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

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The Spanish triumph was held on the fifth day of October; the First Class loathed it, the rest of Rome loved it. Caesar made no attempt whatsoever to play down the fact that the defeated enemy was Roman, though he committed no solecisms like displaying Gnaeus Pompey's head. When he passed his new rostra in the lower Forum Romanum, all the magistrates seated upon it rose to their feet to honor the triumphator except for Lucius Pontius Aquila, who had finally found a way to distinguish his tribunate of the plebs. Aquila's gesture of contempt angered Caesar greatly; so did the feast laid out in the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus afterward. Stingy and unworthy, was his verdict. He gave another feast at his own expense on the next religiously proper day, but Pontius Aquila was told not to attend. Caesar was making it plain that Servilia's lover would receive no further public advancement. Gaius Trebonius promptly strolled around to Aquila's house and added another member to the Kill Caesar Club but made him take an oath not to say a word about it to Servilia. "I'm not a fool, Trebonius," said Aquila, one auburn brow flying up. "She's a marvel in bed, but do you think I don't know that she's still in love with Caesar?" Some other men had also joined: Decimus Turullius, whom Caesar disliked intensely; the brothers Caecilius Metellus and Caecilius Buciolanus; the brothers Publius and Gaius Servilius Casca of a plebeian sept of the gens Servilia; Caesennius Lento, the murderer of Gnaeus Pompey; and, most interestingly, Lucius Tillius Cimber, a praetor in this year along with several other praetors Lucius Minucius Basilus, Decimus Brutus, and Lucius Staius Murcus all members of the club. In October another man was accepted into the Kill Caesar Club: Quintus Ligarius, whom Caesar loathed so much that he had forbidden Ligarius to return to Rome from Africa, though he had cried pardon. Pressure from many influential friends caused Caesar to relent and recall him, but Ligarius, successfully defended in court on charges of treason by Cicero, knew that he was another doomed not to advance in public life. Yes, the collection of would-be assassins was growing, but it still lacked men of real clout, names that the entire First Class knew well enough to respect wholeheartedly. Trebonius had little choice other than to bide his time. Nor had Mark Antony made it appear as if Caesar were aiming for kingship and godhead; he was too delighted at the birth of his son by Fulvia, Marcus Antonius Junior, whom the besotted pair addressed as Antyllus.

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On the day after his triumph Caesar stepped down as consul but not as Dictator and had Quintus Fabius Maximus and Gaius Trebonius appointed the suffect consuls for the rump of the year, less than three months. Calling them "suffect" dispensed with the need for an election; a senatorial decree was enough. He announced his governors for the following year: Trebonius was to replace Vatia Isauricus in Asia Province; Decimus Brutus was to go to Italian Gaul; another Kill Caesar Club member, Staius Murcus was to succeed Antistius Vetus in Syria; and yet another, Tillius Cimber, was to govern Bithynia combined with Pontus. The strong array of governors in the western provinces went from Pollio in Further Spain through Lepidus in Nearer Spain and Narbonese Gaul to Lucius Munatius Plancus in Gaul of the Long-hairs and Gaul of the Rhodanus, and ended with Decimus Brutus in Italian Gaul. "However," said Caesar to the House, "I cannot step down as Dictator yet, which means I must replace my present Master of the Horse, Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, governing next year. His successor will be Gnaeus Domitius Calvinus." Antony, listening smugly and expecting to hear his own name he was behaving himself perfectly, after all! felt the rebuff like a plunge into icy water. Calvinus! A far harder man to bully and baffle than Lepidus, and a man who made no effort to conceal his dislike of Marcus Antonius. Damn Caesar! Was nothing to come easily? It appeared not. Caesar then proceeded to announce next year's consuls. Himself as senior consul until he departed for the East, and Marcus Antonius as junior consul for the entire year. The senior consul after Caesar left would be Publius Cornelius Dolabella. "Oh, no, you don't!" roared Antony, on his feet. "Be junior to Dolabella? I'd rather be dead!" "Let us see what the elections bring, Antonius," said Caesar, quite unruffled. "If the voters wish to return you ahead of Dolabella in the polls, well and good. Otherwise, lump it." Dolabella, a handsome man quite as tall and almost as heavily built as Antony, leaned back on his stool, folded his hands behind his head and grinned complacently. He knew as well as Antony did that his own activities in Rome were a great deal harder to prove than those of a man who had killed eight hundred Roman civilians in the Forum Romanum with armed troops. "Your deeds will come back to haunt you, Antonius," he said, and began to whistle. "It won't happen!" said Antony through his teeth. Cassius listened keenly, on anybody's side rather than that brute Antonius at least Caesar had some sense! Dolabella was venal and could behave like a fool, but he'd grown up somewhat during the past year, and he wasn't about to be cowed by Antonius, so much was sure, perhaps Rome would survive. Cassius was, besides, still glowing; he had been notified that he was to be inducted into the College of Augurs, a significant honor. Brutus listened with growing hope; as he reported to the absent Cicero later, Caesar's dispositions made him think that eventually Caesar intended to restore the full Republic. "Sometimes, Brutus," Cicero snapped, "you talk utter rubbish! Just because Caesar has made you urban praetor, you suddenly think the man is a wonder. Well, he's not. He's an ulcer!"

It was after this meeting of the Senate that the honors given to Caesar suddenly began to multiply. Many of them had been mooted, even legalized by senatorial consulta, yet nothing had been done to implement them. Now all that changed; the statue of Caesar currently being made to go into the temple of Quirinus was to bear a plaque that said TO THE UNCONQUERABLE GOD a reference, said Antony during a meeting of the Senate that Caesar didn't attend, to Quirinus, not to Caesar. At the same meeting funding was granted for an ivory statue of Caesar riding in a golden car to appear at all state parades; yet another statue of him was to be put alongside the ones of the Kings of Rome and the Founder of the Republic, Lucius Junius Brutus. Caesar's palace on the Quirinal, with its temple pediment, also received a vote of money. With the Parthian invasion looming, Caesar in fact didn't have the time to attend many meetings of the Senate, and at the beginning of December he was obliged to spend some time in Campania dealing with the allocation of veterans' land. Antony and Trebonius seized their chance immediately, though they were astute enough to have other, lesser men propose their decrees. In future, the month of Quinctilis would be called the month of Julius. A thirty-sixth tribe of Roman citizens was to be created and called the Tribus Julia. A third college of luperci was to come into being as the Luperci Julii, and Mark Antony, already a lupercus, was to be its prefect. A temple was to be built to Caesar's Clemency, and Mark Antony was to be flamen of the new cult of Caesar's Clemency. Caesar was to sit on a curule chair made of gold and wear a golden wreath adorned with gems at the games. His ivory statue was to be carried in the parade of the gods and have an identical pulvinar base. All these decrees were to be inscribed in gold letters on pure silver tablets, to show how Caesar had filled the Treasury to overflowing. "I object!" Cassius cried when Trebonius, now consul with the fasces, moved for a division of the House on the proposals. "I say again, I object! Caesar is not a god, but you're behaving as if he were! Did he vanish down to Campania so that he wouldn't be present to look bashful and be obliged for form's sake to protest? It certainly looks that way to me! Strike these motions, consul! They are sacrilegious!" "If you object, Gaius Cassius, then stand to the left of the curule dais" was Trebonius's response. Fuming, Cassius went to the left, traditionally the direction that was more likely to lose in a division: ill-omened. That day it was. Only a handful of men, including Cassius, Brutus, Lucius Caesar, Lucius Piso, Calvinus and Philippus, stood to the left. But almost the entire House, Antony in its lead, went right. "I don't think the price of my praetorship is worth it, if I am to bear these godlike honors," said Cassius to Brutus, Porcia and Tertulla over dinner. "Nor do I!" Porcia declared in ringing tones. "Give Caesar time, Cassius, please!" Brutus begged. "I don't believe that any of these honors were proposed at his instigation, I really don't. I think he's going to be appalled." "They shame him," said Tertulla, who hovered perpetually between pleasure at knowing she was Caesar's daughter and pure pain that he never acknowledged her, however informally. "Of course they were passed at Caesar's instigation!" cried Porcia, flicking Brutus an exasperated glance. "No, my love, you're wrong," Brutus insisted. "They were proposed by men trying to curry favor with him, and passed by a House that probably does think he wants them. But there are two significant things. One, that Marcus Antonius is up to his eyes in whatever is going on, and the other, that the proposers waited until Caesar definitely couldn't be present." But it was to be some time before Caesar became aware of the new honors, for the simplest of reasons: the amount of work he had to do was so great that he pushed the minutes of senatorial meetings held in his absence to one side, unread. As it was, he irritated Cleopatra by reading all through her dazzling receptions, eating hardly anything because he was too busy. "You try to do too much!" she snapped. "Hapd'efan'e tells me you're neglecting to drink your syrup now that it isn't made of fruit juice. Caesar, even if you do dislike it, you must drink it! Do you want to fall over in a fit in public?" "I'll be all right," he said absently, eyes on a paper. She snatched it away and held a glass of liquid under his nose. "Drink!" she snarled. The ruler of the world meekly obeyed, but then insisted on going back to his paperwork, lifting his head only when Marcus Tigellius Hermogenes began a series of arias he had composed to the words of Sappho, accompanying himself on a lyre. "Music is the one thing that can divert his attention from work," Cleopatra whispered to Lucius Caesar. Lucius squeezed her hand. "At least something does."