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

"Why didn't you fire him on the spot, Gaius?" Antony's uncle asked his cousin over dinner. "I would have liked to, very much. However, Lucius, it isn't as simple as it looks, is it?" Lucius Caesar's eyes stilled, then went pensive. "Explain." "My mistake was in trusting Antonius in the first place, but to dismiss him out of hand would be an even bigger mistake," said Caesar, munching on a stick of celery. "Think about it. For close to twelve months Antonius has had the run of Italy and sole command of the veteran legions. With whom he's spent by far the major part of his time, especially since last March. I haven't seen the legions, and he's been mighty careful not to let any of my other representatives in Italy see them. There's evidence that they haven't been paid, so by now they're owed two years' money. Antonius pretended ignorance of the entire matter, yet eighteen thousand talents of silver were withdrawn from the Treasury and taken to Magnus's house. Apparently to go to Juno Moneta's for coining, though it hasn't." "My heart's knocking at my ribs, Gaius. Go on, do." "I don't have an abacus to hand, but my arithmetic isn't bad, even when I have to do the sums in my head. Fifteen legions times five thousand men times one thousand per capita per annum adds up to about seventy-five million sesterces. Which are three thousand talents of silver. Add another say, three hundred talents to pay the noncombatants, and then double the figure to make it two years' pay, and you have six thousand, six hundred talents of silver. That is far short of the eighteen thousand Antonius removed," said Caesar. "He's been living mighty high," said Lucius, sighing. "I know he's not paying rent for using Magnus's various residences, but that ghastly armor he's wearing would have cost a fortune to start with. Then there's the armor his sixty Germans wear. Plus the wine, the women, the entourage my nephew, I think, is drowning in debt and decided he'd better empty the Treasury the moment he heard you were in Italy." "He should have emptied it months ago," said Caesar. "Do you think he's been working on the legions to disaffect them by not paying them and blaming you?" Lucius asked. "Undoubtedly. Were he as organized as Decimus Brutus or as cognizantly ambitious as Gaius Cassius, we'd be deeper in the shit than we are. Our Antonius has high ideas, but no method." "He's a plotter, not a planner." "Indeed." A thick white goat's cheese looked appetizing; Caesar scooped some on to another stick of celery. "When do you intend to pounce, Gaius?" "I'll know because my legions will tell me," Caesar said. A spasm of pain crossed his face, he put the tidbit down quickly and pressed his hand against his chest. "Gaius! Are you all right?" How to tell a dear friend that the pain is not of the body? Not my legions! O Jupiter Optimus Maximus, not my legions! Two years ago it would not have occurred to me, but I learned from the mutiny of the Ninth. I trust none of them now, even the Tenth. Caesar trusts none of them now, even the Tenth. "Just a touch of indigestion, Lucius." "Then if you feel up to it, elucidate." "I need the rest of this year to maneuver. Rome comes first, the legions second. I'll have six thousand talents minted for pay, but I'm not going to pay anybody yet. I want to see just what Antonius has been saying, and that won't happen until the legions tell me. If I went to Capua tomorrow, I could squash it in a day, but this is one boil that I think has to come to a head, and the best way to make it do that is to avoid seeing the legions in person." Caesar picked up the celery stick and began to eat again. "Antonius is swimming in very deep water, and his eyes are fixed on a bobbing lump of cork that spells salvation. He's not quite sure what form the salvation will take, but he's swimming very hard. Perhaps he's hoping I'll die stranger things have happened. Or else he's hoping that I'll dash off to Africa Province ahead of my troops, and leave him a clear field to do whatever comes to his mind. He's a Fortuna man, he seizes his chance, he doesn't make his chance. I want him even farther from the shore before I strike, and I want to know exactly what he's been doing and saying to my men. Having to give the silver back is a blow, he'll swim feverishly now. But I will be waiting behind the cork. Frankly, Lucius, I'm hoping that he'll continue to swim for two or three more months. I need time for Rome before I deal with the legions and Antonius." "His actions are treasonable, Gaius." Caesar reached a hand out to pat Lucius's arm. "Rest easy, there'll be no treason trials within the family. I'll cut our relative off from salvation, but I'll leave him his head." He chuckled. "Both his heads. After all, a great deal of his thinking is done with his prick."

2

When Sulla had returned from the East with his fabled beauty utterly destroyed, to march on Rome a second time, he was appointed (by his own arrangement, something he preferred not to mention) the Dictator of Rome. For several nundinae he seemed to do nothing. But a few more observant people noticed a crabbed little old man muffled in a cloak walking all over the city, from Colline Gate to Capena Gate, from the Circus Flaminius to the Agger. It was Sulla, walking patiently up mean alleys and down main roads to see for himself what Rome needed how he, the Dictator, was going to mend her, broken as she was by twenty years of foreign and civil wars. Now Caesar was Dictator, a younger man whose beauty still sat fair upon him, and Caesar too walked from Colline Gate to Capena Gate, from the Circus Flaminius to the Agger, up mean alleys and down main roads, to see for himself what Rome needed how he, the Dictator, was going to mend her, broken as she was by fifty-five years of foreign and civil wars. Both Dictators had lived in the city's worst stews as children and young men, seen at first hand the poverty, the crime, the vice, the rough justice, the sunny acceptance of one's lot that seemed peculiar to the Roman temperament. But whereas Sulla had yearned for retirement to a world of the flesh, Caesar knew only that for as long as he lived, he must continue to work. His solace was work, for his life force was intellectual he had no powerful urges of the flesh crying within him to be gratified, as had Sulla. No need for Sulla's anonymity. Caesar walked openly and was happy to stop and listen to anyone, from the old crones who ran the public latrines to the latest generation of Decumii who ran the gangs selling protection to shops and small businesses. He talked to Greek freedmen, to mothers dragging children as well as produce, to Jews, to citizens of the Fourth and Fifth Classes, to Head Count laborers, to schoolteachers, to pasty vendors, bakers, butchers, herbalists and astrologers, landlords and tenants, makers of wax imagines, sculptors, painters, physicians, tradesmen. In Rome, a number of these people were women, who worked as potters, carpenters, physicians, all sorts; only upper-class women were not allowed to have jobs or a trade. He himself was a landlord; he still owned Aurelia's insula apartment block, now in the charge of Burgundus's eldest son, Gaius Julius Arvernus, also his business manager. The half German, half Gallic Arvernus (born free) had been personally trained by Caesar's mother, who had the best head for figures and accounts of anyone he had ever known, even including Crassus and Brutus. So he talked to Arvernus a great deal. This is what it is really all about, he would think exultantly as he left Arvernus's companytwo absolutely barbarian ex-slaves in Burgundus and Cardixa had produced seven absolutely Roman sons! Oh, perhaps they had had a few extra advantages owners who freed properly, popped them into rural tribes so their votes counted, educated them and encouraged them to acquire status, but all that aside, they were Roman to the core. And if that could work, as work it obviously did, why not the opposite? Take Head Count Romans too poor to belong to one of the five Classes and ship them off into the world to settle in foreign places, bring Rome to the provinces, replace Greek with Latin as the lingua mundi. Old Gaius Marius had tried to do it, but it offended the mos maiorum, it destroyed Roman exclusivity. Well, that was sixty years ago, and everything had changed. Marius's mind had shattered, he degenerated into a butchering madman. Whereas Caesar's mind was growing ever sharper, and Caesar was the Dictator there was no one to gainsay him, especially now that the boni were not a force in politics.