Colleen McCullough - 2. The Grass Crown

To give him his due, all was far from well with Pompey Strabo. As ever by his side, his son no sooner got his father back to their camp than he ordered Pompey Strabo to bed. Fever and dysentery had struck while the battle was going on, and though Pompey Strabo continued to command in person, it was clear to his son and his legates that he was in no condition to follow up his partial success on the Campus Martius. Too young yet to enjoy the full confidence of the Picentine troops, Young Pompey elected not to try to assume the command, especially in the midst of heavy fighting. For three days the lord of northern Picenum and adjacent Umbria lay in his house a prey to the worst ravages of enteric fever, while Young Pompey and his friend Marcus Tullius Cicero nursed him devotedly and the troops waited to see what would happen. In the early hours of the fourth day, Pompey Strabo, so strong and vigorous, died of dehydration and physical exhaustion. Supported by Cicero, his weeping son walked down the Vicus Sub Aggere below the double rampart of the Agger, heading for Venus Libitina to arrange for his father's funeral. Had this been held in Picenum on Pompey Strabo's enormous estates, it would have been almost as large as the parade of a triumphing general, but the son was as shrewd as he was capable, and understood that the obsequies must be kept as simple as possible given the circumstances; the men were upset enough, and the inhabitants of the Quirinal, Viminal, and upper Esquiline hated the dead leader intensely, blaming his camp for the diseases currently decimating them. "What will you do?" asked Cicero as the grove of cypresses sheltering the booths of the Guild of Undertakers came into view. "I'm going home to Picenum," said Pompey amid terrible heaves of chest and shoulders, eyes and nose running. "My father was wrong to come I told him not to come! Let Rome perish, I said! But he wouldn't listen. He said he had to protect my birthright, he had to make sure Rome was still Rome against the day when it would be my turn to be consul." "Come into the city with me and stay for a while in my house," said Cicero, in tears himself; much though he had loathed and feared Pompey Strabo, he was not proof against the son's desolation. "Gnaeus Pompeius, I've met Accius! He came to Rome to produce his new play for the ludi Romani, and then when the trouble arose between Lucius Cinna and Gnaeus Octavius, he said he was too old to make the journey back to Umbria while there was so much unrest. I suspect he likes the present atmosphere of high drama is closer to the truth! Please, come and stay with me for a while. You're closely related to the great Lucilius you'd so much enjoy Accius. And it would take your mind off all this chaotic horror." "No," said Pompey, still weeping. "I'm going home." "With your army?" "It was my father's army. Rome can have it." The two young men were some hours on their doleful errand, so did not return to the villa just outside the Colline Gate wherein Pompey Strabo had taken up residence until well after noon. No one least of all the grief-stricken Pompey had thought to mount a guard within the spacious grounds; the general was dead, there was nothing of value within. Of servants there were few thanks to the inroads of disease, but when son and friend had left, they had already laid Pompey Strabo out upon his bed, two female slaves keeping vigil. Now Pompey and Cicero found the place utterly deserted still, silent, seemingly untenanted. And when they entered the room wherein Pompey Strabo lay, they discovered him gone. Pompey whooped triumphantly. "He's alive!" he cried, face suffused with incredulous joy. "Gnaeus Pompeius, your father is dead," said Cicero, whose emotions were not engaged upon the father's account at all, and who therefore retained his good sense. "Come, calm yourself! You know he was dead when we left. We washed him, we dressed him. He was dead!" The joy died, but not to be replaced by a new outbreak of tears. Instead, the fresh young face hardened to stone. "What is it then? Where is my father?" "The servants are gone, even those who were ill, I think," said Cicero. "The first thing we had better do is search the place." The search revealed nothing, yielded no clues as to where the body of Gnaeus Pompeius Strabo had gone. The one growing ever stonier, the other ever more bewildered, Pompey and Cicero left the villa to gather its silence fast around it, and stood outside on the Via Nomentana looking both ways. "Do we go to the camp or the gate?" asked Cicero. Both lay within scant paces. Pompey wrinkled his brow as he thought, then made up his mind. “We'll go to the general's tent. Perhaps the men removed him to lie in state there," he said. They had turned and were walking campward when someone shouted. "Gnaeus Pompeius! Gnaeus Pompeius!" Back they swung toward the gate, to see a disheveled Brutus Damasippus waving at them as he ran. "Your father!" he panted, reaching Pompey. "What about my father?" Pompey asked, very cool, very calm. "The people of Rome stole his body saying they were going to drag it behind an ass through every street in the city!" said Brutus Damasippus. "One of the women keeping vigil came to tell me, and like a fool I just ran! I suppose thinking I'd catch them. Luckily I saw you otherwise they'd probably be dragging me as well." He looked at Pompey with as much respect as he would have accorded the father. "What do you want me to do?" he asked. "Bring two cohorts of soldiers to me here at once," Pompey said curtly. "Then we'll go inside and look for him." Cicero didn't ask why, nor did Pompey say a word while they waited. The ultimate insult had been done Pompey Strabo, and there could be no doubt why; it was the only way left to the people of the northeastern city to express their contempt and disgust for one they deemed the author of their woes. The more crowded parts of Rome all received their water from the aqueducts, but the upper Esquiline, Viminal and Quirinal, less populous, relied heavily on local spring water. When Pompey led his cohorts through the Colline Gate and into its very large marketplace, he found the whole area deserted. Nor was a soul on the streets beyond, even in the meanest alley leading to the lower Esquiline. One by one the narrow thoroughfares were combed, Damasippus taking a cohort toward the Agger, the two young men working in the opposite direction. Three hours later Pompey's contingent found their dead general sprawled on the lower Alta Semita outside the temple of Salus. Well, thought Cicero to himself, the place they chose to leave him says everything. Outside the temple of Good Health. "I shall not forget," said Pompey, looking down at the naked and mangled body of his father. "When I am consul and embark upon my building program, nothing will I give to the Quirinal!"

When Cinna heard of the death of Pompey Strabo, he breathed a sigh of relief. Then when he heard how the body of Pompey Strabo had been dragged through the streets of the city, he whistled softly. So all was not happy within Rome! Nor apparently were Rome's military defenders popular with the ordinary people. Happily he settled to wait for the surrender he now expected would come within hours. But it did not come. Seemingly Octavius had decided that only if the ordinary people boiled into open revolt would he surrender. Quintus Sertorius came to report late on that same day, his left eye covered by a blood-soaked bandage. “What's happened to you?'' demanded Cinna, dismayed. "Lost my eye," said Sertorius briefly. "Ye gods!" "Lucky for me it's my left one," said Sertorius stoically. "I can still see on my sword side, so it shouldn't inconvenience me much in a battle." "Sit down," said Cinna, pouring wine. He watched his legate closely, deciding there was little in this life capable of throwing Quintus Sertorius off balance. Then, when Sertorius was settled, Cinna sat down himself, sighing. "You know, Quintus Sertorius, you were quite right," he said slowly. "About Gaius Marius, you mean?" "Yes." Cinna turned the cup between his hands. "I am no longer in total command. Oh, I'm respected among the senior ranks! I mean the men. The soldiers. The Samnite and other Italian volunteers. It's Gaius Marius they follow, not me." "It was bound to happen. In the old days it wouldn't have mattered a rush. No fairer-minded, more farsighted man than Gaius Marius ever lived. But this isn't that Gaius Marius," said Sertorius. A bloody tear slid from beneath his bandage, and was wiped away. "No worse thing could have happened to him at his age and in his infirmity than this exile. I've seen enough of him to know that he's simply counterfeiting an interest in the job what he's really interested in is his revenge on those who exiled him. He's surrounded himself with the worst specimens of legate I've seen in years Fimbria! A complete wolfshead. As for his personal legion he calls it his bodyguard and refuses to admit it's an official part of his army it's composed of as vicious and rapacious a collection of slaves and ex-slaves as any Sicilian slave rebel leader might hope for. But he's not lost his mental acuteness, Lucius Cinna, so much as he's lost his moral acuteness. He knows he owns your armies! And I very much fear he intends to use them for his personal advancement, not Rome's welfare. I am only here with you and your forces for one big reason, Lucius Cinna I cannot condone the illegal dismissal of a consul during his year in office. But I cannot condone what I suspect Gaius Marius is planning to do, so it may well be that you and I will have to part company." Cinna's hackles were rising; he stared at Sertorius in dawning horror. "You mean he's set on a bloodbath?" "I believe so. Nor do I think anyone can stop him." "But he can't do that! It is absolutely essential that I enter Rome as rightful consul restore peace prevent further shedding of blood and try to get our poor Rome on her feet again." "The best of luck," said Sertorius dryly, and stood up. "I'll be on the Campus Martius, Lucius Cinna, and I intend to stay there. My men will follow me, so much you can count on. And I support the reinstallation of the legally elected consul! I do not support any faction led by Gaius Marius." "Stay on the Campus Martius, by all means. But please, I beg you, come to whatever negotiations ensue!" "Don't worry, I wouldn't miss that fiasco for anything," said Sertorius, and departed, still wiping his left cheek. The next day, however, Marius packed up his camp and led his legions away from Rome toward the Latin plains. The death of Pompey Strabo had brought home a lesson; that so many men temporarily crowded around such a large city bred frightful disease. Better, Marius decided, to draw his men into the fresh air and unpolluted water of the countryside, and there pillage the grain and other foodstuffs they needed from the various granaries and barns dotted all over the Latin plains. Aricia, Bovillae, Lanuvium, Antium, Ficana, and Laurentum all fell, though none had offered resistance. Hearing of Marius's departure, Quintus Sertorius privately wondered whether the real reason behind Marius's withdrawal was a reflexive movement to safeguard himself and his men from Cinna. Mad he might be, but a fool he was not. It was now the end of November. Everyone on both sides or all three sides might have been a more accurate assessment knew that Gnaeus Octavius Ruso's "true" government of Rome was doomed. The dead Pompey Strabo's army had flatly refused to accept Metellus Pius as its new commander, then marched over the Mulvian Bridge to offer its services to Gaius Marius. Not to Lucius Cinna. The death toll from disease now stood at over eighteen thousand people, many of them from the ranks of Pompey Strabo's legions. And the granaries within Rome were now completely empty. Sensing the beginning of the end, Marius brought his five-thousand-strong bodyguard of slaves and ex-slaves back to the southern flank of the Janiculum. Significantly, he did not bring the rest of his army with him, neither the Samnites, the Italians nor the remnants of Pompey Strabo's forces. Thus ensuring his own safety? wondered Quintus Sertorius. Yes, it very much looked as if Marius was deliberately keeping the bulk of his own men in reserve.