The Tribune's Curse (2 page)

“Well, I must be going, Decius. Good luck.” He clapped me on the shoulder, raising a cloud of the fine chalk with which my toga had been whitened. It settled all over him, making him sneeze.

“Careful, there, Scipio,” I said. “People might think you’re standing for office, too.” He went off to his meeting, snorting and brushing at his clothes. This put me in an even more cheerful mood. Then I caught sight of a man I was far happier to see.

“Greetings, Decius Caecilius Metellus the Younger!” he shouted, striding toward me with a great mob of hard-looking clients behind him. His voice carried clear across the Forum, and people parted before him like water before the ram of a warship. Unlike Scipio he was accompanied by his lictors. By custom they were supposed to precede him and clear his way with their
fasces
, but it took a fleet-footed man to stay ahead of this particular magistrate.

“Greetings,
Praetor Urbanus!
” I hailed. Titus Annius Milo and I were old friends, but here in public only his formal title
would do. Starting as a street thug newly arrived from Ostia, he had somehow leapt ahead of me on the
cursus honorum
, and I never understood exactly how he did it. Whatever the means, nobody ever deserved the honor more. He was living proof that all you needed was citizenship to make something of yourself in Rome. It helped that he had energy to match his ambition, was awesomely capable, inhumanly strong, handsome as a god, and utterly ruthless.

He embraced me expertly, never actually touching me and thus saving himself from a chalking. His crowd of toughs made a ludicrous attempt at looking dignified and respectable. At least he kept them reined in out of respect for his office. He was the deadly enemy of Clodius, and everyone knew that in the next year, when neither of them held office, it would be open warfare in the streets of Rome.

“On your way to court?” I asked him.

“A full day’s schedule, I’m afraid,” he said ruefully. If there was one thing Milo hated, it was sitting still, even when he was doing something important. On the other hand, he had a trick of making everybody involved in a suit extremely uneasy with the way that, at intervals, he rose from his curule chair and paced back and forth across the width of the praetor’s platform, glaring at them all the while. It was just his way of working off his abundance of nervous energy, but he looked exactly like a Hyrcanian tiger pacing up and down in its cage before being turned loose on some poor wretch who got on the wrong side of the law.

“How are the renovations coming along?” I asked him.

“Almost finished,” he said, looking pained. He was married to Fausta, the daughter of Sulla’s old age and possibly the most willful, extravagant woman of her generation. For years Milo had lived in a minor fortress in the middle of his territory, and Fausta had made it her first order of marital business to transform it into a setting worthy of a lordly Cornelian and daughter of a Dictator.

“If you’d like to admire them,” he said, brightening, “we want you and Julia to come to dinner this evening.”

“I’d be delighted!” Not only did I enjoy his company, but Julia and Fausta were good friends as well. Plus, I was in no position to turn down a free meal. My share of the loot from Caesar’s early conquests in Gaul had made me comfortably well-off for the first time in my adult life, but that wealth would vanish without a trace in the next year, inevitably.

“Good, good. Caius Cassius will be there, and young Antonius, if he bothers to show up. He’s been with Gabinius in Syria, but there’s been a lull in the fighting, and he got bored and came home. He never stays still for long.”

He was referring, of course, to Marcus Antonius, one day to be notorious but back then known mainly as a leading light of Rome’s gilded youth, an uproarious, intemperate young man who was nonetheless intensely likable.

“It’s always fun when Antonius is there,” I said. “Who else?”

He waved a hand airily. “Whoever strikes my fancy today, and Fausta never consults me, so it could be anybody.” Milo never kept to the stuffy formality of exactly nine persons at dinner. Often as not, there were twenty or more around his table. He politicked tirelessly and was liable to invite anybody who might be of use to him. At least his was one house where I knew I would never run into Clodius.

“As long as it’s not Cato or anyone boring like that.”

Milo went off to his court, and I went back to my meeting-and-greeting routine. About noon things livened up when two Tribunes of the People ascended the
rostra
and began haranguing the crowd. Strictly speaking they were not supposed to do this except at a lawfully convened meeting of the Plebeian Assembly, but feelings were running high just then, and at such times the tribunes ignored proper form. Since they were sacrosanct, there was nothing anyone could do except yell back at them.

I was too far away to make out what they were saying, but I already knew the gist of it. Marcus Licinius Crassus,
triumvir
and by reputation the richest man in the world, was preparing to go to war against Parthia, and a number of the tribunes were very put out about the whole project. One reason was that the Parthians had done nothing to provoke such a war—not that being inoffensive had ever kept anyone safe from us before. Another was that Crassus was unthinkably rich, and a victorious war would make him even richer, and therefore more dangerous. But a lot of people just hated Crassus, and that was the best reason of all. The tribunes Gallus and Ateius were especially vehement in their denunciations of Crassus, and it was these two who bawled at the crowd in the Forum that day.

All their yowling was to no avail, naturally, because Crassus intended to pay for hiring, arming, and equipping his legions out of his own purse. He would make no demands on the Treasury, and there was nothing in Roman law to prevent a man from doing that, if he had the money, which Crassus did. So Crassus was going to get his war.

That was all right with me, as long as I didn’t have to go with him. Nobody objected, because they actually thought he might be defeated. In those days we thought little of the Parthians as fighting men. To us they were just more effete Orientals. Their ambassadors wore their hair long and scented; their faces were heavily rouged and their eyebrows painted on. As if that weren’t enough, they wore long sleeves. What more evidence did we need that they were a pack of effeminate degenerates?

The proposed war was so unpopular that recruiters were sometimes mobbed. Not that there was great recruiting activity in Rome. The citizenry by that time had grown woefully unwilling to serve in the legions. The smaller towns of Italy supplied more and more of our soldiers.

Caesar’s war in Gaul made no more sense, but it was immensely
popular. His dispatches, which I had helped him write, were widely published and added luster to his name, and the plebs took his victories as their own. People liked Caesar, and they didn’t like Crassus. It was that simple.

The City was full of Crassi that year. Marcus Licinius Crassus Dives was, for the second time, holding the consulship with Pompey. His elder son, the younger Marcus, was standing for the quaestorship. So it was a great year for Crassus, despite the unpopularity of his proposed war. He and Pompey were being amazingly amicable for two men who hated each other so much. Crassus was insanely envious of Pompey’s military glory, and Pompey was similarly envious of Crassus’s legendary wealth.

Friction had been mounting between the members of the Big Three, but, the year before, Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus had met at Luca to iron out their differences, and all had been cooperation since. Crassus and Pompey agreed to extend Caesar’s command in Gaul beyond the already extraordinary five years, were raising more legions for him, and had given him permission to appoint ten legates of his own choosing. In return, Caesar’s people in the Senate and, more important, the Popular Assemblies would give Crassus his war and Pompey the proconsulship of Spain when he left office. Spain had become a rich money cow, peaceful enough in those years that Pompey wouldn’t actually have to go there but could let his legates handle the place and send him the money.

Roman political life had grown uncommonly complicated of late. The reason Pompey was getting the virtual sinecure of Spain was that, besides being a sitting consul, he also held an extraordinary proconsular oversight of the grain supply for the whole Empire, and this was his third year in that office. Inefficiency, corruption, and rapacious speculators had made a catastrophic mess of grain distribution in Roman territory. There was famine in some places even when grain was abundant. When people are hungry, they get rebellious and don’t pay their taxes. We Romans
regard the supervision of the grain supply to be fully as important as the command of armies, and Spain was Pompey’s reward for straightening the situation out, which he did with his usual remorseless efficiency. He was given the power to appoint fifteen legates to assist him, and he chose incorruptible, efficient, ruthless men.

Cnaeus Pompeius Magnus was probably the most overrated general Rome ever had, but even his enemies, among whom I numbered myself, never doubted his administrative genius. If he had not allowed himself to be seduced by the dream of becoming the new Alexander, his reputation would shine today like those of Cincinnatus, Fabius, and the Scipios. Instead, he chased military glory and perished miserably at the hands of an Oriental tyrant, as did Crassus, who deserved that fate much more.

But these gloomy prospects, too, were far in the future on that day. My appetite told me that it was nearly noon, and I strolled over to the great sundial to check the time. This was the old one, brought as loot from Sicily two hundred years before. Since it was calibrated for Catania, it wasn’t very accurate, but it was the first municipal sundial ever installed in Rome, and we were still proud of it. It revealed that it was around noon, give or take an hour. So much for politics. It was time for lunch, then a leisurely afternoon at the baths, where I would of course talk more politics with my peers, then dinner at Milo’s. What a perfect day.

“Master!” It was my slave boy, Hermes. He was running toward me across the Forum, disrespectful as always of rank, age, and dignity. He jostled all with fine impartiality. Actually, he was about twenty-four years of age that year, but it was difficult for me to think of him as anything but a boy. Of course, I, too, was legally a boy, since my father was still alive. A man of my lineage and habits had to be grateful to reach his thirties alive and had no cause to quibble about being a legal minor.

“What is it?”

“Julia wants to know if you will be coming home for lunch.” In the subtle code of married couples, this meant she didn’t care greatly whether I did or not. Had she really wanted me home, the question would have been worded differently: when might she expect me to appear for lunch? or something like that. Hermes was sensitive to these nuances.

“Closeted with her cronies, is she?” I asked him.

“Aurelia has come to visit.”

I winced. “I shall sacrifice a cock to Jupiter in gratitude for this forewarning.” Julia’s grandmother was a gorgon no man dared look upon save with trembling. On three separate occasions she had demanded that her son, Caius Julius Caesar, have me executed. Usually indulgent of her whims, he had fortunately demurred.

“I’d recommend lunch elsewhere,” Hermes concurred. He had grown into a handsome young man, fit and strong as any legionary. He had spent almost three years with me in Caesar’s Gallic camps being trained by army instructors, and on our return I had enrolled him in the gladiatorial school of Statilius Taurus for further sword training. Of course, I had no intention of making him fight professionally, but any man who was going to stay at my back in those unsettled days had to be able to take care of himself. He was forbidden to bear arms anywhere in Italy, and elsewhere in Roman territory only if he accompanied me, but by that time he was expert with all weapons and could do more damage with a wooden stick than most men could with a sword.

“I’ll find something at the booths here. Tell Julia that we are dining this evening at the home of the
praetor urbanus
and the lady Fausta. That’ll put her in a good mood.”

Hermes grinned. “Milo’s place?”

“I knew you’d like that, you young criminal. When you’ve delivered your message, bring my bath things to the new Aemilian Baths. Off with you, now.” He ran homeward as if he’d borrowed
the winged boots of his namesake. Hermes was a criminal by inclination, and he loved to hobnob with Milo’s thugs whenever we dined there, which was often.

I sought out a stall owned by a peasant woman named Nonnia, whose specialty was a pale bread baked with olives, hardboiled eggs, and chopped pork sausage. Sprinkled with fennel and laced with
garum
, a small loaf of it would keep you marching all day in full legionary gear. With just such a loaf and a beaker of coarse Campanian wine, I went to sit on the steps of the rostra and refresh myself after the strenuous morning. One of my clients, an old farmer named Memmius, took charge of my
candidus
lest I get grease or wine on the hideously expensive garment.

“Here comes trouble,” said another client, an even older soldier named Burrus. I had saved his son from a murder charge in Gaul, and the bloodthirsty old veteran was eager to slaughter all my enemies for me. I glanced up to see my least favorite Roman coming toward me.

“It’s just Clodius,” I said. “We’re observing a truce these days. If you’re carrying weapons, keep them out of sight.”

“Truce or no truce,” Burrus said grimly, “don’t turn your back on him.”

“I never have, and I never will,” I assured him. I was not as certain of our safety as I pretended. Clodius was subject to the odd bout of homicidal insanity. Surreptitiously, I checked to make sure that my dagger and my
caestus
were tucked away beneath my tunic where I could reach them handily, just in case.

“Good day, Decius Caecilius!” Clodius called, all smiles and joviality. As usual when not in office, he wore crude sandals and a workingman’s tunic, the sort that leaves one arm and shoulder bare. He was accompanied by a rabble of thugs as disreputable as those in Milo’s train, but those closest to Clodius tended to be better-born. The noble youth of Rome in those days were much addicted to thuggery. After all, we couldn’t all get involved in
politics. His gang looked like the younger brothers of the lot that had followed Catilina in his foolish coup attempt eight years before. Most of those had died in that ugly affair, but a new crop of young fools comes along every few years to fill the depleted ranks.