Colleen McCullough - 2. The Grass Crown

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Gaius Marius entered Rome at last on New Year's Day as her lawfully elected consul, riding a pure white horse, clad in a purple-bordered toga, and wearing an oak-leaf crown. At his side rode the hulking Cimbric slave Burgundus in beautiful golden armor, girt with a sword, and mounted upon a Bastamian horse so big its hooves were the size of buckets. And behind him walked five thousand slaves and ex-slaves, all clad in reinforced leather, and wearing swords not quite soldiers, but not civilians either. Consul seven times! The prophecy was fulfilled. Nothing else lived inside Gaius Marius's head but those words as he rode between walls of cheering, weeping people; what did it really matter whether he was the senior or the junior consul, when the people welcomed their hero so passionately, so blindly? Did they care that he rode instead of walked? Did they care that he came from across the Tiber rather than from his house? Did they care that he hadn't stood the night watch for omens in the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus? Not one iota! He was Gaius Marius. What was required for other, lesser men was not required for Gaius Marius. Moving inexorably toward his fate, he arrived in the lower Forum Romanum and there found Lucius Cornelius Cinna waiting for him at the head of a procession comprising senators and a very few senior knights. Burgundus got Marius down from the pure white horse with a minimum of fuss, adjusted the folds of his master's toga and, when Marius took the place in front of Cinna, stood beside him. "Come on, Lucius Cinna, let's get it over!" snapped Marius in loud tones, starting to walk. "I've done this six times before and you've done it once, so let's not turn it into a triumphal parade!" "Just a moment!" shouted the ex-praetor Quintus Ancharius, stepping out of his place among the men in purple-bordered togas who followed Cinna, and moving quickly to plant himself firmly in front of Gaius Marius. "You are in the wrong order, consuls. Gaius Marius, you are junior consul. You go after Lucius Cinna, not ahead of him. I also demand that you get rid of this great barbarian brute from our solemn deputation to the Great God, and order your bodyguard to leave the city or remove their swords." For a moment Marius looked as if he would strike Ancharius, or perhaps order his German giant to set the ex-praetor aside; then the old man shrugged, repositioned himself behind Cinna. But the slave Burgundus remained alongside him, and he had spoken no word commanding his bodyguard to leave. "On the first issue, Quintus Ancharius, you have a point of law," said Marius fiercely, "but on the second and third issues I will not yield. My life has been imperiled enough of late years. And I am infirm. 'Therefore my slave will remain by my side. My Bardyaei will remain in the Forum and wait to escort me after the ceremonies are over." Quintus Ancharius looked mutinous, but finally nodded and went back to his place; a praetor in the same year Sulla had been consul, he was an inveterate Marius-hater, and proud of it. Not unless he had been tied down would he have allowed Marius to get away with walking ahead of Cinna in the procession, especially after it dawned upon him that Cinna was going to accept this monumental insult. That he went back to his place was in reaction to the look of piteous appeal Cinna gave him; his gorge rose. Why should he fight a weak man's battles? Oh, prayed Quintus Ancharius, finish that war and come home soon, Lucius Sulla! The hundred-odd knights who led the procession had moved off the moment Marius commanded Cinna to walk, and had reached the temple of Saturn before realizing the two consuls and the Senate were still halted, apparently in argument. Thus the start of that pilgrimage to the home of the Great God on the Capitol was as ill-concerted as it was ill-omened. No one, including Cinna, had had the courage to point out that Gaius Marius had not kept watch through the night, as the new consuls were obliged to do; and Cinna said nothing to anyone about the dense black shape of some webbed and taloned creature he had seen fly across the wan sky as he stood his watch. Never had a New Year's Day consular inauguration been so quickly completed as that one, either, even the famous one when Marius had wanted to commence the consular ceremonies still garbed as a triumphing general. Less than four shortish daylight hours later, everything was over sacrifices, the meeting of the Senate within the temple of the Great God, the feast which followed. Nor had any group of men in the past ever been so anxious to escape afterward. As the procession came down off the Capitol, every man saw the head of Gnaeus Octavius Ruso still rotting on its spear at the edge of the rostra, bird-tattered face turned to gaze up at the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus with empty sockets. A terrible omen. Terrible! Emerging from the alleyway between the temple of Saturn and the Capitol hillside, Gaius Marius spied Quintus Ancharius ahead of him, and hastened to catch up. When he put his hand upon Ancharius's arm the ex-praetor looked around, his startled surprise changing to revulsion when he saw who accosted him. "Burgundus, your sword," said Marius calmly. The sword was in his right hand even as he finished speaking; his right hand flashed up, and down. Quintus Ancharius fell dead, his face cloven from hairline to chin. No one tried to protest. As their shock dissipated, senators and knights scattered, running. Marius's legion of slaves and ex-slaves still standing in the lower Forum went in hot pursuit the moment the old man snapped his fingers. "Do what you like with the cunni, boys!" roared Marius, beaming. "Only do try to distinguish between my friends and my enemies!" Horrified, Cinna stood watching his world disintegrate, utterly powerless to intervene. His soldiers were either on their way home or still in their camp on the Vatican plain; Marius's "Bardyaei" as he called his slave followers because so many of them were from this Dalmatian tribe of Illyrians now owned the city of Rome. And, owning it, treated it more pitilessly than a crazed drunkard the wife he hates. Men were cut down for no reason, houses invaded and robbed, women defiled, children murdered. A lot of it was senseless, causeless; but there were other instances too men whom Marius hungered to see dead, or perhaps merely fancied he would like to see dead the Bardyaei were not clever at distinguishing between Marius's various moods. For the rest of the day and far into the night, Rome screamed and howled, and many died or wished they could die. In some places huge flames leaped skyward, screams turned to high and maddened shrieks. Publius Annius, who loathed Antonius Orator above all others, led a troop of cavalry to Tusculum, where the Antonii had an estate, and took great pleasure in hunting down Antonius Orator and killing him. The head was brought back to Rome amid great jubilation, and planted on the rostra. Fimbria chose to take his squadron of horsemen up onto the Palatine, looking first for the censor Publius Licinius Crassus and his son Lucius. It was the son Fimbria spied as he sped up the narrow street toward the safety of home; spurring his horse, Fimbria came alongside him and, bending in the saddle, ran his sword through Lucius Crassus's back. Seeing it happen and powerless to prevent the same fate happening to him, the father drew a dagger from the recesses of his toga and killed himself. Luckily Fimbria had no idea which door in that alleyway of windowless walls belonged to the Licinii Crassi, so the third son, Marcus not yet of an age to be a senator was spared. Leaving his men to decapitate Publius and Lucius Crassus, Fimbria took a few troopers and went looking for the Brothers Caesar. Two of them he found in the one house, Lucius Julius and his younger brother, Caesar Strabo. The heads of course were kept for the rostra, but Fimbria dragged the trunk and limbs of Caesar Strabo out to the tomb of Quintus Varius, and there "killed" him all over again as an offering for the man Caesar Strabo had prosecuted, and who had taken his own life so slowly, so painfully. After that he went looking for the oldest brother, Catulus Caesar, but was found by a messenger from Marius before he found his quarry; Catulus Caesar was to be spared to stand his trial. In the next morning's light the rostra bristled with heads on spears Ancharius, Antonius Orator, Publius and Lucius Crassus, Lucius Caesar, Caesar Strabo, the ancient Scaevola Augur, Gaius Atilius Serranus, Publius Cornelius Lentulus, Gaius Nemetorius, Gaius Baebius, and Octavius. Bodies littered the streets, a pile of unimportant heads lay against the angle where the tiny temple of Venus Cloacina tucked itself into the Basilica Aemilia, and Rome stank of coagulating blood. Indifferent to all save the pursuit of his revenge, Marius walked to the well of the Comitia to hear his own newly elected tribune of the plebs, Publius Popillius Laenas, convene the Plebeian Assembly. Of course no one came to attend, but the meeting went ahead anyway after the Bardyaei chose rural tribes for themselves as part of their new citizenship package. Quintus Lutatius Catulus Caesar and Lucius Cornelius Merula flamen Dialis were immediately indicted for treason. "But I shall not wait for the verdict," said Catulus Caesar, eyes red from weeping at the fate of his brothers and so many of his friends. He said this to Mamercus, whom he had summoned urgently to his house. "Take Lucius Cornelius Sulla's wife and daughter and flee at once, Mamercus, I beg of you! The next to be indicted will be Lucius Sulla, and everyone even remotely attached to him will die or worse, in Dalmatica's case and in the case of your own wife, Cornelia Sulla." "I had thought to remain," said Mamercus, looking exhausted. "Rome will need men untouched by this horror, Quintus Lutatius." "Yes, Rome will. But she won't find them among those who stay, Mamercus. I do not intend to live a moment longer than I have to. Promise me you'll bundle up Dalmatica, Cornelia Sulla, all the various children, and send them to safety in Greece. With yourself as their escort. Then I can get on and do what I have to do." So Mamercus promised, heavyhearted, and did much that day to safeguard the mobile and monetary property of Sulla, Scaurus, Drusus, the Servilii Caepiones, Dalmatica, Cornelia Sulla, and himself. By nightfall he and the women and children were through the Porta Sanqualis, least popular of Rome's gates, and heading for the Via Salaria; it seemed a safer way to go than south to Brundisium. As for Catulus Caesar, he sent little notes to Merula the flamen Dialis, and to Scaevola Pontifex Maximus. Then he had his slaves light every brazier his house possessed and put them in his principal guest suite, so newly plastered its walls exuded the pungent odor of fresh lime. Having sealed every crack and opening with rags, Catulus Caesar sat himself down in a comfortable chair and opened a scroll which contained the last books of the Iliad, his favorite literature. When Marius's men broke down the door, they found him still sitting upright and naturally in his chair, the scroll tidily in his lap; the room was choked with noxious fumes, and the corpse of Catulus Caesar was quite cold. Lucius Cornelius Merula never saw his note from Catulus Caesar, as it found him already dead. After reverently placing his apex and his laena in a tidily folded bundle beneath the statue of the Great God in his temple, Merula went home, got into a hot bath, and opened his veins with a bone knife. Scaevola Pontifex Maximus read his note.