John Roberts - A Point of Law

Sallustius nodded solemnly. “Exactly. Caesar’s probable heir is at the center of your problems.”

I was beginning to seriously doubt his sanity. “Are you talking about young what’s-his-name? Little Caius Octavius?”

He spread his hands in a gesture of satisfaction. “Who else? He’s about twelve years old and a precocious twelve at that. Already proven himself as a public speaker by delivering his grandmother’s eulogy. You missed that, Decius, but I can tell you that it went down very well with the commons. When Caesar comes home next year or the year after, he’s going to keep that boy close and teach him all he needs to know about being a Caesar. His real father is dead; his stepfather is an old man who will be more than amenable to the adoption.”

“Being Caesar’s heir, even were it to happen, won’t make him or anyone else a prince,” I said.

“You are behind the times, Decius. It will mean exactly that.” Sallustius said this flatly, without flourishes and without his customary insinuation. He said it like an historian adding a fact to a book. “What is a prince, anyway? A prince is a human being with a pedigree, like a champion racehorse. The pedigree of the Julii is the highest to be had. That family is surrounded by a unique aura that separates it even from the other patrician gens.”

I was persuaded but unconvinced. “Ancient is the word for them. How many great Caesars have their been? Not many in recent centuries. Caesar’s father was the first of that family to reach the consulship in ages.”

“But the commons have never lost their reverence for them. It was why they were happy to have Caesar as Pontifex Maximus when he was little more than a boy.”

“He bribed his way into that office!” I protested.

“Of course, but it pleased the people no end. They like knowing that a Julian is arbitrating between them and the gods. And,” Sallustius leaned forward for emphasis, “if they respect the Julian men, they absolutely adore the women. Why this should be I don’t know. It must be some religious impulse every Roman absorbs with his mother’s milk. You weren’t in Rome when Caesar’s daughter died, were you?”

“No, I was still in Gaul.”

“You’ve never seen such a spectacle. She died in childbirth, as so often happens to Julian women-” Realizing the thoughtlessness of his words, he stopped abruptly. Sallustius had forgotten he was talking to someone married to a Julian. “Forgive me, Decius, I did not-”

I waved it off. “Please continue.”

“Very well. When Julia died, Pompey did not have to feign his mourning. He truly loved the girl and was heartbroken. But you cannot imagine how the people reacted. I have never seen anything like it. They dared to bring her body here for cremation.” He pointed through the doorway. “Right in the middle of the Forum, where the kings were cremated in the old days. They put her ashes in a grave on the Campus Martius, among the heroes of Rome. No woman has ever before been so honored. The people were honoring neither Pompey, (her husband) nor Caesar (her father). It was purely for love of Julia. Although they barely knew her, she was the most beloved woman in all Rome.”

He leaned back again. “This boy, this Octavius, comes from that family. His grandmother was a Julia. The day will come when his ancestry will be important.”

“Before he gets my support, he’d better have a lot more to offer than he has now,” I grumbled, wondering where all this was leading.

“But will your support be of any value to him?” Sallustius asked.

“Eh? Explain yourself.”

“I know, Decius, that you are a man without personal vanity, and that your own ambitions are modest, limited to praetorian office.”

This was not quite accurate. I fully intended, someday, to be consul. I just wanted it to be in a year without turmoil, allowing me to busy myself with routine duties such as presiding over the Senate and making speeches nobody would have cause to remember. I certainly did not deceive myself into thinking I was a great leader of legions. In the severely limited range of my ambitions, Sallustius evaluated accurately what my family considered my political laziness.

“Nonetheless,” he went on, “you can hardly imagine a time when your opinion and support will not carry weight because of who you are: a Caecilius Metellus.”

“It goes without saying.” I was not as complacent as I was trying to sound. I had grave fears for the future of my family, but I did not want to give them voice in front of one of Rome’s less discreet persons.

“Your family’s constant trimming and fence-mending have earned it a great many enemies. They married a daughter to a son of Marcus Crassus, they married another to a son of Pompey, they married you to Caesar’s niece, all while opposing these men in the Senate and the assemblies. I realize that they have done all these things in order to avoid making powerful, implacable enemies, but the time is past for such tactics.” Sallustius asked, “You are familiar with the old saw about there being three categories of friends?”

I quoted: “My friend, my friend’s friend, my enemy’s enemy.”

“It is your family’s mistake that in holding to this course they have sought to be none of these things. It has made them everybody’s enemy.” I was about to protest, but he held up a hand. “Bear with me, please. You’ve been away from Rome too much in recent years, and the great men of your family seem to listen only to each other.

“I, on the other hand, listen to everybody. I go everywhere in Rome, from the lowest lupanar and drinking club to the houses of the greatest men. I even attend intellectual salons like those of your new friend Callista. And it may not seem likely to you, but I spend most of my time listening, not talking.”

“That is difficult to picture,” I acknowledged.

“That is because you are too easily swayed by personalities and surface appearances,” said Sallustius. “Unlike your elders, you make friends and enemies far too easily and often for the wrong reasons. For-what? twenty years? — Titus Milo has been one of your closest friends. For about as long, Clodius was your deadliest enemy. Why is that? The pair of them were never more than political gangsters with not an ounce of moral difference between them.”

“But I like Milo,” I explained. “I always have. Whereas I detested Clodius from the moment I laid eyes on him.”

“And that,” he said, with exaggerated patience, “is why you’re such a political imbecile.” Sallustius wasn’t the first to say this, so I took no offense. “Men like Caesar and Curio don’t allow such petty considerations to influence the clarity of their political aims.”

“I suspect that this is why the Senate will never appoint me dictator,” I said.

“Decius, I would hate to lose you. Aside from being a good prospect as a Caesarian, you are certainly one of the more interesting and unusual figures in our public life. But I fear you will not be among us for long if you fail to acknowledge the desperation of your peers. All of them: your family, the Claudians, both Marcelli and Pulchri, the Cornelians and Pompey, and the rest, they are all second- and third-raters. And they have been fighting and plotting and bleeding themselves white against each other! Now in Caesar, they are up against a man of the first class, and they have no idea what to do. They are all so jealous of each other that they will never agree on a policy. They have no man of comparable worth to rally behind. In their blind panic they will bring on a civil war they cannot win.”

“It needn’t come to that,” I said. “I know Caesar well. He is arrogant and ambitious, but he is not reckless. He has little personal respect for the Senate, but he is respectful of its institutions. He did not initiate this series of extraordinary commands. Marius began that more than half a century ago. Sulla, Pompey, and others have taken full advantage of them; Caesar has just been better at it. In following precedent, he’s adhered strictly to the Constitution. I don’t believe that he will take up arms against the Senate. He is no Sulla.” Even as I said it, I had doubts. What did I really know of Caesar? What did anybody know? “I don’t feel like arguing about this. I seem to have this same argument with my wife every day lately.”