Colleen McCullough - 1. First Man in Rome

But not the speech of Metellus Dalmaticus Pontifex Maximus nor the passing of Metellus Dalmaticus Pontifex Maximus nor all the ire and power of the Senate could prevent the Plebeian Assembly from passing Saturninus's agrarian bill into law. And the tribunician career of Lucius Appuleius Saturninus was off to a resounding start, a curious compound of infamy and adulation. "I love it," said Saturninus to Glaucia over dinner late in the afternoon of the day the agrarian lex Appuleia was voted into law. They often did dine together, and usually at Glaucia's house; Saturninus's wife had never properly recovered from the awful events following Scaurus's denunciation of Saturninus when the quaestor at Ostia. "Yes, I do love it! Just think, Gaius Servilius, I might have had quite a different kind of career if it hadn't been for that nosy old mentula, Scaurus." "The rostra suits you, all right," said Glaucia, eating hot-house grapes. "Maybe there is something shapes our lives after all." Saturninus snorted. "Oh, you mean Quirinus!" "You can sneer if you want. But I maintain that life is a very bizarre business," said Glaucia. "There's more pattern and less chance to it than there is in a game of cottabus." "What, no element of Stoic or Epicure, Gaius Servilius? Neither fatalism nor hedonism? You'd better be careful, or you might confound all the old Greek killjoys who maintain so loudly that we Romans will never produce a philosophy we didn't borrow from them," laughed Saturninus. "Greeks are. Romans do. Take your pick! I never met a man yet who managed to combine both states of being. We're the opposite ends of the alimentary canal, we Greeks and Romans. Romans are the mouth we shove it in. Greeks are the arsehole they shove it out. No disrespect to the Greeks intended, simply a figure of speech," said Glaucia, punctuating his statement by popping grapes into the Roman end of the alimentary canal. "Since one end has no job to do without the contributions of the other, we'd better stick together," said Saturninus. Glaucia grinned. "There speaks a Roman!" he said. "Through and through, despite Metellus Dalmaticus's saying I'm not one. Wasn't that a turnup for the books, the old fellator up and dying so very timely? If the Policy Makers were more enterprising, they might have made an undying example of him. Metellus Dalmaticus the New Quirinus!" Saturninus swirled the lees in his cup and tossed them expertly onto an empty plate; the splatter they made was counted according to the number of arms radiating out of the central mass. "Three," he said, and shivered. "That's the death number." "And where's our Skeptic now?" gibed Glaucia. "Well, it's unusual, only three." Glaucia spat expertly, and destroyed the form of the splash with three grape seeds. "There! Three done in by three!" "We'll both be dead in three years," said Saturninus. "Lucius Appuleius, you're a complete contradiction! You are as white as Lucius Cornelius Sulla, and with far less excuse. Come, it's only a game of cottabus!” said Glaucia, and changed the subject. "I agree, life on the rostra is far more exciting than life as a darling of the Policy Makers. It's a great challenge, politically manipulating the People. A general has his legions. A demagogue has nothing sharper than his tongue." He chuckled. "And wasn't it a pleasure to watch the crowd chase Marcus Baebius from the Forum this morning, when he tried to interpose his veto?" "A sight to cure sore eyes!" grinned Saturninus, the memory banishing ghostly fingers, three or thirty-three. "By the way," said Glaucia with another abrupt change of subject, "have you heard the latest rumor in the Forum?" "That Quintus Servilius Caepio stole the Gold of Tolosa himself, you mean?" asked Saturninus. Glaucia looked disappointed. "Dis take you, I thought I'd got in first!" "I had it in a letter from Manius Aquillius," Saturninus said. "When Gaius Marius is too busy, Aquillius writes to me instead. And I confess I don't repine, since he's a far better man of letters than the Great Man." "From Gaul-across-the-Alps? How do they know?" "That's where the rumor began. Gaius Marius has acquired a prisoner. The King of Tolosa, no less. And he alleges that Caepio stole the gold all fifteen thousand talents of it." Glaucia whistled. "Fifteen thousand talents! Mazes the mind, doesn't it? A bit much, though I mean, everyone understands that a governor is entitled to his perquisites, but more gold than there is in the Treasury? A trifle excessive, surely!" "True, true. However, the rumor will work very well for Gaius Norbanus when he brings his case against Caepio, won't it? The story of the gold will be around the whole city in less time than it takes Metella Calva to lift her dress for a lusty gang of navvies." "I like your metaphor!" said Glaucia. And suddenly he looked very brisk. "Enough of this idle chatter! You and I have work to do on treason bills and the like. We can't afford to let anything go unnoticed." The work Saturninus and Glaucia did on treason bills and the like was as carefully planned and co-ordinated as any grand military strategy. They intended to remove treason trials from the province of the Centuries and the impossible sequence of dead ends and stone walls this entailed; after which, they intended to remove extortion and bribery trials from the control of the Senate by replacing the senatorial juries with juries composed entirely of knights. "First, we have to see Norbanus convict Caepio in the Plebeian Assembly on some permissible charge as long as the charge isn't worded to say treason, we can do that right now, with popular feeling running so high against Caepio because of the stolen gold," said Saturninus. "It's never worked before in the Plebeian Assembly," said Glaucia dubiously. "Our hot-headed friend Ahenobarbus tried it when he charged Silanus with illegally causing a war against the Germans no mention of treason there! But the Plebeian Assembly still threw the case out. The problem is that no one likes treason trials." "Well, we keep working on it," said Saturninus. "In order to get a conviction out of the Centuries, the accused has to stand there and say out of his own mouth that he deliberately connived at ruining his country. And no one is fool enough to say that. Gaius Marius is right. We have to clip the wings of the Policy Makers by showing them that they're not above either moral reproach or the law. And we can only do that in a body of men who are not senators." "Why not pass your new treason law at once, then try Caepio in its special court?" asked Glaucia. "Yes, yes, I know the senators will squeal like trapped pigs don't they always?" Saturninus grimaced. "We want to live, don't we? Even if we do only have three more years, that's better than dying the day after tomorrow!" "You and your three years!" "Look," Saturninus persevered, "if we can actually get Caepio convicted in the Plebeian Assembly, the Senate will take the hint we're aiming to give it that the People are fed up with senators sheltering fellow senators from just retribution. That there's not one law for senators and another for everybody else. It's time the People woke up! And I'm the boy to administer the whack that will wake them up. Since this Republic began, the Senate has gulled the People into believing that senators are a better breed of Roman, entitled to do and say whatever they want. Vote for Lucius Tiddlypuss his family gave Rome her first consul! And does it matter that Lucius Tiddlypuss is a self-seeking gold-hungry incompetent? No! Lucius Tiddlypuss has the family name, and the family tradition of service in Rome's public sphere. The Brothers Gracchi were right. Take the courts away from the Lucius Tiddlypuss cohort by giving them to the knights!" Glaucia was looking thoughtful. "Something has just occurred to me, Lucius Appuleius. The People are at least a responsible and well-educated lot. Pillars of Roman tradition. But what if one day someone starts talking about the Head Count the way you're talking about the People?" Saturninus laughed. "As long as their bellies are full, and the aediles put on a good show at the games, the Head Count are happy. To make the Head Count politically conscious, you'd have to turn the Forum Romanum into the Circus Maximus!" "Their bellies aren't quite as full as they ought to be this winter," said Glaucia. "Full enough, thanks to none other than our revered Leader of the House, Marcus Aemilius Scaurus himself. You know, I don't mourn the fact that we'll never persuade Numidicus or Catulus Caesar to see things our way, but I can't help thinking it a pity we'll never win Scaurus over," said Saturninus. Glaucia was gazing at him curiously. "You never have held it against Scaurus for throwing you out of the House, have you?" "No. He did what he thought was right. But one day, Gaius Servilius, I'll find out who the real culprits were, and then they'll wish they had as easy a time of it as Oedipus!'' said Saturninus savagely.