The October Horse: A Novel of Caesar and Cleopatra by Colleen McCullough
“Because, my dear fellow, you’re not an admirer of Caesar, and nor is Athens. I think it prudent to keep the pair of you well apart. No, don’t flounce off, hear me out.”
Feet already turned to walk away, Cassius paused, turned back warily. Think, Cassius, think! You may hate him, but he rules.
“I have a mind to advance you and Brutus, not because it is in my gift, but because both of you would have been praetors and consuls in or close to your year, therefore that should happen,” Caesar said, holding Cassius’s eyes. “Stop resenting me when you should be offering thanks to the gods that I am a merciful man. If I were Sulla, you’d be dead, Cassius. Convert your misdirected energies into the right channels and be of good use to Rome. I don’t matter, you don’t matter. Rome matters.”
“Do you swear on your newborn son’s head that you have no ambition to be the King of Rome?”
“I swear it,” said Caesar. “King of Rome? I’d as soon be one of those mad hermits living in a cave above the Palus Asphaltites. Now look at the problem again, Cassius, and look at it dispassionately. A canal is possible.”
IV
The Master of the Horse
From the end of SEPTEMBER to the end of DECEMBER of 47 B.C.
1
The Sixth Legion and the German cavalry had been sent from Pergamum to Ephesus to form the nucleus of Asia Province’s army, so when Caesar set foot on Italian soil on Pompey the Great’s birthday, he had only Decimus Carfulenus and a century of foot with him. As well as Aulus Hirtius, Gaius Cassius, his aide Gaius Trebatius, and a handful of other legates and tribunes all desirous of resuming their public careers. Carfulenus and his century were there to guard the gold, in need of an escort.
The winds had blown them around the heel to Tarentum, most vexatious! Had they landed as planned in Brundisium, Caesar could have seen Marcus Cicero with no inconvenience; as it was, he had to instruct the others to proceed up the Via Appia without him, and set out himself to backtrack to Brundisium in a fast gig.
As luck would have it, the four mules hadn’t covered very many miles when they encountered a litter ambling toward them; Caesar whooped in delight. Cicero, it had to be Cicero! Who else would use a conveyance as slow as a litter in this kind of early summer heat wave? The gig drew up with a clatter, Caesar down from it before it stopped moving. He strode to the litter to find Cicero hunched over a portable writing table. For a moment Cicero gaped, then squawked and scrambled out.
“Caesar!”
“Come, walk with me a little.”
The two old adversaries strolled off down the baking road in silence until they were out of earshot, then Caesar stopped to face Cicero, his eyes busy. Such terrible changes! Not so much to Cicero’s exterior, though that was much thinner, more lined; to the spirit, showing nakedly in the fine, intelligent brown eyes, gone a little rheumy. Here is another who simply wanted to be an eminent consular, an elder statesman, censor perhaps, asked for his opinion early in the House debates. Like me, it’s no longer possible. Too much water has flowed under the bridge.
“How has it been?” Caesar asked, throat tight.
“Ghastly,” said Cicero without prevarication. “I’ve been stuck in Brundisium for a year, Terentia won’t send me any money, Dolabella has dumped Tullia, and the poor girl had such a falling out with her mother that she fled to me. Her health is poor, and—why, I don’t know!—she still loves Dolabella.”
“Go to Rome, Marcus. In fact, I very much want you to take your seat in the Senate again. I need all the decent opposition I can get.”
Cicero bridled. “Oh, I couldn’t do that! I’d be seen as giving in to you.”
A huge rush of blood; lips tightening, Caesar reined his temper in. “Well, let us not discuss it at the moment. Just pack your things and take Tullia to a more salubrious climate. Stay in one of your beautiful Campanian villas. Write a little. Think about things. Patch up matters with Terentia.”
“Terentia? That’s beyond patching up,” Cicero said bitterly. “Would you believe that she’s threatening to leave all her money to strangers? When she has a son and a daughter to provide for?”
“Dogs, cats or a temple?” Caesar asked gravely.
Cicero spluttered. “To leave her money to any of those, she would need a heart! I believe that her choice has fallen on persons dedicated to the—er—‘wisdom of the East,’ or some such. Tchah!”
“Oh, dear. Has she espoused Isis?”
“Terentia, put a whip to her own back? Not likely!”
They talked a little longer, keeping the subject to nothing in particular. Caesar gave Cicero what news of the two Quintuses he had, rather surprised that neither had yet turned up in Italy. Cicero told him that Atticus and his wife, Pilia, were very well, their daughter growing heartbreakingly fast. They moved then to affairs in Rome, but Cicero was reluctant to speak of troubles he clearly blamed on Caesar.
“What besides debt has bitten Dolabella?” Caesar asked.
“How would I know? Except that he’s taken up with Aesopus’s son, and the fellow is a shockingly bad influence.”
“A tragic actor’s son? Dolabella keeps low company.”
“Aesopus,” said Cicero with dignity, “happens to be a good friend of mine. Dolabella’s company isn’t low, it’s just bad.”
Caesar gave up, returned to his gig, and headed for Rome.
His cousin and dearest friend, Lucius Julius Caesar, met him at Philippus’s villa near Misenum, not so very far from Rome. Seven years older than Caesar, Lucius looked a great deal like him in face and physique, though his eyes were a softer, kinder blue.
“You know, of course, that Dolabella has been agitating all year for a general cancellation of debts, and that an amazingly capable pair of tribunes of the plebs have opposed him adamantly?” Lucius asked as they settled to talk.
“Ever since I got out of Egypt. Asinius Pollio and Lucius Trebellius, two of my men.”
“Two very good men! Though they take their lives in their hands every time, they keep vetoing Dolabella’s bill in the Plebeian Assembly. Dolabella thought to cow them by reviving Publius Clodius’s street gangs, added some ex-gladiators, and began to terrorize the Forum. It made no difference to Pollio and Trebellius, who are still vetoing.”
“And your nephew and my cousin, Marcus Antonius, my Master of the Horse?” asked Caesar.
“Antonius is a wolfshead, Gaius. Indolent, gluttonous, bad-mannered, priapic, and a drunkard to boot.”
“I am aware of his history, Lucius. But I had thought, given his good behavior during the war against Magnus, that he’d grown out of his bad habits.”
“He will never grow out of his bad habits!” Lucius snapped. “Antonius’s answer to the mushrooming violence in Rome was to quit the city and go elsewhere to—how did he put it?—‘supervise affairs in Italy.’ His idea of supervision consists in litters full of mistresses, wagons full of wine, a chariot harnessed to a quartet of lionesses, a retinue of dwarves, mummers, magicians and dancers, and an orchestra of Thracian Pan pipers and pitty-pat drummers—he fancies himself the new Dionysus!”
“The fool! I warned him,” Caesar said softly.
“If you did, then he paid you no heed. Late in March word came from Capua that the legions camped there were restive, so Antonius set off with his circus to Capua, where, as far as I can gather, he’s still conferring with the legions six months later. No sooner had he left Rome than Dolabella stepped up the violence. Then Pollio and Trebellius sent Publius Sulla and plain Valerius Messala to see you in person—you haven’t seen them?”
“No. Continue, Lucius.”
“Matters grew steadily worse. Two nundinae ago the Senate passed its Senatus Consultum Ultimum and ordered Antonius to deal with the situation in Rome. He took his time about responding, but when he did, what he did was unspeakable. Four days ago he marched the Tenth Legion from Capua straight into the Forum and ordered them to attack the rioters. Gaius, they drew their swords and waded into men armed onl
Caesar’s face was white, his fists clenched. “I’ve heard none of this,” he said.
“I’m sure you haven’t, though the news of it is all over the entire country. But who would tell Caesar Dictator, except me?”
“Where is Dolabella?”
“Still in Rome, but lying low.”
“And Antonius?”
“Still in Capua. He says the legions are mutinous.”
“And government, apart from Pollio and Trebellius?”
“Nonexistent. You’ve been away too long, Gaius, and you did too little in Rome before you left. Eighteen months! While Vatia Isauricus was consul things rubbed along fairly well, but this has not been a year to leave Rome without consuls or praetors, and so I tell you straight! Neither Vatia nor Lepidus has any authority, and Lepidus is a weakling into the bargain. From the moment that Antonius brought the legions back from Macedonia, the trouble started. He and Dolabella—what bosom friends they used to be!—seem determined to wreck Rome so effectively that even you won’t be able to pick up the pieces—and if you can’t pick up the pieces, Gaius, they’ll fight it out to the finish to see which one of them will be the next dictator.”
“Is that what they’re after?” Caesar asked.
Lucius Caesar got to his feet and paced the room, his face grim. “Why,” he demanded, spinning suddenly to confront Caesar, still sitting, “have you been away so long, cousin? It’s unconscionable! Dallying in the arms of some Oriental temptress, boating down rivers, focusing your attention on the wrong end of Our Sea—Gaius, it is a year since Magnus died! Where have you been? Your place is in Rome!”
No one else could have said this to him, as Caesar well knew; no doubt Vatia, Lepidus, Philippus, Pollio, Trebellius and all those left in Rome had deliberately given the mission to the one man Caesar couldn’t lash back at. His friend and ally of many years, Lucius Julius Caesar, consular, Chief Augur, loyalest legate of the Gallic War. So he listened courteously until Lucius Caesar ran down, then lifted his hands in a gesture of defense.
“Even I can’t be in two places at one and the same moment,” he said, keeping his voice level and detached. “Of course I knew how much work I had to do in Rome, and of course I realized that Rome must come first. But I was faced with two alternatives, Lucius, and I still believe that I chose the correct one. Either I left the eastern end of Our Sea to become a hornet’s nest of intrigue, Republican resistance, barbarian conquests and absolute anarchy, or I remained there and tidied the place because I just happened to be there when it all erupted. I decided to stay in the East, believing that Rome would survive until I could get home. My mistake is obvious now: I trusted Marcus Antonius too much. He can be so competent, Lucius, that’s the most exasperating part of it! What did Julia Antonia do to those three boys, between her megrims and her vapors, her disastrous choice of husbands, and her inability to keep a properly Roman household? As you say, Marcus is a drunken, priapic wolfshead. Gaius is inept enough to qualify as a mental defective, and Lucius is so sly that he never lets his left hand know what his right is doing.”
Blue eyes looked into blue; both pairs crinkled up. Family! The curse of every man.
“However, I am here now, Lucius. This won’t happen again. Nor am I too late. If Antonius and Dolabella think to fight for the dictatorship over my corpse, they have another think coming. Caesar Dictator is not about to oblige them by dying.”
“I do see your point about the East,” Lucius said, a little mollified, “but don’t let Antonius charm you, Gaius. You have a soft spot for him, but he’s gone too far this time.” He frowned. “There’s something peculiar going on with the legions, and I know in my bones that my nephew is at the bottom of it. He won’t allow anyone else in their vicinity.”
“Have they reason to be discontented? Cicero hinted that they haven’t been paid.”
“I assume they have been, because I know Antonius took silver from the Treasury to mint into coin. Perhaps they’re bored? They are your Gallic veterans. Pompeius Magnus’s Spanish veterans are there too,” Lucius Caesar said. “Inaction can’t please them.”
“They’ll have work enough to do in Africa Province as soon as I’ve attended to Rome,” Caesar said, and got to his feet. “We start for Rome this moment, Lucius. I want to enter the Forum at the crack of dawn.”
“One other thing, Gaius,” Lucius said as they left the room. “Antonius has moved into Pompeius Magnus’s palace on the Carinae.”
Caesar stopped in his tracks. “On whose authority?”
“His own, as Master of the Horse. He said his old house was too small for his needs.”
“Did he now,” said Caesar, moving again. “How old is he?”
“Thirty-six.”
“Old enough to know better.”
* * *
Every time Caesar comes back, Rome looks shabbier. Is it that Caesar visits so many other cities, cities planned and built by architecturally sophisticated Greeks who aren’t afraid to rip things apart in the name of progress? Whereas we Romans revere antiquity and ancestors, cannot bear to demolish a public edifice simply because it’s outgrown its function. For all her great size, she’s not a glamorous lady, poor Roma. Her heart beats down in the bottom of a damp gulch that by rights should end in the swamps of the Palus Ceroliae, but doesn’t because the rocky ridge of the Velia cuts clear across from Esquiline to Palatine, thereby turning the heart into a pond of its own. Did the Cloaca Maxima not flow directly beneath it, a pond it definitely would be. The paint is peeling everywhere, the temples on the Capitol are dingy, even Jupiter Optimus Maximus. As for Juno Moneta—how many centuries is it since anyone has refurbished her? The vapors from the mint in her basement are wreaking havoc. Nothing is well planned or laid out, it’s an ancient jumble. Though Caesar is trying to improve it with his own privately funded projects! The truth is that Rome is exhausted from these decades of civil war. It cannot go on thus, it has to stop.
His eyes hadn’t the leisure to seek out the public works he had begun seven years ago: the Forum Julium next door to the Forum Romanum, the Basilica Julia in the lower Forum Romanum where the two old basilicas Opimia and Sempronia used to be, the new Curia for the Senate, the Senate offices next door.
No, his eyes were too busy taking in the rotting bodies, the fallen statues, wrecked altars, desecrated nooks and crannies. The Ficus Ruminalis was scarred, two other sacred trees had their lower limbs splintered, and the Pool of Curtius was fouled by blood. Above, on the first rise of the Capitol, the doors to Sulla’s Tabularium gaped wide, broken shards of stone littered around them.
“Did he make no attempt to clean up the mess?” Caesar asked.
“None,” said Lucius.
“Nor has anyone else, apparently.”
“The ordinary people have been too afraid to venture here, and the Senate didn’t want the public slaves to take the bodies away until relatives had had a chance to reclaim them,” Lucius said unhappily. “It’s one more symptom of lack of government, Gaius. Who takes charge when there’s no praetor urbanus or aediles?”
Caesar turned to his chief secretary, standing green-faced with a handkerchief plastered to his nose. “Faberius, go to the Port of Rome and offer a thousand sesterces to any man who’s willing to cart putrefying bodies,” he said curtly. “I want every corpse out of here by dusk, and they all go to the lime pits on the Campus Esquilinus. Though they were unjustifiably butchered, they were also rioters and malcontents. If their families haven’t claimed them yet, too bad.”
Desperately
“Coponius, find the superviser of the public slaves and tell him I want the entire Forum washed and scrubbed tomorrow,” Caesar ordered another secretary; he blew through his nose, a sound of disgust. “This is the worst kind of sacrilege—it’s senseless.”
He walked between the temple of Concord and the little old Senaculum, and bent to examine the fragments lying around the Tabularium doors. “Barbarians!” he snarled. “Look at these, for pity’s sake! Some of our oldest laws on stone, broken as fine as mosaic. Which is what we’ll have to do—hire workers in that art to put the tablets back together again. I’ll have Antonius’s balls for this! Where is he?”
“Here comes one who might be able to answer that,” Lucius said, watching the approach of a sturdy individual in a purple-bordered toga.
“Vatia!” Caesar cried, holding out his right hand.
Publius Servilius Vatia Isauricus came from a great plebeian family of noblemen, and was the son of Sulla’s loyalest adherent; the father had prospered while ever Sulla’s constitution remained in place, and was so wily that he managed to continue to prosper after it fell; he was still alive, retired to a country villa. That the son should choose to follow Caesar was something of a mystery to those who assessed Roman noblemen according to their family’s political leanings—the Servilii Vatiae were extremely conservative, as indeed had Sulla been. This particular Vatia, however, had a gambling streak; he had fancied Caesar, the outside horse in the race for power, and was clever enough to know that Caesar was no demagogue, no political adventurer.
Grey eyes sparkling, lean face grinning, Vatia took Caesar’s hand in both his own, wrung it fervently. “Thank the gods that you’re back!”
“Come, walk with us. Where are Pollio and Trebellius?”
“On their way. We didn’t expect you half so early.”
“And Marcus Antonius?”
“He’s in Capua, but sent word that he’s coming to Rome.”