The Grass Crown by Colleen McCullough
Lupus and Marius were encamped on the Via Valeria outside Carseoli in a very well-fortified way—thanks to Marius, who simply went ahead and got the recruits digging—to strengthen their muscles, he said innocently whenever Lupus complained that the men were digging when they ought to be drilling. Caepio lay behind them, also on the Via Valeria, outside the town of Varia. In one respect Lupus was not wrong; no one would see anyone else's point of view. Caepio kept himself absolutely away from Carseoli and his general because, he said, he couldn't bear the acrimonious atmosphere in the command tent. And Marius— who had a fair idea that his general would march against the Marsi as soon as he counted enough soldiers in the parades—never let up carping. The troops were hopelessly inexperienced, he said, they would need the full hundred days of training before they could cope with any sort of battle, a lot of the equipment was substandard, Lupus had better settle down and accept things for what they were instead of dwelling endlessly upon Pompey Strabo and the stolen veteran legions.
But if Lucius Caesar was indecisive, Lupus was downright incompetent. His military experience was minimal, and he belonged to that school of armchair general who believed that the moment an enemy set eyes upon a Roman legion, the fight was over—in Rome's favor. He also despised Italians, considering every last one of them a bucolic knave. As far as he was concerned, the moment Marius had gathered and armed four legions, they could move. However, he reckoned without Marius. Marius clung doggedly to his standpoint: that the soldiers must be kept out of action until they were properly trained. On the one occasion when he issued a direct order to Marius to march for Alba Fucentia, Marius flatly refused. And when Marius refused, so did the more junior legates.
Off went more letters to Rome, now accusing his legates of mutiny rather than insubordination. It was Gaius Marius at the bottom of it, always Gaius Marius.
Thus it was that Lupus made no move until the end of May, when he called a council and instructed Gaius Perperna to take the Capuan legion of recruits and the next-best legion, and advance through the western pass along the Via Valeria into the lands of the Marsi. His objective was Alba Fucentia, which he was to relieve should the Marsi have besieged it, or else garrison it against a Marsic attack. Once again Marius objected, but this time he was overridden; the recruits, said Lupus with truth, had had their training period. Perperna and his two legions set off up the Via Valeria.
The western pass was a rocky gorge lying at four thousand feet, and the snows of winter had not yet entirely melted. The troops muttered and complained of the cold, so Perperna failed to post as many lookouts on the high points as he should have, more concerned to keep everyone happy than everyone alive. Publius Praesenteius attacked his column just as it became completely enclosed by the ravine, leading four legions of Paeligni hungry for a victory. They had their victory, as complete as it was sweet. Four thousand of Perperna's soldiers lay dead in the pass to yield up their arms and armor to Praesenteius; the Paeligni also got the armor of the six thousand men who survived, as they had abandoned it in order to run away faster. Perperna himself was among the fastest runners.
In Carseoli, Lupus stripped Perperna of his rank and sent him to Rome in disgrace.
"That's stupidity, Lupus," said Marius, who had long given up according the general the courtesy of Publius Rutilius; it hurt to speak that beloved name to someone so unworthy of it. "You can't blame it all on Perperna, he's an amateur. The fault is yours, and nobody else's. I told you—the men weren't ready. And they ought to have been led by someone who understands green troops—me."
"Mind your own business!" snapped Lupus. "And try to remember that your chief business is to say yes to me!"
"I wouldn't say yes to you, Lupus, if you presented me with your bare arse," said Marius, eyebrows matted together across the bridge of his nose, and looking doubly fierce because of them. "You are a totally incompetent idiot!"
"I shall send you back to Rome!" cried Lupus.
"You couldn't send your grandmother ten paces down the road," said Marius scornfully. "Four thousand men dead who might one day have turned into decent soldiers, and six thousand naked survivors who ought to be scourged! Don't blame Gaius Perperna, blame no one but yourself!" He shook his head, slapped his flaccid left cheek. "Oh, I feel as if someone's sent me back twenty years! You're doing the same as all the rest of the senatorial fools, killing good men!"
Lupus drew himself up to his full height, which was not very imposing. "I am not only the consul, I am the commander-in-chief in this theater of war," he said haughtily. "In exactly eight days—today, I remind you, are the Kalends of June—you and I will march for Nersae and approach the lands of the Marsi from the north. We will proceed in two columns, each of two legions, and cross the Velinus separately. There are only two bridges between here and Reate, and neither is wide enough to take eight men abreast. Which is why we will proceed in two columns. Otherwise it will take too long to cross. I will use the bridge closer to Carseoli, you will use the one closer to Cliterna. We will reunite on the Himella beyond Nersae and join the Via Valeria just before Antinum. Is that understood, Marius?"
"It's understood," said Marius. "It's stupid! But it's understood. What you don't seem to realize, Lupus, is that there are very likely to be Italian legions west of the Marsic lands."
"There are no Italian legions west of Marsic lands," said Lupus. "The Paeligni who ambushed Perperna have gone east again."
Marius shrugged. "Have it your own way. But don't say I didn't warn you."
They moved out eight days later, Lupus taking the lead with his two legions, Marius following on until it came time to continue north alone, leaving Lupus with a shorter march to his bridge across the swift and icy Velinus, swollen with melted snows. The moment Lupus's column was out of sight, Marius led his troops into a nearby forest and ordered them to make smokeless camp.
"We're following the Velinus toward Reate, and on the far side of it are formidable heights," he said to his senior legate, Aulus Plotius. "If I were a canny Italian planning to beat Rome in a war—and I'd had a taste of our abysmal mettle—I'd have my longest-sighted men sitting on top of that ridge watching for troop movements on this side of the river. The Italians must know Lupus has been squatting at Carseoli for months, so why shouldn't they be expecting him to move, and watching out for him? They annihilated his last little effort. They're watching for his next, mark my words. So we are going to stay here in this nice thick wood until dark, then we'll march as best we can until daylight, when we'll hide in another nice thick wood. I am not going to expose my men until they're tramping across that bridge on the double."
Plotius of course was young, but more than old enough to have seen service as a junior tribune against the Cimbri in Italian Gaul; he had been attached to Catulus Caesar, but—as everybody did who served in that campaign—he knew where the real credit lay. And as he listened to Marius, he was profoundly glad that it had been his luck to be seconded to Marius's column, rather than to Lupus's. Before they had left Carseoli he had jokingly commiserated with Lupus's legate, Marcus Valerius Messala, who had also wanted to march with Marius.
Gaius Marius finally reached his bridge on the twelfth day of June, having proceeded at a painfully slow pace because the nights were moonless and the terrain roadless save for a meandering track he had preferred not to follow. He made his dispositions carefully, and in the secure knowledge that no one watched from the heights or the far side— he had had them scoured. The two legions were cheerful and willing to do anything Marius wanted them to do; they were exactly the same sort of men who had marched with Perperna through the western pass grumbling about the cold and unhappy to be there, they came from the same towns in the same lands. Yet these soldiers felt confident, fit for anything including battle, and obeyed their instructions to the letter as they commenced pouring across the little bridge. It is because, thought Aulus Plotius, they are Marius's men—even if that means they must also be Marius's mules. For, as always, Marius was ma
Plotius strolled down to the stream south of the bridge, wanting to find a vantage point from which he could watch those fine stout fellows making the bridge timbers jingle and shudder as they jogged across. The river was up and roaring, but—due to the fact that Plotius had deliberately made for a small promontory jutting into the straight course of the stream—on the south side of the land where he stood there was a little bay full of eddies and bodies. At first he registered the bodies idly, not comprehending, then stared with growing horror. They were the bodies of soldiers! Two or three dozen of them! And judging from the plumes on their helmets, they were Roman.
He ran at once for Marius, who took one look and understood.
"Lupus," he said grimly. "He's been brought to battle on the far side of his bridge. Here, help me."
Plotius scrambled down the bank in Marius's wake and assisted him to bring one of the bodies in against the shore, where Marius turned it over and gazed down into the chalk-white, terrified face.
"It happened yesterday," he said, and let the body go. "I'd like to stop and attend to these poor fellows, but there isn't the time, Aulus Plotius. Assemble the troops on the far side of the bridge in battle marching order. I'll address them the moment you're ready. And make it quick! I'd say the Italians don't know we're here. So we might have a chance to make up for this in a small way."
Publius Vettius Scato, leading two legions of Marsi, had left the vicinity of Aesernia a month before. He headed for Alba Fucentia to find Quintus Poppaedius Silo, who was besieging that Latin Rights city, strongly fortified and determined to hold out. Silo himself had elected to remain within Marsic territory to keep the war effort at its peak, but intelligence had long informed him that the Romans were training troops at Carseoli and Varia.
"Go and have a look," he said to Scato.
Encountering Praesenteius and his Paeligni near Antinum, he received a full report upon the rout of Perperna in the western pass; Praesenteius was going east again to donate his spoils to the Paeligni recruitment campaign. Scato went west and did precisely what Marius had guessed a canny Italian would do; he put long-sighted men on top of the ridge beyond the eastern side of the Velinus. In the meantime he built a camp on the east bank of the river halfway between the two bridges, and was just beginning to think he ought to penetrate closer to Carseoli when a messenger came running in to tell him there was a Roman army crossing the more southerly of the two bridges.
With incredulous delight Scato himself watched Lupus get his soldiers from one side of the river to the other, committing every mistake possible. Before they even approached the bridge he allowed them to break ranks, and left them to mill in disorder on the far bank after they crossed. Lupus's own energies were devoted to the baggage train; he was standing at the bridge clad only in a tunic when Scato and the Marsi fell upon his army. Eight thousand Roman legionaries died upon the field, including Publius Rutilius Lupus and his legate, Marcus Valerius Messala. Perhaps two thousand managed to escape by dragging the ox-wagons off the bridge, shedding their mail-shirts, helmets and swords, and running for Carseoli. It was the eleventh day of June.
The battle—if such it could be called—took place in the late afternoon. Scato decided to stay where he was rather than send his men back to their camp for the night. At dawn on the morrow they would commence to pick the corpses clean, pile up the naked bodies and burn them, drive the abandoned ox-wagons and mule-carts across to the eastern bank. They would undoubtedly contain wheat and other rations. They would also do to carry the captured armaments. A wonderful haul! Beating Romans, Scato thought complacently, was as easy as beating a baby. They didn't even know how to protect themselves when on maneuvers in enemy country! And that was very odd. How had they ever managed to conquer half the world and keep the other half in a perpetual dither?
He was about to find out. Marius was on the move, and it was Scato's turn to be attacked with his own men in complete disorder.
Marius had encountered the Marsic camp first, utterly deserted. He romped through it taking everything it contained—baggage, food aplenty, money aplenty too. But not in a disorderly fashion. Rather, he left most of his noncombatants behind to do the gathering up and sorting out, while he pressed on with his legions. At about noon he reached yesterday's battlefield to find the Marsic troops going about stripping the armor from corpses.
"Oh, very nice!" he roared to Aulus Plotius. "My men are blooded in the best way—a rout! Gives them all sorts of confidence! They're veterans before they know it!"
It was indeed a rout. Scato took to his heels into the mountains leaving two thousand Marsic dead behind him as well as everything he owned. But the honors, Marius thought grimly, had still to be awarded to the Italians, who had had by far the best of things in terms of soldier dead. All those months of recruiting and training gone for nothing. Eight thousand good men dead because—as seemed inevitable—they were led by a fool.
They found the bodies of Lupus and Messala by the bridge.
"I'm sorry for Marcus Valerius; I think he would have turned out well," said Marius to Plotius. "But I am profoundly glad that Fortune saw fit to turn her face away from Lupus! If he had lived, we'd lose yet more men."
To which there was no reply. Plotius made none.
Marius sent the bodies of the consul and his legate back to Rome under the escort of his only cavalry squadron, his letter of explanation traveling with the cortege. Time, thought Gaius Marius sourly, that Rome was given a thorough fright. Otherwise no one living there was going to believe there really was a war going on in Italy—and no one would believe the Italians were formidable.
Scaurus Princeps Senatus sent two replies, one on behalf of the Senate, the other on his own behalf.
I am truly sorry the official report says what it does, Gaius Marius. It was not my doing, I can assure you. But the trouble is, old man, that I just do not have the necessary reserves of energy one needs to swing a body of three hundred men around single-handedly. I did it over twenty years ago in the matter of Jugurtha—but it is the last twenty years are the ones which count. Not that there are three hundred in the Senate these days. More like one hundred. Those senators under thirty-five are all doing some sort of military service— and so are quite a few of the ancients, including a certain fellow named Gaius Marius.
When your little funeral train arrived in Rome it created a sensation. The whole city fell about screaming and tearing out hunks of hair, not to mention lacerating its breast. All of a sudden, the war was real. Perhaps nothing else could have taught them that particular lesson. Morale plummeted. In an instant, in less time than it takes a bolt of lightning to strike. Until the body of the consul arrived in the Forum, I think everyone in Rome—including senators and knights!— regarded this war as a sinecure. But there lay Lupus, stone dead, killed by an Italian on a battlefield not more than a few miles from Rome herself. A frightful instant, that one when we spilled out of the Curia Hostilia and stood gaping at Lupus and Messala—did you tell the escort to uncover them before they reached the Forum? I'll bet you did!
Anyway, all Rome has gone into mourning, it's dark and dreary clothes wherever you go. All men left in the Senate are wearing the sagum instead of the toga, and a knight's narrow stripe on their tunics rather than the latus clavus. The curule magistrates have doffed their insignia of office, even to sitting on plain wooden stools in the Curia and on their tribunals. Sumptuary laws are being hinted at regarding purple and pepper and panoply. From total unconcern Rome has gone to the opposite extreme. Everywhere I go, people are audibly wondering if we are actually going to lose?
As you will see, the official reply is upon two separate matters. The first I personally deplore, but I was howled down in the name of "national emergency." To wit: in future all and any war casualties from the lowest ranker to the general will be given a funeral and all possible obsequies in the field. No one is to be returned to Rome for
The second is far worse, Gaius Marius. Knowing you, you have taken this to read ahead of officialdom. So I had better tell you without further ado that the House refused to give you the supreme command. They didn't precisely pass you over—that they weren't quite courageous enough to do. Instead, they have given the command jointly to you and Caepio. A more asinine, stupid, futile decision they could not possibly have made. Even to have appointed Caepio above you on his own would have been smarter. But I suppose you will deal with it in your own inimitable way.
Oh, I was angry! But the trouble is that those who are left in the House are by and large the dried-up, rattly bits of shit hanging around the sheep's arse. The decent wool is in the field—or else, like me, had a job to do in Rome—but there are only a handful of us compared to the rattly bits. At the moment I feel as if I am quite superfluous. Philippus is running the place. Can you truly imagine that? It was bad enough having to deal with him as consul in those awful days leading up to the murder of Marcus Livius, but now he's worse. And the knights in the Comitia eat out of his greasy palm. I wrote to Lucius Julius asking that he return to Rome and pick a consul suffectus in place of Lupus, but he wrote back saying we'd have to muddle along as we were because he's too tied up to leave Campania for so much as one day. I do what I can, but I tell you, Gaius Marius, I am getting very old.