Colleen McCullough: 3. Fortune's Favorites

In two market intervals of eight days each Pompey had his three legions of veteran volunteers camped inside well fortified ramparts some five miles from Auximum on the banks of a tributary of the Aesis River. His sanitary dispositions within his camp were faultless, and care of them rigidly policed. Pompey Strabo had been a more typical product of his rural origins, had known only one way to deal with wells, cesspits, latrines, rubbish disposal, drainage: when the stink became unbearable, move on. Which was why he had died of fever outside Rome's Colline Gate, and why the people of the Quirinal and Viminal, their springs polluted from his wastes, had done such insult to his body. Growing ever more fascinated, Varro watched the evolution of his young friend's army, and marveled at the absolute genius Pompey showed for organization, logistics. No detail, regardless how minute, was overlooked; yet at the same time the enormous undertakings were executed with the speed only superb efficiency permitted. I have been absorbed into the very small private circle of a true phenomenon, he thought: he will change the way our world is, he will change the way we see our world. There is not one single iota of fear in him, nor one hairline crack in his self confidence. However, Varro reminded himself, others too have shaped equally well before the turmoil begins. What will he be like when he has his enterprise running, when opposition crowds him round, when he faces no, not Carbo or Sertorius when he faces Sulla? That will be the real test! Same side or not, the relationship between the old bull and the young bull will decide the young bull's future. Will he bend? Can he bend? Oh, what does the future hold for someone so young, so sure of himself? Is there any force or man in the world capable of breaking him? Definitely Pompey did not think there was. Though he was not mystical, he had created a spiritual environment for himself that fitted certain instincts he cherished about his nature. For instance, there were qualities he knew he owned rather than possessed invincibility, invulnerability, inviolability for since they were outside him as much as inside, ownership seemed more correct than possession. It was just as if, while some godly ichor coursed through him, some godly miasma wrapped him round as well. Almost from infancy he had lived within the most colossal daydreams; in his mind he had generated ten thousand battles, ridden in the antique victor's chariot of a hundred triumphs, stood time and time again like Jupiter come to earth while Rome bowed down to worship him, the greatest man who had ever lived. Where Pompey the dreamer differed from all others of that sort was in the quality of his contact with reality he saw the actual world with hard and sharp acuity, never missed possibility or probability, fastened his mind leechlike upon facts the size of mountains, facts as diminutive as one drop of clearest water. Thus the colossal daydreams were a mental anvil upon which he hammered out the shape of the real days, tempered and annealed them into the exact framework of his actual life. So he got his men into their centuries, their cohorts, their legions; he drilled them and inspected their accoutrements; he culled the too elderly from his pack animals and sounded blows on the axles of his wagons, rocked them, had them driven fast through the rough ford below his camp. Everything would be perfect because nothing could be allowed to happen that would show him up as less than perfect himself.

Twelve days after Pompey had begun to assemble his troops, word came from Brundisium. Sulla was marching up the Via Appia amid scenes of hysterical welcome in every hamlet, village, town, city. But before Sulla left, the messenger told Pompey, he had called his army together and asked it to swear an oath of personal allegiance to him. If those in Rome had ever doubted Sulla's determination to extricate himself from any threat of future prosecutions for high treason, the fact that his army swore to uphold him even against the government of Rome told all men that war was now inevitable. And then, Pompey's messenger had gone on to say, Sulla's soldiers had come to him and offered him all their money so that he could pay for every grain of wheat and leaf of vegetable and seed of fruit as he moved through the heartland of Calabria and Apulia; they would have no dark looks to spoil their general's luck, they would have no trampled fields, dead shepherds, violated women, starving children. All would be as Sulla wanted it; he could pay them back later, when he was master of the whole of Italy as well as Rome. The news that the southern parts of the peninsula were very glad to welcome Sulla did not quite please Pompey, who had hoped that by the time he reached Sulla with his three legions of hardened veterans, Sulla would be in sufficient trouble to need him. However, that was clearly not to be; Pompey shrugged and adapted his plans to the situation as it had been reported to him. "We'll march down our coast to Buca, then head inland for Beneventum," he said to his three chief centurions, who were commanding his three legions. By rights these jobs should have gone to high born military tribunes, whom he could have found had he tried. But high born military tribunes would have questioned Pompey's right to general his army, so Pompey had preferred to choose his subordinates from among his own people, much though certain high born Romans might have deplored it had they known. "When do we move?" asked Varro, since no one else would. "Eight days before the end of April," said Pompey.

Then Carbo entered the scene, and Pompey had to change his plans yet again. From the western Alps the straight line of the Via Aemilia bisected Italian Gaul all the way to the Adriatic Sea at Ariminum; from Ariminum another excellent road skirted the coast to Fanum Fortunae, where began the Via Flaminia to Rome. This gave Ariminum a strategic importance only equaled by Arretium, which dominated access to Rome west of the Apennines. It was therefore logical that Gnaeus Papirius Carbo twice consul of Rome and now governor of Italian Gaul should put himself, his eight legions and his cavalry into camp on the fringes of Ariminum. From this base he could move in three directions: along the Via Aemilia through Italian Gaul toward the western Alps; along the Adriatic coast in the direction of Brundisium; and along the Via Flaminia to Rome. For eighteen months he had known Sulla would come, and that of course would be Brundisium. But too many men still lingered in Rome who might when the time came side with Sulla, though they declared themselves completely neutral; they were all men with the political clout to overthrow the present government, which made Rome a necessary target. And Carbo also knew that Metellus Pius the Piglet had gone to earth in Liguria, bordering the western Alps of Italian Gaul; with Metellus Pius were two good legions he had taken with him out of Africa Province after Carbo's adherents had ejected him from Africa. The moment the Piglet heard that Sulla had landed, Carbo was certain he would march to join Sulla, and that made Italian Gaul vulnerable too. Of course there were the sixteen legions sitting in Campania, and these were much closer to Brundisium than Carbo in Ariminum; but how reliable were the consuls of this year, Norbanus and Scipio Asiagenus? Carbo couldn't be sure, with his own iron will removed from Rome herself. At the end of last year he had been convinced of two things: that Sulla would come in the spring, and that Rome would be more inclined to oppose Sulla if Carbo himself were absent from Rome. So he had ensured the election of two staunch followers in Norbanus and Scipio Asiagenus and then given himself the governorship of Italian Gaul in order to keep an eye on things and be in a position to act the moment it became necessary. His choice of consuls had been in theory anyway good, for neither Norbanus nor Scipio Asiagenus could hope for mercy from Sulla. Norbanus was a client of Gaius Marius's, and Scipio Asiagenus had disguised himself as a slave to escape from Aesernia during the Italian War, an action which had disgusted Sulla. Yet were they strong enough? Would they use their sixteen legions like born generals, or would they miss their chances? Carbo just didn't know.