Colleen McCullough - 3. Fortune's Favorites

It was the middle of November when Caesar arrived in the small Peloponnesian port city of Gytheum, to find that Lucullus had wasted no time; his advent was anticipated and the terms of his junior military tribunate spelled out explicitly. "What on earth have you done?" asked the legate Marcus Manius, who was in charge of setting up Antonius's headquarters. "Annoyed Lucullus," said Caesar briefly. "Care to be more specific?" "No." "Pity. I'm dying of curiosity." Manius strolled down the narrow, cobbled street alongside Caesar. "I thought first I'd show you where you'll be lodging. Not a bad place, actually. Two old Roman widowers named Apronius and Canuleius who share a huge old house. Apparently they were married to sisters women of Gytheum and moved in together after the second sister died. I thought of them immediately when the orders came through because they have lots of room to spare, and they'll spoil you. Funny old codgers, but very nice. Not that you'll be in Gytheum much. I don't envy you, chasing ships from the Greeks! But your papers say you're the best there is, so I daresay you'll manage." "I daresay I will," agreed Caesar, smiling. Collecting warships in the Peloponnese was not entirely unenjoyable, however, for one soaked in the Greek classics: did sandy describe Pylos, did titans build the walls of Argos? There was a certain quality of ageless dreaming about the Peloponnese that rendered the present irrelevant, as if the gods themselves were mere nurselings compared to the generations of men who had lived here. And while he was very good at incurring the enmity of the Roman great, when Caesar dealt with humbler men he found himself much liked. The fleets grew slowly through the winter, but at a rate Caesar thought Antonius would find hard to criticize. Instead of accepting promises, the best gatherer of ships in the world would commandeer any warlike vessels he saw on the spot, then tie the towns down to signed contracts guaranteeing delivery of newly built galleys to Gytheum in April. Marcus Antonius, Caesar thought, would not be ready to move before April, as he wasn't expected to sail from Massilia until March. In February the Great Man's personal entourage began to dribble in, and Caesar brows raised, mouth quivering got a far better idea of how Marcus Antonius campaigned. When Gytheum did not prove to own a suitable residence, the entourage insisted that one be built on the shore looking down the Laconian Gulf toward the beautiful island of Cythera; it had to be provided with pools, waterfalls, fountains, shower baths, central heating and imported multicolored marble interiors. "It can't possibly be finished until summer," said Caesar to Manius, eyes dancing, "so I was thinking of offering the Great Man room and board with Apronius and Canuleius." "He won't be happy when he finds his house unfinished," said Manius, who thought the situation as funny as Caesar did. "Mind you, the locals are adopting a praiseworthily Greek attitude toward sinking their precious town funds into that vast sybaritic eyesore they're planning on renting it for huge sums to all sorts of would be potentates after Antonius has moved on." "I shall make it my business to spread the fame of the vast sybaritic eyesore far and wide," said Caesar. "After all, this is one of the best climates in the world ideal for a long rest cure or a secret espousal of unmentionable vices." "I'd like to see them get their money back," said Man ius. "What a waste of everyone's resources! Though I didn't say that." "Eh?" shouted Caesar, hand cupped around his ear. When Marcus Antonius did arrive, it was to find Gytheum's commodious and very safe habor filling up with ships of all kinds (Caesar had not been too proud to accept merchantmen, knowing that Antonius had a legion of land troops to shunt about), and his villa only half finished. Nothing, however, could dent his uproariously jolly mood; he had been drinking unwatered wine to such effect that he had not been sober since leaving Massilia. As far as his fascinated legate Marcus Manius and his junior military tribune Gaius Julius Caesar could see, Antonius's idea of a campaign was to assault the private parts of as many women as he could find with what, so rumor had it, was a formidable weapon. A victory was a howl of feminine protest at the vigor of the bombardment and the size of the ram. "Ye gods, what an incompetent sot!" said Caesar to the walls of his pleasant and comfortable room in the house of Canuleius and Apronius; he dared not say it to any human listener. He had, of course, seen to it that Marcus Manius mentioned his fleet gathering activities in dispatches, so when his mother's letter arrived at the end of April not many days after Antonius, the news it contained presented a merciful release from duty in Gytheum without the loss of a campaign credit. Caesar's eldest uncle, Gaius Aurelius Cotta, returned from Italian Gaul early in the new year, dropped dead on the eve of his triumph. Leaving behind him among many other things a vacancy in the College of Pontifices, for he had been in length of years the oldest serving pontifex. And though Sulla had laid down that the college should consist of eight plebeians and seven patricians, at the time of Gaius Cotta's death it contained nine plebeians and only six patricians, due to Sulla's need to reward this man and that with pontificate or augurship. Normally the death of a plebeian priest meant that the college replaced him with another plebeian, but in order to arrange the membership as Sulla had laid down, the members of the college decided to co opt a patrician. And their choice had fallen upon Caesar. As far as Aurelia could gather, Caesar's selection hinged upon the fact that no Julian had been a member of the College of Pontifices or the College of Augurs since the murders of Lucius Caesar (an augur) and Caesar Strabo (a pontifex) thirteen years before. It had been generally accepted that Lucius Caesar's son would fill the next vacancy in the College of Augurs, but (said Aurelia) no one had dreamed of Caesar for the College of Pontifices. Her informant was Mamercus, who had told her that the decision had not been reached with complete accord; Catulus opposed him, as did Metellus the eldest son of the Billy goat. But after many auguries and a consultation of the prophetic books, Caesar won. The most important part of his mother's letter was a message from Mamercus, that if he wanted to make sure of his priesthood, Caesar had better get back to Rome for consecration and inauguration as soon as he possibly could; otherwise it was possible Catulus might sway the college to change its mind. His fifth campaign recorded, Caesar packed his few belongings with no regrets. The only people he would miss were his landlords, Apronius and Canuleius, and the legate Marcus Manius. "Though I must confess," he said to Manius, "that I wish I could have seen the vast sybaritic eyesore standing on the cove in all its ultimate glory." "To be pontifex is far more important," said Manius, who had not realized quite how important Caesar was; to Manius he had always seemed a down to earth and unassuming fellow who was very good at everything he did and a glutton for work. "What will you do after you've been inducted into the college?" "Try to find some humble propraetor with a war on his hands he can't handle," said Caesar. "Lucullus is proconsul now, which means he can't order the other governors about." "Spain?" "Too prominent in dispatches. No, I'll see if Marcus Fonteius needs a bright young military tribune in Gaul across the Alps. He's a vir militaris, and they're always sensible men. He won't care what Lucullus thinks of me as long as I can work." The fair face looked suddenly grim. "But first things first, and first is Marcus Junius Juncus. I shall prosecute him in the Extortion Court." "Haven't you heard?" asked Manius. "Heard what?" "Juncus is dead. He never got back to Rome. Shipwrecked."