Colleen McCullough - 2. The Grass Crown

"To the Senate and People of Rome. We, the elected representatives of the Marsic nation, do hereby on behalf of our people declare that we withdraw from our Allied status with Rome. That we will not pay to Rome any taxes, tithes, duties, or dues which may be demanded of us. That we will not contribute troops to Rome. That we will take back from Rome the town of Alba Fucentia and all its lands. Please regard this as a declaration of war."

The House hummed; Gaius Marius extended his hand for the document, and Scaurus gave it to him. Slowly it went round the ranks of those present, until everyone had seen for himself that it was both genuine and unequivocal. "It appears that we have a war on our hands," said Marius. "With the Marsi?" asked Ahenobarbus Pontifex Maximus. "I know when I spoke to Silo outside the Colline Gate he said it would be war but the Marsi couldn't defeat us! They don't have enough people to go to war against Rome! Those two legions he had with him would be about as many as the Marsi could scrape up." "It does seem peculiar," admitted Scaurus. "Unless," said Sextus Caesar, "there are other Italian nations involved as well." But that no one would believe, including Marius. The meeting dissolved without any conclusion being reached, save that it would be prudent to keep a closer eye on Italy only not with another pair of itinerant praetors! Servius Sulpicius Galba, the praetor deputed to investigate "the Italian question" to the south of Rome, had written to say he was on his way back. When he arrived, the House thought it would be in better case to decide what ought to be done. War with Italy? Perhaps so. But not yet. "I know that when Marcus Livius was alive, I believed with fervor that war with Italy was just around the corner," said Marius to Scaurus as the meeting broke up, "but now that he's gone, I cannot credit it! And I have been asking myself if it was just that way he had. Now I don't honestly know. Are the Marsi in this alone? Surely they must be! And yet I never thought of Quintus Poppaedius Silo as a fool." "I echo everything you have just said, Gaius Marius," Scaurus agreed. "Oh, why didn't I read that paper while Scato was still inside Rome? The gods are toying with us, I feel it in my bones."

Of course the time of year militated against anything outside of Rome occupying senatorial minds, no matter how serious or how puzzling; no one wanted to make decisions when one pair of consuls was almost at the end of their term, and the incoming pair was still feeling their way anent House alliances. Thus it was that internal affairs preoccupied both Senate and Forum during December; the most trivial incidents, because close at hand and essentially Roman, outweighed the Marsic declaration of war easily. Among the more trivial incidents was the vacant priesthood of Marcus Livius Drusus. Even after so many years, Ahenobarbus Pontifex Maximus still felt he should have been given the place given to Drusus; so he was very quick to put up the name of his elder son, Gnaeus, recently engaged to Cornelia Cinna, the oldest daughter of the patrician Lucius Cornelius Cinna. The pontificate of course belonged to a plebeian, as Drusus had been a plebeian. By the time the nominations were all in, the list of candidates read like a plebeian honor roll. It included Metellus Pius the Piglet, another man existing in a smoldering resentment, as his father's place had gone by election to Gaius Aurelius Cotta. Then at the last moment Scaurus Princeps Senatus stunned everyone by putting up a patrician name Mamercus Aemilius Lepidus Livianus, the brother of Drusus. "It's not legal on two counts!" snarled Ahenobarbus Pontifex Maximus. "Number one, he's a patrician. Number two, he's an Aemilius, and you're already a pontifex, Marcus Aemilius, which means another Aemilius can't belong." "Rubbish!" said Scaurus roundly. "I'm not nominating him as an adopted Aemilius, but as the blood brother of the dead priest. He's a Livius Drusus, and I say he must be nominated." The College of Pontifices finally agreed that in this situation Mamercus should be accounted a Livius Drusus, and permitted his name to be added to the list of candidates. How fond of Drusus the electors had become was soon obvious; Mamercus carried all seventeen tribes and succeeded to the priesthood of his brother. More serious or so it seemed at the time was the conduct of Quintus Varius Severus Hybrida Sucronensis. When the new College of Tribunes of the Plebs entered office on the tenth day of December, Quintus Varius immediately moved that a law be placed on the tablets to treason-try every man who had been known to support the general enfranchisement of Italy. All nine of his colleagues promptly vetoed even the discussion of such an act. But Varius took his example from Saturninus, filled the Comitia with louts and hirelings, and succeeded in intimidating the rest of the college into withdrawing their vetos. He also succeeded in intimidating all other opposition, with the result that the New Year saw the establishment of a special treason court all of Rome began to call the Varian Commission, empowered to try only those men who had supported enfranchisement of the Italians. Its terms of reference were so vague and flexible that almost anyone could find himself arraigned, its jury composed purely of knights. "He'll use it to pursue his own enemies and the enemies of Philippus and Caepio," said Scaurus Princeps Senatus, who made no secret of his opinion. "Wait and see! This is the most disgraceful piece of legislation ever foisted upon us!" That Scaurus was right Varius demonstrated in the selection of his first victim, the stiff, formal, ultra-conservative praetor of five years earlier, Lucius Aurelius Cotta. Half brother of Aurelia on her father's side. Never an ardent proponent of enfranchisement, Cotta had nonetheless swung round to it along with many others in the Senate during those days when Drusus had fought so strenuously in the House; one of the most cogent reasons behind Cotta's change of heart was his detestation of Philippus and Caepio. He then made the mistake of cutting Quintus Varius dead. This oldest Cotta of his generation was an excellent choice for the Varian Commission's first victim; not as high as the consulars, nor as low as the pedarii. If Varius gained a conviction, his court would become an instrument of terror for the Senate. The first day's proceedings showed Lucius Cotta all too clearly what his fate was going to be, for the jury impaneled was stuffed with haters of the Senate, and scant notice of the defense's jury challenges was taken by the court president, the enormously powerful knight-plutocrat Titus Pomponius. "My father is wrong," said young Titus Pomponius, standing in the crowd which had gathered to watch the Varian Commission swing into action. His auditor was another member of Scaevola the Augur's little band of legal acolytes, Marcus Tullius Cicero, four years his junior in age, forty years his senior in intellect if not in common sense. "How do you mean?" asked Cicero, who had gravitated to young Titus Pomponius after the death of Sulla's son. That had been the first real tragedy of Cicero's life; even so many months later, he still found himself mourning and missing his dear dead friend. "This obsession my father has to get into the Senate," said young Titus Pomponius gloomily. "It eats at him, Marcus Tullius! Not one thing does he do that isn't directed toward the Senate. Including snapping up Quintus Varius's wheedling bait to be president of this court. Of course the invalidation of Marcus Livius Drusus's laws destroyed his certain selection for the Senate, and Quintus Varius has used that to lure him into this. He's been promised that if he does as he's told, he'll get his Senate membership as soon as the new censors are elected." "But your father's in business," objected Cicero. "He'd have to give it all up except for owning land if he became a senator." "Oh, don't worry, he would!" said young Titus Pomponius, voice bitter. "Here am I, not quite twenty years old, already doing most of the work in the firm and scant thanks I get, I can tell you! He's actually ashamed of being in business!" "What has all this got to do with your father's being wrong?" asked Cicero. "Everything, you dunce!" said young Titus. "He wants to get into the Senate! But he's wrong to want that. He's a knight, and one of Rome's ten most important knights, at that. I can see nothing wrong with being one of Rome's ten most important knights. He has the Public Horse which he will pass on to me everyone asks his advice, he's a great power in the Comitia, and a consultant to the tribunes of the Treasury. Yet what does he want? To be a senator! To be one of those fools in the back row who never even get a chance to speak, let alone speak well!" "You mean he's a social climber," said Cicero. "Well, I can see nothing wrong with that. So am I." "My father is already socially the best, Marcus Tullius! By birth and by wealth. The Pomponii are very closely related right down the generations to the Caecilii of the Pilius branch, and you can't do better than that without being a patrician." Born to the highest knightly nobility, young Titus went on without realizing how his words would hurt: he said, "I can understand your being a social climber, Marcus Tullius. When you get into the Senate you'll be a New Man, and if you attain the consulship, you'll ennoble your family. Which means you'll have to cultivate every famous man you possibly can, plebeian and patrician. Whereas my father's becoming a pedarius senator would actually be a backward step." "Getting into the Senate is never a backward step!" said Cicero, smarting. Young Titus's words contained additional sting these days; Cicero had come to understand that the moment he said he came from Arpinum, he was immediately smeared with a little of the same ordure reserved for Arpinum's most famous citizen, Gaius Marius. If Gaius Marius was an Italian with no Greek, what else could Marcus Tullius Cicero be than a better-educated version of Gaius Marius? The Tullii Cicerones had never been over-fond of the Marii, despite the occasional marriage between the clans; but since arriving in Rome, young Marcus Tullius Cicero had learned to loathe Gaius Marius. And to loathe his birthplace. "Anyway," said young Titus Pomponius, "when I am paterfamilias, I am going to be perfectly content with my knight's lot. If the censors both get down on their knees to me, they'll beg in vain! For I swear to you, Marcus Tullius, that I will never, never, never enter the Senate!" In the meantime, Lucius Cotta's despair was becoming more evident. It was therefore no surprise when the court reconvened the next day to learn that Lucius Aurelius Cotta had chosen to go into voluntary exile rather than wait for an inevitable verdict of CONDEMNO. This ploy at least enabled a man to gather most of his assets and take them with him into exile; if he waited and was convicted, his assets would be confiscated by the court, and the ensuing exile harder to bear because of lack of funds. It was a bad time to have to liquidate capital assets, for, while the Senate vacillated in a mood of sheer disbelief and the Comitia were absorbed in the doings of Quintus Varius, the business community sniffed something nasty in the wind, and took appropriate measures. Money went into immediate hiding, shares tottered, the smaller companies held emergency meetings. Manufacturers and importers of luxury goods debated the possibility of strict sumptuary laws should a war ensue, and concocted schemes for switching their lines of goods to war essentials. Nothing happened to convince the Senate that the Marsic declaration of war was sincere; no word came of an army on the march, no word came of any kind of martial preparations in any Italian nation. The only worrying thing, perhaps, was that Servius Sulpicius Galba, the praetor delegated to look into matters in the south of the peninsula, did not come to Rome. Instead, he had lapsed into complete silence. The Varian Commission gathered impetus. Lucius Calpurnius Bestia was convicted and sent into exile, his property confiscated; so was Lucius Memmius, who went to Delos. Halfway through January Antonius Orator was arraigned, but gave such a magnificent speech and was so cheered by the Forum crowds that the jury prudently decided to acquit him. Angry at this fickle conduct, Quintus Varius retaliated by charging Marcus Aemilius Scaurus Princeps Senatus with treason. Scaurus appeared totally unattended to answer the indictment, clad in his toga praetexta and positively radiating the awesome aura of his dignitas and auctoritas. Impassively he listened to Quintus Varius (who was conducting every prosecution himself) reel off the long list of his wrongdoings in regard to the Italians. When Varius finally stopped speaking, Scaurus snorted. He turned not to face the jury, but to face the crowd. "Did you hear that, Quirites!" he thundered. "A half-breed upstart from Sucro in Spain accuses Scaurus, Princeps Senatus, of treason! Scaurus denies the charge! Whom do you believe?" "Scaurus, Scaurus, Scaurus!" chanted the crowd. Then the jury joined in, and finally left its seats to chair Scaurus on its shoulders in a triumphant parade all around the lower Forum. "The fool!" said Marius to Scaurus afterward. "Did he really think he could convict you of treason? Did the knights think it?" "After the knights succeeded in convicting poor Publius Rutilius, I imagine they thought they could convict anyone if only they were given the chance," said Scaurus, adjusting his toga, which had become a little disorganized during his ride. "Varius should have started his campaign against the more formidable consulars with me, not you," said Marius. "When Marcus Antonius got off, there was a strong message in it. A message now well and truly driven home! I predict Varius will suspend his activities for a few weeks, then start again but with less august victims. Bestia doesn't matter, everyone knows him for a wolfshead. And poor Lucius Cotta didn't have enough clout. Oh, the Aurelii Cottae are powerful, but they don't like Lucius they like the boys his uncle Marcus Cotta bred from Rutilia." Marius paused, eyebrows dancing wildly. "Of course, Varius's real disadvantage is that he's not a Roman. You are. I am. He's not. He doesn't understand." Scaurus refused to rise to the bait. "Nor do Philippus and Caepio understand," he said scornfully.