Colleen McCullough - 1. First Man in Rome

"And I'll bet you don't even know what your agents did about the men whose farms you confiscated," said Rutilius. "You're right, I don't," said Marius, looking uncomfortable. ' 'I had no idea there were so many Italians enslaved to us. It's like enslaving Romans!" "Well, we do that too when Romans fall into debt." "Less and less, Publius Rutilius!" "True." "I shall see to the Italian complaint the moment I'm in office," said Gaius Marius with decision. Italian dissatisfaction hovered darkly in the background that December, its nucleus the warlike tribes of the central highlands behind the Tiber and Liris valleys, led by the Marsi and the Samnites. But there were other rumblings as well, aimed more at the privileges of the Roman nobility, and generated by other Roman nobles. The new tribunes of the plebs were very active indeed. Smarting because his father was one of those incompetent generals held in such odium at the moment, Lucius Cassius Longinus tabled a startling law for discussion in a contio meeting of the Plebeian Assembly. All those men whom the Assembly had stripped of their imperium must also lose their seats in the Senate. That was declaring war upon Caepio with a vengeance! For of course it was generally conceded that Caepio, if and when tried for treason under the present system, would be acquitted. Thanks to his power and wealth, he held too many knights in the First and Second Classes in his sway not to be acquitted. But the Plebeian Assembly law stripping him of his seat in the Senate was something quite different. And fight back though Metellus Numidicus and his colleagues did, the bill proceeded on its way toward becoming law. Lucius Cassius was not going to share his father's odium. And then the religious storm broke, burying all other considerations under its fury; since it had its funny side, this was inevitable, given the Roman delight in the ridiculous. When Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus had dropped dead on the rostra during the row about Gaius Marius's standing for the consulship in absentia, he left one loose end behind that it was not in his power to tie up. He was a pontifex, a priest of Rome, and his death left a vacancy in the College of Pontifices. At the time, the Pontifex Maximus was the ageing Lucius Gaecilius Metellus Dalmaticus, and among the priests were Marcus Aemilius Scaurus Princeps Senatus, and Publius Licinius Crassus, and Scipio Nasica. New priests were co-opted by the surviving members of the college, a plebeian being replaced by a plebeian, and a patrician by a patrician; the colleges of priests and of augurs normally stood at half-plebeian, half-patrician. According to tradition, the new priest would belong to the same family as the dead priest, thus enabling priesthoods and augurships to pass from father to son, or uncle to nephew, or cousin to cousin. The family honor and dignitas had to be preserved. And naturally Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus Junior, now the head of his branch of the family, expected to be asked to take his father's place as a priest. However, there was a problem, and the problem's name was Scaurus. When the College of Pontifices met to co-opt its new member, Scaurus announced that he was not in favor of giving the dead Ahenobarbus's place to his son. One of his reasons he did not mention aloud, though it underlay everything he said, and loomed equally large in the minds of the thirteen priests who listened to him; namely, that Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus had been a pigheaded, argumentative, irascible, and unlikable man, and had sired a son who was even worse. No Roman nobleman minded the idiosyncrasies of his peers, and every Roman nobleman was prepared to put up with quite a gamut of the less admirable character traits; provided, that is, that he could get away from these fellows. But the priestly colleges were close-knit and met within the cramped confines of the Regia, the little office of the Pontifex Maximus and young Ahenobarbus was only thirty-three years old. To those like Scaurus who had suffered his father for many years, the idea of suffering the son was not at all attractive. And, as luck would have it, Scaurus had two valid reasons to offer his fellow priests when moving that the new place not go to young Ahenobarbus. The first was that when Marcus Livius Drusus the censor had died, his priesthood had not gone to his son, nineteen at the time. This had been felt to be just a little too underage. The second was that young Marcus Livius Drusus was suddenly displaying alarming tendencies to abandon his natural inheritance of intense conservatism; Scaurus felt that if he was given his father's priesthood, it would draw him back into the fold of his tradition-bound ancestors. His father had been an obdurate enemy of Gaius Gracchus, yet the way young Drusus was carrying on in the Forum Romanum, he sounded more like Gaius Gracchus! There were extenuating circumstances, Scaurus argued, particularly the shock of Arausio. So, what nicer and better way could there be than to co-opt young Drusus into his father's priestly college? The thirteen other priests, including Dalmaticus Pontifex Maximus, thought this was a splendid way out of the Ahenobarbus dilemma, particularly because old Ahenobarbus had secured an augurship for his younger son, Lucius, not long before he died. The family could not therefore argue that it was utterly devoid of priestly clout. But when Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus the younger heard that his expected priesthood was going to Marcus Livius Drusus, he was not pleased. In fact, he was outraged. At the next meeting of the Senate he announced that he was going to prosecute Marcus Aemilius Scaurus Princeps Senatus on charges of sacrilege. The occasion had been the adoption of a patrician by a plebeian, this complicated affair needing a sanction from the College of Pontifices as well as the Lictors of the Thirty Curiae; young Ahenobarbus alleged that Scaurus had not attended to the requirements properly. Well aware of the real reason behind this sudden espousal of sacerdotal punctiliousness, the House was not a bit impressed. Nor was Scaurus, who simply got to his feet and looked down his nose at the puce-faced Ahenobarbus. "Do you, Gnaeus Domitius not even a pontifex! accuse me, Marcus Aemilius, pontifex and Leader of the House, of sacrilege?" asked Scaurus in freezing tones. "Run away and play with your new toys in the Plebeian Assembly until you finally grow up!" And that seemed the end of the matter. Ahenobarbus flounced out of the House amid roars of laughter, catcalls, cries of "Sore loser!" But Ahenobarbus wasn't beaten yet. Scaurus had told him to run away and play with his new toys in the Plebeian Assembly, so that was precisely what he would do! Within two days he had tabled a new bill, and before the old year was done he had pushed it through the discussion and voting processes into formal law. In future, new members for priesthoods and for augurships would not be co-opted by the surviving members, said the lex Domitia de sacerdotiis; they would be elected by a special tribal assembly, and anyone would be able to stand. "Ducky," said Metellus Dalmaticus Pontifex Maximus to Scaurus. "Just ducky!" But Scaurus only laughed and laughed. "Oh, Lucius Caecilius, admit he's twisted our pontifical tails beautifully!" he said, wiping his eyes. "I like him the better for it, I must say." "The next one of us to pop off, he's going to be running for election," said Dalmaticus Pontifex Maximus gloomily. "And why not? He's earned it," said Scaurus. "But what if it's me? He'd be Pontifex Maximus as well!" "What a wonderful comeuppance for all of us that would be!" said Scaurus, impenitent. "I hear he's after Marcus Junius Silanus now," said Metellus Numidicus. "That's right, for illegally starting a war with the Germans in Gaul-across-the-Alps," said Dalmaticus Pontifex Maximus. "Well, he can have the Plebeian Assembly try Silanus for that, where a treason charge means going to the Centuries," said Scaurus, and whistled. "He's good, you know! I begin to regret that we didn't co-opt him to take his father's place." "Oh, rubbish, you do not!" said Metellus Numidicus. "You are enjoying every moment of this ghastly fiasco." "And why shouldn't I?" asked Scaurus, feigning surprise. "This is Rome, Conscript Fathers! Rome as Rome ought to be! All of us noblemen engaged in healthy competition!" "Rubbish, rubbish, rubbish!" cried Metellus Numidicus, still seething because Gaius Marius would be consul very soon. "Rome as we know it is dying! Men elected consul a second time within three years and who weren't even present in Rome to show themselves in the toga Candida the Head Count admitted into the legions priests and augurs elected the Senate's decisions about who will govern what overturned by the People the State paying out fortunes to field Rome's armies New Men and recent arrivals running things tchah!"