Colleen McCullough - 2. The Grass Crown

Perhaps another man would have softened, reconsidered. Not Sulla. By the time he reached his house, a long walk, that private exaltation was tucked away below conscious thought; he dined very pleasantly with Dalmatica, took her to bed and made love to her, then slept his normal dreamless ten hours or if he dreamed, he did not remember. An hour before dawn he woke and rose without disturbing his wife, took some crisp, freshly baked bread and cheese in his study and stared abstractedly as he ate at a box about the size of one of his ancestral temples. It sat on the far corner of his desk, and it held the head of Publius Sulpicius Rufus. The rest of the condemned had escaped; only Sulla and a few of his colleagues knew that no exhaustive attempts to apprehend them had been mounted. Sulpicius, however, had to go. Therefore to catch him was imperative. The boat across the Tiber had been a ruse. Further downstream Sulpicius crossed back again, but bypassed Ostia in favor of the little harbor town of Laurentum, some few miles down the coast. Here the fugitive had tried to engage a ship and here, with the aid of one of his own servants, he was run to earth. Sulla's hirelings had killed him on the spot, but knew Sulla better than to ask for money without furnishing proof. So they cut off Sulpicius's head, put it in a waterproofed box, and brought it to Sulla's house in Rome. They were then paid. And Sulla had the head, still fairly fresh; it had only left its owner's shoulders two days earlier. On his way out of Rome on that second day of January, Sulla summoned Cinna to the Forum. And there, stapled to the wall of the rostra, was a tall spear carrying Sulpicius's head. Sulla took Cinna ungently by the arm. "Look well," he said. "Remember what you see. Remember the expression on its face. They say that when a man's head is taken, his eyes still have sight. If you did not believe that in the past, you will in the future. That's a man who watched his own head hit the dust. Remember well, Lucius Cinna. I do not intend to die in the East. And that means I will return to Rome. If you tamper with my remedies for Rome's current diseases, you too will watch your own head hit the dust." His answer was a look of scorn and contempt, but Cinna may as well have saved himself the effort. For the moment he finished speaking Sulla hauled his mule's head around and trotted off up the Forum Romanum without a backward glance, his wide-brimmed hat upon his head. Not anyone's picture of the successful general. But Cinna's private picture of Nemesis. He turned then to look up at the head, its eyes wide, its jaw sagging. Dawn had barely broken; if it was removed now, no one would see it. "No," said Cinna aloud. "It should stay there. Let all of Rome see how far the man who invaded Rome is prepared to go."

4

In Capua, Sulla closeted himself with Lucullus and got down to the logistics of transferring his soldiers to Brundisium. It had been Sulla's original intention to sail from Tarentum until he learned it did not possess sufficient transport ships. Brundisium it must be. "You will go first, taking all the cavalry and two of the five legions," Sulla said to Lucullus. "I'll follow with the other three. However, don't look for me on the other side of the Ionian Sea. As soon as you land in Elatria or Buchetium, march for Dodona. Strip every temple in Epirus and Acarnania they won't yield you a big fortune, but I suspect they'll yield you enough. A pity the Scordisci plundered Dodona so recently. However, never forget that Greek and Epirote priests are canny, Lucius Licinius. It may be that Dodona managed to hide quite a lot from a collection of barbarians." "They won't hide anything from me," said Lucullus, smiling. '”Good! March your men overland to Delphi, and do what you have to do. Until I reach you, it's your theater of war.'' "What about you, Lucius Cornelius?" Lucullus asked. "I'll have to wait at Brundisium until your transports return, but before that I'll have to wait in Capua until I'm sure things are quiet in Rome. I don't trust Cinna, and I don't trust Sertorius." As three thousand horses and a thousand mules were not popular residents around Capua, Lucullus marched for Brundisium by the middle of January, though winter was fast approaching and both Lucullus and Sulla doubted that Lucullus would sail much before March or April. Despite his urgent need to leave Capua, Sulla still hesitated; the reports from Rome were not promising. First he heard that the tribune of the plebs Marcus Vergilius had made a magnificent speech to the Forum crowd from the rostra, and had avoided infringing Sulla's laws by refusing to call it a meeting. Vergilius had advocated that Sulla no longer consul be stripped of his imperium and brought to Rome by force if necessary to answer charges of treason for the murder of Sulpicius and the unlawful proscription of Gaius Marius and eighteen others, still at large. Nothing came of the speech, but Sulla then heard that Cinna was actively lobbying many of the backbenchers for their support when Vergilius and another tribune of the plebs, Publius Magius, submitted a motion to the Senate to recommend to the Centuriate Assembly that Sulla be stripped of his imperium and made to answer charges of treason and murder. The House refused steadfastly to countenance any of these ploys, but Sulla knew they boded no good; they all knew he was still in Capua with three legions, so they had obviously decided he would not have the courage to march on Rome a second time. They felt they could defy him with impunity.

At the end of January a letter came to Sulla from his daughter, Cornelia Sulla.

Father, my position is desperate. With my husband and my father-in-law both dead, the new paterfamilias my brother-in-law who now calls himself Quintus is behaving abominably toward me. He has a wife who dislikes me intensely. While my husband and my father-in-law were alive, there could be no trouble. Now, however, the new Quintus and his dreadful wife are living with my mother-in-law and me. By rights the house belongs to my son, but that seems to have been forgotten. My mother-in-law naturally, I suppose has transferred her allegiance to her living son. And they have all taken to blaming you for Rome's troubles as well as their own. They even talk that you deliberately sent my father-in-law to his death in Umbria. As a result of all this, my children and I find ourselves without servants, we are given the same food to eat as the servants, and we are poorly housed. When I complain, I am told that technically I am your responsibility! Just as if I had not borne my late husband a son who is actually the heir to most of his grandfather's fortune! That too is a great source of resentment. Dalmatica is beseeching me to live with her in your house, but I feel I cannot do that until I obtain your permission. What I would ask of you ahead of providing a home for me in your own house, Father (if in the midst of your own troubles you have time to think of me), is that you find me another husband. There are still seven months of my mourning period left. If you will give your consent I would like to spend them in your house under the protection and chaperonage of your wife. But I do not want to impose upon Dalmatica any longer than that. I must have my own home. I am not like Aurelia, I do not want to live on my own. Nor can I face the kind of life Aelia seems genuinely to enjoy, Marcia's tyrannies notwithstanding. Please, Father, if you can find me a husband I would so much appreciate it! Marriage to the worst of men is infinitely preferable to invading the house of another woman. I say it with feeling. In myself I am quite well, though plagued by a cough due to the coldness of my room. As are the children. It has not escaped me that there would be little grief in this house if something were to happen to my son.

Considered dispassionately, Cornelia Sulla's plaint was the smallest particle of aggravation; yet it was the particle which tipped the balance in Sulla's unsettled mind. Until he received it he hadn't known which was his best course. Now he knew. That course had nothing to do with Cornelia Sulla. But he had an idea about her poor little life too. How dare some jumped-up Picentine lout imperil the health and happiness of his daughter! And her son! He sent off two letters, one to Metellus Pius the Piglet ordering him to come to Capua from Aesemia and bring Mamercus with him, the other to Pompey Strabo. The Piglet's letter consisted of two bald sentences. Pompey Strabo received more.