Colleen McCullough - 4. Caesar's Women

Rome during March buzzed, some of it arising from politics and some from the sensational death of Metellus Celer. Still dallying in Rome and leaving his province of Further Gaul to the ministrations of his legate Gaius Pomptinus, Celer seemed not to know what to do for the best. It had been bad enough when Clodia blazed a trail across Rome's social sky in the throes of her wild affair with Catullus, but that was finished. The poet from Verona was crazed with grief; his howls and sobs could be heard from the Carinae to the Palatine and his wonderful poems read from the same to the same. Erotic, passionate, heartfelt, luminous if Catullus had searched forever for a suitable object of a great love, he could not have found a better than his adored Lesbia, Clodia. Her perfidy, cunning, heartlessness and rapacity coaxed words out of him he hadn't known himself capable of producing. She terminated Catullus when she discovered Caelius, about to commence his prosecution of Gaius Antonius Hybrida. What had attracted her to Catullus was present to some extent in Caelius, but in a more Roman mold; the poet was too intense, too volatile, too prone to gloomy depression. Whereas Caelius was sophisticated, witty, innately joyous. He came from good stock and had a rich father who was anxious that his brilliant son should snatch nobility for the Caelius family by attaining the consulship. Caelius was a New Man, yes, but not of the more obnoxious kind. The striking and stormy good looks of Catullus had ravished her, but the powerful thews and equally handsome face belonging to Caelius pleased Clodia more; it could become quite an ordeal to be a poet's mistress. In short, Catullus began to bore Clodia at precisely the moment she spied Caelius. So it was off with the old and on with the new. And how did a husband fit into this frenzied activity? The answer was, not very well. Clodia's passion for Celer had lasted until she neared thirty, but that was the end of it. Time and increasing self assurance had weaned her away from her first cousin and childhood companion, prompted her to seek whatever it was she looked for with Catullus, her second essay in illicit love at least of a glaringly public kind. The incest scandal she, Clodius and Clodilla had provoked had whetted an appetite eventually grown too great not to be indulged. Clodia also found that she adored being despised by all the people she herself despised. Poor Celer was reduced to the role of helpless onlooker. She was twelve years older than the twenty three year old Marcus Caelius Rufus when she spied him, not that he had just arrived in Rome; Caelius had flitted in and out since he had come to study under Cicero three years before the consulship. He had flirted with Catilina, been sent in disgrace to assist the governor of Africa Province until the fuss died down because Caelius Senior happened to own a great deal of the wheatlands of the Bagradas River in that province. Recently Caelius had come home to start his Forum career in earnest, and with as much splash as possible. Thus he elected to prosecute the man even Gaius Caesar hadn't been able to convict, Gaius Antonius Hybrida. For Celer the misery just kept on waxing at the same rate as Clodia's interest in him waned. And then, on top of being shown that he had no choice other than to swear the oath to uphold Caesar's land bill, he learned that Clodia had a new lover, Marcus Caelius Rufus. The inhabitants of the houses around Celer's residence had no trouble hearing the frightful quarrels which erupted out of Celer's peristyle at all hours of day and night. Husband and wife specialized in shouting threats of murder at each other, and there were sounds of blows struck, missiles landing, breaking pottery or glass, frightened servants' voices, shrieks which froze the blood. It couldn't last, all the neighbors knew it, and speculated how it would eventually end. But who could have predicted such an end? Unconscious, brain herniating out of the splintered depths of a shocking head wound, Celer was hauled naked from his bath by servants while Clodia stood screaming, robe soaked because she had climbed into the bath in an attempt to get him out herself, covered in blood because she had held his head out of the water. When the horrified Metellus Nepos was joined by Appius Claudius and Publius Clodius, she was able to tell them what had happened. Celer had been very drunk, she explained, but insisted on a bath after he vomited who could ever reason with a drunken man or persuade him not to do what he was determined to do? Repeatedly telling him that he was too drunk to bathe, Clodia accompanied him to the bathroom, and continued to plead with him as he undressed. Then, poised on the top step and about to descend into the tepid water, her husband fell and struck his head on the rear parapet of the tub sharp, projecting, lethal. Sure enough, when the three men went to the bathroom to inspect the scene of the accident, there on the rear parapet were blood, bone, brain. The physicians and surgeons tenderly inserted a comatose Metellus Celer into his bed, and a weeping Clodia refused to leave his side for any reason. Two days later he died, never having regained consciousness. Clodia was a widow, and Rome plunged into mourning for Quintus Caecilius Metellus Celer. His brother, Nepos, was his principal heir, but Clodia had been left extremely comfortably off, and no agnate relative of Celer's was about to invoke the lex Voconia. Busy preparing his case for the defense of Hybrida, Cicero had listened fascinated when Publius Nigidius Figulus told him and Atticus (in Rome for the winter) the details Appius Claudius had told him in confidence. When the story was done the thought popped into Cicero's mind; he giggled. "Clytemnestra!" he said. To which the other two said not one word, though they seemed distinctly uneasy. Nothing could be proved, there had been no witnesses aside from Clodia. But certainly Metellus Celer had borne the same kind of wound as King Agamemnon had after his wife, Queen Clytemnestra, had plied an axe to murder him in his bath so that she could continue her liaison with Aegisthus. So who spread the new nickname of Clytemnestra? That was never established either. But from that time on Clodia was also known as Clytemnestra, and many people implicitly believed that she had murdered her husband in his bath. The sensation did not die down after Celer's funeral, for he left a vacancy in the College of Augurs, and every aspiring man in Rome wanted to contest the election. In the old days when men had been co opted into the priestly colleges, the new augur would have been Metellus Nepos, the dead man's brother. Nowadays, who knew? The boni had very vocal supporters, but they were not in the majority. Perhaps aware of this, Nepos was heard saying that he would probably not nominate himself, as he was so brokenhearted he intended to travel abroad for several years. The squabbles over the augurship may not have attained the height of those frightful altercations heard from the house of Celer before he died, but they enlivened the Forum mightily. When the tribune of the plebs Publius Vatinius announced that he would stand, Bibulus and the Chief Augur, Messala Rufus, blocked his candidacy very simply. Vatinius had a disfiguring tumor on his forehead; he wasn't perfect. "At least," Vatinius was heard to say loudly, though it seemed with great good humor, "my wen is where everyone can see it! Now Bibulus's wen is on his arse, though Messala Rufus goes one better he has two wens where his balls used to be. I am going to move in the Plebs that all future candidates for an augurship should be required to strip naked and parade up and down the Forum."

In April the junior consul Bibulus could enjoy true possession of the fasces for the first time, given February's foreign affairs. He entered his month well aware that all was not going well with the execution of the lex Iulia agraria: the commissioners were unusually zealous and the five committeemen enormously helpful, but every organized settlement in Italy still retaining public lands was being obstructive, and sale of private lands was tardy because even knightly acquisition of land for resale to the State took time. Oh, the act was so beautifully thought out that things would sort themselves out eventually! The trouble was that Pompey needed to settle more of his veterans at once than could be done. "They have to see action," said Bibulus to Cato, Gaius Piso, Ahenobarbus and Metellus Scipio, "but action isn't on the horizon as yet. What they need is a very large tract of public land already surveyed and apportioned out in ten iugera lots by some previous land legislator who didn't live long enough to implement his law." Cato's huge nose contracted, his eyes blazed. "They would never dare!" he said. "Dare what?" asked Metellus Scipio. "They will dare," Bibulus insisted. "Dare what?" "Bring in a second land bill to use the Ager Campanus and the Capuan public lands. Two hundred and fifty square miles of land parceled up by almost everyone since Tiberius Gracchus, ready for seizure and settlement." "It will pass," said Gaius Piso, lips peeled away from teeth. "I agree," said Bibulus, "it will pass." "But we have to stop it," from Ahenobarbus. "Yes, we have to stop it." "How?" asked Metellus Scipio. "I had hoped," said the junior consul, "that my ploy to make all comitial days feriae would answer, though I should have known that Caesar would use his authority as Pontifex Maximus. However, there is one religious ploy neither he nor the Colleges can counter. I may have exceeded my authority as a lone augur in the feriae business, but I will not exceed my authority as both augur and consul if I approach the problem in both roles." They were all leaning forward eagerly. Perhaps Cato was the most publicly prominent one among them, but there could be no doubt that Bibulus's heroism in choosing to suggest a menial and very belittling proconsulship had given him the edge over Cato in all private meetings of the leaders of the boni. Nor did Cato resent this; Cato had no aspirations to lead. "I intend to retire to my house to watch the skies until the end of my year as consul." No one spoke. Did you hear me?'' asked Bibulus, smiling. "We heard, Marcus Bibulus," said Cato, "but will it work? How can it work?" "It's been done before, and it's firmly established as a part of the mos maiorum. Besides which, I organized a secret little search of the Sacred Books, and found a prophecy which could easily be interpreted as meaning that this year the sky is going to produce an omen of extreme significance. Just what the sign is the prophecy didn't say, and that's what makes the whole ploy possible. Now when the consul retires to his house to watch the skies, all public business must be suspended until he emerges to take up his fasces again. Which I have no intention of doing!" "It won't be popular," said Gaius Piso, looking worried. "At first perhaps not, but we're all going to have to work hard to make it look more popular than it actually will be. I intend to use Catullus he's so good at lampooning, and now that Clodia's finished with him he can't do enough to make her or her little brother unhappy. I just wish I could get Curio again, but he won't oblige. However, we're not going to concentrate on Caesar, he's immune. We're going to set Pompeius Magnus up as our chief target, and for the rest of the year we make absolutely sure that not a day goes by without as many of our adherents in the Forum as we can marshal. Numbers don't actually mean much. Noise and numbers in the Forum are what count. The bulk of city and country want Caesar's laws, but they're hardly ever in the Forum unless there's a vote or a vital contio." Bibulus looked at Cato. "You have a special job, Cato. On every possible occasion I want you to make yourself so obnoxious that Caesar loses his temper and orders you off to the Lautumiae. For some reason, he loses it more easily if it's you or Cicero doing the agitating. One must assume both of you have the ability to get under his saddle like burrs. Whenever possible we'll prearrange things so that we can have the Forum packed with people ready to support you and condemn the opposition. Pompeius is the weak link. Whatever we do has to be designed to make him feel vulnerable." "When do you intend to retire to your house?" Ahenobarbus asked. "The second day before the Ides, the only day between the Megalesia and the Ceriala, when Rome will be full of people and the Forum full of sightseers. There's no point in doing it without the biggest possible audience." "And do you think that all public business will cease when you retire to your house?" asked Metellus Scipio. Bibulus raised his brows. "I sincerely hope not! The whole object of the ploy is to force Caesar and Vatinius to legislate in contraindication of the omens. It means that as soon as they're out of office we can invalidate their laws. Not to mention have them prosecuted for maiestas. Doesn't a conviction for treason sound wonderful?" "What if Clodius becomes a tribune of the plebs?" "I can't see how that can change anything. Clodius has why I don't know! conceived a dislike for Pompeius Magnus. He'll be our ally next year if he's elected, not our enemy." "He's after Cicero too." "Again, what is that to us? Cicero isn't boni, he's an ulcer. Ye gods, I'd vote for any law which could shut him up when he begins to prate about how he saved his country! Anyone would think Catilina worse than a combination of Hannibal and Mithridates." "But if Clodius goes after Cicero he'll also go after you, Cato," said Gaius Piso. "How can he?" Cato asked. "I merely gave my opinion in the House. I certainly wasn't the senior consul, I hadn't even gone into office as a tribune of the plebs. Free speech is becoming more perilous, but there's no law on the tablets yet forbidding a man to say what he thinks during a meeting of the Senate." It was Ahenobarbus who thought of the major difficulty. "I see how we can invalidate any laws Caesar or Vatinius pass between now and the end of the year," he said, "but first we have to get the numbers in the House. That means it will have to be our men sitting in the curule chairs next year. But whom can we succeed in getting elected as consuls, not to mention praetor urbanus! I understand Metellus Nepos intends to leave Rome to heal his grief, so he's out. I'll be praetor, and so will Gaius Memmius, who hates Uncle Pompeius Magnus terrifically. But who for consul? Philippus sits in Caesar's lap. So does Gaius Octavius, married to Caesar's niece. Lentulus Niger wouldn't get in. Nor would Cicero's little brother Quintus. And anyone who was praetor earlier than that lot can't succeed either." "You're right, Lucius, we have to get our own consuls in," said Bibulus, frowning. "Aulus Gabinius will run, so will Lucius Piso. Both with a foot in the Popularist camp, and both with much electoral clout. We'll just have to persuade Nepos to stay in Rome, run for augur and then for consul. And our other candidate had better be Messala Rufus. If we don't have sympathetic curule magistrates next year, we won't invalidate Caesar's laws." What about Arrius, who's very annoyed with Caesar, I hear, because Caesar won't back him as a consular candidate?" from Cato. "Too old and not enough clout" was the scornful reply. "I heard something else," said Ahenobarbus, not pleased; no one had mentioned his name in connection with the augural vacancy. "What?" asked Gaius Piso. "That Caesar and Magnus are thinking of asking Cicero to take Cosconius's place on the Committee of Five. Convenient that he dropped dead! Cicero would suit them better." "Cicero's too big a fool to accept," said Bibulus, sniffing. "Not even if his darling Pompeius implores?" "At the moment I hear Pompeius isn't his darling," said Gaius Piso, laughing. "He's heard who auspicated at the adoption of Publius Clodius!" "You'd think that would tell Cicero something about his actual importance in the scheme of things," sneered Ahenobarbus. "Well, there's a rumor emanating from Atticus that Cicero says Rome is sick of him!" "He isn't wrong," said Bibulus, sighing theatrically. The meeting broke up with great hilarity; the boni were happy.