Colleen McCullough - 3. Fortune's Favorites

My daughter has come home, Caesar. I'm sure you know that Lucius Licinius Lucullus has had great success in his war against King Mithridates, and that for a year now he has been campaigning in Pontus itself. Among the many fortresses the King maintained, Cabeira had always been thought to be his strongest. But this year it fell to Lucullus, who found all sorts of horrible things the dungeons were full of political prisoners and potentially dangerous relatives who had been tortured, or used as specimens by the King in his constant experimentations with poison. I will not dwell upon such hideous matters, I am too happy. Among the women Lucullus found in residence was Nysa. She had been there for nearly twenty years, and has come home to me a woman of more than sixty. However, Mithridates had treated her well according to his lights she was held to be no different from the small collection of minor wives and concubines he kept in Cabeira. He also kept some of his sisters there whom he didn't wish to see marry or have any opportunity to bear children, so my poor girl had plenty of spinsterly company. For that matter, the King has so many wives and concubines that those in Cabeira had also been living like spinsters for years! A colony of old maids. When Lucullus opened up their prison he was very kind to all the women he found, and took exquisite care that there should be no masculine offense offered to them. The way Nysa tells it, he behaved as did Alexander the Great toward the mother, wives and other harem members of the third King Darius. I believe Lucullus sent the Pontic women to his ally in Cimmeria, the son of Mithridates called Machares. Nysa he freed completely the moment he discovered who she was. But more than that, Caesar. He loaded her down with gold and presents and sent her back to me under an escort of troops sworn to honor her. Can you imagine this aged, never very beautiful woman's pleasure at journeying through the countryside as free as any bird? Oh, and to see her again! I knew nothing until she walked through the front door of my villa in Rheba, glowing like a young girl. She was so happy to see me! My last wish has come true, I have my daughter back. She came just in time. My dear old dog, Sulla, died of antiquity a month before her advent, and I despaired. The servants tried desperately to persuade me to get another dog, but you know how it is. You think of all the special wonders and laughable antics that beloved pet has owned, his place in your family life, and it seems such a betrayal to bury him, then hurry some other creature into his basket. I'm not saying it's wrong to do so, but a little time has to go by before the new pet takes on characteristics special to him, and I very much fear I would have been dead before any new pet became a person in his own right. No need for dying now! Nysa wept to find her father gone, of course, but we have settled down here together in such harmony and delight we both handline fish from the jetty and stroll through the village for our constitutional. Lucullus did invite us to live in the palace at Nicomedia, but we have decided to remain where we are. And we have a dear little pup named Lucullus. Please, Caesar, try to find the time to journey to the east again! I would so much like you to meet Nysa, and I miss you dreadfully.

3

It was last years tribune of the plebs, Marcus Lollius Palicanus, whom the delegates from all the cities of Sicily except Syracuse and Messana approached to prosecute Gaius Verres. But Palicanus referred them to Pompey, and Pompey in turn referred them to Marcus Tullius Cicero as the ideal man for that particular job. Verres had gone to Sicily as its governor after his urban praetorship, and mostly thanks to Spartacus remained its governor for three years. He had only just returned to Rome when the Sicilian delegation sought out Cicero during January. Both Pompey and Palicanus were personally concerned; Palicanus had gone to the assistance of some of his clients when Verres persecuted them, and Pompey had amassed a considerable number of clients in Sicily during his occupation of it on Sulla's behalf. Quaestor in Lilybaeum under Sextus Peducaeus the year before Verres arrived to govern Sicily in Peducaeus's place, Cicero had developed an enormous fondness for Sicily too. Not to mention having amassed a nice little retinue of clients. Yet when the Sicilians came to see him, he backed away. "I never prosecute," he explained. "I defend." "But Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus recommended you! He said you were the only man who could win. Please, we beg of you, break your rule and prosecute Gaius Verres! If we do not win, Sicily could well rise up against Rome." "Raped the place, did he?" asked Cicero clinically. "Yes, he raped it. But having raped it, Marcus Tullius, he then dismembered it. We have nothing left! All our works of art are gone from every temple, paintings and statues both, and any valuables in the hands of private owners what can we say about a man who actually had the temerity to enslave a free woman famous for her tapestry work and make her run a factory for his profit? He stole the moneys the Treasury of Rome gave him to purchase grain, then commandeered the grain from the growers without paying for it! He has stolen farms, estates, even inheritances. The list is endless!" This catalogue of perfidies startled Cicero greatly, but still he shook his head. "I'm sorry, but I do not prosecute." The spokesman drew a breath. "Then we will go home," he said. We had thought that a man so knowledgeable about Sicily's history that he went to great trouble to rediscover the whereabouts of the tomb of Archimedes would see our plight, and help. But you have lost your affection for Sicily, and clearly you do not value Gnaeus Pompeius as he values you." To be reminded of Pompey and of a famous coup he had indeed rediscovered the lost tomb of Archimedes outside the city of Syracuse was too much. Prosecution in Cicero's opinion was a waste of his talents, for the (highly illegal) fees were always far less than the inducements offered by some sweating ex governor or publicanus in danger of losing everything. Nor (such was the mentality of men) was it popular to prosecute! The prosecuting advocate was always seen as a nasty piece of work determined to make a ruin out of some hapless individual's life, whereas the defending advocate who got the hapless individual off was a popular hero. It made not the slightest difference that most of these hapless individuals were cunning, avaricious and guilty to the extreme; any threat to a man's right to conduct his life as he saw fit was bound to be considered an infringement of his personal entitlements. Cicero sighed. "Very well, very well, I will take the case!" he said. "But you must remember that the defending attorneys speak after the prosecuting team, so that the jury has clean forgotten every word the prosecution said by the time it is given the directive to find a verdict. You must also remember that Gaius Verres is very highly connected. His wife is a Caecilia Metella, the man who should have been consul this year is his brother in law, he has another brother in law who is the present governor of Sicily you'll get no help from that quarter, and nor will I! and every other Caecilius Metellus will be on his side. If I prosecute, then Quintus Hortensius will defend, and other advocates almost as famous will join him as his juniors. I said I will take the case. That does not mean I think I can win." The delegation had hardly left his house before Cicero was regretting his decision; who needed to offend every Caecilius Metellus in Rome when his chances of becoming consul rested on the slender base of personal ability in the law courts? He was as much a New Man as his detested fellow man from Arpinum, Gaius Marius, but he didn't have a soldiering bone in his body and a New Man's progress was harder if he could not earn fame on the battlefield. Of course he knew why he had accepted; that absurd loyalty he felt he owed to Pompey. The years might be many and the legal accolades multiple, but how could he ever forget the careless kindness of a seventeen year old cadet toward the cadet his father despised? As long as he lived Cicero would be grateful to Pompey for helping him through that ghastly, miserable military experience in the ranks of Pompey Strabo's cadets; for shielding him from Pompey Strabo's indifferent cruelties and terrifying rages. No other hand had been raised to assist him, yet young Pompey, the general's son, had raised his hand. He had been warm that winter thanks to Pompey, he had been given clerical duties thanks to Pompey, he had never needed to lift a sword in battle thanks to Pompey. And he could never, never forget it. So off to the Carinae he betook himself to see Pompey. "I just wanted to tell you," he said in a voice of doom, "that I have decided to prosecute Gaius Verres." "Oh, splendid!" said Pompey heartily. "A lot of Verres's victims are or sometimes were my clients. You can win, I know you can. And name your favors." "I need no favors from you, Magnus, and you can never be in any doubt that it is I who owe you." Pompey looked startled. "You do? On what account?" "You made my year with your father's army bearable." "Oh, that!" Laughing, Pompey shook Cicero by the arm. "I hardly think that's worth a lifetime's gratitude." "To me it is," said Cicero, tears in his eyes. "We shared a lot during the Italian War." Perhaps Pompey was remembering less palatable things they had shared, like the search for his father's naked and insulted body, for he shook his head as if to banish the Italian War from his mind, and gave Cicero a beaker of excellent wine. Well, my friend, you just let me know what I can do to assist you now." "I will," said Cicero gratefully. "All those Little Goat men of the Caecilii Metelli will be against this prosecution, of course," said Pompey thoughtfully. "So will Catulus, Hortensius, others." "And you've just mentioned the main reason why I have to get this case heard early enough in the year. I daren't run the risk of having the case bound over until next year Little Goat and Hortensius will be consuls then, everyone seems to be saying." "A pity in a way," said Pompey. "Next year there may well be knight juries again, and that would go against Verres." Not if the consuls rig the court behind the scenes, Magnus. Besides, there's no guarantee our praetor Lucius Cotta will find in favor of knight juries. I was talking to him the other day he thinks his enquiries into the composition of court juries are going to take months and he's not convinced knight juries will be any better than senatorial ones. Knights can't be prosecuted for taking bribes." "We can change the law," said Pompey, who, having no respect for the law, thought that whenever it became inconvenient it should be changed to suit himself, naturally. "That could prove difficult." "I don't see why." "Because," said Cicero patiently, "to change that law would mean enacting another law in one of the two tribal Assemblies both dominated by knights." "They've indemnified Crassus and me against our action last year," said Pompey, unable to distinguish the difference between one law and another. "That is because you've been very nice to them, Magnus. And they want you to go on being very nice to them. A law making them culpable for accepting bribes is quite a separate pot of stew." "Oh, well, perhaps as you say Lucius Cotta won't find in favor of knight juries. It was just a thought." Cicero rose to go. "Thank you again, Magnus." "Keep me informed."