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

One more little King of Rome ploy, thought Mark Antony on the day before the festival of the Lupercalia. This year three teams would participate, with Antony leading the Luperci Julii. The Lupercalia was one of the oldest and most beloved feast days Rome owned, its archaic rituals fraught with sexual overtones that the prudish segment of the Roman upper classes preferred not to see. In the cliff on the corner of the Palatine Mount that faced the end of the Circus Maximus and the Forum Boarium was a small cave and spring called the Lupercal. Here, adjacent to the shrine of the Genius Loci and under an aged oak tree (though in her time it had been a fig tree), the she-wolf had suckled the abandoned twins Romulus and Remus. Romulus had gone on to found the original city on the Palatine, and executed his brother for some peculiar treason described as "jumping over the walls." One of Romulus's oval thatched huts was still preserved on the Palatine, just as the people of Rome still reverenced the Lupercal cave and prayed to Rome's spirit, the Genius Loci. It had all happened over six hundred years ago, but it continued to live, never more so than on the feast of Lupercalia. The men of the three colleges of luperci met at the cave, and there outside it, all stark naked, killed sufficient billy goats and one male dog The three prefects of Luperci Julii, Fabii and Quinctilii supervised their teams as they cut the victims' throats, then stood while the bloody knives were wiped across their foreheads, roaring with obligatory crazy laughter. Neither of the other two prefects laughed as loudly or as crazily as Mark Antony, blinking the blood out of his eyes until the members of his team cleaned the blood away with hanks of wool dipped in milk. The goats and dog were skinned and the gory hides hacked into strips which all the luperci then wrapped around their loins, making sure that a section of this gruesome drape was long enough to use as a flail. Few of the many thousands who came to Lupercalia were able to see this part of the ceremony, between the piers of houses above and the roofs of temples and shrines below; the Palatine had become too built up. Once the luperci were dressed, they offered little salt cakes called mola salsa to the faceless deities who safeguarded the People of Rome. The cakes were made by the Vestal Virgins from the first ears of the last Latin harvest, and constituted the real sacrifice; the goats and dog were killed to provide luperci apparel, albeit ritually. After which the three dozen fit, athletic men lay on the ground and ate a "feast" washed down by watered wine a sparse meal, actually, for as soon as it concluded the luperci commenced a run over two miles long. With Antony in their lead, they came down the Steps of Cacus from the Lupercal to plough into the huge throng below, laughing as they grasped the long pieces of their drapes and whipped them about. A path was cleared for them; they began their run up the Circus Maximus side of the Palatine, around the corner into the wide avenue of the Via Triumphalis, down to the swamps of the Palus Ceroliae, then up the hill to the Velia at the top of the Forum Romanum, down the Forum to the rostra on the Sacra Via, then ended by backtracking a short distance to Rome's first temple, the tiny old Regia. Every foot of the way, the run was made more difficult because the path through the crowd was barely wide enough to give one man passage at a time, and hordes of people dashed across it constantly, presenting themselves to be flailed. There was solemn purpose in the flail; whoever it struck was assured of procreating, so those who despaired of having children men as well as women implored to be let through the crush so that one of the luperci would lash them with his bloody whip. To Antony it was a simple fact of life; Fulvia's mother, Sempronia the daughter of Gaius Gracchus, had reached thirty-nine years of age without conceiving. Not knowing what else was left to do, she went to the Lupercalia and was struck. Nine months later she gave birth to Fulvia, her only child. So Antony swished and lashed his flail generously despite the additional labor it involved, roaring with laughter, pausing to drink water some kind soul in the press offered, thoroughly enjoying himself. He provided the crowd with more than this, however; as soon as he came into sight people screamed and swooned deliriously, for alone among the luperci he had made no attempt to cover his genitalia with the piece of hide; the most formidable penis and the largest scrotum in Rome were there for all to see, a treat in itself. Everybody loved it! Oh, oh, oh, strike me! Strike me! Nearing the finish of the run, the luperci streamed down the hill to the lower Forum with Antony still in the lead; ahead, sitting on his curule chair atop the rostra, was Caesar Dictator, for once not immersed in paperwork. He too was laughing, making jokes and exchanging pleasantries with the people thronging the whole area. When he saw Antony he made some remark directed at Antony's exposed genitals, it was obvious that had men and women falling on the ground in mirth. Witty mentula, Caesar, no one could deny it. Well, Caesar, take this flail! As he reached the bottom of the rostra Antony stretched out his left hand, took something from a hand in the crowd; suddenly he leaped up the steps and was behind Caesar, was tying a white ribbon around Caesar's head, already crowned with oak leaves. Caesar acted like lightning. The ribbon came off without marring the oak leaves, and on his feet, the diadem in his right hand, held on high, he cried out in a huge voice: "Jupiter Optimus Maximus is the only king in Rome!" The crowd began to cheer deafeningly, but he held up both his hands to hush them. "Quiris," he said to a young, togate man below him, "take this to the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus and lay it at the base of the Great God's statue as a gift from Caesar." The people cheered again as the young man, clearly overcome at the honor, ascended the rostra to accept the diadem. Caesar smiled at him, said a few words to him that no one could hear, then, dazed and uplifted, the Quiris descended and began the walk up the Clivus Capitolinus to the temple. "You haven't finished your run yet, Antonius," Caesar said to Antony, standing with chest heaving and a slight erection that had women whimpering. "Do you want to be the last man at the Regia? After you've had a bath and covered yourself, you have another job to do. Convene the Senate for dawn tomorrow in the Curia Hostilia."

The Senate met, shivering in dread, to find Caesar looking his usual self. "Let it be inscribed on bronze," he said levelly, "that on the day of the Lupercalia in the year of the consulship of Gaius Julius Caesar and Marcus Antonius, the consul Marcus Antonius did offer Caesar a diadem, and that Caesar did refuse it publicly, to great applause from the people." "Well played, Caesar!" said Antony heartily as the House went off about other business. "Now the whole of Rome has seen you refuse to wear a diadem. Admit that I've performed a great service for you." "Kindly leave your philanthropy at that, Antonius. Otherwise one of your heads might part company from your body. My problem is, which head holds your thinking apparatus?"

Twenty-two was not a very large number, but getting twenty-two men together under one roof for a meeting of the Kill Caesar Club was depressingly difficult. None of the members they did not think of themselves as conspirators had a big enough dining room to accommodate so many diners, and it was too wintry for chats in a peristyle or public garden. Guilt and apprehension contributed to their reluctance to be seen together, even before a meeting of the Senate. Had Gaius Trebonius not been a distinguished tribune of the plebs in his day and maintained an interest above and beyond the normal in the history of the Plebs, the club may well have foundered for the lack of a safe place to meet. Luckily Trebonius was archiving the records of the Plebs, which were stored under the temple of Ceres on the Aventine Mount. Here, in what was held to be Rome's most beautiful temple, the club could meet unnoticed after dark, provided that said meetings were not held frequently enough to make a nosy female curious as to where her spouse or son or son-in-law was going. Like most temples, behind its exquisite facade of columns on all four sides, Ceres was a windowless building with close-fitting double bronze doors; once they were shut, no lights showed to indicate that anyone was inside. The cella was huge, dominated by a twenty-foot-high statue of the goddess, arms full of sheaves of emmer wheat, clad in a gloriously painted robe patterned in summer's beauties from roses to pansies and violets. Her golden hair was crowned by a wreath of flowers, cornucopias overflowing with fruits clustered at her feet. However, the most striking feature of the temple was a gigantic mural depicting a priapic Pluto carrying Proserpina off to rape and exile in Hades, while a tearful, disheveled Ceres wandered a sere, blasted winter landscape searching vainly for her beloved daughter. All the members came on the night that fell two days after Caesar's dictate that his rejection of the diadem be recorded on a bronze tablet. They were edgy and irritable, some to the point of mild panic; telling over their faces, Trebonius wondered how he was ever going to keep them together. Cassius charged into speech. "In less than a month, Caesar will be gone," he said, "and so far I've not seen a particle of evidence that any one of you is really serious about this business. It's all very well to talk! What we need is action!" "Are you getting anywhere with Marcus Brutus?" Staius Murcus asked waspishly. "There's more at stake than action, Cassius! I'm supposed to have left for Syria already, and our master is looking at me sideways because I'm still in Rome. My friend Cimber can say the same." Cassius's touchiness was a direct consequence of his failure with Brutus; between his extraordinary passion for Porcia and the war that Porcia and Servilia were pursuing relentlessly, Brutus had time for so little else that even his cherished but illicit commercial activities were suffering. "Give me another nundinum," Cassius said curtly. "If that doesn't do it, count him out. But that's not what's worrying me. Killing Caesar isn't going far enough. We have to kill Antonius and Dolabella as well. Also Calvinus." "Do that," Trebonius said calmly, "and we'll be declared nefas and sent into permanent exile without a sestertius if we keep our heads. Civil war isn't possible because there are no legions in Italian Gaul for Decimus to use, and every legion camped between Capua and Brundisium is on the move to Macedonia. This isn't a conspiracy to overthrow Rome's government, it's a club to rid Rome of a tyrant. As long as we confine ourselves to Caesar, we can claim that we acted rightly, within the law and in keeping with the mos maiorum. Kill the consuls and we're nefas, make no mistake." Marcus Rubrius Ruga was a nonentity of a family that had produced a governor of Macedonia unlucky enough to have to cope with a young Cato; of morals, ethics and principles he had none. "Why," he asked now, "are we going through all this? Why don't we simply waylay Caesar in secret, kill him, and never tell?" The silence hung like a pall until Trebonius spoke. "We are honorable men, Marcus Rubrius, that's why. Where's the honor in a simple murder? To do it and not admit to it? No! Never!" The growls of agreement that erupted from every throat had Rubrius Ruga shrinking into a dark corner. "I think Cassius has a point," said Decimus Brutus with a glance of contempt for Rubrius Ruga. "Antonius and Dolabella will come after us they're too attached to Caesar not to." "Oh, come, Decimus, how can you say that of Antonius? He pecks at Caesar remorselessly," Trebonius objected. "For his own ends, Gaius, not our ends. Don't forget that he swore an oath to Fulvia on his ancestor Hercules that he'd never touch Caesar," Decimus countered. "Which makes him doubly dangerous. If we kill Caesar and leave Antonius alive, he'll start to wonder when his turn will come." "Decimus is right," Cassius said strongly. Trebonius sighed. "Go home, all of you. We'll meet here again in one nundinum hoping, Cassius, that you bring Marcus Brutus with you. Concentrate on that, not on a bloodbath that would see no one left to sit on the curule dais, and Rome plunged into utter chaos." Since he held the key, Trebonius waited until the others had departed, some in groups, some singly, then went around snuffing the lamps, the last one in his hand. It's doomed, he thought. It's doomed. They sit there listening, hopping and leaping at the slightest noise, they offer not one word of encouragement, they have no opinions worth listening to sheep. Baa, baa, baa. Even men like Cimber, Aquila, Galba, Basilus. Sheep. How can twenty-two sheep kill a lion like Caesar?