Colleen McCullough - 3. Fortune's Favorites

When Spain learned of the death of Quintus Sertorius, his Spanish adherents vanished into Lusitania and Aquitania; even some of his Roman and Italian soldiers deserted Perperna's cause. Undeterred, Perperna marshaled all those who had elected to remain and in May ventured out of Osca to give battle to Pompey, whose curt reply to his petition for the reward had angered him greatly. Who did the Picentine upstart think he was, to answer on behalf of a Caecilius Metellus? Though the Caecilius Metellus had not answered at all. The battle was no contest. Perperna stumbled upon one of Pompey's legions foraging in the country south of Pompaelo; its men were scattered, and hampered too by several dozen oxcarts. Seeing the last army of Sertorius bearing down on them, Pompey's men fled into the confines of a steep gulch. Perperna, elated, followed them. Only when every last man was inside the gulch did Pompey spring his trap; down from its sides thousands of his soldiers leaped out of concealment, and massacred the last army of Quintus Sertorius. Some soldiers found Perperna hiding in a thicket and brought him to Aulus Gabinius, who at once brought him to Pompey. Grey with terror, Perperna tried to bargain for his life by offering Pompey all of Quintus Sertorius's private papers which, he whimpered, would confirm the fact that there were many important men in Rome who were anxious to see Sertorius win, reconstruct Rome on Marian principles. "Whatever they might be," said Pompey, face wooden, blue eyes expressionless. What might be?'' asked Perperna, shivering. "Marian principles." "Please, Gnaeus Pompeius, I beg of you! Only let me give you these papers, and you'll see for yourself how right I am!" "Very well, give them to me," said Pompey laconically. Looking immensely relieved, Perperna told Aulus Gabinius whereabouts to look for the papers (he had carried them along with him, fearing to leave them in Osca), and waited with scarcely concealed impatience until the detail came back again. Two of the men bore a large chest between them, and put it on the ground at Pompey's feet. "Open it," said Pompey. He squatted down and rustled through the packed scrolls and papers inside for a very long time, occasionally spreading a sheet out to read it, nodding to himself as he muttered. The vaster bulk of what the chest contained he merely glanced at, but some of the shorter papers he also merely glanced at caused him to raise his brows. He stood up when the chest was empty and a huge pile of documents lay higgledy piggledy on the trampled grass. Push all that rubbish together and burn it here and now in front of me," said Pompey to Aulus Gabinius. Perperna gasped, but said nothing. When the contents of the chest were blazing fiercely, Pompey thrust his chin toward Gabinius, a look of profound satisfaction on his face. "Kill this worm," he said. Perperna died under a Roman legionary's sword, and the war in Spain was over in the moment his head rolled and jumped across the blood soaked ground. "So that's that," said Aulus Gabinius. Pompey shrugged. "Good riddance," he said. Both of them had been standing looking down at Perperna's disembodied face, its eyes goggling in horrified surprise; now Pompey turned away and began to walk back to the rest of his legates, who had known better than to intrude themselves when they had not been summoned. "Did you have to burn the papers?" asked Gabinius. "Oh, yes." "Wouldn't it have been better to have brought them back to Rome? Then all the traitors would have been flushed out." Pompey shook his head, laughed. What, keep the Treason Court busy for the next hundred years?" he asked. "Sometimes it is wiser to keep one's own counsel. A traitor does not cease to be a traitor because the papers which would have indicted him have gone up in smoke." "I don't quite understand." "I mean they'll keep, Aulus Gabinius. They'll keep."

Though the war was over, Pompey was too meticulous a man to pack up and march home bearing Perperna's head on a spear. He liked to clean up his messes, which principally meant killing anyone he thought might prove a threat or a danger in the future. Among those who perished were Sertorius's German wife and son, whom Pompey found in Osca when he accepted the capitulation of that frowning fortress in June. The thirty year old man who was pointed out to him as Sertorius's son looked enough like him to make the tale credible, though he spoke no Latin and conducted himself like a Spaniard of the Illergetes. On hearing of Sertorius's death, Clunia and Uxama repented of their submissions to Pompey, shut their gates and prepared to withstand siege. Pompey was happy to oblige them. Clunia fell. Uxama fell. So eventually did Calagurris, where the appalled Romans discovered that the men of the town had eaten their own women and children rather than surrender; Pompey had every living Calagurrian executed, then put not only the town but the entire district to the torch. Of course all through this, communications had flown back and forth between the victorious general and Rome. Not all the letters were official ones, nor all the documents for public dissemination; chief among Pompey's correspondents was Philippus, who was crowing mightily in the Senate. The consuls of the year were two of Pompey's secret clients, Lucius Gellius Poplicola and Gnaeus Cornelius Lentulus Clodianus, which meant that Pompey was able to petition them to secure the Roman citizenship for those Spaniards who had assisted him significantly. At the top of Pompey's list was the same outlandish name, twice written; Kinahu Hadasht Byblos, uncle and nephew, aged thirty three and twenty eight respectively, citizens in good standing of Gades, Punic merchant princes. But they did not assume Pompey's name, for it was no part of Pompey's plan to let loose a flood of Spanish Gnaeus Pompeius This and That upon Rome. The Gadetanian uncle and nephew were put in the clientship of one of Pompey's more recent legates, Lucius Cornelius Lentulus, a cousin of the consul. So they entered into Roman life and annals as Lucius Cornelius Balbus Major and Lucius Cornelius Balbus Minor. Still Pompey refused to hurry. The mines around New Carthage were reopened, the Contestani punished for attacking dear, dead Gaius Memmius: his sister was now a widow. He would have to do something about that when he returned to Rome! Slowly the province of Nearer Spain was carefully pieced together, given a properly organized bureaucracy, a tax structure, succinct rules and laws, and all the other adjuncts necessary to pronounce a place Roman. Then in the autumn Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus bade farewell to Spain, devoutly hoping he would never need to return. He had quite recovered his self confidence and his good opinion of himself, though never again would he face any military adversary without a premonitory shudder, never again would he enter into any war unless he knew he outnumbered the enemy by several legions at least. And never again would he fight another Roman! At the crest of the pass through the Pyrenees the victorious general set up trophies, including armor which had belonged to Quintus Sertorius and the armor in which Perperna had lost his head. They hung sturdily stapled to tall poles with crossarms, pteryges flapping in the mournful mountain wind, a mute reminder to all who crossed from Gaul into Spain that it did not pay to go to war with Rome. Alongside the various trophies Pompey erected a cairn which bore a tablet on which he set forth his name, his title, his commission, the number of towns he had taken and the names of the men who had been rewarded with the Roman citizenship. After which he descended into Narbonese Gaul and spent the winter there feasting on shrimps and dug mullets. Like his war, that year had seen a turn for the better; the harvests were good in both the Spains but bountiful in Narbonese Gaul. He did not plan to reach Rome until the middle of the year at the earliest, though not because he came home feeling any sense of failure. Simply, he didn't know what to do next, where to go next, what pillar of Roman tradition and veneration to tumble. On the twenty eighth day of September he would turn thirty five years old, no longer the fresh faced darling of the legions. Thus it behooved him to find a goal suitable for a man, not a boy. But what goal? Something the Senate would hate to give him, of that there could be no doubt. He could feel the answer lurking in the mazes of that part of his mind he shrank from exploring, but still it eluded him. Then he shrugged, cast all those thoughts away. There were more immediate things to do, such as opening up the new road he had pioneered across the Alps survey it, pave it, make it what? The Via Pompeia? That sounded good! But who wanted to die leaving the name of a road as his monument to glory? No, better to die leaving just the name itself. Pompey the Great. Yes, that said it all.