John Roberts - The Year of Confusion

Caesar was resplendent as usual, sitting in a leopardskin-draped curule chair upon the big, marble reviewing stand dressed in his triumphal regalia complete with golden wreath. This time I saw a new touch to his turnout, and I was not alone.

“He’s wearing red boots!” said a scandalized old senator.

“What’s wrong with that?” demanded an idler. “Caesar can wear anything he wants!”

“Not red boots,” the old man insisted. “There was a time when only kings of Rome were allowed to wear them.”

Caesar’s impressive footwear resembled the thick-soled buskins worn by actors on the stage, elaborately strapped and pierced, and topped with spotted lynx skin. They would have been merely a showy affectation had not the color been an affront to the Senate, as I had no doubt was Caesar’s intention.

“He’s asking for trouble, isn’t he?” Hermes said in a low voice.

“He’s done little else for the last ten years,” I affirmed. “He adds a bit more royal glitter to his appearance from time to time, testing the waters. If the Senate is outraged, so what? Just so the people stay behind him. That’s where his power lies.”

“You think he really intends to be king?”

“I’ve tried to deny it for a long time,” I said, “but those boots may be a bit too much. He’s outdone the consuls of the past. Now he wants to outdo Alexander. What’s the one thing left that will place him unassailably ahead of every Roman who has ever lived?”

“King of Rome. But there have been kings before.”

I shook my head. “They were petty kings, lording it over an Italian city-state still being regularly whipped by the Etruscans. With Parthia added to his conquests and Cleopatra making him Pharaoh, he’ll effectively be emperor of the world.” I shrugged. “Well, never let it be said that Caesar lacks ambition.” I shut up when I saw a little band of senators heading my way. I plastered a silly smile on my face but I was too late. Cicero was among them, and he was steeped so deeply in the rhetorical arts that no nuance of facial expression escaped him.

“So, do you believe now, Decius?” Cicero said, gesturing toward the podium. Brutus and Cassius were with him, as on the day when Caesar had rebuked Archelaus. Lucius Cinna, Caesar’s former brother-in-law, was with them, and some others I did not know as well.

“What Caesar wants and what he can accomplish are not the same thing,” I said.

“Then it behooves us all,” Cassius said, “to assure that he does not accomplish his ambitions.”

“And how do you propose to do that?” I asked him.

He glanced at Cicero, but Cicero didn’t catch it. “Roman patriots have always found ways to frustrate the designs of tyrants.”

“Let me know as soon as you’ve found a way,” I told him.

“At least his soldiers look fit for battle,” Brutus said, changing the subject clumsily.

“So they do,” Cicero agreed, “and perhaps this war of his will be the best thing for all of us. It will keep him out of Italy for some time, perhaps a few years. Much can happen in that time.”

“And much will, I’ve no doubt,” said Cinna, “but not an election. Not as long as Caesar is dictator in perpetuity. All offices with imperium will go to men nominated by Caesar and confirmed by his tame assemblies. We’ll have tribunes of the plebs, but their power of veto is suspended while he is dictator, and what is a tribuneship without the veto? All they can do is propose the legislation he has already laid out for them.”

That was the real reason for the resentment of these men. Caesar was frustrating their own ambitions and humbling their pride. Except for Cicero, they were all men from the great families, men who thought high office to be their natural right, inherited from their ancestors. I had been such a man myself, once. When men prate of things like patriotism, you can be sure that self-interest is at the root of it.

“Caesar is not immortal,” Brutus said, a pronouncement that could be banal or fraught with meaning, depending on how you looked at it.

“He thinks himself godlike,” Cicero said lightly. “Let us hope that his fellow deities see fit to call him to join them soon.” The rest laughed, but without much humor.

They turned back toward the City gate and left me pondering. “Cassius is plotting something,” I said to Hermes, “but he doesn’t want to talk about it in front of Cicero.”

“I caught that,” he said. “But why, do you think? They all seem to be of a mind on the subject of Caesar and his power and ambition.”

“He could be planning something desperate, and Cicero is not a man you want to involve in desperate action. He’d lose his nerve at the last minute. He acted decisively and against popular opinion once in his career, when he put down the Catilinarian revolt. He’s been conservative and vacillating ever since. He’d be the weak reed in any conspiracy.”

“What is Cassius up to?”

“I don’t want to know.” It was all a great distraction. I had other things on my mind.

That evening Julia filled me in on what she had learned the previous night.

“Servilia is definitely on the outs with her dear little Brutus, and she doesn’t really approve of his friends lately, Cassius and Cinna and that lot.”

“Why not? They positively reek of nobility and old-fashioned Roman virtue.”

“I think it’s because they’re so vehemently anti-Caesarian. I, on the other hand, am most definitely in the Caesarian camp so she feels she can confide in me. She wants Brutus close to Caesar and wishes he’d go back to his old moneylending habits. She loathes the business as ill-bred, but at least it’s politically neutral.”

“Anything about the astrologers? The exotic woman in particular?”

“No, and every time I tried to bring the subject up-discreetly, of course-nobody seemed much interested. Atia was there and she had a whole collection of omens from all over Italy. She must employ people just to collect them. So everybody was talking about a two-headed goat born in Bruttium and an eagle that snatched a child in Cumae and a statue of Scipio Africanus in Nola that wept blood.”

“And what did these ladies discern from such prodigies?”

“That something dreadfully important is going to happen.”

“Something dreadfully important is always going to happen. What of that?”

“They all believe that it will concern them personally.”

“Did they say why, other than that this lot never needs much excuse to see the will of the gods at work in all their doings?”

“They were noticeably reticent on that point.”

“Because they fear what they say to you will get back to Caesar?”

“Most likely.”

“At least Atia should be in your camp, since she wants her vaguely Caesarian brat to inherit. She may want to call upon you privately soon.”

“In fact, as we were leaving she asked if she might do exactly that tomorrow after the morning ceremony at Vesta’s.”

“Do you patrician women do anything that doesn’t revolve around that temple?”

“It’s convenient. Common women get together at the corner fountain or the laundry to meet and gossip. The rich freedwomen and wives of the equites gather at the expensive shops on the north end of the Forum. We have the Temple of Vesta. To be terribly honest, very few even pay attention to the ceremonies except on special days.”

“I always thought it must be something like that. Like senators at the baths in the afternoon.”

I told her about our barely productive visit to the gymnasia, then about the military review on the Field of Mars. Her face fell when I told her about the boots.

“He’s giving his enemies a sword to use against him, isn’t he?” she said.