Colleen McCullough - 3. Fortune's Favorites

"Ye gods, Caesar, you're clever!" said Crassus feebly when Caesar had ended his tale of Pompey. "I didn't think of half that! I don't say I wouldn't have worked it all out eventually, but you must have done it between my tent and his. A villa on the Pincian, indeed! I have a perfectly good house on the Palatine I've just spent a fortune redecorating why spend money on a villa on the Pincian? I'm comfortable in a tent." "What an incurable cheeseparer you are, Marcus Crassus!" said Caesar, laughing. "You'll rent a villa on the Pincian at least as expensive as Pompeius's and move Tertulla and the boys into it at once. You can afford it. Look on it as a necessary investment. It is! You and Pompeius are going to have to seem like bitter opponents for the next almost six months." And what are you going to do?'' asked Crassus. "I'm going to find myself a tribune of the plebs. Preferably a Picentine one. I don't know why, but men from Picenum are attracted to the tribunate of the plebs, and make very good ones. It shouldn't be difficult. There are probably half a dozen members of this year's college who hail from Picenum." "Why a Picentine?" "For one thing, he'll be inclined to favor Pompeius. They're a clannish lot, the Picentines. For another, he'll be a fire eater. They're born breathing fire in Picenum!" "Take care you don't end up with burned hands," said Crassus, already thinking about which of his freedmen would drive the hardest bargain with the agents who rented villas on the Pincian Hill. What a pity he'd never thought of investing in real estate there! An ideal location. All those foreign kings and queens looking for Roman palaces no, he wouldn't rent! He'd buy! Rent was a disgraceful waste; a man never saw a sestertius's return.

2

In November the Senate gave in. Marcus Licinius Crassus was informed that he would be allowed to stand in absentia for the consulship. Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus was informed that the Senate had sent a decree to the Assembly of the People asking that body to waive the usual requirements membership in the Senate, the quaestorship and praetorship and legislate to allow him to stand for the consulship. As the Assembly of the People had passed the necessary law, the Senate was pleased to inform Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus that he would be allowed to stand in absentia for the consulship, et cetera, et cetera. When a candidate stood for office in absentia, canvassing was difficult. He couldn't cross the pomerium into the city to meet the voters, chat to everyone in the Forum, pose modestly nearby when some tribune of the plebs called a contio of the Plebeian Assembly to discuss the merits of this favored candidate and lambaste his rivals. Because in absentia required special permission from the House, it was rarely encountered, but never before had two candidates for the consulship both stood in absentia. However, as things turned out the usual disadvantages mattered not a bit. Debate in the Senate even under the threat of those two undischarged armies had been as feverishly hot as it had been protracted; when the House gave in at last, every other candidate for the consulship had withdrawn from the contest as a protest against the blatant illegality of Pompey's candidature. If there were no other candidates, Pompey and Crassus would look what they were: dictators in disguise. Many and varied were the threats called down upon Pompey's head and Crassus's head, mostly in the form of prosecution for treason the moment imperium was lost; so when the tribune of the plebs Marcus Lollius Palicanus (a man from Picenum) called a special meeting of the Plebeian Assembly in the Circus Flaminius on the Campus Martius, every senator who had turned his back on Pompey and Crassus sat up with a shock of realization. They were going to wriggle out of treason charges by bringing back the full powers of the tribunate of the plebs and having ten grateful tribunes of the plebs legislate them immunity from the consequences of their actions! Many in Rome wanted to see the restoration, most people because the tribunate of the plebs was a hallowed institution in proper harmony with the mos maiorum, and not a few people because they missed the vigor and buzz of the old days in the lower Forum Romanum when some militant demagogue fired up the Plebs until fists swung and hired ex gladiators waded into the fray. So Lollius Palicanus's meeting, widely advertised as being to discuss the restoration of the tribunate of the plebs, was bound to attract crowds. But when the news got round that the consular candidates Pompey and Crassus were going to speak in support of Palicanus, enthusiasm reached heights unknown since Sulla had turned the Plebeian Assembly into a rather attenuated men's club. Used for the less well patronized games, the Circus Flaminius held a mere fifty thousand people; but on the day of Palicanus's meeting every bleacher was full. Resigned to the fact that no one save those lucky enough to be within a couple of hundred feet would hear a word, most of those who had streamed out along the bank of the Tiber had only come so that they could tell their grandchildren that they had been there on the day two consular candidates who were also military heroes had promised to restore the tribunate of the plebs. Because they would do it! They would! Palicanus opened the meeting with a rousing speech aimed at procuring the most possible votes for Pompey and Crassus at the curule elections; those close enough to hear were those high enough in the classes to have a worthwhile vote. All Palicanus's nine colleagues were present, and all spoke in support of Pompey and Crassus. Then Crassus appeared to great applause and spoke to great applause. A nice series of preliminary entertainments before the main performance. And here he came, Pompey the Great! Clad in glittering golden armor as bright as the sun, looking absolutely gorgeous. He did not have to be an orator; for all the crowd cared, he might have recited gibberish. The crowd had come to see Pompey the Great, and went home deliriously satisfied. No surprise then that when the curule elections took place on the day before the Nones of December, Pompey was voted in as senior consul and Crassus as his junior. Rome was going to have a consul who had never been a member of the Senate and Rome had preferred him to his more elderly and orthodox colleague.

"So Rome has her first consul who was never a senator," said Caesar to Crassus after the election gathering had dispersed. He was sitting with Crassus on the loggia of the Pincian villa where once King Jugurtha of Numidia had sat plotting; Crassus had bought the property after he saw the long list of illustrious foreign names who had rented it over the years. Both of them were looking at the public slaves clearing up the enclosures, bridges and voting platforms from the Saepta. "For no other reason than that he wanted to be consul," said Crassus, aping the peevish note Pompey put into his voice whenever he was thwarted. "He's a big baby!" "In some ways, yes." Caesar turned his head to glance at Crassus's face, which bore its usual placid expression. "It's you who'll have to do the governing. He doesn't know how." "Oh, don't I know! Though he must have absorbed something by now from Varro's handy little instant manual on senatorial and consular conduct," said Crassus, and grunted. "I ask you! The senior consul having to peruse a manual of behavior! I have these wonderful visions of what Cato the Censor would say." "He's asked me to draft the law returning all its powers to the tribunate of the plebs, did he tell you?'' "When does he ever tell me anything?" "I declined." "Why?" "First of all, because he assumed he'd be senior consul." "He knew he'd be senior consul!" "And secondly, you're perfectly capable of drafting any law the pair of you might want to promulgate you were urban praetor!" Crassus shook his huge head, put his hand on Caesar's arm. "Do it, Caesar. It will keep him happy! Like all spoiled big babies, he has a gift for using the right people to achieve his ends. If you decline because you don't care to be used, that's all right by me. But if you'd like the challenge and you think it would add to your legislative experience, then do it. No one is going to know he'll make sure of that." "How right you are!" laughed Caesar, then sobered. "I would like to do it, as a matter of fact. We haven't had decent tribunes of the plebs since I was a boy Sulpicius was the last. And I can foresee a time when all of us might need tribunician laws. It has been very interesting for a patrician to associate with the tribunes of the plebs the way I have been lately. Palicanus has a replacement ready for me, by the way." "Who?" "A Plautius. Not one of the old family Silvanus. This one is from Picenum and seems to go back to a freedman. A good fellow. He's prepared to do whatever I need done through the newly revitalized Plebeian Assembly." "The tribunician elections haven't been held yet. Plautius may not get in," said Crassus. "He'll get in," said Caesar confidently. "He can't lose he's Pompeius's man." "And isn't that an indictment of our times?" "Pompeius is lucky having you for a colleague, Marcus Crassus. I keep seeing Metellus Little Goat there instead. A disaster! But I am sorry that you haven't the distinction of being senior consul." Crassus smiled, it seemed without rancor. "Don't worry, Caesar. I am reconciled." He sighed. "However, it would be nice to see Rome mourn my passing more than she does Pompeius's passing when we leave office." "Well," said Caesar, rising, "it's time I went home. I have devoted little time to the women of my family since I came back to Rome, and they'll be dying to hear all the election news."