Colleen McCullough - 1. First Man in Rome

Marcus Antonius Orator had had a very successful three-year campaign against the pirates of Cilicia and Pamphylia, which he finished in some style from his headquarters in the delightfully cosmopolitan and cultured city of Athens. Here he had been joined by his good friend Gaius Memmius, who on his return to Rome from governing Macedonia had found himself arraigned in Glaucia's extortion court along with Gaius Flavius Fimbria, his partner-in-crime in the grain swindle. Fimbria had been convicted heavily, but Memmius was unlucky enough to be convicted by one vote. He chose Athens as his place of exile because his friend Antonius spent so much time there, and he needed his friend Antonius's support in the matter of an appeal to the Senate to quash his conviction. That he was able to defray the costs of this expensive exercise was due to pure chance; while governing Macedonia, he had almost literally tripped over a cache of gold in a captured Scordisci village one hundred talents of it. Like Caepio at Tolosa, Memmius had seen no reason why he ought to share the gold with anybody, so he didn't. Until he dropped some of it into Antonius's open hand in Athens. And a few months later got his recall to Rome and his seat in the Senate reinstated. Since the pirate war was properly concluded, Gaius Memmius waited in Athens until Marcus Antonius Orator was ready to go home as well. Their friendship had prospered, and they formed a pact to seek the consulship as joint candidates. It was the end of November when Antonius sat down with his little army on the vacant fields of the Campus Martius, and demanded a triumph. Which the Senate, able to meet in the safety of the temple of Bellona to deal with this, was pleased to grant him. However, Antonius was informed that his triumph would have to wait until after the tenth day of December, as no tribunician elections had yet been held, and the Forum Romanum was still packed with the Head Count. Hopefully the tribunician elections would be held and the new college would enter office on the tenth day of the month, but a triumphal parade with the city in its current mood, Antonius was informed, was out of the question. It began to look to Antonius as if he would not be able to stand for the office of consul, for until his triumph was held, he had to remain outside the pomerium, the sacred boundary of the city; he still held imperium, which put him in exactly the same position as a foreign king, forbidden to enter Rome. And if he couldn't enter Rome, he couldn't announce himself as a candidate in the consular elections. However, his successful war had made him tremendously popular with the grain merchants and other businessmen, for traffic on the Middle Sea was safer and more predictable than in half a century. Could he stand for the consulship, there was every chance that he would win the senior position, even against Gaius Marius. And in spite of his part in Fimbria's grain swindle, Gaius Memmius's chances were not bad either, for he had been an intrepid foe of Jugurtha's, and fought Caepio bitterly when he returned the extortion court to the Senate. They were, as Catulus Caesar said to Scaurus Princeps Senatus, as popular a pair with the knights who formed the majority of the First and Second Classes as the boni could possibly ask and both of them were infinitely preferable to Gaius Marius. For of course everyone expected Gaius Marius back in Rome at the very last minute, all set to stand for his seventh consulship. The story of the stroke had been verified, but it didn't seem to have incapacitated Marius very much, and those who had made the journey to Cumae to see him had come away convinced it had not in any way affected the quality of his mind. No doubt of it in anyone's thoughts; Gaius Marius was sure to declare himself a candidate. The idea of presenting the electorate with a pair of candidates eager to stand as partners appealed to the Policy Makers very strongly; Antonius and Memmius together stood a chance of breaking Marius's iron hold on the senior chair. Except that Antonius stubbornly refused to give up his triumph for the sake of the consulship by yielding his imperium and stepping across the pomerium to declare himself a candidate. "I can run for the consulship next year," he said when Catulus Caesar and Scaurus Princeps Senatus came to see him on the Campus Martius. "The triumph is more important I'll probably never fight another good war again as long as I live." And from that stand he could not be budged. "All right," said Scaurus to Catulus Caesar as they came away from Antonius's camp despondent, "we'll just have to bend the rules a little. Gaius Marius thinks nothing of breaking them, so why should we be scrupulous when so much is at stake?" But it was Catulus Caesar who proposed their solution to the House, meeting with just enough members present to make a quorum in yet another safe location, the temple of Jupiter Stator near the Circus Flaminius. "These are trying times," Catulus Caesar said. "Normally all the candidates for the curule magistracies must present themselves to the Senate and the People in the Forum Romanum to declare their candidacies. Unfortunately the shortage of grain and the constant demonstrations in the Forum Romanum have rendered this location untenable. Might I humbly beg the Conscript Fathers to shift the candidates' tribunal for this one extraordinary year only! to a special convocation of the Centuriate Assembly in the saepta on the Campus Martius? We must do something about holding elections! And if we do shift the curule candidates' ceremony to the saepta, it's a start the requisite time between the declarations and the elections can elapse. It would also be fair to Marcus Antonius, who wants to stand for the consulship, but cannot cross the pomerium without abandoning his triumph, yet cannot hold his triumph because of the unrest in our hungry city. On the Campus Martius he can present himself as a candidate. We all expect that the crowds will go home after the tribunes of the plebs are elected and take office. So Marcus Antonius can hold his triumph as soon as the new college goes in, after which we can hold the curule elections." "Why are you so sure the crowds will go home after the new College of Tribunes of the Plebs takes office, Quintus Lutatius?" asked Saturninus. "I should have thought you of all people could answer that, Lucius Appuleius!" snapped Catulus Caesar. "It's you draws them to the Forum it's you up there day after day haranguing them, making them promises neither you nor this august body can keep! How can we buy grain that doesn't exist?" "I'll still be up there speaking to the crowd after my term is over," said Saturninus. "You will not," said Catulus Caesar. "Once you're a privatus again, Lucius Appuleius, if it takes me a month and a hundred men, I'll find some law on the tablets or some precedent that makes it illegal for you to speak from the rostra or any other spot in the Forum!" Saturninus laughed, roars of laughter, howls of laughter; and yet no one there made the mistake of thinking he was amused. "Search to your heart's content, Quintus Lutatius! It won't make any difference. I'm not going to be a privatus after the current tribunician year is finished, because I'm going to be a tribune of the plebs all over again! Yes, I'm taking a leaf out of Gaius Marius's book, and with no legal constraints to have you yammering after my blood! There's nothing to stop a man's seeking the tribunate of the plebs over and over again!" "There are custom and tradition," said Scaurus. "Enough to stop all men save you and Gaius Gracchus from seeking a third term. And you ought to take warning from Gaius Gracchus. He died in the Grove of Furrina with only a slave for company." "I have better company than that," countered Saturninus. "We men of Picenum stick together eh, Titus Labienus? eh, Gaius Saufeius? You'll not get rid of us so easily!" "Don't tempt the gods," said Scaurus. "They do love a challenge from men, Lucius Appuleius!" "I'm not afraid of the gods, Marcus Aemilius! The gods are on my side," said Saturninus, and left the meeting. "I tried to tell him," said Sulla, passing Scaurus and Catulus Caesar. "He's riding a half-mad horse for a fall." "So's that one," said Catulus Caesar to Scaurus after Sulla was out of earshot. "So is half the Senate, if only we knew it," said Scaurus, lingering to look around him. "This truly is a beautiful temple, Quintus Lutatius! A credit to Metellus Macedonicus. But it was a lonely place today without Metellus Numidicus." Then he shrugged his shoulders, cheered up. "Come, we'd better catch our esteemed junior consul before he bolts to the very back of his warren. He can perform the sacrifice to Mars as well as to Jupiter Optimus Maximus if we make it an all-white suovetaurilla, that should surely buy us divine approval to hold the curule candidacy ceremony on the Campus Martius!" "Who's going to foot the bill for a white cow, a white sow, and a white ewe?" asked Catulus Caesar, jerking his head to where Metellus Piglet and Caepio Junior were standing together. "Our Treasury quaestors will squeal louder than all three of the sacrificial victims." "Oh, I think Lucius Valerius the white rabbit can pay," said Scaurus, grinning. "He's got access to Mars!"