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

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Not all the tribunes of the plebs were bent on sucking up to Caesar. One, Gaius Servilius Casca, was already a member of the Kill Caesar Club, and two others had come under review by the club's founders: Lucius Caesetius Flavus and Gaius Epidius Marullus. However, Trebonius and Decimus Brutus had decided not to invite Flavus and Marullus to join the club, much though they both hated Caesar. They were notorious blabbers, and neither had an ounce of genuine clout with the First Class. On the day after Caesar let the Senate know how he felt about becoming the King of Rome, Flavus and Marullus just happened to be in the vicinity of the new rostra, which, as Caesar had built it at his own expense, held a bust of the Great Man on a high, hermed pedestal. Though the day was dull and cold, the Forum frequenters were out and about, wandering to see if there was an interesting court case going on inside the Basilica Julia such a comfort to be under shelter if one was! eating snacks from the stalls and booths tucked in out-of-the-way corners, hoping that some new orator would decide to mount a vacant set of steps or tribunal and declaim in other words, an ordinary early January day. Suddenly Flavus and Marullus started shouting and yelling, making such a fuss that they quickly drew a large crowd. "Look! Look!" Marullus was screaming, pointing. "A disgrace! A crime!" Flavus was screaming, pointing. Both jabbing fingers were leveled at the bust of Caesar, a good one painted to lifelike verisimilitude; around its pale brow and thinning blond hair someone had tied a broad white ribbon, knotted it on the nape of the neck and strayed the two ends over the bust's vestigial shoulders. "He wants to be the King of Rome!" Marullus shrieked. "A diadem! A diadem!" Flavus shrieked. After a great deal more of the same, the two tribunes of the plebs tore the ribbon off the bust and trampled it showily beneath their feet, then ostentatiously ripped it into several pieces. One day later, the Nones, the Latin Festival was held on the Alban Mount with Caesar officiating, clad in the ancient regalia of the Alban priest-kings, as was his Julian right. It was a relatively brief affair, over and done with in short enough time for the celebrants to ride out of Rome at dawn and return to Rome by sunset. Riding Toes, Caesar led the procession of magistrates back to the city, where, for the second time, the new young patrician Gaius Octavius had acted as Praefectus urbi in the absence of the consuls and praetors. For the ordinary people it was a popular occasion; those who lived adjacent to the Alban Mount went there and afterward attended a public feast, while those in Rome contented themselves with lining the Via Appia to watch the magistrates return. "Ave, Rex!" someone called from the roadside crowd as Caesar rode by. "Ave, Rex! Ave, Rex!" Caesar threw back his head and laughed. "No, you have the cognomen wrong! I'm Caesar, not Rex!" Marullus and Flavus spurred their horses down the line from where the tribunes of the plebs rode to where Caesar was; mounts rearing and plunging spectacularly, they started to yell, pointing into the throng. "Lictors, remove the man who called Caesar a king!" Marullus shouted several times. When Antony's lictors started to move, Caesar held up his hand to halt them. "Stay where you are," he ordered curtly. "Marullus, Flavus, go back to your places." "He called you a king! If you don't do something about it, Caesar, then you want to be king!" Marullus screamed. By now the entire parade had come to a stop, horses milling, lictors and magistrates watching fascinated. "Remove the man and prosecute him!" Flavus was shouting. "Caesar wants to be king!" Marullus was shouting. "Antonius, have your lictors put Flavus and Marullus where they belong!" Caesar snapped, red kindling in his cheeks. Antony sat his horse, looking contemplative. "Do it, Antonius, or tomorrow you'll be a privatus!" "Hear that? Hear that? Caesar is a king, he orders the consul around like a servant!" Marullus yelled as Antony's lictors took hold of his horse's bridle and led him back down the line. "Rex! Rex! Rex! Caesar Rex!" Flavus was howling. "Call the Senate into session tomorrow at dawn" was Caesar's parting remark to Antony as he reached the Domus Publica. This time his temper was up. The prayers and auspices were over in a trice, the applause for the crown winners cut ruthlessly short. "Lucius Caesetius Flavus, Gaius Epidius Marullus, come out!" he rapped. "Front and center of the floor, now!" The two tribunes of the plebs lifted their buttocks off the tribunician bench in front of the curule dais and marched to face Caesar, chins up, eyes hard. "I am fed up with being put in the wrong! Do you hear me? Do you understand me?" Caesar thundered. "I am fed up! I will have no more of it! Flavus, Marullus, you disgrace your office!" "Rex! Rex! Rex! Rex!" they began to bark. "Tacete, ineptes!" Caesar roared. How he did it, no one ever knew when they thought about it afterward; simply that when Caesar got a certain look on his face and roared in a certain tone, the whole world quailed. He wasn't a king. He was nemesis. All of a sudden every senator started remembering what a dictator could do without needing to be a king. Like flog. Decapitate. "What has the tribunate of the plebs descended to, when a pair like you think you can behave worse than two scruffy schoolboys?" Caesar demanded. "If someone ties a white ribbon on my image, then take it off, by all means! That would win my approbation! But to make such a business out of it that a thousand people collect to hear you scream and shout that is unacceptable conduct for any Roman magistrate, even the most unabashed demagogue who ever called himself a tribune of the plebs! And if some fellow in a crowd makes a smart remark, then let him! A soft answer and a joke turn him off, he's rendered ridiculous! What the pair of you did on the Via Appia was unconscionable you transformed some scurra in the crowd into a circus! What did you want to prosecute him for? High treason? Minor treason? Impiety? Murder? Theft? Embezzlement? Bribery? Extortion? Violence? Inciting violence? Bankruptcy? Witchcraft? Sacrilege? To the best of my knowledge, they are the sum total of crimes under Roman law! It is not a crime for a man to come out with a provocative remark! It is not a crime for a man to slander other men! It is not a crime for a man to calumniate other men! If it were, then Marcus Cicero would be in permanent exile for calling Lucius Piso a sucking whirlpool of greed, among many other things! Along with every other member of this House for calling some other member of this House anything from an eater of feces to a violator of his own children! How dare you blow trivial incidents up into major crimes? How dare you traduce me by making much out of nothing? I'll have an end to it! Hear me? Do you hear me? If one single member of this body ever again implies let alone says outright! that I want to be King of Rome, let him beware! Rex is a word! It has connotations, but no reality in our Roman sphere! Rex? Rex? If I did want to be your absolute ruler in perpetuity, why should I bother to call myself Rex? Why not plain Caesar? Caesar is a word too! It could as easily mean king as rex does! So beware! As Dictator, I can strip any one of you of your citizenship and your property! I can flog and behead you! I do not need to be Rex! And believe me, conscript fathers, you tempt me! You tempt me! That is all. You are dismissed. Go!" The silence was more thunderous than the sound of that huge voice booming off the rafters, echoing around the walls. Gaius Helvius Cinna rose from the tribunician bench and went to a place from which he could see both Caesar and the miscreants, who stood shivering in their senatorial shoes. "Conscript fathers, as president of the College of Tribunes of the Plebs," he said, "I move that Lucius Caesetius Flavus and Gaius Epidius Marullus cease forthwith to be tribunes of the plebs. I further move that they be expelled from the Senate." The House broke into tumult, fists waving. "Expel! Expel!" "You can't do this!" cried Lucius Caesetius Flavus Senior, rising to his feet. "My son doesn't deserve this!" "If you had any sense, Caesetius, you'd disinherit your son for sheer stupidity!" Caesar snapped. "Now go, all of you! Go! Go! I don't want to see your faces again until you can start to behave like responsible Roman men!" Helvius Cinna promptly marched outside, convened the Plebeian Assembly and enacted the dismissal of Flavus and Marullus from the College of Tribunes of the Plebs and the Senate. He then conducted a brisk election: Lucius Decidius Saxa and Publius Hostilius Saserna became tribunes of the plebs. "I hope you realize, Cinna," said Caesar gently to Helvius Cinna when the meeting was over, "that today is feriae. You'll have to do it all again tomorrow, when the comitia can meet. Still, I appreciate the gesture. Come and have a goblet of wine at my house, and tell me about the new poetry." The "King of Rome" campaign suddenly died as if it had never been. Those who had not heard Caesar explain that there was no reason why "Rex" and "Caesar" couldn't mean the same were apprised of his remark, and swallowed convulsively. As Cicero said to Atticus (they were still getting nowhere with the Buthrotum immigrants), the trouble was that people tended to forget what kind of man Caesar actually was until he lost his temper. Perhaps as a result of that memorable meeting, on the Kalends of February the House met under Mark Antony's auspices, and voted Gaius Julius Caesar the Dictator Perpetuus. Dictator for life. No one, from Brutus and Cassius to Decimus Brutus and Trebonius, had the courage to stand to the left of the curule dais when the division was called. The decree passed unanimously.

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