Colleen McCullough - 3. Fortune's Favorites

"You'll have to go to Spain," said Sulla to Metellus Pius. "Quintus Sertorius is rapidly taking the whole place over." Metellus Pius gazed at his superior somewhat reprovingly. "Surely not!" he said in reasonable tones. "He has fruh fruh friends among the Lusitani and he's quite strong west of the Baetis, buh buh but you have good governors in both the Spanish provinces." "Do I really?" asked Sulla, mouth turned down. "Not anymore! I've just had word that Sertorius has trounced Lucius Fufidius after that fool was stupid enough to offer him battle. Four legions! Yet Fufidius couldn't beat Sertorius in command of seven thousand men, only a third of whom were Roman!" He bruh bruh brought the Romans with him from Mauretania last spring, of course," said Metellus Pius. "The rest are Lusitani?" "Savages, dearest Piglet! Not worth one hobnail on the sole of a Roman caliga! But quite capable of beating Fufidius." "Oh... Edepol!" For some reason beyond the Piglet, this delightfully mild expletive sent Sulla into paroxysms of laughter; some time elapsed before the Dictator could compose himself sufficiently to speak further upon the vexing subject of Quintus Sertorius. "Look, Piglet, I know Quintus Sertorius of old. So do you! If Carbo could have kept him in Italy, I might not have won at the Colline Gate because I may well have found myself beaten long before then. Sertorius is at least Gaius Marius's equal, and Spain is his old stamping ground. When Luscus drove him out of Spain last year, I'd hoped to see the wretched fellow degenerate into a Mauretanian mercenary and trouble us never again. But I ought to have known better. First he took Tingis off King Ascalis, then he killed Paccianus and stole his Roman troops. Now he's back in Further Spain, busy turning the Lusitani into crack Roman troops. It will have to be you who goes to govern Further Spain and at the start of the New Year, not in spring." He picked up a single sheet of paper and waved it at Metellus Pius gleefully. "You can have eight legions! That's eight less I have to find land for. And if you leave late in December, you can sail direct to Gades." "A great command," said the Pontifex Maximus with genuine satisfaction, not at all averse to being out of Rome on a long campaign even if that meant he had to fight Sertorius. No religious ceremonies to perform, no sleepless nights worrying as to whether his tongue would trip him up. In fact, the moment he got out of Rome, he knew his speech impediment would disappear it always did. He bethought himself of something else. "Whom will you send to govern Nearer Spain?" "Marcus Domitius Calvinus, I think." "Not Curio? He's a guh guh guh good general." "I have Africa in mind for Curio. Calvinus is a better man to support you through a major campaign, Piglet dear. Curio might prove too independent in his thinking," said Sulla. "I do see what you mean." "Calvinus can have a further six legions. That's fourteen altogether. Surely enough to tame Sertorius!" "In no time!" said the Piglet warmly. "Fuh fuh fear not, Lucius Cornelius! Spain is suh suh safe!" Again Sulla began to laugh. "Why do I care? I don't know why I care, Piglet, and that's the truth! I'll be dead before you come back." Shocked, Metellus Pius put out his hands in protest. "No! Nonsense! You're still a relatively young man!" It was foretold that I would die at the height of my fame and power," said Sulla, displaying no fear or regret. "I shall step down next Quinctilis, Pius, and retire to Misenum for one last, glorious fling. It won't be a long fling, but I am going to enjoy every single moment!" "Prophets are un Roman," said Metellus Pius austerely. "We both know they're more often wrong than right." "Not this prophet," said Sulla firmly. "He was a Chaldaean, and seer to the King of the Parthians." Deeming it wiser, Metellus Pius gave the argument up; he settled instead to a discussion of the coming Spanish campaign.

In truth, Sulla's work was winding down to inertia. The spate of legislation was over and the new constitution looked as if it would hold together even after he was gone; even the apportioning of land to his veterans was beginning to arrive at a stage where Sulla himself could withdraw from the business, and Volaterrae had finally fallen. Only Nola oldest and best foe among the cities of Italy still held out against Rome. He had done what he could, and overlooked very little. The Senate was docile, the Assemblies virtually impotent, the tribunes of the plebs mere figureheads, his courts a popular as well as a practical success, and the future governors of provinces hamstrung. The Treasury was full, and its bureaucrats mercilessly obliged to fall into proper practices of accounting. If the Ordo Equester didn't think the loss of sixteen hundred knights who had fallen victim to Sulla's proscriptions was enough of a lesson, Sulla drove it home by stripping the knights of the Public Horse of all their social privileges, then directed that all men exiled by courts staffed by knight juries should come home. He had crotchets, of course. Women suffered yet again when he forbade any female guilty of adultery to remarry. Gambling (which he abhorred) was forbidden on all events except boxing matches and human footraces, neither of which drew a crowd, as he well knew. But his chief crotchet was the public servant, whom he despised as disorganized, slipshod, lazy, and venal. So he regulated every aspect of the working lives of Rome's secretaries, clerks, scribes, accountants, heralds, lictors, messengers, the priestly attendants called calatores, the men who reminded other men of yet other men's names nomenclatores and general public servants who had no real job description beyond the fact that they were apparitores. In future, none of these men would know whose service they would enter when the new magistrates came into office; no magistrate could ask for public servants by name. Lots would be drawn three years in advance, and no group would consistently serve the same sort of magistrate. He found new ways to annoy the Senate, having already banned every noisy demonstration of approbation or disapproval and changed the order in which senators spoke; now he put a law on the tablets which severely affected the incomes of certain needy senators by limiting the amount of money provincial delegations could spend when they came to Rome to sing the praises of an ex governor, which meant these delegations could not (as they had in the past) give money to certain needy senators. It was a full program of laws which covered every aspect of Roman public life as well as much Roman life hitherto private. Everyone knew the parameters of his lot how much he could spend, how much he could take, how much he paid the Treasury, who he could marry, whereabouts he would be tried, and what he would be tried for. A massive undertaking executed, it seemed, virtually single handed. The knights were down, but military heroes were up, up, up. The Plebeian Assembly and its tribunes were down, but the Senate was up, up, up. Those closely related to the proscribed were down, but men like Pompey the Great were up, up, up. The advocates who had excelled in the Assemblies (like Quintus Hortensius) were down, but the advocates who excelled in the more intimate atmosphere of the courts (like Cicero) were up, up, up. "Little wonder that Rome is reeling, though I don't hear a single voice crying Sulla nay," said the new consul, Appius Claudius Pulcher, to his colleague in the consulship, Publius Servilius Vatia. "One reason for that," said Vatia, "lies in the good sense behind so much of what he has legislated. He is a wonder!" Appius Claudius nodded without enthusiasm, but Vatia didn't misinterpret this apathy; his colleague was not well, had not been well since his return from the inevitable siege of Nola which he seemed to have supervised on and off for a full ten years. He was, besides, a widower burdened with six children who were already notorious for their lack of discipline and a distressing tendency to conduct their tempestuous and deadly battles in public. Taking pity on him, Vatia patted his back cheerfully. "Oh, come, Appius Claudius, look at your future more brightly, do! It's been long and hard for you, but you've finally arrived." "I won't have arrived until I restore my family's fortune," said Appius Claudius morosely. "That vile wretch Philippus took everything I had and gave it to Cinna and Carbo and Sulla has not given it back." "You should have reminded him," said Vatia reasonably. "He has had a great deal to do, you know. Why didn't you buy up big during the proscriptions?" "I was at Nola, if you remember," said the unhappy one. "Next year you'll be sent to govern a province, and that will set all to rights." "If my health holds up." "Oh, Appius Claudius! Stop glooming! You'll survive!" "I can't be sure of that" was the pessimistic reply. "With my luck, I'll be sent to Further Spain to replace Pius." "You won't, I promise you," soothed Vatia. "If you won't ask Lucius Cornelius on your own behalf, I will! And I'll ask him to give you Macedonia. That's always good for a few bags of gold and a great many important local contracts. Not to mention selling citizenships to rich Greeks." "I didn't think there were any," said Appius Claudius. "There are always rich men, even in the poorest countries. It is the nature of some men to make money. Even the Greeks, with all their political idealism, failed to legislate the wealthy man out of existence. He'd pop up in Plato's Republic, I promise you!" "Like Crassus, you mean." "An excellent example! Any other man would have plummeted into obscurity after Sulla cut him dead, but not our Crassus!" They were in the Curia Hostilia, where the New Year's Day inaugural meeting of the Senate was being held because there was no temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, and the size of the Senate had grown sufficiently to render places like Jupiter Stator and Castor's too small for a comfortable meeting that was to be followed by a feast. "Hush!" said Appius Claudius. "Sulla is going to speak." "Well, Conscript Fathers," the Dictator commenced, voice jovial, basically it is all done. It was my avowed intention to set Rome back on her feet and make new laws for her that fulfilled the needs of the mos maiorum. I have done so. But I will continue as Dictator until Quinctilis, when I will hold the elections for the magistrates of next year. This you already know. However, I believe some of you refuse to credit that a man endowed with such power would ever be foolish enough to step down. So I repeat that I will step down from the Dictatorship after the elections in Quinctilis. This means that next year's magistrates will be the last personally chosen by me. In future years all the elections will be free, open to as many candidates as want to stand. There are those who have consistently disapproved of the Dictator's choosing his magistrates, and putting up only as many names for voting as there are jobs to fill. But as I have always maintained! the Dictator must work with men who are prepared to back him wholeheartedly. The electorate cannot be relied upon to return the best men, nor even the men who are overdue for office and entitled to that office by virtue of their rank and experience. So as the Dictator I have been able to ensure I have both the men I wish to work with and to whom office was morally and ethically owed. Like my dear absent Pontifex Maximus, Quintus Caecilius Metellus Pius. He continues to be worthy of my favor, for he is already on the way to Further Spain, there to contend with the outlawed felon, Quintus Sertorius." "He's rambling a bit," said Catulus clinically. "Because he has nothing to say," said Hortensius. "Except that he will stand down in Quinctilis." "And I am actually beginning to believe that."