Colleen McCullough - 1. First Man in Rome

November was just beginning to promise rain when an embassage arrived in Cirta from King Bocchus of Mauretania. Marius let its members stew for several days, ignoring their pleas of urgency. "They'll be soft as cushions," he said to Sulla when finally he consented to see them. "I'm not going to forgive King Bocchus," he said as his opening gambit, "so go home! You're wasting my time." The spokesman was a younger brother of the King, one Bogud, and now Prince Bogud stepped forward quickly, before Marius could wave at his lictors to eject the embassage. "Gaius Marius, Gaius Marius, my brother the King is only too aware of the magnitude of his transgressions!" said the prince. ' 'He isn't asking for forgiveness, nor is he asking that you recommend to the Senate and People of Rome that he be reinstated as a Friend and Ally of the Roman People. What he does ask is that in the spring you send two of your most senior legates to his court in Tingis beyond the Pillars of Hercules. There he will explain to them most carefully why he allied himself with King Jugurtha, and he asks only that they listen to him with open ears. They are not to say one word to him in reply they are to report what he has said to you, so that you may reply. Do, I entreat you, grant my brother the King this favor!" "What, send two of my top men all the way to Tingis at the start of the campaigning season?" asked Marius with well-feigned incredulity. "No! The best I'll do is send them as far as Saldae." This was a small seaport not far to the west of Cirta's seaport, Rusicade. The whole embassage threw up hands in horror. "Quite impossible!" cried Bogud. "My brother the King wishes to avoid King Jugurtha at all costs!" "Icosium," said Marius, naming another seaport, this one about two hundred miles to the west of Rusicade. "I'll send my senior legate, Aulus Manlius, and my quaestor, Lucius Cornelius Sulla, as far as Icosium but now, Prince Bogud, not in the spring." "Impossible!" cried Bogud. "The King is in Tingis!" "Rubbish!" said Marius scornfully. "The King is on his way back to Mauretania with his tail between his legs. If you send a fast rider after him, I'll guarantee he has no trouble reaching Icosium about the same moment as my legates sail in." He glared at Bogud balefully. "That is my best and only! offer. Take it or leave it." Bogud took it. When the embassage embarked two days later, it sailed together with Aulus Manlius and Sulla upon a ship bound for Icosium, having sent that fast rider to catch up with the tattered remnants of the Moorish army. "He was waiting for us when we sailed in, just as you said," Sulla reported a month later, upon his return. "Where's Aulus Manlius?" asked Marius. Sulla's eyes twinkled. "Aulus Manlius isn't well, so he decided to come back overland." "A serious indisposition?" "I've never seen a poorer sailor," said Sulla reminiscently. "Well, I never knew that about him!" said Marius, amazed. "I take it then that you did most of the careful listening, not Aulus Manlius?" "Yes," said Sulla, and grinned. "He's a funny little man, Bocchus. Round like a ball from too many sweeties. Very pompous on the surface, very timid underneath." "It's a combination goes together," said Marius. "Well, it's clear enough that he's afraid of Jugurtha; I don't think he's lying about that. And if we were to give him strong guarantees that we have no intention of removing him from rule in Mauretania, I think he'd be delighted to serve Rome's interests. But Jugurtha works on him, you know." "Jugurtha works on everyone. Did you adhere to Bocchus's rule about saying nothing, or did you speak up?" "Oh, I let him talk himself out first," said Sulla, "but then I spoke up. He tried to get all royal and dismiss me, so I told him his had been a one-sided bargain that did not bind your representatives as far as you were concerned." "What did you have to say?" asked Marius. "That if he was a clever little king, he'd ignore Jugurtha in the future and stick by Rome." "How did he take that?" "Quite well. Certainly I left him in a chastened mood." "Then we'll wait and see what happens next," said Marius. "One thing I did find out," added Sulla, "was that Jugurtha has come to the end of his recruiting tether. Even the Gaetuli are refusing to give him more men. Numidia is very tired of the war, and hardly anyone in the kingdom, be he a dweller in the settled regions or a nomad of the inland, now feels there's the remotest chance of winning." "But will they hand over Jugurtha?" Sulla shook his head. "No, of course they won't!" "Never mind," said Marius, showing his teeth. "Next year, Lucius Cornelius! Next year we'll get him."

Shortly before the old year ended, Gaius Marius received a letter from Publius Rutilius Rufus, long delayed en route by a series of appalling storms.

I know you wanted me to stand for consul in tandem with you, Gaius Marius, but an opportunity has come up which I'd be a fool to ignore. Yes, I intend to stand for the consulship of next year, and am lodging my name as a candidate tomorrow. The well seems to have run temporarily dry, you see. No one of any note is standing. What, not Quintus Lutatius Catulus Caesar again? I hear you ask. No, he's lying very low these days, as he belongs too obviously to that faction which has defended all our consuls responsible for the loss of so many soldier lives. So far the best nominee is a New Man of sorts Gnaeus Mallius Maximus, no less. He's not a bad sort of fellow; I could certainly work with him but if he's the best candidate in the field, I'm just about a certainty. Your own command is prorogued for the coming year, as you probably already know. Rome is really a very boring place at the moment; I have hardly any news to give you, and precious little by way of scandal. Your family are all well, Young Marius being a joy and a delight, very domineering and ahead of his years, into every sort of mischief and driving his mother mad, just as a small boy ought. However, your father-in-law, Caesar, is not well, though of course, being Caesar, he never complains. There's something wrong with his voice, and no amount of honey seems to fix it. And that really is the end of the news! How frightful. What can I talk about? Barely a page filled, and bare is right. Well, there's my niece Aurelia. And who on the face of this earth is Aurelia? I hear you ask. Nor are you one bit interested, I'll warrant. Never mind. You can listen; I'll be brief. I'm sure you know the story of Helen of Troy, even if you are an Italian hayseed with no Greek. She was so beautiful every single king and prince in all of Greece wanted to marry her. Of like kind is my niece. So beautiful that everyone of any note in Rome wants to marry her. All the children of my sister, Rutilia, are handsome, but Aurelia is more than merely handsome. When she was a child, everyone deplored her face it was too bony, too hard, too everything. But now she's turning eighteen, everyone is lauding exactly the same face. I love her very much, as a matter of fact. Now why? I hear you ask. True, I am not normally interested in the female offspring of my many close relatives, even my own daughter and my two granddaughters. But I know why I prize my darling Aurelia. Because of her serving maid. For when she turned thirteen, my sister and her husband, Marcus Aurelius Cotta, decided she ought to have a permanent maidservant who would also function as companion and watchdog. So they bought a very good girl, and gave the girl to Aurelia. Who after a very short time announced that she didn't want this particular girl. "Why?" asked my sister, Rutilia. "Because she's lazy," said the thirteen-year-old. Back the parents went to their dealer, and, after even more care, chose another girl. Whom Aurelia also refused. "Why?" asked my sister, Rutilia. "Because she thinks she can dominate me," said Aurelia. And back the parents went a third time, and they combed Spurius Postumius Glycon's books for another girl. All three, I add, were highly educated, Greek, and vocally intelligent. But Aurelia didn't want the third girl either. "Why?" asked my sister, Rutilia. "Because she's got an eye for the main chance; she's already fluttering her lashes at the steward," said Aurelia. "All right, go and pick your own maidservant!" said my sister, Rutilia, refusing to have anything more to do with the whole business. When Aurelia came home with her choice, the family was appalled. For there stood this sixteen-year-old girl of the Gallic Arverni, a vastly tall and skinny creature with a horrid round pink short-nosed face, faded blue eyes, cruelly cropped hair (it had been sold to make a wig when her previous master needed money), and the most enormous hands and feet I have ever seen on anyone, male or female. Her name, announced Aurelia, was Cardixa. Now as you know, Gaius Marius, I am always intrigued with the backgrounds of those we bring into our houses as slaves. For, it has always struck me, we spend considerably more time deciding upon the menu for a dinner party than we do upon the people whom we trust to care for our clothes, our persons, our children, and even our reputations. Whereas, it struck me immediately, my thirteen-year-old niece Aurelia had chosen this ghastly Cardixa girl for precisely the right reasons. She wanted someone loyal, hardworking, submissive, and well intentioned, rather than someone who looked good, spoke Greek like a native (don't they all?), and could hold up her end of a conversation. Thus I made it my business to find out about Cardixa, which was very simple. I merely asked Aurelia, who knew the girl's whole history. She had been sold into captivity with her mother when she was four years old, after Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus had conquered the Arverni and carved out our province of Gaul-across-the-Alps. Not long after the pair arrived in Rome, the mother died, it appears of homesickness. So the child became a kind of page girl, trotting back and forth with chamber pots, pillows, and pouffes. She was sold several times after she lost her toddler's prettiness and began to grow into the gangling homely weed I saw when Aurelia brought her home. One master had sexually molested her when she was eight; another master had flogged her every time his wife complained; a third master had her taught to read and write along with his daughter, a recalcitrant student. "So your pity was stirred, and you wanted to bring this poor creature into a kind home," I said to Aurelia. And here, Gaius Marius, is why I love this girl more than I love my own daughter. For my comment did not please her at all. She reared back a little like a serpent, and said, "Certainly not! Pity is admirable, Uncle Publius, for so all our books tell us, and our parents too. But I would find pity a poor reason for choosing a maidservant! If Cardixa's life has not been ideal, that is no fault of mine. Therefore I am in no way morally bound to rectify her misfortunes. I chose Cardixa because I am sure she will prove loyal, hardworking, submissive, and well intentioned. A pretty bucket is no guarantee that the book it contains is worth reading." Oh, don't you love her too, Gaius Marius, just a little? Thirteen years old she was at the time! And the strangest part about it was that though in my atrocious handwriting now, what she said may sound priggish, or even unfeeling, I knew she was neither prig nor cold-heart. Common sense, Gaius Marius! My niece has common sense. And how many women do you know with such a wonderful gift as that? All these fellows here want to marry her because of her face and her figure and her fortune, where I would rather give her to someone who prized her common sense. But how does one decide whose suit to favor? That is the burning question we are all asking each other.