Colleen McCullough - 5. Caesar

RAVENNA TO ANCONA

The messenger Antony and Curio had sped on ahead of their own flight from Rome reached Caesar's villa near Ravenna the day after Antony and Quintus Cassius had been ejected from the House by force. Though he arrived close to the dawning of the ninth day of January, Caesar received him at once, took the letter and sent him to a meal and a comfortable bed with a warm smile of thanks: two hundred miles in less than two days was a grueling ride. Antony's letter was brief.

Caesar, Quintus Cassius and I were manhandled out of the Senate when we tried to interpose our vetoes against a Senatus Consultum Ultimum. It's an odd decree. Doesn't declare you hostis nor specifically name Pompeius. It authorizes all the magistrates and consulars to protect the State against the tribunician veto, if you please. The sole reference to Pompeius is a mention that among those entrusted with the care of the State are "promagistrates within the vicinity of Rome." Which applies as much to Cicero, sitting awaiting his triumph, as to Pompeius, just sitting. I would imagine Pompeius is a disappointed man. But that's one thing about the boni they hate awarding special commands. There are four of us coming. Curio and Caelius elected to leave the city too. We'll take the Via Flaminia. Oh, I don't know if it will be of any use to you, but I've ensured that we'll arrive in exactly the same condition as we were when the lictors finished tossing us out. Which means we'll stink a bit, so have hot baths ready.

The only trusted legate Caesar had with him was Aulus Hirtius, who came in to find Caesar sitting, the letter in his hand, staring at a mosaic wall depicting the flight of King Aeneas from burning Ilium, his aged father on his right shoulder and the Palladium tucked under his left arm. "One of the best things about Ravenna," Caesar said without looking at Hirtius, "is the skill of the locals at mosaic. Better even than the Sicilian Greeks." Hirtius sat down where he could see Caesar's face. It was calm and contented. "I hear a messenger arrived in a terrific hurry," said Hirtius. "Yes. The Senate has passed its ultimate decree." Hirtius's breath hissed. "You're declared a public enemy!" "No," said Caesar levelly. "The real enemy of Rome, it would appear, is the tribunician veto, and the real traitors the tribunes of the plebs. How like Sulla the boni are! The enemy is never without, always within. And the tribunes of the plebs must be muzzled." "What are you going to do?" "Move," said Caesar. "Move?" "South. To Ariminum. Antonius, Quintus Cassius, Curio and Caelius are traveling the Via Flaminia at this moment, though not as fast as their messenger. I imagine they'll reach Ariminum within two days, counting this one just arrived." "Then you still have your imperium. If you move to Ariminum, Caesar, you have to cross the Rubicon into home territory." "By the time I do, Hirtius, I imagine I will be a privatus, and at full liberty to go wherever I want. Sheltered by their ultimate decree, the Senate will strip me of everything at once." "So you won't take the Thirteenth with you to Ariminum?" Hirtius asked, conscious that relief hadn't followed in the wake of Caesar's answer. He looked so relaxed, so tranquil, so much as he always did the man in absolute control, never plagued by doubt, always in command of himself and events. Was that why his legates loved him? By definition he ought not to have been a man capable of inspiring love, yet he did. Not because he needed it. Because because oh, why? Because he was what all men wanted to be? "Certainly I will take the Thirteenth," said Caesar. He got to his feet. I "Have them ready to move within two hours. Full baggage train, every-thing with them including artillery." "Are you going to tell them where they're heading?" The fair brows rose. "Not for the time being. They're boys from across the Padus. What does the Rubicon mean to them?"

Junior legates like Gaius Asinius Pollio flew everywhere, barking orders at military tribunes and senior centurions; within those two hours the Thirteenth had struck camp and was lined up in column ready to move out. Its legionaries were fit and well rested, despite the route march Caesar had sent them on to Tergeste under the command of Pollio. They had conducted intensive military maneuvers there, then had returned to Ravenna in time for a final furlough long enough to bring them to peak fighting pitch. The pace Caesar set was a leisurely one; the Thirteenth went into a properly fortified camp still well north of the river Rubicon, the official boundary between Italian Gaul and Italia. Nothing was said, but everyone, including the legionaries and their centurions, was aware that the Rubicon loomed. They belonged to Caesar completely, and were overjoyed that he was not going to take it lying down, that he was marching to defend his hideously insulted dignitas, which was also the dignitas of everyone who served under him, from his legates to the noncombatants. "We're marching into history," said Pollio to his fellow junior legate, Quintus Valerius Orca; Pollio liked history. "No one can say he didn't try to avoid this," said Orca, and laughed. "But isn't it like him, to march with only one legion? How does he know what he'll find once he's crossed into Picenum? There might be ten legions drawn up against us." "Oh no, he's too clever for that," said Pollio. "Three or four legions, maybe, but not more. And we'll beat them hollow." "Especially if two of them are the Sixth and the Fifteenth." "True." On the tenth day of January, fairly late in the afternoon, the Thirteenth reached the Rubicon. Its men were ordered to cross without pausing; camp was to be made on the far side. Caesar and his little band of legates remained on the north bank, and there took a meal. At this autumnal time of year the rivers which flowed their shortish courses from the Apennines to the Adriatic Sea were at ebb; the snows had long melted, rain was unusual. Thus despite its long course, its sources almost literally a knife edge from those of the westward-flowing Arnus in the high mountains, the Rubicon's broad stream in autumn was at most knee-deep, no obstacle to any man or beast. Little was said, though what Caesar did say was dampening in that it was so ordinary. He ate his usual plain and sparing fare a little bread, a few olives, a hunk of cheese then washed his hands in a bowl a servant tendered, and got up from his ivory curule chair, which he had not, it was noted, abandoned. "To your horses," he said. But the horse his groom led up for Caesar to mount was not one of his several beautiful, highly strung road animals; it was Toes. Like the two other Toes he had ridden into battle since Sulla gifted him with the original animal, this Toes the veteran of the years in Gaul was a sleek chestnut with long mane and tail and pretty dish face, an appropriately well-bred mount for any general who didn't (like Pompey) prefer a splashy white horse. Except that its feet were cloven into three genuine toes, each ending in a tiny hoof, behind which it had a footpad. Mounted, the legates watched, enthralled; they had waited for a statement of war to no avail, but now they had it. When Caesar rode Toes, he was going into battle. He nudged the animal into the lead and rode at a sedate pace across the yellowed, autumnal grass between the trees toward the sparkling stream. And there, on the vestigial bank, paused. It is here. I can still turn back. I have not yet abandoned legality, constitutionality. But once I cross this undistinguished river I pass from servant of my country to an aggressor against her. Yet I know all this. I've known it for two years. I've gone through everything thought, planned, schemed, striven mightily. I've made incredible concessions. I would even have settled for Illyricum and one legion. But for every step of the way, I have known and understood that they would not yield. That they were determined to spit on me, to shove my face into the dust, to make a nothing out of Gaius Julius Caesar. Who is not a nothing. Who will never consent to be a nothing. You wanted it, Cato. Now you can have it. You've forced me to march against my country, to turn my face against the legal way. And, Pompeius, you are about to discover what it's like to face a competent enemy. The moment Toes wets his feet, I am an outlaw. And in order to remove the slur of outlaw from my name, I will have to go to war, fight my own countrymen and win. What lies across the Rubicon? How many legions have they managed to get together? How much real preparation? I am basing my entire campaign on a hunch, that they have done nothing. That Pompeius doesn't know how to start a war, and that the boni don't know how to fight one. He's never once started a war, Pompeius, for all those special commands. He's the expert at mopping up. Whereas the boni have no skill at anything beyond starting a war. Once the fighting begins, how will Pompeius manage to coexist with the boni, who will retard him, harangue him, criticize him, attempt to constrain him? They've thought of this as a game, as a hypothesis. Never as an actuality. Still, I suppose it is a game. And I have the luck as well as the genius. Suddenly he threw his head back and laughed, remembering a line from his favorite poet, Menander. "Let the dice fly high!" he cried out in the original Greek, kicked Toes gently in the ribs, and rode across the Rubicon into Italia and rebellion.