Colleen McCullough - 4. Caesar's Women

Both Pompey and Crassus sent letters to Caesar on the Campus Martius, where he had taken up residence at the inn of Minicius. Very tired because despite his massive size and strength he was no longer young enough to row with impunity for days on end, Burgundus sat quietly in a corner of Caesar's private parlor watching his beloved master converse softly with Balbus, who had elected to keep him company rather than enter Rome without him. The letters arrived carried by the same messenger, and took very little time to read. Caesar looked up at Balbus. "Well, it seems I am not to stand for consul in absentia," he said calmly. "The House appeared willing to grant me the favor, but Cato talked out any possibility of a vote. Crassus is on his way to see me now. Pompeius won't come. He thinks he's being watched, and he's probably right." "Oh, Caesar!" Balbus's eyes filled, but what he might have said after this was never uttered; Crassus erupted into the room breathing fire. "The sanctimonious, puffed up prig! I detest Pompeius Magnus and I despise idiots like Cicero, but Cato I could kill! What a leader the rump has inherited in him! Catulus would imitate his father and suffocate from fresh plaster fumes if he knew! Who said incorruptibility and honesty are the virtues which matter most? I'd rather deal with the shiftiest, slimiest usurer in the world than piss in Cato's general direction! He's a bigger upstart than any New Man who ever strolled down the Via Flaminia sucking a straw! Mentula! Verpa! Cunnus! Pah!" To all of this Caesar listened fascinated, a delighted smile spreading from ear to ear. My dear Marcus, I never thought I'd have to say it to you, but calm down! Why suffer a stroke over the likes of Cato? He won't win, for all his much extolled integrity." "Caesar, he's already won! You can't be consul in the New Year now, and what's going to happen to Rome? If she doesn't get a consul strong enough to squash slugs like Cato and Bibulus, I despair! There won't be any Rome! And how am I going to protect my standing with the Eighteen if you're not senior consul?" "It's all right, Marcus, truly. I'll be senior consul in the New Year, even if I'm saddled with Bibulus for my colleague." The rage vanished; Crassus stared at Caesar slack jawed. "You mean you'll give up your triumph?" he squawked. "Certainly I will." Caesar turned in his chair. "Burgundus, it's time you saw Cardixa and your sons. Go to the Domus Publica and stay there. Give my mother two messages: that I'll be home tomorrow evening, and pack up my toga Candida and send it to me here tonight. At dawn tomorrow I'll cross the pomerium into Rome." "Caesar, it's too great a sacrifice!" moaned Crassus, on the verge of tears. "Nonsense! What sacrifice? I'll have more triumphs I do not intend to go to a tame province after my consulship, I assure you. You ought to know me by now, Marcus. If I went ahead and triumphed on the Ides, what sort of show would it be? Anything but worthy of me. There's some pretty stiff competition in Magnus, who took two days to parade. No, when I triumph, it will be at my leisure and without parallel. I am Gaius Julius Caesar, not Metellus Little Goat Creticus. Rome must talk about my parade for generations. I will never consent to being an also ran." "I don't believe I'm hearing this! To give up your triumph? Gaius, Gaius, that's the height of a man's glory! Look at me! All my life a triumph has eluded me, and it's the one thing I want before I die!" "Then we'll have to make sure you triumph. Cheer up, Marcus, do. Sit down and drink a beaker of Minicius's best wine, then let's have some supper. Rowing twelve hours a day for twelve days gives a man a huge appetite, I've found." "I could kill Cato!" said Crassus as he seated himself. "As I keep saying to largely deaf ears, death is no fitting punishment, even for Cato. Death cheats one of the best victory, which is to spare one's enemies the sight of defeat. I love to pit myself against the Catos and Bibuluses. They'll never win." "How can you be so sure?" "Simple," said Caesar, surprised. "They don't want to win as badly as I do." The rage was gone, but Crassus had not yet managed to put on his normal impassive mien when he said, a little uncomfortably, "I have something less important to tell you, but perhaps you'll not see it in that light." "Oh?" Whereupon Crassus actually quailed. Later will do. Here we've been talking as if your friend over there doesn't exist." "Ye gods! Balbus, forgive me!" cried Caesar. "Come here and meet a plutocrat more bloated by far than you. Lucius Cornelius Balbus Major, this is Marcus Licinius Crassus." And that, thought Caesar, is a handshake between equals if ever I saw one. I don't know what pleasure they get out of making money, but between them they could probably buy and sell the whole of the Iberian Peninsula. And how delighted they are finally to meet. Not so odd that they haven't met before. Crassus's days in Spain were finished while Balbus was still unknown there. And this is Balbus's first trip to Rome, where I very much hope he will take up residence. The three men made a merry meal, for it seemed that once the imperturbable one was catapulted out of his imperturbability he found it difficult to regain that state of mind. Not until the dishes were removed and the lamps trimmed did Crassus refer again to his other news for Caesar. "I have to tell you, Gaius, but you won't like it," he said. Like what?'' Nepos made a short speech in the House about your petition." "Not in my favor." "Anything but." Crassus stopped. "What did he say? Come, Marcus, it can't be that bad!" "Worse." "Then you'd best tell me." "He said he wouldn't grant any kind of favor to a notorious homosexual like you. That was the polite bit. You know Nepos, very salty indeed. The rest was extremely graphic and concerned King Nicomedes of Bithynia." Crassus stopped again, but when Caesar said nothing he hurried on. "Afranius ordered the scribes to strike the statement from the records, and forbade Nepos to attend any more meetings of the Senate if he's holding the fasces. He handled the situation quite well, really." Of course Caesar wasn't staring at either Crassus or Balbus, and the light was dim. He didn't move, there was no look on his face to cause alarm. Yet why did the temperature of the room seem suddenly so much colder? The pause wasn't long enough to qualify as a silence before Caesar said, voice normal, "That was foolish of Nepos. He'd do the boni more good in the House than barred from it. He must be in on all the boni councils and very thick with Bibulus. I've been waiting years for that canard to be remembered. Bibulus made much of it almost half a lifetime ago, then it seemed to die." His smile flashed, but there was no amusement in it. "My friends, I predict this is going to be a very dirty election." "It didn't sit well with the House," said Crassus. "You could have heard a moth land on a toga. Nepos must have realized he'd harmed himself more than he'd managed to harm you, because when Afranius pronounced sentence he said something equally rude to Afranius the old 'son of Aulus' jibe and walked out." "I'm disappointed in Nepos, I thought he had more finesse." "Or perhaps he's cherishing a tendency that way himself," rumbled Crassus. "It was very funny at the time, but thinking about how he used to carry on during meetings of the Plebs when he was a tribune, he always made much of fluttering his eyelashes and blowing kisses at hulking lumps like Thermus." "All of which," said Caesar, rising to his feet as Crassus did, "is beside the point. Nepos has eroded my dignitas. That means I'll have to erode Nepos." When he returned to the parlor after ushering Crassus out, he found Balbus wiping away tears. Grief over something as trite as Nepos?'' he asked. "I know your pride, so I know how it hurts." "Yes," said Caesar, sighing, "it does hurt, Balbus, though I'd not admit that to any Roman of my own class. One thing were it true, but it isn't. And in Rome an accusation of homosexuality is very damaging. Dignitas suffers." "I think Rome is wrong," Balbus said gently. "So do I, as a matter of fact. But it's irrelevant. What matters is the mos maiorum, our centuries of traditions and customs. For whatever reason and I do not know the reason homosexuality is not approved of. Never was approved of. Why do you think there was such resistance in Rome to things Greek two hundred years ago?" "But it must be here in Rome too." '' Wagonloads of it, Balbus, and not only among those who don't belong to the Senate. It was said of Scipio Africanus by Cato the Censor, and it was certainly true of Sulla. Never mind, never mind! If life were easy, how bored we'd be!"