his style of translation to the crowds. And he draws the crowds too. Not merely regular Forum frequenters, but men of the Third and Fourth and Fifth Classes who seem fascinated by him to the extent that whenever they have a day off, they turn up in the Forum to listen to him.”
“Does he speak that often?” asked Sulla.
“He speaks every single day!”
Sulla whistled. “That’s something new in the annals of the Forum! Every day? Rain or shine? Formal meetings or no formal meetings?”
“Every single day. When the urban praetor—his own boon companion Glaucia—obeyed his orders from the Pontifex Maximus to instruct Saturninus that he couldn’t speak on market days or holidays or non-comitial days, he simply ignored it. And because he’s a tribune of the plebs, no one has seriously tried to haul him down.” Marius frowned, worried. “In consequence, h
“We’ll have to keep an eye on him, won’t we?” Sulla asked. He looked at Marius very seriously. “Why did you do it?”
There was no pretence at ignorance; Marius answered at once. “I didn’t have any choice, Lucius Cornelius. The truth is that I’m not—I don’t know—devious enough to see around all the corners I should if I’m to keep a pace to two ahead of men like Scaurus. He caught me as neatly as anyone could have wanted. I acknowledge the fact freely.”
“But in one way you’ve salvaged the scheme,” said Sulla, trying to comfort him. “The second land bill is still on the tablets, and I don’t think the Plebeian Assembly—-or the Assembly of the People, for that matter—is going to invalidate it. Or at least, I’m told that’s how things stand.”
“True,” said Marius, not looking comforted. He hunched his head into his shoulders, sighed. “Saturninus is the victor, Lucius Cornelius, not I. It’s his sense of outrage keeping the Plebs firm. I’ve lost them.” He writhed, threw out his hands. “How am I ever going to get through the rest of this year? It’s an ordeal to have to walk through the volley of boos and hisses from the region around the rostra whenever Saturninus is speaking, but as for walking into the Curia— I loathe it! I loathe the sleek smile on Scaurus’s seamy face, I loathe the insufferable smirk on that camel Catulus’s face—I’m not made for the political arena, and that’s a truth I’ve just begun to find out.”
“But you climbed the cursus honorum, Gaius Marius!” Sulla said. ‘ ‘You were one of the great tribunes of the plebs! You knew the political arena, and you loved it, otherwise you could never have been a great tribune of the plebs.”