Colleen McCullough - 3. Fortune's Favorites

As Crassus chose to go about purchasing his vast quantity of wheat with stealth and personal anonymity and said not a word about intending to dedicate a tenth of his wealth to Hercules Invictus on the day before the Ides of Sextilis, Pompey proceeded with his own plans in sublime ignorance of the danger that he would find himself eclipsed. His intention was to make all of Rome and Italy aware that the bad times were over; and what better way to do that than to give the whole country over to feasting and holidaymaking? The consulship of Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus would live in the memory of the people as a time of prosperity and freedom from anxiety no more wars, no more famines, no more internal strife. And though the element of self spoiled his intentions, they were genuine enough. The ordinary people, who were not important and therefore did not suffer during the proscriptions, spoke these days with wistful longing for the time when Sulla had been the Dictator; but after the consulship of Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus was over, Sulla's reign would not loom so large in memory. At the beginning of Quinctilis Rome began to fill up with country people, most of whom were looking for lodgings until after the middle of September. Nor did as many as usual leave for the seashore, even among the upper classes. Aware that crime and disease would both be on the increase, Pompey devoted some of his splendid organizational talents to diminishing crime and disease by hiring ex gladiators to police the alleys and byways of the city, by making the College of Lictors keep an eye on the shysters and tricksters who frequented the Forum Romanum and other major marketplaces, by enlarging the swimming holes of the Trigarium, and plastering vacant walls with warning notices about good drinking water, urinating and defaecating anywhere but in the public latrines, clean hands and bad food. Unsure how many of these countryfolk understood how amazing it was that Rome's senior consul had been a knight at the time he was elected (and did not become a senator until he, was inaugurated on New Year's Day), Pompey had resolved to use the parade of the Public Horse to reinforce this fact. Thus had his tame censors Clodianus and Gellius revived the transvectio, as the parade was called, though it had not been held after the time of Gaius Gracchus. Until the consulship of Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus, who wanted to make a public splash with his Public Horse. It began at dawn on the Ides of Quinctilis in the Circus Flaminius on the Campus Martius, where the eighteen hundred holders of the Public Horse offered to Mars Invictus Undefeated Mars whose temple lay within the Circus. The offering made, the knights mounted their Public Horses and rode in solemn procession, century by century, through the gate in the vegetable markets, along the Velabrum into the Vicus Iugarius, and thence into the lower Forum Romanum. They turned to ride up the Forum to where, on a specially erected tribunal in front of the temple of Castor and Pollux, the censors sat to review them. Each man when he drew close to the tribunal was expected to dismount and lead his Public Horse up to the censors, who minutely inspected it and him. Did it or he not measure up to the ancient equestrian standards, then the censors were at liberty to strip the knight of his Public Horse and expel him from the eighteen original Centuries. It had been known to happen in the past; Cato the Censor had been famous for the stringency of his inspections. So novel was the transvectio that most of Rome tried to jam into the Forum Romanum to watch it, though many had to content themselves with seeing the parade pass by between the Circus Flaminius and the Forum. Every vantage point was solid with people roofs, plinths, porticoes, steps, hills, cliffs, trees. Vendors of food, fans, sunshades and drinks scrambled through the masses in the most precarious way crying their wares, banging people on the head with the corners of their neck slung open boxes, giving back as much abuse as they collected, each one with a slave in attendance to replenish the box or keep some sticky fingered member of the crowd from pilfering the goods or the proceeds. Toddlers were held out to piss on those below them, babies howled, children dived this way and that through the masses, gravy dribbled down tunics in a nice contrast to custard cascades, fights broke out, the susceptible fainted or vomited, and everybody ate nonstop. A typical Roman holiday. The knights rode in eighteen Centuries, each one preceded by its ancient emblem wolf, bear, mouse, bird, lion, and so on. Because of the narrowness of some parts of the route they could ride no more than four abreast, which meant that each Century held twenty five rows, and the whole procession stretched for nearly a mile. Each man was clad in his armor, some suits of incredible antiquity and therefore bizarre appearance; others (like Pompey's, whose family had nudged into the eighteen original Centuries and did not own ancient armor they would have cared to try to pass off as Etruscan or Latin) magnificent with gold and silver. But nothing rivaled the Public Horses, each a splendid example of horseflesh from the rosea rura, and mostly white or dappled grey. They were bedizened with every medallion and trinket imaginable, with ornate saddles and bridles of dyed leather, fabulous blankets, brilliant colors. Some horses had been trained to pick up their feet in high stepping prances, others had manes and tails braided with silver and gold. It was beautifully staged, and all to show off Pompey. To have examined every man who rode, no matter how rapid the censors were, was manifestly impossible; the parade would have taken thirty summer hours to ride past the tribunal. But Pompey's Century had been placed as one of the first, so that the censors solemnly went through the ritual of asking each of some three hundred men in turn what his name was, his tribe, his father's name, and whether he had served in his ten campaigns or for six years, after which his financial standing (previously established) was approved, and he led his horse off to obscurity. When the fourth Century's first row dismounted, Pompey was in its forefront; a hush fell over the Forum specially induced by Pompey's agents in the crowd. His golden armor flashing in the sun, the purple of his consular degree floating from his shoulders mixed with the scarlet of his general's degree, he led his big white horse forward trapped in scarlet leather and golden phalerae, his own person liberally bedewed with knight's brasses and medallions, and the scarlet plumes in his Attic helmet a twinkling mass of dyed egret's feathers. "Name?" asked Clodianus, who was the senior censor. "Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus!" hollered Pompey. "Tribe?" "Clustumina!" "Father?" "Gnaeus Pompeius Strabo, consul!" "Have you served in your ten campaigns or for six years?" "Yes!" screamed Pompey at the top of his voice. "Two in the Italian War, one defending the city at the Siege of Rome, two with Lucius Cornelius Sulla in Italy, one in Sicily, one in Africa, one in Numidia, one defending Rome from Lepidus and Brutus, six in Spain, and one cleaning up the Spartacani! They are sixteen campaigns, and every one of them beyond cadet status took place under my own generalship!" The crowd went berserk, shouting, cheering, applauding, feet drumming, arms flailing; wave after wave of acclamation smote the stunned ears of the censors and the rest of the parade, setting horses plunging and some riders on the cobbles. When the noise finally died down it took some time to do so, because Pompey had walked out into the center of the open space in front of Castor's, his bridle looped over his arm, and turned in slow circles applauding the crowds the censors rolled up their screeds and sat regally nodding while the sixteen Centuries behind Pompey's rode past at a trot. "A splendid show!" snarled Crassus, whose Public Horse was the property of his elder boy, Publius, now twenty. He and Caesar had watched from the loggia of Crassus's house, this having originally belonged to Marcus Livius Drusus, and owning a superb view of the lower Forum. What a farce!" "But brilliantly staged, Crassus, brilliantly staged! You must hand Pompeius top marks for inventiveness and crowd appeal. His games should be even better." "Sixteen campaigns! And all beyond his cadetship he claims he generaled himself! Oh yes, for about a market interval after his daddy died at the Siege of Rome and during which he did nothing except ready his daddy's army to march back to Picenum and Sulla generaled him in Italy, so did Metellus Pius and Catulus was the general against Lepidus and Brutus and what do you think about that last claim, that he 'cleaned up the Spartacani'? Ye gods, Caesar, if we interpreted our own careers as loosely as he's interpreted his, we're all generals!" Console yourself with the fact that Catulus and Metellus Pius are probably saying much the same thing," said Caesar, who hurt too. "The man's a parvenu from an Italian backwater. '' "I hope my ploy with the free grain works!" "It will, Marcus Crassus, I promise you it will."