The Grass Crown by Colleen McCullough
It was now October, and Rome was only scant miles away. Cinna's agents reported to him that the city was in a panic—that Octavius had written to Pompey Strabo beseeching him to come to the aid of his country—and that, wonder of wonders, none other than Gaius Marius had landed on the Etrurian coast at the township of Telamon, adjacent to his own vast estates. This last item of news threw Cinna into transports of delight, especially when his agents followed it up with the intelligence that men from Etruria and Umbria were flocking to join Marius, who was marching down the Via Aurelia Vetus in the direction of Rome.
"This is the best news!" Cinna said to Quintus Sertorius. "Now Gaius Marius is back in Italy, this business will be over in a matter of days. Since you know him better than the rest of us do, find him and inform him of our dispositions. Discover what his own plans are too. Is he going to take Ostia or bypass it in favor of Rome? Make sure you tell him that if I can, I would rather keep our armies—and any hostilities!—on the Vatican side of the river. I hate the thought of bringing troops anywhere near the pomerium, and I have no wish to end in emulating Lucius Sulla. Find him, Quintus Sertorius, and tell him how glad I am that he's in Italy again!" Cinna thought of something else. "Tell him too that I'll send every spare item of armor I have to him before he reaches Ostia."
Sertorius located Marius near the little township of Fregenae, some miles north of Ostia; if his cross-country ride to Fregenae had been fast, his cross-country gallop back to Cinna at Labicum was at record pace. He erupted into the small house where Cinna had set up a temporary headquarters, and launched into speech before the astonished Cinna could open his mouth.
"Lucius Cinna, I beg of you, write to Gaius Marius and order him to disband his men or transfer them to your service!" Sertorius said, face drawn and set. "Order him to behave like the privatus he is—order him to disband his army—order him to return to his estates and wait like any privatus until the issue is decided."
"What on earth is the matter with you?" asked Cinna, hardly able to believe his ears. "How can you of all people say such things? Gaius Marius is essential for our cause! If he stands in our forefront, we can't lose."
"Lucius Cinna, it is Marius can't lose!" cried Sertorius. "I tell you straight—if you allow Gaius Marius to participate in this struggle, you will rue the day. For it won't be Lucius Cinna victorious and placed at the head of Rome's government—it will be Gaius Marius! I have just seen him, I have just spoken to him. He is old, he is bitter, and his mind has given way. Order him to go to his estates as a privatus, please!"
"What do you mean, his mind has given way?"
"Just that. He's mad."
"Well, that's not what my agents who are with him are saying, Quintus Sertorius. According to them, he's as superbly organized as he ever was, he's marching toward Ostia with a good sound plan in his head—why do you say his mind has given way? Is he gibbering? Is he ranting and raving? My agents are not as privy to him as you are, but they would surely have seen signs," said Cinna with obvious skepticism.
"He's not gibbering. He's not ranting and raving. Nor has he forgotten how to control or maneuver an army. But I have known Gaius Marius since I was seventeen years old, and I tell you in all sincerity, this is not the Gaius Marius I know! He's old and he's bitter. Thirsting for revenge. Quite obsessed with himself and his prophesied destiny. You cannot trust him, Lucius Cinna! He will end in taking Rome away from you and running it to suit his own purposes." Sertorius drew a breath, tried again. "Young Marius sends the same message to you, Lucius Cinna. Don't give his father any kind of authority! He's mad."
"I think you're both overreacting," said Cinna.
"I am not. Young Marius is not."
Cinna shook his head, drew a sheet of paper toward him. "Look, Quintus Sertorius, I need Gaius Marius! If he's as old and mentally disturbed as you say he is, then how can he be a threat to me—or to Rome? I shall confer a proconsular imperium upon him—I can have the Senate ratify it later—and use him to cover me on the west."
"You'll rue the day!"
"Nonsense," said Cinna, beginning to write.
Sertorius stood looking at his bent head for a moment, clawed at the air with his hands, then left the house.
Having received Marius's assurances that he would take care of Ostia and come up the Tiber on the Campus Vaticanus bank, Cinna split his own forces into three divisions of ten thousand men each, and marched from Labicum.
The first division—ordered to occupy the Vatican Plain— was under the command of Gnaeus Papirius Carbo, cousin of the tribune of the plebs Carbo Arvina, and victor over Lucania; the second division—ordered to occupy the Campus Martius (it was the only section of Cinna's army on the city side of the river)—was under the command of Quintus Sertorius; and the third division—commanded by Cinna himself—sat itself down on the northern flank of the Janiculan hill. When Marius arrived, he was to come up on the south side of the Janiculum.
However, there was an impediment. The middle section and the heights of the Janiculum had always been a Roman garrison, and Gnaeus Octavius had retained sufficient sense to gather what volunteers he could inside the city and send them to occupy and strengthen the Janiculan fortress. So between Cinna's army (which had crossed the river on the Mulvian Bridge) and whatever force Marius would bring from the direction of Ostia lay this formidable stronghold, filled with several thousand defenders, and extremely well fortified thanks to a program of repairs at the time the Germans had seemed likely to overrun Italy.
As if the presence of an impregnable garrison on the far side of the Tiber was not enough, Pompey Strabo unexpectedly arrived with his four legions of Picentine soldiers and took up a position just outside the Colline Gate. Save for the legion from Nola (which had gone to Sertorius), Pompey Strabo's army was the only fully trained one on the field, and therefore represented a major focus of power. Only the Pincian hill with its gardens and orchards separated Pompey Strabo from Sertorius.
For sixteen days Cinna sat behind the entrenched palisades of three separate camps waiting for Pompey Strabo to attack; he had automatically assumed Pompey Strabo would make his move before Gaius Marius arrived. Quintus Sertorius, who would bear the initial shock, had dug himself in deeply on the Campus Martius. But no one moved. Nothing whatsoever happened.
In the meantime, Marius had encountered no resistance. At the instigation of its quaestor, Ostia opened its gates the moment Marius and his army came into sight, wild with joy and ready to welcome its hero with open arms. But its hero behaved with brutal indifference and allowed his army—largely composed of slaves and ex-slaves, one of the factors most perturbing to Sertorius when he had visited his old commander—to sack the town, which suffered terribly. As if blind and deaf, Marius made no attempt to curtail the insanities and atrocities of his motley troops; he bent his attention and his energies upon throwing a barrage across the mouth of the Tiber, effectively preventing the grain barges from going upriver to supply Rome. Even when he prepared to march up the Via Campana toward the city, he did nothing to succor Ostia's distress.
It had been a dry year in central Italy, and the snows of the previous winter atop the Apennines had been unusually scanty. So the Tiber was running low, and many of the little streams which fed its course dried up long before summer was over. The end of October in that year was actually the border between summer and autumn, so the weather was still very hot when all these small armies put themselves down in a three-quarters circle around the city of Rome. The African and Sicilian harvests were in, but the ships bringing the wheat were just beginning to arrive in Ostia; Rome's granaries were at their lowest.
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Disease broke out not long after Pompey Strabo arrived at the Colline Gate, and spread quickly among the men of his legions as well as within the city itself. The various enteric fevers made their dreaded appearances, for the waters Pompey Strabo's soldiers were drinking were fouled by the same kind of careless sanitary arrangements Quintus Pompeius Rufus ha
Gnaeus Octavius and his custodial consular colleague Merula flamen Dialis saw October slip into the past without any change in the dispositions of the armies, and despaired. Whenever they managed to gain an audience with Pompey Strabo, he had some reason why he couldn't fight; Octavius and Merula were eventually forced to come to the conclusion that the real reason was that he preferred to outnumber his opponent in a battle situation, whereas in fact Cinna outnumbered him.
When the city learned that Marius owned Ostia and there would be no grain barges coming up the river with the new harvest, gloom rather than a fresh panic ensued. The consuls saw into a terrible future, and wondered how long they could last if Pompey Strabo continued to refuse to engage the enemy.
Finally Octavius and Merula decided to recruit among the Italians, and had the Senate recommend to the Centuries that those Italians who supported the "true" government of Rome be awarded full citizen status across the tribes. Once the law was passed, heralds were sent out to proclaim it throughout Italy, and call for soldier volunteers.
Hardly any came, chiefly because Cinna's tribunes of the plebs had beaten the "true" government of Rome to all the available men more than two months before.
Then Pompey Strabo hinted that if Metellus Pius brought his two legions from Aesernia, together they would defeat Cinna and Marius. So Octavius and Merula sent a deputation to see the Piglet before Aesernia, beg him to conclude a peace treaty with the beleaguered Samnites and come to Rome as quickly as he could.
Torn between his duty to reduce Aesernia and the critical situation within Rome, the Piglet rode out to treat with a paralyzed Gaius Papius Mutilus, who was—of course—completely aware of what was going on around Rome.
"I am willing to conclude a peace with you, Quintus Caecilius," said Mutilus from his litter, "on the following terms: give back to the Samnites all you have taken from them—return the Samnite deserters and prisoners of war in your custody to us unharmed—renounce all claim to the booty the Samnites have taken off you—and bestow the full citizenship of Rome upon every free man in the nation of Samnium."
Metellus Pius reared back, outraged. "Yes, certainly!" he said sarcastically. "Why not just require us to pass under the yoke, Gaius Papius, as the Samnites did after the battle of the Caudine Forks two hundred years ago?" he asked. "Your terms are absolutely impossible! Good day to you."
Head up and spine straight, he rode back to his camp and icily informed the delegation from Octavius and Merula that there would be no peace treaty, and that in consequence he would not be able to go to Rome's assistance.
The Samnite Mutilus returned in his litter to Aesernia feeling a great deal happier than the Piglet; he had been visited by a brilliant idea. After nightfall his courier sneaked through the Roman lines bearing a letter from Mutilus to Gaius Marius asking Marius if he was interested in concluding a peace treaty with Samnium. Though he was well aware that Cinna was the rebel consul and Marius only a rebel privatus, it never even occurred to Mutilus to send his letter to Cinna. In any enterprise involving Gaius Marius, he would be the leader, the man with the clout.
With Marius, now approaching Rome, was the tribune of the soldiers Gaius Flavius Fimbria; he had been with the legion at Nola, and like his colleagues Publius Annius and Gaius Marcius Censorinus, elected to follow Cinna. But the moment Fimbria heard of the advent of Marius in Etruria, he transferred immediately to Marius, who was delighted to see him.
"No point in making you a tribune of the soldiers here," Marius said. "My army has few Roman legionaries, it's mostly servile. So I'll give you the command of my Numidian cavalry—brought them from Africa with me."
When Marius received Mutilus's letter, he sent for Fimbria. "Go and see Mutilus in the Melfa Gorge, which is where he says he'll be." Marius snorted contemptuously. "No doubt he wants to remind us how many times we were beaten in that selfsame spot. However, for the time being we'll ignore his impudence. Meet him, Gaius Flavius, and agree to whatever he asks, be it rule over all Italy or a trip to the land of the Hyperboreans. We'll cut Mutilus and the Samnites down to size later."
While this was going on, a second delegation from Rome arrived to see Metellus Pius before Aesernia. It comprised much stronger men; Catulus Caesar and his son Catulus, and Publius Crassus the censor and his son Lucius.
"I beg you, Quintus Caecilius," said Catulus Caesar to the Piglet and his legate, Mamercus, "leave as small a force as you can to contain Aesernia, and come to Rome yourself! Otherwise you will have no purpose besieging Aesernia anyway. Rome and all Rome stands for will be finished."
So Metellus Pius agreed. He left Marcus Plautius Silvanus behind with a paltry five cohorts of suddenly very frightened men to contain the Samnites, but no sooner had the other fifteen cohorts disappeared in the direction of Rome than the Samnites issued out of Aesernia. They trounced Silvanus's skeleton force, and then overran all of Roman-held Samnium. Those Samnites who had not gone to Rome with Cinna now overran all southwestern Campania almost as far as Capua; the little town of Abella was sacked and burned, after which a second Samnite army went off to join the insurgents. These Italians gave Cinna no thought whatsoever—they went directly to Gaius Marius and offered him their services.
With Metellus Pius were Mamercus and Appius Claudius Pulcher. The fifteen cohorts they brought from Aesernia were put into the Janiculan garrison; Appius Claudius was appointed garrison commander. Unfortunately Octavius insisted upon retaining the title of chief garrison commander for himself, which Appius Claudius took as a monumental insult. Why should he do all the work and get none of the glory? Smoldering, Appius Claudius contemplated changing sides.
Word had also been sent by the Senate to Publius Servilius Vatia in Italian Gaul, where two legions of trainees had been kept under arms; one lay in Placentia with the legate Gaius Coelius, and one in Aquileia with Vatia, far to the east. These two forces were purely intended to intimidate the Italian Gauls, as Vatia feared the accumulating resentment of Rome's unpaid war debts, particularly in the steel towns near Aquileia. When he got the Senate's letter Vatia notified Coelius to march his legion from Placentia to the east, and himself set off for Rome with his own legion the moment Coelius assured him it was safe to do so.
Unfortunately for the "true" government of Rome, when Vatia reached Ariminum he encountered the outlawed tribune of the plebs Marcus Marius Gratidianus, who had been sent north on the Via Flaminia with every spare cohort Cinna could provide, just in case the governor of Italian Gaul should try to send reinforcements. After his unblooded recruits gave a very poor account of themselves, Vatia crossed back into his own province and abandoned all ideas of trying to relieve Rome. Hearing a garbled version of what had happened at Ariminum, Gaius Coelius, a very depressed man, decided all was lost for the "true" government of Rome, and killed himself.
Octavius, Merula, and the rest of the "true" government of Rome watched their position worsen almost hour by hour. Gaius Marius came prancing up the Via Campana and set his troops down just to the south of the Janiculan garrison, whereupon the resentful Appius Claudius secretly collaborated with Marius and allowed him to penetrate the Janiculan fortress's outer stockade and defenses. That the citadel did not fall was thanks to Pompey Strabo, who deflected Cinna's attention from Marius by marching over the Pincian hill and engaging Sertorius. At the same time Octavius and the censor Publius Crassus led a fresh force of volunteers across the Wooden Bridge and reli
To give him his due, all was far from well with Pompey Strabo. As ever by his side, his son no sooner got his father back to their camp than he ordered Pompey Strabo to bed. Fever and dysentery had struck while the battle was going on, and though Pompey Strabo continued to command in person, it was clear to his son and his legates that he was in no condition to follow up his partial success on the Campus Martius. Too young yet to enjoy the full confidence of the Picentine troops, Young Pompey elected not to try to assume the command, especially in the midst of heavy fighting.
For three days the lord of northern Picenum and adjacent Umbria lay in his house a prey to the worst ravages of enteric fever, while Young Pompey and his friend Marcus Tullius Cicero nursed him devotedly and the troops waited to see what would happen. In the early hours of the fourth day, Pompey Strabo, so strong and vigorous, died of dehydration and physical exhaustion.