Colleen McCullough - 3. Fortune's Favorites

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New senators and old gathered two days later to hear Sulla announce that he intended to abolish the election of censors, at least for the time being; the way he would reorganize the State's finances, he explained, would make it unnecessary to call for contracts, and no census of the people would be of value for at least another decade. "At that point you may re examine the matter of censors," said the Dictator grandly. "I do not presume to legislate the censors completely out of existence." He would, however, do something special for the men of his own order, the Patriciate. Over the centuries which have passed since the original plebeian revolt," he said, "patrician rank has come to mean very little. The only advantage a patrician possesses over a plebeian these days is that he can assume certain religious offices barred to plebeians. I do not consider this worthy of the mos maiorum. A man born a patrician goes back to before the Kings in a clean, clear line. The mere fact that he exists shows that his family has served Rome for more than half a millennium. I think it fair in light of this that the patrician must enjoy some special honor minor perhaps, but exclusive to him. I am therefore going to allow the patrician to stand for curule office both praetor and consul two years ahead of the plebeian." "What he means, of course, is that he's looking after his own," said the plebeian Marcus Junius Brutus to his wife Servilia, a patrician. Servilia had found her husband slightly more communicative in these peril fraught days. Ever since the news came that her father in law had died off Lilybaeum as a result of the Dictator's house pet Pompey's cleaning up operations, Brutus had lived on a hairline. Would his father be proscribed? Would he be proscribed? As the son of a proscribed man he could inherit nothing, would lose everything; and if he himself were proscribed, he would lose his life. But Old Brutus's name had not been among the forty proscribed senators, and no more senatorial names had been published since that first list. Brutus hoped the danger was over but he couldn't be sure. No one could be sure! Sulla dropped hints. That he was less aloof toward Servilia was due to his sudden appreciation of the fact that it was probably his marriage to her that had kept the Marcus Junius Brutus name off Sulla's lists. This new honor Sulla was providing for patricians was just one more way in which Sulla was saying that the patrician was special, due more honors than the richest and most powerful plebeian of a consular family. And among the Patriciate, what name was more august than Servilius Caepio? "It is a pity," said Servilia now, "that our son cannot have patrician status." "My name is sufficiently old and revered for our son," said Brutus stiffly. "We Junii Bruti are descended from the founder of the Republic." "I've always found it odd," said Servilia coolly, "that if that is really so, the present day Junii Bruti are not patrician. For the founder of the Republic certainly was. You always talk of an expedient adoption into a plebeian family, but a plebeian family called Junius Brutus must have been descended from a slave or a peasant belonging to the patrician family." This speech, which Brutus felt himself obliged to swallow, was one more indication that Servilia was no longer a silent and compliant wife. Her fear of divorce had lessened, and her sense of power had correspondingly grown. The child in the nursery, now two years old, meant everything to her. Whereas the child's father meant nothing. That she intended to preserve her husband's status was purely because of her son. But that didn't mean she had to bow and scrape to Brutus as she had in the days before the old man's treason had threatened everything. "Your younger sister will do superbly," said Brutus with a slight tinge of malice. A patrician married to another patrician! She and Drusus Nero can't go wrong." "Drusus Nero is a plebeian," said Servilia haughtily. "He may have been born a Claudian, but my uncle Drusus adopted him. He is a Livian, with rank no greater than yours." "I predict he'll prosper all the same." "Drusus Nero is twenty years old, and has about a medicine spoon of intelligence. Why, our son is more capable at two!" said Servilia tartly. Brutus eyed her warily; it had not been lost upon him that his wife's attachment to little Brutus was phenomenal. To say the least. A lioness! "Anyway," said Brutus pacifically, "Sulla will continue to tell us what he means to do the day after tomorrow." "Have you any idea what he's going to do?" "Not until the day after tomorrow." The day after tomorrow saw Sulla tackling elections and elected offices with an expression on his face that did not brook argument. "I am tired of haphazard electoral scrambles," he said, "and will legislate a proper procedure. In future, all elections will be held in Quinctilis, which is five to six months earlier than an elected man takes office. During the waiting period, the curule men will assume a new importance in the House. Consuls elect will be asked to speak immediately after consuls in office, and praetors elect immediately after praetors in office. From now on the Princeps Senatus, ex censors and consulars will not speak until after the last praetor elect. It is a plain waste of the House's time to listen to men who have passed beyond office ahead of men occupying it or in transition toward occupying it." All eyes had turned to Flaccus Princeps Senatus, sharply demoted by this edict, but he sat blinking gently, apparently not at all put out. Sulla continued. "The curule elections in the Centuriate Assembly will be held first, on the day before the Ides of Quinctilis. Then will follow the elections for quaestors, curule aediles, tribunes of the soldiers and other minor positions in the Assembly of the People ten days before the Kalends of Sextilis. And finally the plebeian elections in the Plebeian Assembly will be held on a date between two and six days before the Kalends." "Not too bad," said Hortensius to Catilus. "We'll all know our electoral fates well before the end of the year." "And enjoy a new prominence," said Catulus, pleased. "Now to the offices themselves," said Sulla. "After I've personally finished adding the names of new senators to this distinguished body, I intend to close the door. From then on, the only entrance will be through the office of quaestor, which a man will stand for in his thirtieth year, no earlier. There will be twenty quaestors elected each year, a sufficient number to offset senatorial deaths and keep the House plump. There are two minor exceptions which will not affect overall numbers: a man elected tribune of the plebs who is not already a senator will continue to enter the Senate through this office. And a man who has been awarded the Grass Crown or the Civic Crown will be promoted to the Senate automatically." He shifted a little, looked at his mute flock. "I will see eight praetors elected every year. A plebeian man will not be able to seek election as praetor until his thirty ninth year, but a patrician man two years sooner, as already said. There will be a two year wait between a man's election as praetor and his election as consul. No man will be able to stand for consul unless he has already been praetor. And I will restate the lex Genucia in the strongest terms, making it impossible for any man patrician or plebeian! to stand for consul a second time until after ten full years have elapsed. I will have no more Gaius Mariuses!" And that, everyone thought, was an excellent thing!

But when Sulla introduced his legislation to cancel the powers of the tribunes of the plebs, approval was not so general or so strong. Over the centuries of the Republic, the tribunes of the plebs had gradually arrogated more and more legislative business unto themselves, and turned that Assembly which contained only plebeians into the most powerful of the lawmaking bodies. Often the main objective of the tribunes of the plebs had been to handicap the largely unwritten powers of the Senate, and to render the consuls less essential. "That," said Sulla in tones of great satisfaction, "is now all finished with. In future, tribunes of the plebs will retain little except their right to exercise the ius auxilii ferendi.'' A huge stir; the House murmured and moved restlessly, then frowned and looked bleak. "I will see the Senate supreme!" Sulla thundered. "To do that, I must render the tribunate of the plebs impotent and I will! Under my new laws, no man who has been a tribune of the plebs will be able to hold any magistracy after it he will not be able to become aedile or praetor or consul or censor! Nor will he be able to hold office as a tribune of the plebs for a second time until ten years have elapsed. He will be able to exercise the ius auxilii ferendi only in its original way, by rescuing an individual member of the Plebs from the clutches of a single magistrate. No tribune of the plebs will be able to call a law threatening the Plebs as a whole a part of that right! Or call a duly convened court a part of that right." Sulla's eyes rested thoughtfully upon, oddly enough, two men who could not hold the office of tribune of the plebs because they were patricians Catilina and Lepidus. "The right of the tribune of the plebs to veto," he went on, "will be severely curtailed. He will not be able to veto senatorial decrees, laws carrying senatorial approval, the right of the Senate to appoint provincial governors or military commanders, nor the right of the Senate to deal with foreign affairs. No tribune of the plebs will be allowed to promulgate a law in the Plebeian Assembly unless it has been authorized first by the Senate in passing a senatus consultum. He will no longer have the power to summon meetings of the Senate." There were many glum faces, quite a few angry ones; Sulla paused rather stagily to see if anyone was going to protest audibly. But no one did. He cleared his throat. "What do you have to say, Quintus Hortensius?" Hortensius swallowed. "I concur, Lucius Cornelius." "Does anyone not concur?" Silence. "Good!" said Sulla brightly. "Then this lex Cornelia will go into law forthwith!" "It's horrific," said Lepidus to Gaius Cotta afterward. "I couldn't agree more." "Then why," demanded Catulus, "did we lie down under it so tamely? Why did we let him get away with it? How can the Republic be a genuine Republic without an active and properly constituted tribunate of the plebs?" "Why," asked Hortensius fiercely, taking this as a direct criticism of his own cowardice, "did you not speak out, then?" "Because," said Catulus frankly, "I like my head right where it is firmly attached to my shoulders." "And that about sums it up," said Lepidus. "I can see," said Metellus Pius, joining the group, "the logic behind it how clever he's been! A lesser man would simply have abolished the office, but not he! He hasn't tampered with the ius auxilii ferendi. What he's done is to pare away the powers added on in later times. So he can successfully argue that he's working well within the framework of the mos maiorum and that has been his theme in everything. Mind you, I don't think this can possibly work. The tribunate of the plebs matters too much to too many." "It will last as long as he lives," said Cotta grimly. Upon which note, the party broke up. No one was very happy but on the other hand, nor did anyone really want to pour his secret thoughts and feelings into another man's ear. Too dangerous! Which just went to show, thought Metellus Pius as he walked home alone, that Sulla's climate of terror was working.