Colleen McCullough - 1. First Man in Rome

"Gaius Marius," said Marcus Aemilius Scaurus in the House when the lex Manila had been passed, empowering the consuls of the day to call for volunteers among the capite censi, "is a ravening, slavering wolfshead, running amok! Gaius Marius is a pernicious ulcer upon the body of this House! Gaius Marius is the single most obvious reason why, Conscript Fathers, we should close our ranks against New Men, never even permit them a seat at the very back of this venerable establishment! What, I ask you, does a Gaius Marius know about the nature of Rome, the imperishable ideals of its traditional government? "I am Princeps Senatus the Leader of the House and in all my many years within this body of men I love as the manifestation of the spirit of Rome it is, never have I seen a more insidious, dangerous, piratical individual than Gaius Marius! Twice within three months he has taken the hallowed prerogatives of the Senate and smashed them on the uncouth altar of the People! First he nullified our senatorial edict giving Quintus Caecilius Metellus an extended command in Africa. And now, to gratify his own ambitions, he exploits the ignorance of the People to grant him powers of recruitment of soldiers that are unnatural, unconscionable, unreasonable, and unacceptable!" The meeting was heavily attended; of the 300 living senators, over 280 had come to this session of the House, winkled out of their homes and even their sickbeds by Scaurus and the other leaders. And they sat upon their little folding stools in the three rising tiers along either side of the Curia Hostilia like a huge flock of snowy hens gone to roost on their perches, only the purple-bordered togas of those who had been senior magistrates to relieve that blinding, shadowless mass of white. The ten tribunes of the plebs sat upon their long wooden bench on the floor of the House, to one side of the only other magistrates accorded the distinction of isolation from the main body two curule aediles, six praetors, and two consuls all seated upon their beautiful carved ivory chairs raised up on a dais at the far end of the hall, opposite the pair of huge bronze doors which gave entrance to the chamber. On that dais sat Gaius Marius, next to and slightly behind the senior consul, Cassius, his isolation purely one of the spirit; Marius appeared calm, content, almost catlike, and he listened to Scaurus without dismay, without anger. The deed was done. He had his mandate. He could afford to be magnanimous. "This House must do whatever it can to limit the power Gaius Marius has just given the Head Count. For the Head Count must remain what it has always been a useless collection of hungry mouths we who are more privileged must care for, feed, and tolerate without ever asking it for any service in return. For while it does no work for us and has no use, it is no more and no less than a simple dependant, Rome's wife who toils not, and has no power, and no voice. It can claim nothing from us that we are not willing to give it, for it does nothing. It simply is. "But thanks to Gaius Marius we now find ourselves faced with all the problems and grotesqueries of what I must call an army of professional soldiers men who have no other source of income, no other way of making a living men who will want to stay on in the army from campaign to campaign men who will cost the State enormous sums of money. And, Conscript Fathers, men who will claim they now have a voice in Rome's scheme of things, for they do Rome a service, they work for Rome. You heard the People. We of the Senate, who administer the Treasury and apportion out Rome's public funds, must dig into Rome's coffers and find the money to equip Gaius Marius's army with arms, armor, and all the other gear of war. We are also directed by the People to pay these soldiers on a regular basis instead of at the very end of a campaign, when booty is available to help defray the outlay. The cost of fielding armies of insolvent men will financially break the back of the State, there can be no doubt of it." "Nonsense, Marcus Aemilius!" Marius interjected. "There is more money in Rome's Treasury than Rome knows what to do with because, Conscript Fathers, you never spend any of it! All you do is hoard it." The rumbling began, the faces started to mottle, but Scaurus held up his right arm for silence, and got it. "Yes, Rome's Treasury is full," he said. "That is how a treasury should be! Even with the cost of the public works I instituted while censor, the Treasury remains full. But in the past there have been times when it was very empty indeed. The three wars we fought against Carthage brought us to the very brink of fiscal disaster. So what, I ask you, is wrong with making sure that never happens again? While her Treasury is full, Rome is prosperous." "Rome will be more prosperous because the men of her Head Count have money in their purses to spend," said Marius. "That is not true, Gaius Marius!" cried Scaurus. "The men of the Head Count will fritter their money away it will disappear from circulation and never grow." He walked from where he stood at his stool in the front row of the seated tiers, and positioned himself near the great bronze doors, where both sides of the House could see as well as hear him. "I say to you, Conscript Fathers, that we must resist with might and main in the future whenever a consul avails himself of the lex Manila and recruits among the Head Count. The People have specifically ordered us to pay for Gaius Marius's army, but there is nothing in the law as it has been inscribed to compel us to pay for the equipping of whichever is the next army of paupers! And that is the tack we must take. Let the consul of the future cull all the paupers he wants to fill up the ranks of his legions but when he applies to us, the custodians of Rome's monies, for the funds to pay his legions as well as to outfit them, we must turn him down. "The State cannot afford to field an army of paupers, it is that simple. The Head Count is feckless, irresponsible, without respect for property or gear. Is a man whose shirt of mail was given to him free of charge, its cost borne by the State, going to look after his shirt of mail? No! Of course he won't! He'll leave it lying about in salt air or downpours to rust, he'll pull up stakes in a camp and forget to take it with him, he'll drape it over the foot of the bed of some foreign whore and then wonder why she stole it in the night to equip her Scordisci boyfriend! And what about the time when these paupers are no longer fit enough to serve in the legions? Our traditional soldiers are owners of property, they have homes to return to, money invested, a little solid, tangible worth to them! Where pauper veterans will be a menace, for how many of them will save any of the money the State pays them? How many will bank their share of the booty? No, they will emerge at the end of their years of paid service without homes to go to, without the wherewithal to live. Ah yes, I hear you say, but what's strange about that, to them? They live from hand to mouth always. But, Conscript Fathers, these military paupers will grow used to the State's feeding them, clothing them, housing them. And when upon retirement all that is taken away, they will grumble, just as any wife who has been spoiled will grumble when the money is no longer there. Are we then going to be called upon to find a pension for these pauper veterans? "It must not be allowed to happen! I repeat, fellow members of this Senate I lead, that our future tactics must be designed to pull the teeth of those men conscienceless enough to recruit among the Head Count by adamantly refusing to contribute one sestertius toward the cost of their armies!" Gaius Marius rose to reply. "A more shortsighted and ridiculous attitude would be hard to find in a Parthian satrap's harem, Marcus Aemilius! Why won't you understand? If Rome is to hold on to what is even at this moment Rome's, then Rome must invest in all her people, including the people who have no entitlement to vote in the Centuries! We are wasting our farmers and small businessmen by sending them to fight, especially when we dower them with brainless incompetents like Carbo and Silanus oh, are you there, Marcus Junius Silanus? I am sorry! “What's the matter with availing ourselves of the services of a very large section of our society which until this time has been about as much use to Rome as tits on a bull? If the only real objection we can find is that we're going to have to be a bit freer with the mouldering contents of the Treasury, then we're as stupid as we are shortsighted! You, Marcus Aemilius, are convinced that the men of the Head Count will prove dismal soldiers. Well, I think they'll prove wonderful soldiers! Are we to continue to moan about paying them? Are we going to deny them a retirement gift at the end of their active service? That's what you want, Marcus Aemilius! "But I would like to see the State part with some of Rome's public lands so that upon retirement, a soldier of the Head Count can be given a small parcel of land to farm or to sell. A pension of sorts. And an infusion of some badly needed new blood into the more than decimated ranks of our smallholding farmers. How can that be anything but good for Rome? Gentlemen, gentlemen, why can't you see that Rome can grow richer only if Rome is willing to share its prosperity with the sprats in its sea as well as the whales?" But the House was on its feet in an uproar, and Lucius Cassius Longinus, the senior consul, decided prudence was the order of the day. So he closed the meeting, and dismissed the Conscript Fathers of the Senate.