Colleen McCullough - 6. The October Horse - A Novel of Caesar and Cleopatra

When the dispositions were finally completed, he shot the bolt on his study door and wrote letters: to Cleopatra and Mithridates of Pergamum in Alexandria, Publius Servilius Vatia Isauricus in Rome, Marcus Antonius his Master of the Horse, and, last but not least, to the oldest of his friends, Gaius Matius. They were the same age. Matius's father had rented the other ground-floor apartment of Aurelia's insula in the Subura, so the two boys had played together in the beautiful garden Matius's father had created at the bottom of the insula's light well. The son had inherited Matius Senior's genius for ornamental horticulture, and designed, in his nebulous spare time, Caesar's pleasure gardens across the Tiber. Matius had invented the art of topiary, and seized eagerly upon any chance to trim box and privet into birds, animals, wonderful shapes. Caesar embarked upon this letter with his defenses down, for this recipient above all others had no axes to grind.

VENI, VIDI, VICI. I came, I saw, I conquered. I am thinking of adopting that as my motto, it seems to happen so regularly, and the phrase itself is so succinct. At least this last episode of coming, seeing, and conquering has been against a foreigner. Things in the East have been put right. What a mess! Thanks to rapacious governors and invading kings, Cilicia, Asia Province, Bithynia and Pontus are on their knees and groaning. I feel less sympathy for Syria. I've followed in the footsteps of that other dictator, Sulla simply revived all his relief measures, which were remarkably perceptive. Since you're not in the tax farming business, my reforms in Asia Minor won't hurt you, but the fur will fly among the publicani and other Asian speculators when I reach Rome I have clipped their wings back to stumps. Do I care? No, I do not. The trouble with Sulla was that he didn't know his political ABC. He resigned from his dictatorship without first making sure that his new constitution couldn't be overthrown. Believe me, Caesar won't make that mistake. The last thing I want is a Senate stuffed with my own creatures, but I fear that is what must happen. You might think it sensible to have a compliant Senate, but it isn't, Matius, it isn't. While ever there is healthy political competition, the more feral among my adherents can be kept in order. But once governmental institutions are composed entirely of my own adherents, what is to stop a younger, more ambitious man than I from stepping over my carcass into the dictator's chair? Government must have opposition! What government does not need is the boni, who oppose for the sake of opposing, who don't understand what it is that they oppose. Therefore boni opposition was irrational, rather than soundly based in genuine, thoughtful analysis. Note that I switched to the past tense. The boni are no more, Africa Province will see to that. What I had hoped to see was the right kind of opposition: now I am afraid that all a civil war actually achieves is the murder of opposition. I am in a cleft stick. From Tarsus onward I have had the dubious pleasure of the company of Marcus Junius Brutus and Gaius Cassius. Both now pardoned and working indefatigably for themselves. No, not for Rome, and certainly not for Caesar. A potential healthy senatorial opposition, then? No, I fear not. Neither man cares more for his country than for his own personal agenda. Though being with that pair has had its entertaining side, and I have learned a lot about moneylending. I have just concluded the rearrangement of Anatolia's client-kingdoms, chiefly Galatia and Cappadocia. Deiotarus needed a lesson, so I gave him one. Originally I had meant to pare Galatia back to a small area around Ancyra, but oh, oh, oh! Brutus suddenly roared like a lion and went to war to protect Deiotarus, who owes him millions upon millions. How dare I strip such a splendid fellow of three-quarters of his territories and turn a steady income into a permanent bad debt? Brutus just wouldn't have it. The eloquence, the rhetorical devices! Truly, Matius, had Cicero heard Brutus in full flight, he would have been tearing his hair out and gnashing his teeth in envy. With Cassius contributing his mite too, I add. They are more than mere brothers-in-law and old school chums. In the end I let Deiotarus keep a great deal more than I had intended, but he lost western Galatia to the new client-kingdom of Pergamum, and Armenia Parva to Cappadocia. Brutus may not want much, but what he does want, he wants desperately. Namely, the preservation of his fortune. Brutus's motives are as clear as Anatolian spring water, but Cassius is a far murkier individual. Arrogant, conceited and hugely ambitious. I shall never forgive him for that scurrilous report he sent back to Rome after Crassus died at Carrhae, extolling his own virtues and turning poor Crassus into nothing more than a money-grubber. I admit his weakness for money, but he was genuinely a great man. What irked Cassius about my client-kingdom arrangements was that I did them by my dictate without any debates in the House, without any laws on the tablets, without considering anybody's wishes save my own. In that respect it is terrific to be the Dictator saves huge amounts of time in dealing with matters I know I've fixed in exactly the fairest and most proper way. But it doesn't please Cassius. Or put it this way: it would only please Cassius if he were the Dictator. I am the father of a son. The Queen of Egypt presented me with a boy last June. Naturally he isn't a Roman, but his destiny is to rule Egypt, so I'm not complaining. As for the mother of my boy meet her and decide for yourself. She insists upon coming to Rome after the Republicans what a misnomer! have gone down to final defeat. Her agent, one Ammonius, is going to come to you and ask that she be granted a tract of land next door to my Janiculan gardens, thereon to build a palace for her stay in Rome. When you deal with the conveyancing, put it in my name, though she can pay for it. I have no intention of divorcing Calpurnia to marry her. That would be too churlish. Piso's daughter has been an exemplary wife. I may not have been in Rome for more than a few days since shortly after I married her, but I have my spies. Calpurnia is all that Caesar's wife must be above suspicion. A nice girl. I know I sound hard, a trifle facetious, somewhat cagey. But I have changed out of all recognition, Matius. It is not meet that a man should rise so far above his equals that he has no equal, and I fear that that is what has happened to me. The very men who might have given me a run for my money are all dead. Publius Clodius. Gaius Curio. Marcus Crassus. Pompeius Magnus. I feel like the lighthouse on Pharos nothing stands half so tall. Which is not the way I would have it, did I have a choice. When I crossed the Rubicon into Italy and marched on Rome, something broke in me. It isn't fair that they should have pushed me into that did they genuinely think I would not march? I am Caesar, my dignitas is dearer to me than my very life. Caesar, to be convicted of a nonexistent treason and sent into an irreversible exile? Unthinkable. If I had it all to do again, I would do it all again. Yet something in me broke. I can never be what I wanted to be consul for the second time in my year, Pontifex Maximus, elder statesman whose opinion is asked for first in the House after the consuls-elect and the consuls, Military Man without peer. Now I am a god in Ephesus and a god in Egypt, I am Dictator of Rome and ruler of the world. But they are not my choice. You know me well enough to understand what I am saying. Few men do. They interpret my motives in the light of what their own motives would be were they in my place. It came as a grievous shock to hear of Aulus Gabinius's death in Salona. A good man exiled for a wrong cause. Old Ptolemy Auletes didn't have ten thousand talents to pay him, I doubt Gabinius ever got more than two thousand for the job. If Lentulus Spinther had gotten off his arse in Cilicia quickly enough to beat Gabinius to that particular contract, would he have been prosecuted? Of course not! He was boni, whereas Gabinius voted for Caesar. That is what has to stop, Matius one law for one man, another law for another man. On one subject my inimicus Gaius Cassius remains silent. When I told him that his brother Quintus had raped Further Spain, loaded his plunder on a ship and sailed for Rome before Gaius Trebonius arrived to govern, Cassius said not one word. Nor when I told him that the ship, very overloaded, capsized and sank in the Iberus estuary, and Quintus Cassius was drowned. I am not sure whether Gaius Cassius's silence is due to the fact that Quintus was my man, or that Quintus made the Cassii look bad. I shall be in Rome around the end of September.