Colleen McCullough - 2. The Grass Crown

I hope, Lucius Cornelius, that this catches you in time. And I hope yours has been a better year than mine. But more of that anon. I do so love writing to those far away about the goings-on in Rome. How I shall miss it! And who will write to me? But more of that anon. In April we elected ourselves a new pair of censors. Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus Pontifex Maximus and Lucius Licinius Crassus Orator. An ill-assorted pair, you perceive. The irascible allied to the immutable Hades and Zeus the succinct coupling with the verbose a harpy and a muse. All of Rome is trying to find the perfect description of the world's most imperfect duo. It should of course have been Crassus Orator and my dear Quintus Mucius Scaevola, but it wasn't. Scaevola refused to run. He says he's too busy. Too wary, more like! After the fuss the last censors created and the lex Licinia Mucia to cap it I daresay Scaevola thought himself well out of the business. Of course the special courts provided for by the lex Licinia Mucia are now defunct. Gaius Marius and I succeeded in having them disbanded early in the year, on the grounds that they were a financial burden the returns could not justify. Luckily everyone agreed. The amendment was passed without incident in both Senate and Comitia. But the scars linger, Lucius Cornelius, in truly terrible ways. Two of the more obnoxious judges, Gnaeus Scipio Nasica and Catulus Caesar, have had farmsteads and villas they own burned to the ground; and others have had crops destroyed, vineyards torn apart, water cisterns poisoned. There is a new nocturnal sport up and down the country find a Roman citizen and beat him half to death. Not, naturally, that anyone even Catulus Caesar will admit that the lex Licinia Mucia has anything to do with all these private disasters. That revolting young man, Quintus Servilius Caepio, actually had the effrontery to charge Scaurus Princeps Senatus in the extortion court, the charge being that he had accepted an enormous bribe from King Mithridates of Pontus. You can imagine what happened. Scaurus turned up at the spot where the court had gathered in the lower Forum, but not to answer any charges! He walked straight up to Caepio and smacked him on the left cheek, then the right cheek snap, snap! Somehow at such moments I swear Scaurus grows two feet. He seemed to tower over Caepio, whereas in fact they are much the same height. "How dare you!" he barked. "How dare you, you slimy, miserable little worm! Withdraw this ridiculous charge at once, or you'll wish you'd never been born! You, a Servilius Caepio, a member of a family famous for its love of gold, dare to accuse me, Marcus Aemilius Scaurus, Princeps Senatus, of taking gold? I piss on you, Caepio!" And off he marched across the Forum, escorted by huge cheers, applause, whistles, all of which he ignored. Caepio was left standing with the marks of Scaurus's hand on both sides of his face, trying not to look at the panel of knights who had been ordered to appear for jury selection. But after Scaurus's little scene, Caepio could have produced ironclad evidence to prove his case, and the jury still would have acquitted Scaurus. "I withdraw my charge," said Caepio, and scurried home. Thus perish all who would indict Marcus Aemilius Scaurus, showman without peer, poseur, and prince of good fellows! I admit that I, for one, was delighted. Caepio has been making life miserable for Marcus Livius Drusus for so long now it is a Forum fact. Apparently Caepio felt that my nephew should have taken his side when my niece was discovered in her affair with Cato Salonianus, and when things didn't turn out that way, Caepio reacted downright viciously. He's still carrying on about that ring! But enough of Caepio, grubby subject for a letter that he is. We have another useful little law upon the tablets, thanks to the tribune of the plebs Gnaeus Papirius Carbo. Now there is a family has had no luck since its members decided to forsake their patrician status! Two suicides in the last generation, and now a group of young Papirian men who just itch to make trouble. Anyway, Carbo called a contio in the Plebeian Assembly some months ago early spring, actually how time does get away! Crassus Orator and Ahenobarbus Pontifex Maximus had just declared themselves candidates for the censorship. What Carbo was trying to do was to push an updated version of Saturninus's grain law through the Plebs. But the meeting got so out of hand that a couple of ex-gladiators were killed, some senators were molested, and a riot suspended the proceedings. Crassus Orator was caught in the midst of it, thanks to his electoral campaigning, got his toga dirty, and was absolutely livid. The result is that he promulgated a decree in the Senate to the effect that the entire responsibility for keeping order during a meeting rests squarely upon the shoulders of the magistrate convoking it. The decree was hailed as a brilliant piece of lawmaking, went to the Assembly of the Whole People, and was passed. Had Carbo's meeting taken place under the auspices of Crassus Orator's new law, he could have been charged with inciting violence, and been heavily fined. Now I come to the most delicious bit of news. We no longer have censors! But Publius Rutilius, what happened? I hear you cry. Well, I shall tell you. At first we thought they would manage to deal together fairly well, despite their manifest differences of character. They let the State contracts, perused the rolls of the senators and then the knights, and then followed this up with a decree expelling all save an unimpeachable handful of teachers of rhetoric from Rome. Their chief fury fell upon the teachers of Latin rhetoric, but those teaching in Greek didn't fare too well either. You know the kind of fellows, Lucius Cornelius. For a few sesterces a day they guarantee to turn the sons of impecunious but social-climbing Third or Fourth Classers into lawyers, who then solicit business tirelessly up and down the Forum, preying upon our gullible but litigious-minded populace. Most don't bother to teach in Greek, as the due process of the law is conducted in Latin. And as everyone admits! these so-called teachers of rhetoric drag the law and lawyers down, prey upon the uninformed and the underprivileged, trick them out of what little money they have, and do not glorify our Forum. Out they all went, bag and baggage! Calling down curses upon the heads of Crassus Orator and Ahenobarbus Pontifex Maximus, but to no avail. Out they all went. Only those teachers of rhetoric with pristine reputations and a proper clientele have been permitted to stay. It looked good. Everyone sang the praises of the censors, who might therefore have been thought to get on somewhat better together. Instead, they began to fight. Oh, the arguments! In public! Culminating in an acrimonious exchange of incivilities heard by at least half of Rome, that half (I am a part of it, I admit it freely!) which took to lingering in the vicinity of the censors' booth to hear what it could hear. Now you may or may not know that Crassus Orator has taken to farming fish, this now being regarded as a kind of trade practice in keeping with senatorial rank. So he has installed vast ponds on his country estates and is making a fortune selling freshwater eels, pike, carp, and so forth to for instance the college of epulones before all the big public feasts. Little did we know what we were in for when Lucius Sergius Orata started farming oysters down in the Baiae lakes! It is but a small step from oysters to eels, dear Lucius Cornelius. Oh, how much I will miss this kind of deliciously Roman furor! But more of that anon. Back to Crassus Orator and his fish-farming. On his country estates it is purely a commercial activity. But, being Crassus Orator, he rather fell in love with his fish. So he extended the size of the pond in his peristyle right here in Rome and filled it with some more exotic and expensive piscine denizens. He sits on the wall of the pool, tickles the water with his finger, and up they swim for their crumbed bread, little shrimps, all manner of delicacies. Especially this one carp, a huge creature the color of well-cared-for pewter with quite a lovely face, as fish go. It was so tame it would come buzzing to the edge of the water the moment Crassus Orator entered his garden. And I really don't blame him for growing fond of the thing, I really don't. Anyway, the fish died, and Crassus Orator was brokenhearted. For one whole market interval no one saw him; those who ventured to call at his house were told he was prostrate with grief. Eventually he reappeared in public, face very cast down, and joined his colleague the Pontifex Maximus at their booth in the Forum they were, I add, about to move their booth out to the Campus Martius to take a much-needed new census of the general populace. "Hah!" said Ahenobarbus Pontifex Maximus when Crassus Orator appeared. "What, no toga pulla? No formal mourning garb, Lucius Licinius? I am amazed! Why, I heard that when you cremated your fish, you hired an actor to don its wax mask and made him swim all the way to the temple of Venus Libitina! I also hear that you have had a cupboard made for the fish's mask and intend to parade it at all future Licinius Crassus funerals as a part of the family!" Crassus Orator drew himself up majestically well, like all the Licinii Crassi, he has the bulk for it! and looked down his considerable nose at his fellow censor. "It is true, Gnaeus Domitius," said Crassus Orator haughtily, "that I have wept for my dead fish. Which makes me a far better kind of man than you! You've had three wives die so far, and wept not a single tear for any of them!" So that, Lucius Cornelius, was the end of the censorship of Lucius Licinius Crassus Orator and Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus Pontifex Maximus. A pity, I suppose, that we will not now obtain a true census of the populace for another four years. No one plans to have new censors elected. And now I come to the bad news. I write this on the eve of my departure for Smyrna, where I am going into exile. Yes, I see you start in surprise! Publius Rutilius Rufus, the most harmless and upright of men, sentenced to exile? It is true. Certain people in Rome have never forgotten the splendid job Quintus Mucius Scaevola and I did in Asia Province men like Sextus Perquitienus, who can no longer confiscate priceless works of art in lieu of unpaid taxes. And since I am the uncle of Marcus Livius Drusus, I have also incurred the enmity of that ghastly individual, Quintus Servilius Caepio. And through him, of such human excrement as Lucius Marcius Philippus, still trying to get himself elected consul. Of course no one tried to get Scaevola, he's too powerful. So they decided to get me. Which they did. In the extortion court, where they produced blatantly fabricated evidence that I I obtained money from the hapless citizens of Asia Province. The prosecutor was one Apicius, a creature who boasts of being Philippus's client. Oh, I had many outraged offers of defense counsel Scaevola, for one, and Crassus Orator, and Antonius Orator, and even ninety-two-year-old Scaevola the Augur, if you please. That hideously precocious boy they all drag round the Forum with them Marcus Tullius Cicero, from Arpinum offered to speak up for me too. But, Lucius Cornelius, I could see it would all be in vain. The jury was paid a fortune (Gold of Tolosa?) to convict me. So I refused all offers and defended myself. With grace and dignity, I flatter myself. Calmly. My only assistant was my beloved nephew, Gaius Aurelius Cotta, the eldest of Marcus Cotta's three boys, and my dear Aurelia's half brother. Her half brother on the other side, Lucius Cotta, who was praetor in the year of the lex Licinia Mucia, actually had the effrontery to assist the prosecution! His uncle Marcus Cotta isn't speaking to him anymore, nor is his half sister. The outcome was inevitable, as I have said. I was found guilty of extortion, stripped of my citizenship, and sentenced to exile not closer to Rome than five hundred miles. I was not, however, stripped of my property I think they knew that any move in that direction might have seen them lynched. My last words to the court were to the effect that I would go into exile among the people on whose behalf I was convicted the citizens of Asia Province and in particular, Smyrna. I will never go home, Lucius Cornelius. And I do not say that in a spirit of umbrage, or injured pride. I do not want ever to set eyes again upon a city and a people who could consent to such a manifest injustice. Three quarters of Rome is going about weeping at the manifest injustice, but that doesn't alter the fact that I, its victim, am no longer a Roman citizen, and must go into exile. Well, I will not demean myself or gratify them, those who convicted me, by subjecting the Senate to a barrage of petitions to have my sentence repealed, my citizenship restored. I will prove myself a true Roman. I will lie down obediently, good Roman dog that I am, under the sentence of a legally appointed Roman court. I have already had a letter from the ethnarch of Smyrna wild with joy, it seems, at the prospect of having a new citizen named Publius Rutilius Rufus. It appears they are organizing a festival in my honor, to be celebrated the moment I arrive. Strange people, to react in this way to the advent of one who allegedly plundered them piecemeal! Do not pity me too much, Lucius Cornelius. I will be well looked after, it seems. Smyrna has even voted me a most generous pension, and a house, and good servants. There are enough Rutilii left in Rome to make a nuisance of our clan my son, my nephews, and my cousins of the branch Rutilius Lupus. But I will don the Greek chlamys and Greek slippers, for I am no longer entitled to wear the toga. On your way home, Lucius Cornelius, if you can possibly spare the time, would you call in to Smyrna to see me? I anticipate that no friend of mine at the eastern end of the Middle Sea will not call in to Smyrna to see me! A little solace for an exile. I have decided to begin to write seriously. No more compendiums of military logistics, tactics, strategy. Instead, I shall become a biographer. I plan to start with a biography of Metellus Numidicus Piggle-wiggle, incorporating some juicy stuff which will have the Piglet gnashing his tusks in rage. Then I shall pass on to Catulus Caesar, and mention certain mutinous events which took place on the Athesis in the days when the Germans were milling around Tridentum. Oh, what fun I shall have! So do come and see me, Lucius Cornelius! I need information only you can give me!