Colleen McCullough - 1. First Man in Rome

In Placentia lay the Roman army, fifty-four thousand strong. Marius had donated two of his legions to Manius Aquillius, who had gone to Sicily early in the year to deal with the slave-king Athenion; so thoroughly had the Teutones been vanquished that it was not even necessary to leave any soldiers behind to garrison Gaul-across-the-Alps. The situation had certain parallels to the command situation at Arausio: again the senior commander was a New Man, again the junior commander was a formidable aristocrat. But the difference between Gaius Marius and Gnaeus Mallius Maximus was enormous; the New Man Marius was not the man to take any nonsense from the aristocrat Catulus Caesar. Catulus Caesar was brusquely told what to do, where to go, and why he was doing and going. All that was required of him was that he obey, and he knew exactly what would happen if he didn't obey, because Gaius Marius had taken the time to tell him. Very frankly. "You might say I've drawn a line for you to tread, Quintus Lutatius. Put one toe either side of it, and I'll have you back in Rome so fast you won't know how you got there," said Marius. "I'll have no Caepio tricks played on me! I'd much prefer to see Lucius Cornelius in your boots anyway, and that's who will go into them if you so much as think of deviating from your line. Understood?" "I am not a subaltern, Gaius Marius, and I resent being treated like one," said Catulus Caesar, a crimson spot burning in each cheek. "Look, Quintus Lutatius, I don't care what you feel!" said Marius with exaggerated patience. "All I care about is what you do. And what you do is what I tell you to do, nothing else." "I do not anticipate any difficulty following your orders, Gaius Marius. They're as specific as they are detailed," said Catulus Caesar, curbing his temper. "But I repeat, there is no need to speak to me as if I were a junior officer! I am your second-in-command." Marius grinned unpleasantly. "I don't like you either, Quintus Lutatius," he said. "You're just another one of the many upper-class mediocrities who think they've got some sort of divine right to rule Rome. My opinion of you as an individual is that you couldn't run a wine bar sitting between a brothel and a men's club! So this is how you and I are going to collaborate I issue the instructions; you follow them to the letter." "Under protest," said Catulus Caesar. "Under protest, but do it," said Marius. "Couldn't you have been a little more tactful?" asked Sulla of Marius later that day, having endured Catulus Caesar striding up and down his tent ranting about Marius for a full hour. "What for?" asked Marius, genuinely surprised. "Because in Rome he matters, that's what for! And he also matters here in Italian Gaul!" snapped Sulla. His spurt of anger died, he looked at the unrepentant Gaius Marius and shook his head. "Oh, you're impossible! And getting worse, I swear." "I'm an old man, Lucius Cornelius. Fifty-six. The same age as our Princeps Senatus, whom everybody calls an old man." "That's because our Princeps Senatus is a bald and wrinkled Forum fixture," said Sulla. "You still represent the vigorous commander in the field, so no one thinks of you as old." "Well, I'm too old to suffer fools like Quintus Lutatius gladly," said Marius. "I do not have the time to spend hours smoothing down the ruffled feathers of cocks-on-dungheaps just to keep them thinking well of themselves." "Don't say I didn't warn you!" said Sulla.

By the second half of Quinctilis the Cimbri were massed at the foot of the western Alps, spread across a plain called the Campi Raudii, not far from the small town of Vercellae. "Why here?" asked Marius of Quintus Sertorius, who had been mingling with the Cimbri off and on as they moved westward. "I wish I knew, Gaius Marius, but I've never managed to get close to Boiorix himself," said Sertorius. "The Cimbri seem to think they're going home to Germania, but a couple of the thanes I know think Boiorix is still determined to go south." "He's too far west," said Sulla. "The thanes think he's trying to placate the people by leading them to believe they'll be crossing the Alps back into Long-haired Gaul very soon, and next year will be home again in the Cimbrian Chersonnese. But he's going to keep them in Italian Gaul just long enough to close the alpine passes, and then present them with a pretty poor alternative stay in Italian Gaul and starve through the winter, or invade Italy." "That's a very complicated maneuver for a barbarian," said Marius skeptically. "The three-pronged fish spear into Italian Gaul wasn't your typical barbarian strategy either," Sulla reminded him. "They're like vultures," said Sertorius suddenly. "How?" asked Marius, frowning. "They pick the bones of wherever they are clean, Gaius Marius. That's really why they keep moving, it seems to me. Or maybe a plague of locusts is a better comparison. They eat everything in sight, then move on. It will take the Aedui and the Ambarri twenty years to repair the ravages of playing host to the Germans for four years. And the Atuatuci were looking very dismayed when I left, I can tell you." "Then how did they manage to stay in their original homeland without moving for so long?" asked Marius. “There were less of them, for one thing. The Cimbri had their huge peninsula, the Teutones all the land to the south of it, the Tigurini were in Helvetia, the Cherusci were along the Visurgis in Germania, and the Marcomanni lived in Boiohaemum," said Sertorius. "The climate is different," said Sulla when Sertorius fell silent. "North of the Rhenus, it rains all year round. So the grass grows very quickly, and it's juicy, sweet, tender grass. Nor are the winters so very hard, it seems at least as close to Oceanus Atlanticus as the Cimbri, the Teutones, and the Cherusci were. Even at dead of winter they get more rain than snow and ice. So they can graze rather than grow. I don't think the Germans live the way they do because it's their nature. I think the Germans live the way their original homelands dictated." Marius looked up from beneath his brows. "So if, for instance, they fetched up long enough in Italy, they'd learn to farm, you think?" "Undoubtedly," said Sulla. "Then we'd better force a conclusive fight this summer, and make an end to it and them. For nearly fifteen years Rome has been living under their shadow. I can't rest peacefully in my bed if the last thing I think of before I close my eyes is half a million Germans wandering around Europa looking for an Elysium they left behind somewhere north of the Rhenus. The German migration has to stop. And the only way I can be sure it's stopped is to stop it with Roman swords." "I agree," said Sulla. "And I," said Sertorius. "Haven't you got a sprog among the Cimbri somewhere?" asked Marius of Sertorius. "I have." "Do you know where?" "Yes." "Good. After it's over, you can send the sprog and his mother wherever you want, even Rome." "Thank you, Gaius Marius. I'll send them to Nearer Spain," said Sertorius, smiling. Marius stared. "Spain? Why Spain?" "I liked it there, when I was learning to be a Celtiberian. The tribe I stayed with will look after my German family." "Good! Now, good friends, let's see how we can bring on a battle with the Cimbri."

Marius brought on his battle; the date was the last day of Quinctilis by the calendar, and it had been formally fixed at a conference between Marius and Boiorix, For Marius was not the only one fed up with years of indecision. Boiorix too was keen to see an end to it. "To the victor goes Italy," said Boiorix. "To the victor goes the world," said Marius. As at Aquae Sextiae, Marius fought an infantry engagement, his scant cavalry drawn up to protect two massive infantry wings made up of his own troops from Gaul-across-the-Alps, split up into two lots of fifteen thousand. Between them he put Catulus Caesar and his twenty-four thousand less experienced men to form the center; the veteran troops in the wings would keep them steady and contained. He himself commanded the left wing, Sulla the right wing, and Catulus Caesar the center. Fifteen thousand Cimbric cavalry began the battle, magnificently clad and equipped, and riding the huge northern horses rather than little Gallic ponies. Each German trooper wore a towering helmet shaped like a mythical monster's head with gaping jaws, stiff tall feathers on either side to give the rider even more height; he wore an iron breastplate and a long-sword, and carried a round white shield as well as two heavy lances. The horsemen massed four deep along a line nearly four miles long, with the Cimbric infantry directly behind them, but when they charged they swung to their right, and drew the Romans with them; a tactic designed to move the Roman line far enough to the Roman left to enable the Cimbric infantry to outflank Sulla's right, and take the Romans from behind. So eager were the legions to come to grips that the German plan very nearly succeeded; then Marius managed to pull his troops to a halt and took the brunt of the cavalry charge, leaving Sulla to deal with the first onslaught of the Cimbric foot, while Catulus Caesar in the middle battled horse and foot. Roman fitness, Roman training, and Roman guile won on the field of Vercellae, for Marius had banked on a battle fought mostly before noon, and thus formed up with his lines facing west. It was the Cimbri who had the morning sun in their eyes, the Cimbri who couldn't keep up the pace. Used to a cooler, kinder climate and having breakfasted as always upon huge amounts of meat they fought the Romans two days after the summer solstice beneath a cloudless sky and in a choking pall of dust. To the legionaries it was a mild inconvenience, but to the Germans it was a pitiless furnace. They went down in thousands upon thousands upon thousands, tongues parched, armor as fiery as the hair shirt of Hercules, helmets a roasting burden, swords too heavy to lift. And by noon the fighting men of the Cimbri were no more. Eighty thousand fell on the field, including Boiorix; the rest fled to warn the women and children in the wagons, and take what they could across the Alps. But fifty thousand wagons couldn't be driven away at a gallop, nor half a million cattle and horses mustered in an hour or two. Those closest to the alpine passes of the Vale of the Salassi escaped; the rest did not. Many of the women rejected the thought of captivity and killed themselves and their children; some of the women killed the fleeing warriors as well. Even so, sixty thousand live Cimbric women and children were sold to the slavers, as were twenty thousand warriors. Of those who fled up the Vale of the Salassi and got away to Gaul-across-the-Alps through the Lugdunum Pass, few succeeded in running the gauntlet of the Celts. The Allobroges assailed them with fierce delight, as did the Sequani. Perhaps two thousand Cimbri finally rejoined the six thousand warriors left among the Atuatuci; and there where the Mosa received the Sabis, the last remnants of a great migration settled down for good, and in time came to call themselves Atuatuci. Only the vast accumulation of treasure reminded them that they had once been a German host more than three quarters of a million strong; but the treasure was not theirs to spend, only theirs to guard against the coming of other Romans. Catulus Caesar came to the council Marius called after Vercellae girt for war of a different kind, and found a mellow, affable Marius only too happy to grant his every request. "My dear fellow, of course you shall have a triumph!" said Marius, clapping him on the back. "My dear fellow, take two thirds of the spoils! After all, my men have the spoils from Aquae Sextiae as well, and I donated the proceeds from sale of slaves to them, so they'll come out of the campaign far ahead of your fellows, I imagine unless you too intend to donate the slave money ? No? Perfectly understandable, my dear Quintus Lutatius!" said Marius, pushing a plate of food into his hands. "My dear fellow, I wouldn't dream of taking all the credit! Why should I, when your soldiers fought with equal skill and enthusiasm?" said Marius, taking the plate of food off him and replacing it with a brimming goblet of wine. "Sit down, sit down! A great day! I can sleep in peace." "Boiorix is dead," said Sulla, smiling contentedly. "It is all over, Gaius Marius. Definitely, definitely over." "And your woman and child, Quintus Sertorius?" asked Marius. "Safe." "Good. Good!" Marius looked around the crowded general's tent, even his eyebrows seeming to beam. "And who wants to bring the news of Vercellae to Rome?" he asked. Two dozen voices answered; several dozen more said nothing but put eager expressions on their faces. Marius looked them over one by one, and finally let his eyes rest where he had already made up his mind. "Gaius Julius," he said, "you shall have the job. You are my quaestor, but I have even better grounds. In you is vested a part of all of us in senior command. We must stay in Italian Gaul until everything is properly tidied up. But you are the brother-in-law of Lucius Cornelius and myself; our children have your family's blood in their veins. And Quintus Lutatius here is a Julius Caesar by birth. So it's fitting that a Julius Caesar should bring the news of victory to Rome." He turned to look at everyone present. "Is that fair?" he asked. "It's fair," everyone said in chorus.