Colleen McCullough - 1. First Man in Rome

Marius looked up from the letter, frowning. "I wonder exactly what Saturninus is up to?" he asked. But Sulla's mind was dwelling upon a far less important point. "Plautus!" he said suddenly. "What?" "The boni, the Good Men! Gaius Gracchus, Lucius Opimius, and our own Scaurus claim to have invented boni to describe their factions, but Plautus applied boni to plutocrats and other patrons a hundred years ago! I remember hearing it in a production of Plautus's Captivi put on while Scaurus was curule aedile, by Thespis! I was just old enough to be a playgoer." Marius was staring. "Lucius Cornelius, stop worrying about who coined pointless words, and pay attention to what really matters! Mention theater to you, and everything else is forgotten." "Oooops, sorry!" said Sulla impenitently. Marius resumed reading.

We now move from the Forum Romanum to Sicily, where all sorts of things have been happening, none of them good, some of them blackly amusing, and some downright incredible. As you know, but I shall refresh your memory anyway because I loathe ragged stories, the end of last year's campaigning season saw Lucius Licinius Lucullus sit down in front of the slave stronghold of Triocala, to starve the rebels out. He'd thrown terror into them by having a herald retell the tale of the Enemy stronghold which sent the Romans a message saying they had food enough to last for ten years, and the Romans sent the reply back that in that case, they'd take the place in the eleventh year. In fact, Lucullus did a magnificent job. He hemmed in Triocala with a forest of siege ramps, towers, shelter sheds, rams, catapults, and barricades, and he filled in a huge chasm which lay like a natural defense in front of the walls. Then he built an equally magnificent camp for his men, so strongly fortified that even if the slaves could have got out of Triocala, they couldn't have got into Lucullus's camp. And he settled down to wait the winter out, his men extremely comfortable, and he himself sure that his command would be prorogued. Then in January came the news that Gaius Servilius Augur was the new governor, and with the official dispatch came a letter from our dear Metellus Numidicus Piggle-wiggle, which filled in the nasty details, the scandalous way in which the deed had been done by Ahenobarbus and his arse-boy the Augur. You don't know Lucullus all that well, Gaius Marius. But I do. Like so many of his kind, he presents a cool, calm, detached, and insufferably haughty face to the world. You know, "I am Lucius Licinius Lucullus, a noble Roman of most ancient and prestigious family, and if you're very lucky, I might deign to notice you from time to time." But underneath the facade is a very different man thin-skinned, fanatically conscious of slights, filled with passion, awesome in rage. So when Lucullus got the news, he took it on the surface with exactly the degree of calm and composed resignation you might expect. Then he proceeded to tear out every last piece of artillery, the siege ramp, the siege tower, the tortoise, the shelter sheds, the rubble-filled defile, the walled-in mountain shelves, everything. And he burned the lot he could burn, and carried every bucketload of rubble, fill, earth, whatever, far away from Triocala in a thousand different directions. After which he demolished his own camp, and destroyed the materials it contained too. You think that's enough? Not for Lucullus, who was only just getting started! He destroyed every single record of his administration in both Syracuse and Lilybaeum, and he marched his seventeen thousand men to the port of Agrigentum. His quaestor proved terrifically loyal, and connived at everything Lucullus wanted to do. The pay had come for his army, and there was money in Syracuse from spoils taken after the battle of Heracleia Minoa. Lucullus then proceeded to fine every non-Roman citizen in Sicily for putting too much strain upon Publius Licinius Nerva, the previous governor, and added that money to the rest. After which he used some of the new shipment of money which had arrived for the use of Servilius the Augur in hiring a fleet of ships to transport his soldiers. On the beach at Agrigentum he discharged his men, and gave them every last sestertius he had managed to scrape up. Now Lucullus's men were a motley collection, and proof positive that the Head Count in Italy is as exhausted these days as all the other classes when it comes to providing troops. Aside from the Italian and Roman veterans he'd got together in Campania, he had a legion and a few extra cohorts from Bithynia, Greece, and Macedonian Thessaly it was his demanding these from King Nicomedes of Bithynia which had led the King to say he had no men to give, because the Roman tax farmers had enslaved them all. A rather impertinent reference to our freeing the Italian Allied slaves Nicomedes thought his treaty of friendship and alliance with us should extend the emancipation to Bithynian slaves! Lucullus rolled him up, of course, and got his Bithynian soldiers. Now the Bithynian soldiers were sent home, and the Roman and Italian soldiers were sent home to Italy and Rome. With their discharge papers. And having removed every last trace of his governorship from the annals of Sicily, Lucullus himself sailed away. The moment he was gone, King Tryphon and his adviser Athenion spilled out of Triocala, and began to plunder and pillage Sicily's countryside all over again. They are now absolutely convinced that they'll win the war, and their catch-cry is "Instead of being a slave, own a slave!" No crops have been planted, and the cities are overflowing with rural refugees. Sicily is a very Iliad of woes once more. Into this delightful situation came Servilius the Augur. Of course he couldn't believe it. And started to bleat in letter after letter to his patron, Ahenobarbus Pipinna. In the meantime, Lucullus arrived back in Rome, and began to make preparations for the inevitable. When Ahenobarbus taxed him in the House with deliberate destruction of Roman property siegeworks and camps especially Lucullus simply looked down his nose and said he thought the new governor would want to start in his own way. He himself, said Lucullus, liked to leave everything the way he found it, and that was precisely what he had done in Sicily at the end of his term he had left Sicily the way he had found it. Servilius the Augur's chief grievance was the lack of an army he had simply assumed Lucullus would leave his legions behind. But he hadn't bothered to make a formal request of Lucullus about the troops. So Lucullus maintained that in the absence of any request from Servilius the Augur, his troops were his to do what he wanted with. And he felt they were due for discharge. "I left Gaius Servilius Augur a new tablet, wiped clean of everything I might have done," said Lucullus in the House. "Gaius Servilius Augur is a New Man, and New Men have their own ways of doing everything. I considered therefore that I was doing him a favor.'' Without an army there's very little Servilius the Augur can do in Sicily, of course. Nor, with Catulus Caesar sifting what few recruits Italy can drop into his net, is there any likelihood of another army for Sicily this year. Lucullus's veterans are scattered far and wide, most of them with plump purses, and not anxious to be found. Lucullus is well aware he's left himself wide open to prosecution. I don't think he honestly cares. He's had the infinite satisfaction of completely destroying any chance Servilius the Augur might have had to steal his thunder. And that matters more to Lucullus than avoiding prosecution. So he's busy doing what he can to protect his sons, for it's plain he thinks Ahenobarbus and the Augur will utilize Saturninus's new knight-run treason court to initiate a suit against him, and secure a conviction. He has transferred as much of his property as he possibly can to his older son, Lucius Lucullus, and given out his younger son, aged thirteen now, to be adopted by the Terentii Varrones. There is no Marcus Terentius Varro in this generation, and it's an extremely wealthy family. I heard from Scaurus that Piggle-wiggle who is very upset by all this, as well he might be, for if Lucullus is convicted, he'll have to take his scandal-making sister, Metella Calva, back says the two boys have taken a vow to have their revenge upon Servilius the Augur as soon as they're both of age. The older boy, Lucius Lucullus Junior, is particularly bitter, it seems. I'm not surprised. He looks like his father on the outside, so why not on the inside as well? To be cast into disgrace by the overweening ambition of the noisome New Man Augur is anathema. And that's all for the moment. I'll keep you informed. I wish I could be there to help you with the Germans, not because you need my help, but because I'm feeling left out of it.