Colleen McCullough - 1. First Man in Rome

The elections for the new College of the Tribunes of the Plebs were held as Gaius Marius and Catulus Caesar led their armies south toward Rome and their single joint triumph, and they were hotly contested. There were over thirty candidates for the ten posts, and more than half of that number were creatures in the employ of the Policy Makers, so the campaign was bitter and violent. Glaucia, president of the current ten tribunes of the plebs, was deputed to hold the elections for the incoming college; had the Centuriate elections for consuls and praetors already been held, he would not have been able to officiate, for his status as praetor-elect would have disqualified him. As it was, nothing prevented his conducting the tribunate elections. The proceedings took place in the well of the Comitia, with Glaucia presiding from the rostra, and his nine fellow tribunes of the plebs drawing the lots to see which of the thirty-five tribes would vote first through to last, then marshaling each tribe when its turn came to vote. A lot of money had changed hands, some of it on behalf of Saturninus, but a great deal more on behalf of the anonymous candidates fielded by the Policy Makers. Every rich man on the conservative front benches had dug deep into his cashbox, and votes were bought for men like Quintus Nonius from Picenum, a political nobody of stoutly conservative heart. Though Sulla had had nothing to do with his entering the Senate, nor his standing for the tribunate of the plebs, he was the brother of Sulla's brother-in-law; when Sulla's sister, Cornelia Sulla, had married into the wealthy squirarchical family of Nonius from Picenum, the luster of her name inspired the men of the family of Nonius to try their luck on the cursus honorum. Her son was being groomed for the most earnest attempt, but the boy's uncle decided to see what he could do first. It was an election full of shocks. Quintus Nonius from Picenum got in easily, for example. Whereas Lucius Appuleius Saturninus didn't get in at all. There were ten places for tribunes of the plebs, and Saturninus came in eleventh. "I don't believe it!" Saturninus gasped to Glaucia. "I just don't believe it! What happened?" Glaucia was frowning; suddenly his own chances to become a praetor seemed dim. Then he shrugged, clapped Saturninus on the back with rough comfort, and stepped down from the rostra. "Don't worry," he said, "something might change things yet." "What can possibly change an election result?" Saturninus demanded. "No, Gaius Servilius, I'm out!" "I'll see you shortly here. Just stay here, don't go home yet," said Glaucia, and hurried off into the crowd. The moment he heard his name called as one of the ten new tribunes of the plebs, Quintus Nonius from Picenum wanted to go home to his expensive new house on the Carinae. There his wife waited with his sister-in-law Cornelia Sulla and her boy, anxious to know the results, provincial enough to doubt Quintus Nonius's chances. However, it was more difficult to leave the Forum area than Quintus Nonius had counted on, for every few feet he was stopped and warmly congratulated; a natural courtesy could not allow him to fob off his well-wishers, so he lingered in a forced detention, beaming and bowing, shaking a hundred hands. One by one Quintus Nonius's companions dropped away, until he entered the first of the alleyways on his route home attended only by three close friends who also lived on the Carinae. When they were set upon by a dozen men armed with clubs, one of the friends managed to break away and run back toward the Forum, crying for help, only to find it virtually deserted. Luckily Saturninus and Glaucia were standing talking to some others near the rostra, Glaucia looking red-faced and a little disheveled; when the cry for help came, they all followed at a run. But it was too late. Quintus Nonius and his two friends were dead. "Edepol!" said Glaucia, getting to his feet after verifying that Quintus Nonius was indeed dead. "Quintus Nonius has just been elected a tribune of the plebs, and I'm the officer in charge of proceedings." He frowned. "Lucius Appuleius, will you see Quintus Nonius is carried home? I'd better go back to the Forum and deal with the electoral dilemma." The shock of finding Quintus Nonius and his friends lying extinguished in lakes of their own blood deprived those who had come to the rescue of their normal faculties, including Saturninus; no one noticed how artificial Glaucia sounded, including Saturninus. And standing on an empty rostra shouting to a deserted Forum Romanum, Gaius Servilius Glaucia announced the death of the newly elected tribune of the plebs Quintus Nonius. He then announced that the candidate who came in eleventh would replace Quintus Nonius in the new college Lucius Appuleius Saturninus. "It's all set" said Glaucia complacently later, at Saturninus's house. "You are now a legally elected tribune of the plebs, co-opted to fill Quintus Nonius's shoes." He was not over-endowed with scruples since those awful events which had seen him dismissed from his post as quaestor at Ostia, but Saturninus was nonetheless so shocked he stared at Glaucia, aghast. "You didn't!" he cried. Glaucia put the tip of his index finger against the side of his nose and smiled at Saturninus from beneath his brows, a smile owning much fierceness. "Ask me no questions, Lucius Appuleius, and I'll tell you no lies," he said. "The shame of it is that he was a nice fellow." "Yes, he was. But that's his luck, to wind up dead. He was the only one who lived on the Carinae, so he was elected in more ways than one. It's too hard to set something up on the Palatine there aren't enough people on the streets." Saturninus sighed, shrugged off his depression. "You're right. And I'm in. I thank you for your help, Gaius Servilius." "Think nothing of it," said Glaucia. The scandal was difficult to live down, but it was quite impossible for anyone to prove that Saturninus was implicated in a murder when even the dead man's surviving friend could testify that both Saturninus and Glaucia. had been standing in the lower Forum at the time the deed was done. People talked, but talk was cheap, as Glaucia said with a sneer. And when Ahenobarbus Pontifex Maximus demanded that the tribunician elections be held all over again, he got nowhere; Glaucia had created a precedent to deal with a particular crisis which had never occurred before. "Talk is cheap!" Glaucia said again, this time in the Senate. "The allegations that Lucius Appuleius and I were involved in the death of Quintus Nonius have no foundation in fact. As for my replacing a dead tribune of the plebs with a live one, I did what any true presiding officer of an election ought to do I acted! No one can dispute that Lucius Appuleius polled in eleventh place, nor that the election was properly conducted. To appoint Lucius Appuleius the successor of Quintus Nonius as quickly and smoothly as possible was as logical as it was expedient. The contio of the Plebeian Assembly which I called yesterday gave my actions full-throated approval, as everyone here can verify. This debate, Conscript Fathers, is as useless as it is causeless. The matter is closed." Thus Gaius Servilius Glaucia.

Gaius Marius and Quintus Lutatius Catulus Caesar triumphed together on the first day of December. The joint parade was a stroke of genius, for there could be no doubt that Catulus Caesar, his chariot trailing behind the incumbent consul's, was very much the second lead in the production. The name on everybody's lips was Gaius Marius. There was even a very clever float put together by Lucius Cornelius Sulla who as usual got the job of organizing the parade showing Marius allowing Catulus Caesar's men to pick up the thirty-five Cimbric standards, because he had already captured so many in Gaul. At the meeting which followed in the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, Marius spoke with passion of his actions in awarding the citizenship to the soldiers of Camerinum and plugging up the Vale of the Salassi by planting a soldier colony at little Eporedia. His announcement that he would seek a sixth consulship was greeted with groans, gibes, cries of bitter protest and cheers. The cheers were far louder. When the tumult died down he announced that all his personal share of the spoils would go to build a new temple to the military cult of Honor and Virtue; in it his trophies and the trophies of his army would be housed, and it would be sited on the Capitol. He would also build a temple to the Roman military Honor and Virtue at Olympia in Greece. Catulus Caesar listened with a sinking heart, understanding that if he was to preserve his own reputation he would have to donate his own share of the spoils to a similar kind of public religious monument, rather than investing it to augment his private fortune which was large enough, but not nearly as large as Marius's. It surprised no one when the Centuriate Assembly elected Gaius Marius consul for the sixth time, and in senior place. Not only was he now the undisputed First Man in Rome, many were beginning to call him the Third Founder of Rome as well. The First Founder was none other than Romulus himself. The Second Founder was Marcus Furius Camillus, who had been-responsible for the ejection of the Gauls from Italy three hundred years before. Therefore it seemed appropriate to call Gaius Marius the Third Founder of Rome, since he too had repulsed a tide of barbarians. The consular elections were not without their surprises; Quintus Caecilius Metellus Numidicus Piggle-wiggle failed to carry the junior consul's poll. This was Marius's high point, and he won, even in the matter of his junior colleague; he had declared his firm support for Lucius Valerius Flaccus, and Lucius Valerius Flaccus was duly elected. Flaccus held an important lifelong priesthood, the position of flamen Martialis the special priest of Mars and his office had made him a quiet man, biddable and subordinate. An ideal companion for the masterful Gaius Marius. But it was no surprise to anyone when Gaius Servilius Glaucia was elected a praetor, for he was Marius's man, and Marius had bribed the voters lavishly. What was a surprise was the fact that he came in at the head of the poll, and so was appointed praetor urbanus, the most senior of the six praetors elected. Shortly after the elections Quintus Lutatius Catulus Caesar announced publicly that he would donate his personal share of the German spoils to two religious causes; the first was to purchase the old site of Marcus Fulvius Flaccus's house on the Palatine it lay next door to his own house and build thereon a magnificent porticus to house the thirty-five Cimbric standards he had captured on the field of Vercellae; the second was to build a temple on the Campus Martius to the goddess Fortuna in her guise of the Fortune of the Present Day.