The October Horse: A Novel of Caesar and Cleopatra

3

The storm brewing in the legionary camps around Capua tossed its first thunderbolt the day after Caesar's dinner party, at the very end of October. A letter came from Mark Antony.

Caesar, there's trouble. Big, big trouble. The really veteran veterans are wild with rage, and I can't reason with them or rather, with their elected representatives. It's the Tenth and Twelfth are the worst. Surprised? Well, I was surprised, at any rate. The pot boiled over when I issued orders that the Seventh, the Eighth, the Ninth, the Tenth, the Eleventh, the Twelfth, the Thirteenth and the Fourteenth were to pull stakes and march for Neapolis and Puteoli. I had all their elected representatives on my doorstep in Herculaneum (I'm living in Pompeius's villa there), telling me that no one was going anywhere until after they'd been formally notified about things like their date of discharge, their plots of land, their bounties and bonuses for this extra campaign that's what they call it, an "extra campaign." Not usual duty. And they want to be paid. They were set on seeing you, so they weren't too happy when I had to tell them that you're too busy in Rome to come to Campania. The next thing I knew, the Tenth and Twelfth went crazy, started looting and wrecking all the villages around Abella, where they're camped. Caesar, I can't handle them anymore. I suggest you come yourself. Or, if you really can't come, send someone important to see them. Someone they know and trust.

Here it is, and it's too soon. Oh, Antonius, will you never learn patience? You've so much riding on this, yet you've just made a clumsy move, you've betrayed your insincerity. The only clever part, which is acting now rather than later, is simply due to your impatience. No, I can't leave Rome, as you well know! Though not for the reasons you think. I daren't leave Rome until I've held my elections, is the true reason. Have you divined why? I don't think so, despite your acting now. You're too unsubtle. Use the tactics of delay, Caesar. Postpone the reckoning until after the elections, no matter whom you have to sacrifice. He sent for one of his loyalest and most competent military men, Publius Cornelius Sulla. Sulla's nephew. "Why not send Lepidus?" Publius Sulla asked. "He hasn't enough clout with old warhorses like the Tenth and Twelfth," Caesar said curtly. "Better to send a man they know from Pharsalus. Explain that their land is on my agenda, Publius, but that the debt legislation has to come first." "Do you want me to take the pay wagons, Caesar?" "I think not. I have my reasons. The boil is coming to a head, balm like pay might cause it to subside untimely. Just do your best with the paltry ammunition I've given you," said Caesar. Publius Sulla returned four days later, cut and bruised on face and arms. "They stoned me!" he snarled, stiff with fury. "Oh, Caesar, grind their faces into the dust!" "The faces I want to grind into the dust are those belonging to whoever is working on them, Caesar said grimly. "The men are idle and more or less permanently drunk, I suspect discipline hasn't been kept up either. That means they've been extended a lot of credit with the tavern keepers, and their centurions and tribunes are even drunker than the rankers. For all his continuous presence in Campania for months on end, Antonius has let this happen. Who else is going guarantor for so much wine on credit?" Publius Sulla shot Caesar a look of sudden comprehension, but said not a word. Next Caesar summoned Gaius Sallustius Crispus, a brilliant orator. "Choose two of your fellow senators, Sallustius, and try to make the cunni see sense. As soon as the elections are over, I'll see them in person. Just hold the fort for me."

The Centuriate Assembly finally met on the Campus Martius to vote for two consuls and eight praetors; no one was surprised when Quintus Fufius Calenus was elected senior consul and Publius Vatinius junior consul. Every candidate for praetor whom Caesar had personally recommended was also voted in. It was done! Now he could deal with the legions and with Marcus Antonius.

Shortly after dawn two days later Mark Antony rode into Rome, his German troopers escorting a litter strapped between a pair of mules. In it was a badly injured Sallust. Antony was nervous and on edge. Now that his big moment had arrived, he was fretting about how exactly he should conduct himself during his interview with Caesar. That was the trouble in dealing with someone who'd kicked your arse when you were twelve years old and been metaphorically kicking it ever since. Gaining the advantage was difficult. So he went about it aggressively, left Poplicola and Cotyla outside holding his Public Horse, barged into the Domus Publica and walked straight to Caesar's study. "They're on their way to Rome," he announced as he strode in. Caesar put down his beaker of vinegar and hot water. "Who?" "The Tenth and the Twelfth." "Don't sit down, Antonius. You're on report. Stand in front of my desk and report to your commander. Why are two of my oldest veteran legions on their way to Rome?" His neckerchief wasn't covering a patch of skin where the gold chain holding his leopard cloak suddenly began to pinch; Antony reached up and tugged at the scarlet neckerchief, conscious of a slight patina of cold sweat. "They've mutinied, Caesar." "What happened to Sallustius and his companions?" "They tried, Caesar, but " The voice became glacial. "I've known times, Antonius, when you could summon words. This had better be one of them, for your own sake. Tell me what happened, if you please." The "if you please" was worst. Concentrate, concentrate! "Gaius Sallustius called the Tenth and Twelfth to an assembly. They came in a very ugly mood. He started to say that everybody would be paid before embarkation for Africa and the land was under review, but Gaius Avienus intervened " "Gaius Avienus?" Caesar asked. "An unelected tribune of the soldiers from Picenum? That Avienus?" "Yes, he's one of the Tenth's representatives." "What did Avienus have to say?" "He told Sallustius and the other two that the legions were fed up, that they weren't willing to fight another campaign. They wanted their discharges and their land right that moment. Sallustius shouted that you were willing to give them a bonus of four thousand if they'd just get on their ships " "That was a mistake," Caesar interrupted, frowning. "Go on." Feeling more confident, Antony ploughed on. "Some of the worst hotheads shoved Avienus aside and started pelting stones. Well, rocks, actually. The next thing the air was full of them. I did manage to save Sallustius, but the other two are dead." Caesar reared in his chair, shocked. "Two of my senators, dead? Their names?" "I don't know," said Antony, sweating again. He searched wildly for something exculpatory, and blurted, "I mean, I haven't attended any meetings of the Senate since I've been back. I've been too busy as Master of the Horse." "If you saved Sallustius, why isn't he here with you now?" "Oh, he's flat out, Caesar. I carted him back to Rome in a litter. Terrible head injury, but he's not paralyzed or having seizures or anything. The army surgeons say he'll recover." "Antonius, why did you let matters come to this? I feel I should ask you, give you the opportunity to explain." The reddish-brown eyes widened. "It's not my fault, Caesar! The veterans came back to Italy so discontented that nothing I did or said pacified them. They're mortally offended that you gave all the work in Anatolia to ex-Republican legions, and they don't approve of the fact that you're giving them land on retirement." "Now you tell me. What do you think the Tenth and Twelfth intend to do when they reach Rome?" Antony rushed to answer. "That's why I hustled myself back, Caesar! They're in the mood for murder. I think you should get out of the city for your own protection." The lined, handsome face looked fashioned from flint. "You know perfectly well that I would never leave Rome in a situation like this, Antonius. Is it I they're in the mood to murder?" "They will if they find you," Antony said. "You're sure of that? You're not exaggerating?" "No, I swear it!" Caesar drained the beaker and rose to his feet. "Go home and change, Antonius. Into a toga. I'm summoning the Senate to meet in Jupiter Stator's on the Velia in one hour. Kindly be there." He went to the door and thrust his head around it. "Faberius!" he called, then glanced back at Antony. "Well, why are you standing there like a cretin? Jupiter Stator's in one hour." Not too bad, thought Antony, emerging on to the Sacra Via, where his friends were still waiting. "Well?" asked Lucius Gellius Poplicola eagerly. "He's summoned the Senate to meet in an hour, though what good he thinks that will do, I have no idea." "How did he take it?" asked Lucius Varius Cotyla. "Since he always listens to bad news with the same expression as the Tarpeian Rock, I don't know how he took it," Antony said impatiently. "Come on, I have to get home to my old place and try to find a toga. He wants me at the meeting." Their faces fell. Neither Poplicola nor Cotyla was a senator, though both were ostensibly eligible. That they were not lay in their social unacceptability; Poplicola had once tried to murder his father, the Censor, and Cotyla was the son of a man convicted and sent into exile by his own court. When Antony returned to Italy, they had tied their careers to his rising star, and looked forward to great advancement once Caesar was out of the way. "Is he leaving Rome?" Cotyla asked. "Him, leave? Never! Rest easy, Cotyla. The legions belong to me now, and in two days the old boy will be dead they'll tear him apart with their bare hands. Which will throw Rome into tumultus, and I, as Master of the Horse, will assume the office of dictator." He stopped in his tracks, struck by amazement. "You know, I can't think why we didn't work out that this was what to do ages ago!" "It wasn't easy to see a clear path until he came back to Italy," said Poplicola, and frowned. "One thing worries me ..." "What's that?" asked Cotyla apprehensively. "He's got more lives than a cat." Antony's mood was soaring; the more he thought about that interview with Caesar, the more convinced he became that he'd won his way through. "Even cats run out of lives sooner or later," he said complacently. "At fifty-three, he's past it." "Oh, it will give me great satisfaction to proscribe that fat slug, Philippus!" Poplicola gloated. Antony pretended to look scandalized. "Lucius, he's your half brother!" "He cut our mother out of his life, he deserves to die."

Attendance in the temple of Jupiter Stator was thin; yet one more thing to do, plump out the Senate, thought Caesar. When he entered behind his twenty-four lictors, his eyes searched in vain for Cicero, who was in Rome and had been notified that there was an urgent meeting of the Senate. No, he couldn't attend Caesar's Senate! That would be seen as giving in. The Dictator's ivory curule chair was positioned between the ivory curule chairs of the consuls on a makeshift dais. Since the people had burned the Curia Hostilia down with Clodius's body inside it, Rome's oligarchic senior governing institution was obliged to meet in temporary premises. The place had to be an inaugurated temple, and most were too small for comfort, though Jupiter Stator was adequate for the mere sixty men gathered there. Mark Antony was present in a purple-bordered toga that looked the worse for wear crumpled, marred by stains. Can Antonius not even control his own servants? Caesar asked himself, irritated. As soon as Caesar entered, Antony came bustling up. "Where does the Master of the Horse sit?" he asked. "You sound like Pompeius Magnus when he was consul for the first time," Caesar said acidly. "Have someone write you a book on the subject. You've been in the Senate for six years." ''Yes, but hardly ever in it physically except when I was a tribune of the plebs, and that was only for three nundinae." "Put your stool in the front row where I can see you and you can see me, Antonius." "Why on earth did you bother electing consuls?" "You're about to find out." The prayers were said, the auspices taken. Caesar waited then until everyone had seated himself. "Two days ago the consuls Quintus Fufius Calenus and Publius Vatinius entered office," Caesar said. "It is a great relief to see Rome in the care of her proper senior magistrates, the two consuls and eight praetors. The courts will be able to function, the comitia to meet in the prescribed manner." His tone changed, became even calmer and more matter-of-fact. "I've summoned this session to inform you, conscript fathers, that two mutinous legions, the Tenth and the Twelfth, are at this moment marching to Rome in according to my Master of the Horse a mood for murder." No one stirred, no one murmured, though the shock was so palpable that the air seemed to vibrate. "A mood for murder. My murder, apparently. In light of this, I wish to diminish my importance to Rome. Were the Dictator to be slain by his own troops, our country might well despair. Our beloved Rome might once again fill up with ex-gladiators and other ruffians. Business might slump drastically. Public works, so necessary for full employment and building contractors, might come to a halt, particularly those that I am personally paying for. Rome's games and festivals might not occur. Jupiter Optimus Maximus might show his displeasure by sending a thunderbolt to demolish his temple. Vulcan might visit Rome with an earthquake. Juno Sospita might vent her wrath on Rome's unborn babies. The Treasury might empty overnight. Father Tiber might flood and backwash the sewage onto the streets. For the murder of the Dictator is a cataclysmic event. Cat-a-clys-mic." They were all sitting with their mouths open. "However," he went on blandly, "the murder of a privatus is of little public moment. Therefore, conscript fathers of Rome's old and hallowed Senate, I hereby lay down my imperium maius and the dictatorship. Rome has two duly elected consuls who have been sworn in with the prescribed rituals, and no priest or augur found any flaws. Very gladly I hand Rome to them." He turned to his lictors, standing against the closed doors, and bowed. "Fabius, Cornelius, all you others, I thank you most sincerely for your care of the Dictator's person, and assure you that if and when I am once more elected to public office, I will call upon your services." He walked between the senators and handed Fabius a clinking bag. 'A small donative, Fabius, to be divided among yourselves in the customary proportions. Now go back to the College of Lictors." Fabius nodded and opened the door, his face impassive. The twenty-four lictors filed out. The silence was so profound that the sudden fluttering of a bird in the rafters made everyone jump. "On my way here," Caesar said, "I procured a lex curiata confirming the fact that I have laid down my dictatorial powers." Antony had listened in disbelief, not understanding exactly what Caesar was doing, let alone why he was doing it. For a while, in fact he had fancied that Caesar was playing a joke. "What do you mean, you've laid down your dictatorship?" he asked, voice cracking. "You can't do that with two mutinous legions on their way to Rome! You're needed!" "No, Marcus Antonius, I am not needed. Rome has consuls and praetors in office. They are now responsible for Rome's welfare." "That's rubbish! This is an emergency!" Neither Calenus nor Vatinius had said a word; they exchanged a glance that mutually agreed on continued silence. Something more was going on than a simple abdication of power, and both men knew Caesar very well, as friend, fellow politician, and military commander. This had to do with Marcus Antonius: no one was deaf or blind, everyone knew Antonius had been a naughty boy with the legions. Therefore let Caesar play the act to its end. A decision men like Lucius Caesar, Philippus and Lucius Piso had also reached. "Naturally," Caesar said, addressing the House, not Antony, "I don't expect the consuls to do my dirty work. I shall meet the two mutinous legions on the Campus Martius and discover why they are bent not only on my destruction, but on their own. But I will meet them as a privatus. As no more important than they." His voice rose. "Let all of it rest upon what happens there!" "You can't resign!" Antony gasped. "I have already resigned, lex curiata and all." Whole body numb, having difficulty breathing, Antony lurched toward Caesar. "You've gone mad!" he managed to say. "Raving mad! In which case, the answer's obvious in the absence of the Dictator's sanity, as his Master of the Horse, I declare myself the Dictator!" "You can't declare yourself anything, Antonius," said Lucius Caesar from his stool. "The Dictator has resigned. The moment that happens, the office of Master of the Horse ceases to exist. You're a privatus too." "No! No, no, no!" Antony roared, fists clenched. "As Master of the Horse, and in the absence of the Dictator's sanity, I am now the Dictator!" "Sit down, Antonius," said Fufius Calenus. "You're out of order. You're not the Master of the Horse, you're a privatus." What had happened? Where had it all gone? Clutching the last vestige of his composure, Antony finally looked into Caesar's eyes, and saw contempt, derision, a certain enjoyment. "Remove yourself, Antonius," Caesar whispered, took Antony's right arm and escorted him to the open doors, the babble of sixty voices behind them. Once outside he dropped Antony's arm as if to touch it was an offense. "Did you think you fooled me, cousin?" he asked. "You don't have the intelligence. I know enough now to understand that you're utterly untrustworthy, that you cannot be relied on, that you are indeed what your uncle always calls you, a wolfshead. Our political and professional relationship is ended, and our blood kinship has become a mortification. An embarrassment. Get out of my sight, Antonius, and stay out of it! You're a mere privatus, and a privatus you'll remain." Antony turned on his heel, laughing, trying to pretend he was in control again. "One day you'll need me, Cousin Gaius!" "If I do, Antonius, I will use you. But always in the sure knowledge that you're not to be trusted an inch. So don't get too puffed up again. You're not a thinking man's anus."

A single lictor, dressed in a plain white toga and without the axe in his fasces, directed the Tenth and Twelfth around the city outside its walls to the Campus Martius; they had come up from the south, the Campus Martius lay north. Caesar met them absolutely alone, mounted on his famous war horse with the toes, clad in his habitual plain steel armor and the scarlet paludamentum of the General. He wore the oak-leaf crown on his head to remind them that he was a decorated war hero, a front-line soldier of rare bravery. The very sight of him was enough to turn their knees to jelly. They had sobered up on the long march from Campania, for the taverns along the Via Latina had bolted their doors, they had no money and Marcus Antonius's pledge wasn't good for a drink in this part of the country. Word that Caesar wasn't the dictator anymore and that Marcus Antonius had therefore lost his job came when they were still well short of Rome, a dampener. And somehow, as the miles passed by under their hobnailed caligae, their grievances seemed to dwindle, their memories of Caesar their friend and fellow soldier to blossom. So when they set eyes on him sitting Toes without a vestige of fear, all they could think was how they loved him. Always had, always would. "What are you doing here, Quirites?" he asked coldly. A huge gasp went up, spreading ever wider as his words were passed back. Quirites? Caesar was calling them ordinary civilian citizens? But they weren't ordinary civilians, they were his boys! He always called them his boys! They were his soldiers! "You're not soldiers," he said scornfully, reproached by a hundred voices. "Even Pharnaces would hesitate to call you that! You're drunks I and incompetents, pathetic fools! You've rioted! Looted! Burned! Wrecked! Stoned Publius Sulla, one of your commanders at Pharsalus! Stoned three senators, two of them to death! If my mouth wasn't dry as ashes, Quirites, I'd spit on you! Spit on the lot of you!" They were beginning to moan, some of them to weep. "No!" screamed a man from the ranks. "No, it's a mistake! A misunderstanding! Caesar, we thought you'd forgotten us!" "Better to forget you than have to remember mutiny! Better you were all dead than present here as declared mutineers!" The biting voice went on to inform them that Caesar had all of Rome to care for, that he had trusted them to wait for him because he had thought they knew him. "But we love you!" someone cried. "You love us!" "Love? Love? Love?" Caesar roared. "Caesar can't love mutineers! You're the professional soldiers of the Senate and People of Rome, their servants, their only defense against their enemies! And you've just proved that you're not professionals! You're rabble! Not fit to clean vomit off the streets! You've mutinied, and you know what that means! You've forfeited your share of the booty to be distributed after I celebrate my triumphs, you've forfeited your land upon discharge, you've forfeited any additional bonuses! You're Head Count Quirites!" They wept, pleaded, beseeched, begged to be forgiven. No, not Quirites, not ordinary civilian citizens! Never Quirites! They belonged to Romulus and Mars, not to Quirinus! The business took several hours, watched by half of Rome standing atop the Servian Walls and sitting on the roofs of the Capitol houses; the Senate, including the consuls, clustered a respectable distance from the privatus quelling a mutiny. "Oh, he's a wonder!" sighed Vatinius to Calenus. "How did Antonius manage to delude himself that Caesar's soldiers would touch a hair of his head, scarce though they are?" Calenus grinned. "I think Antonius was sure he'd replaced Caesar their affections. You know what Antonius was like in Gaul, Pollio, he said to that individual. "Always prating that he'd inherit Caesar's legions when the old boy was past it. And for a year he's been buying them drinks and letting them loaf, which he equates with bliss. Forgetting that these men have willingly marched through six feet of snow for days on end just to please Caesar, not to mention never let him down on a field of battle, no matter how hard the fight." Pollio shrugged. "Antonius thought his moment had arrived," he said, "but Caesar diddled him. I wondered why the old boy was so determined to hold rump of the year elections, and why he wouldn't visit Campania to calm the men down. It was Antonius he was after, and he knew how far he'd have to go to get him. I feel sorry for Caesar, it's a bitter affair whichever way you look at it. Though I hope he's learned the real lesson in this." "What real lesson?" Vatinius asked. "That even a Caesar can't leave veteran troops idle for so long. Oh, yes, Antonius stirred them, but so did others. There are always malcontents and natural troublemakers in any army. Idleness gives them fertile soil to till," said Pollio.

"I'll never forgive them!" Caesar said to Lucius Caesar, two red spots burning in his cheeks. Lucius shivered. "But you did forgive them." "I acted prudently, for the sake of Rome. But I swear to you, Lucius, that every man in the Tenth and Twelfth will pay for this mutiny. First the Ninth, now two more. The Tenth! I took them from Pomptinus at Genava they were always my boys! For the moment I need them, but their own activities have shown me what I have to do have a trusted agent or two in their ranks to take down the names of the ringleaders in this sort of thing. A rot has set in certain among them have come to believe that the soldiers of Rome have power of their own." "At least now it's over." "Oh, no. There's more to come," Caesar said positively. "I may have drawn Antonius's fangs, but there are still some snakes lurking in the legion grass." "On the subject of Antonius, I hear that he has the money to pay his debts," said Lucius, thought about that, then hastened to amend it. 'At least some of his debts. He intends to bid for Pompeius's palace on the Carinae." Brows pleating, Caesar looked alert. "Tell me more." "To begin with, he looted Pompeius's premises wherever he went. For instance, that solid gold grapevine Magnus was gifted with by Aristobulus of the Jews turned up the other day in the Porticus Margaritaria. It sold for a fortune in less time than it took Curtius to put it on display. And Antonius has another source of revenue Fulvia." "Ye gods!" Caesar cried, revolted. "After Clodius and Curio, what can she see in a gross specimen like Antonius?" "A third demagogue. Fulvia falls in love with men who make trouble and on that account, Antonius is very eligible. Take my word for it, Gaius, she'll marry Antonius." "Has he divorced Antonia Hybrida?" "No, but he will." "Has Antonia Hybrida any money of her own?" "Hybrida managed to conceal the existence of a lot of the grave gold he found on Cephallenia, and it's making his second exile most comfortable. Antonius spent her two-hundred-talent dowry, but I'm sure her father would be happy to settle another two hundred talents on her if you recall him from exile. I know he's execrable, and I well remember your suit against him, but it's a way of ensuring his daughter's future. She won't find a new husband. The child is such a sad case too." "I'll recall Hybrida as soon as I return from Africa. What's one more, when I'm going to recall the Sullan exiles?" "Is Verres coming home?" Lucius asked. "Never!" Caesar said vehemently. "Never, never, never!"

The chastened legions were paid and shipped out of Neapolis and Puteoli gradually, destined for a primary camp around Lilybaeum in western Sicily, thence to Africa Province later. No one, least of all the two consuls, asked any questions as to why or how, legally a privatus was calmly functioning as commander-in-chief of the forces intended to crush the Republicans in Africa Province. All would be made clear in time. As it was. At the end of November, Caesar held elections for next year's crop of magistrates, and graciously assented to pleas that he stand for the consulship. When asked if he had any preferences as to whom among his adherents he would like as fellow consul, he indicated that he would quite like his old friend and colleague, Marcus Aemilius Lepidus. "I hope you understand your place, Lepidus," he said to that worthy after they had declared themselves consular candidates amid a cheering crowd at Vatinius's electoral booth. "Oh, I think so," Lepidus said contentedly, not at all put out by Caesar's bluntness. The promised consulship had been a while coming, but it was going to be his on New Year's Day, no doubt about that. "Tell me, then." "I am to hold Rome and Italy for you in your absence keep both at peace carry on with your program of legislation make sure I don't insult the knights or depress business continue to adlect senators according to your criteria and watch Marcus Antonius like a hawk. Also watch Antonius's intimates, from Poplicola to the newest, Lucius Tillius Cimber," said Lepidus. "What a splendid fellow you are, Lepidus!" "Do you want to be dictator again, Caesar?" "I would prefer not, but it may become necessary. If it does become necessary, would you be prepared to act as my Master of the Horse?" Caesar asked. "Of course. Better me than some of the others. I never have had the knack of getting cozy with the troops."

4

Brutus came home early in December, after Caesar had left for Campania to finish embarking his army. His mother looked him up and down sourly. "You haven't improved" was her verbal conclusion. "I think I have, actually," said Brutus, making no attempt to sit down. "The last two years have been highly educational." "I hear you dropped your sword at Pharsalus and hid." "If I had continued to hold it, I would have endangered my health. Does all of Rome know this story?" "My, Brutus, you almost snapped at me! Whom do you mean by 'all of Rome'?" "I mean, all of Rome." "And Porcia in particular?" "She's your niece, Mama. Why do you hate her so?" "Because, like her father, she's the descendant of a slave." "And a Tusculan peasant, you forgot to add." "I hear you're to be a pontifex." "Oh, Caesar came visiting, did he? Is the affair on again?" "Don't be crass, Brutus!" So Caesar hadn't renewed the affair, thought Brutus, escaping. From his mother's sitting room he went to his wife's. A daughter of Appius Claudius Pulcher, she had become his bride seven years ago, shortly after Julia's death, but had had little joy in the union. Brutus had managed to consummate the marriage, but with no pleasure, a worse factor than no love to poor Claudia. Nor had he entered her bed often enough to generate the children she yearned for. A good-natured young woman, and not ill looking, she had many friends and spent as much time as she could away from this unhappy house. When forced to be in it, she kept to her own apartment and her loom. Luckily she had no desire to administer the establishment, though technically it was her duty as the Master's wife to do so; Servilia was mistress always. Brutus pecked Claudia on the cheek, smiled at her absently and went to find his two tame philosophers, Strato of Epirus and Volumnius. Two welcoming faces at last! They had been with him in Cilicia, but he had sent them home when he joined Pompey; it might please Uncle Cato to drag his tame philosophers to a war, but Brutus wasn't made of such stern stuff, nor were Volumnius and Strato of Epirus. Brutus was an Academic, not a Stoic. "The consul Calenus wants to see you," said Volumnius. "Whatever for, I wonder?"

"Marcus Brutus, sit down!" said Calenus, looking glad to see him. "I was beginning to worry that you wouldn't return in time." "In time for what, Quintus Calenus?" "To take up your new duties, of course." "New duties?" "That's right. Caesar favors you highly well, you know that and said I was to be sure to tell you that he can think of no one as qualified as you to do this particular work." "Work?" asked Brutus, a little blankly. "Lots of it! Though you haven't been praetor yet, Caesar's given you a proconsular imperium and appointed you governor of Italian Gaul." Brutus sat with jaw dropped. "Proconsular imperium? Me?" he squeaked, winded. "Yes, you," said Calenus, who seemed undisturbed by this extraordinary business, didn't appear resentful or annoyed that such a plum post was going to an ex-Republican. "The province is at peace, so there won't be any military duties in fact, at the moment there's no legion, even as a garrison." The senior consul folded his hands on his desk and looked confiding. "You see, next year there's going to be a massive census in Italy and Italian Gaul, held on an entirely new basis. The census conducted two years ago no longer meets Caesar's er purposes, hence this new one." Calenus bent to lift a book bucket of scarlet leather, its flap sealed with purple wax, and handed it across the desk to Brutus, who looked at the seal curiously. A sphinx, with the word CAESAR around its margin. When he went to take the bucket, he discovered that it was far heavier than most it must be absolutely stuffed with very tightly wound scrolls. "What's inside?" he asked. "Your orders, dictated by Caesar himself. He intended to give them to you in person, but of course you didn't show up in time." Calenus got up, came around his desk and shook Brutus's hand warmly "Let me know the date you intend to set out, and I'll arrange for your lex curiata of imperium. It's a good job, Marcus Brutus, and I agree with Caesar it's perfect for you." Brutus left in a daze, his manservant carrying the book bucket as if it were made of gold. At first he stood in the narrow street outside Calenus's house and turned around several times, as if he wasn't sure whereabouts to go. Suddenly he squared his shoulders. "Take the bucket home, Phylas, and lock it in my strong room at once," said Brutus to his manservant. He coughed, shuffled, looked embarrassed. "If the lady Servilia should see it, she may demand that you hand it over. I would prefer that she didn't see it, is that clear?" Face expressionless, Phylas bowed. "Leave it to me, domine. It will go straight into your strong room undetected." So the pair parted, Phylas to return to Brutus's house, and Brutus to walk the short distance to Bibulus's house. Here he found chaos. Like many of the nicer premises on the Palatine, the back portions opened on to the lane-width street; entry put the newcomer in a small open room sheltering the porter, with the kitchens off to one side and the bathroom and latrine off to the other. Straight ahead was the big peristyle garden, surrounded on its three respectable aspects by a pillared walkway, off which opened the various suites of the inhabitants on right and left. At the far end lay the dining room, the master's study, and, beyond them, the huge atrium reception room, equipped with a loggia overlooking the Forum Romanum. The garden was a muddle of crates and wrapped statues; a jumble of pots and pans tied together with twine littered the stones outside the kitchen, and the covered walkways were impeded by beds, couches, chairs, pedestals, different kinds of tables and cupboards. Linen lay in a heap, clothing in another. Brutus stood in shock, understanding at once what was going on: though dead, Marcus Calpurnius Bibulus had been declared nefas, and his estates were confiscate. His surviving son, Lucius, was propertyless, and so too his widow. They were vacating the house, which must therefore be up for auction. "Ecastor, Ecastor, Ecastor!" said a familiar voice, loud and harsh, deep enough to sound like a man's. There she was, Porcia, clad in her usual awful brown tent of some coarse fabric, her mass of brilliant, waving red hair half falling down, tendrils escaping the pins. "Put it all back!" Brutus cried, walking to her swiftly. The next moment he was lifted off his feet, squashed in an embrace that drove the breath from his lungs, the smell of her in his nostrils ink, paper, stale wool, leather of book buckets. Porcia, Porcia, Porcia! How it happened he had no idea, for there was nothing novel about this greeting she had been lifting him off his feet and squashing him for years. But his lips, pressed against her cheek, were suddenly seeking hers, and having found them, locked; a wave of fire and feeling crashed upon his spirit, he struggled to free his arms and slide them across her back. Then he kissed her with the first surge of passion he had ever known. She kissed him back, the taste of her tears mingled with the delicacy of her breath, untainted by wine or fancy foods. It seemed to go on for hours, and she didn't push him away or hold aloof. Her ecstasy was too great, her longing too old, her love too overwhelming. "I love you!" he said when he could, his hands stroking her wonderful hair, his fingertips reveling in its crackling life. "Oh, Brutus, I have always loved you! Always, always!" They found two chairs abandoned on the colonnade, and sank into them handfast, gazing into each other's tear-filled eyes, smiling and smiling. Two children discovering enchantment. "I have finally come home," he said, mouth trembling. "It can't be real," she said, and leaned to kiss him again. A dozen people had witnessed this passionate reunion, but they were all servants save for Bibulus's son, who winked at the steward and slipped away unnoticed. "Put it all back," Brutus said again some time later. "I can't. We've been served notice." "I'll buy the place, so put it all back," he insisted. Her lovely grey eyes grew stern; suddenly Cato looked out of them. "No, my father would not condone it." "Yes, dearest, he would," Brutus said very seriously. "Come, Porcia, you know Cato! He would see it as a victory for the Republicans. He would deem it a right act. It is the duty of the family to look after the family. Cato, to render his daughter homeless? I condemn Caesar for this. Lucius Bibulus is too young to be a part of the Republican cause." "His father was one of the great Republicans." She turned her face to present Brutus with her profile, the very image of Cato's; the huge, beaked nose was noble to his eyes, and the mouth distractingly beautiful. "Yes, I see the rightness," she said, then turned to look at him fearfully. "But others will be bidding too. What if someone else buys this house?" He laughed. "Porcia! Who can outbid Marcus Junius Brutus? Besides, this is a nice house, but it doesn't compare with places like Pompeius Magnus's or Metellus Scipio's. The big money will be bid for the outstanding houses. I won't bid myself, I'll use an agent, so Rome won't gossip. And I shall bid for your father's estates in Lucania. Nothing else of his, just that. I'd like you to have something of his forever." Tears dropped on her hands. "You speak as if he were dead already, Brutus." "Many may get pardons, Porcia, but you and I know that Caesar will never reach an accommodation with any of the leaders who went to Africa Province. Still, Caesar won't live forever. He's older than Cato, who may be able to come home one day." "Why did you beg a pardon from him?" she asked abruptly. His face saddened, fell. "Because I am not Cato, my dearest girl. I wish I were! Oh, how I wish it! But if you truly love me, you must know what I am. As my mother says, a coward. I I can't explain what happens to me when it comes to battle or defying people like Caesar. I just go to pieces." "My father will say that it isn't a right act for me to love you because you gave in to Caesar." "Yes, he will," Brutus agreed, smiling. "Does that mean we have no future together? I won't believe it." She flung both arms around him fiercely. "I'm a woman, and women are weak, my father says. He won't approve, but I can't live without you, and I won't live without you!" "Then you'll wait for me?" he asked. "Wait?" "Caesar has endowed me with a proconsular imperium. I am to go at once to govern Italian Gaul." Her arms dropped, she moved away. "Caesar!" she hissed. "Everything goes back to Caesar, even your awful mother!" His shoulders spasmed, hunched. "I have known that since I was a lad and first met him. When he came back from his quaestorship in Further Spain. He stood in the midst of all those women, looking like a god. So striking! So royal. My mother was shot through the heart he slew her! Her, with her pride! A patrician Servilia Caepionis. But she beggared her pride for him. After my stepfather Silanus died, she thought Caesar would marry her. He refused on the grounds that she was an unfaithful wife. 'With you, only with you!' she cried. It made no difference with whom she was unfaithful, he said. The fact remained that she was an unfaithful wife." "How do you know that?" Porcia asked, fascinated. "Because she came home roaring and screeching like Mormolyce. The whole house knew," said Brutus simply, and shivered. "But that is Caesar. It takes a Cato to resist him, and I am no Cato, my love." His eyes filled with tears, he took her hands. "Forgive me for my weakness, Porcia! A proconsular imperium, and I haven't even been a praetor yet! Italian Gaul! How can I say no to him? I don't have the strength." "Yes, I understand," she said gruffly. "Go and govern your province, Brutus. I'll wait for you." "Do you mind if I say nothing about us to my mother?" She barked her strange laugh, but not in amusement. "No, dear Brutus, I don't mind. If she terrifies you, she terrifies me even more. Let's not wake the monster before we have to. Stay married to Claudia for the time being." "Have you heard from Cato?" he asked. "No, not a word. Nor has Marcia, who suffers terribly. She has to go home to her father now, of course. Philippus tried to intervene for Marcia's sake, but Caesar was adamant. Everything of my father's is confiscate, and she gave her dowry to him when he rebuilt the Basilica Porcia after Clodius's fire. Philippus isn't happy. She cries so, Brutus!" "What of your dowry?" "It went to rebuild the Basilica Porcia too." "Then I'll lodge a sum with Bibulus's bankers for you." "Cato would not approve." "If Cato took your dowry, my love, he has forfeited his right to an opinion. Come," he said, drawing her to her feet, "I want to kiss you again, somewhere less public." At the door to her study he looked at her gravely. "We are first cousins, Porcia. Perhaps we shouldn't have children." "Only half first cousins," she said reasonably. "Your mother and my father are only half sister and half brother."

* * *

A great deal of money came out of hiding when the property of the unpardoned Republicans came up for auction. Bidding through Scaptius, Brutus had no trouble in acquiring Bibulus's house, his big villa in Caieta, his Etrurian latifundium and his Campanian farms, vineyards; the best way to provide Porcia and young Lucius with an income, he had decided, was to buy all that Bibulus had. But he had no luck with Cato's Lucanian estates. Caesar's agent, Gaius Julius Arvernus, bought every last piece of Cato's property. For more by far than it was worth; Brutus's Scaptius didn't dare keep on bidding once the sums became outrageous. Caesar's reasons were two: he wanted the satisfaction of seeing Cato's property fall to him, and he also wanted to use it to dower his three ex-centurions with enough to qualify for membership in the Senate. Decimus Carfulenus and two others had won the corona civica, and Caesar intended to honor Sulla's legislation that promoted all winners of major crowns of valor to the Senate. "The odd thing is that I think my father would approve," said Porcia to Brutus when he came to bid her farewell. "I'm very sure that Caesar wasn't aiming for Cato's approval," said Brutus. "Then he misread my father, who esteems valor quite as much as Caesar." "Given the hideous hatred between them, Porcia, neither man can read the other." Pompey's mansion on the Carinae was knocked down to Mark Antony for thirty million sesterces, but when he casually told the auctioneers that he would defer payment until his finances were more flush, the head of the firm drew him aside. "I am afraid, Marcus Antonius, that you must pay the entire amount immediately. Orders from Caesar." "But it would clean me out!" said Antony indignantly. "Pay now, or forfeit the property and incur a fine." Antony paid, cursing. Whereas Servilia, new owner of Lentulus Crus's latifundium and several lucrative vineyards in Falernian Campania, fared much better at Caesar's hands. "Our instructions are to give you a third off the price," the chief auctioneer said when she presented herself at the booth to make arrangements for payment. She hadn't bothered to use an agent, it was more fun by far to bid in person, especially as she was a women and not supposed to be so publicly forward. "Instructions from whom?" she asked. "Caesar, domina. He said you would understand." Most of Rome understood, including Cicero, who almost fell off his chair laughing. "Oh, well done, Caesar!" he cried to Atticus (another successful bidder), visiting to give him all the news. "A third off! A third! You have to admit that the man's witty!" The joke, of course, lay in the fact that Servilia's third girl, Tertulla, was Caesar's child. The witticism hadn't amused Servilia in the least, but her umbrage was not sufficient to spurn the discount. Ten million was ten million, after all. Gaius Cassius, who bid for nothing, was not amused either. "How dared he draw attention to my wife!" he snarled. "Everyone I meet puns on Tertulla's name!" More than his wife's relationship to Caesar was annoying Cassius; while Brutus, the same age and at exactly the same level on the cursus honorum, was going to govern Italian Gaul as proconsul, he, Gaius Cassius, had been palmed off with an ordinary propraetorian legateship in Asia Province. Though Vatia the governor was his own brother-in-law, he wasn't one of Cassius's favorite people.

V

The Sting in Winning

From JANUARY until QUINCTILIS (JULY) of 46 B.C.

Publius Sittius was a Roman knight from Campanian Nuceria, of considerable wealth and education; among his friends he had numbered Sulla and Cicero. Several unfortunate investments during the years after Pompey the Great and Marcus Crassus had been consuls for the first time had caused him to join Catilina's conspiracy to overthrow Rome's legitimate government; what had attracted him was Catilina's promise that he would bring in a general cancellation of debts. Though Sittius didn't think so at the time, it turned out to be for the best that his financial embarrassments grew too pressing to linger in Italy waiting for Catilina's bid at power. He was forced to flee to Further Spain at the beginning of the Cicero/Hybrida consulship, and when that didn't prove far enough away from Rome, he then migrated to Tingis, the capital of western Mauretania. This most distressing series of events brought out qualities in Publius Sittius that he never knew he owned; the businessman with a tendency to speculate transformed himself into a sweet-talking, immensely capable freebooter who undertook to reorganize King Bocchus's army, and even to provide the ruler of western Mauretania with a nice little navy. Though Bocchus's kingdom was farther from Numidia than his brother, Bogud's, kingdom of eastern Mauretania, Bocchus was terrified of the expansionist ideas churning around in King Juba of Numidia's head. Juba was determined to be another Masinissa, and since the Roman African province lay on Numidia's eastern borders, the only direction to expand was west. Once he had Bocchus's forces up to strength, Sittius did the same for Bogud's forces. His rewards were gratifying; money, his own palace in Tingis, a whole harem of delectable women, and no business worries. Definitely the life of a talented freebooter was preferable to flirting with conspiracies in Italy! When King Juba of Numidia declared for the Republicans after Caesar crossed the Rubicon, it was inevitable that Bocchus and Bogud of Mauretania would declare for Caesar. Publius Sittius stepped up Mauretanian military preparedness and sat back to see what would happen. A great relief when Caesar won at Pharsalus, then a huge shock when the Republican survivors of Pharsalus decided to make Africa Province their next focus of resistance. Too close to home! So Sittius hired a few spies in Utica and Hadrumetum to keep himself informed on Republican doings, and waited for Caesar to invade, as Caesar must.

* * *

But Caesar's invasion began unhappily in several ways. He and his first fleet were forced to land at Leptis Minor because every seaport to the north of it was too strongly fortified by the Republicans to think of trying to get ashore. As there were no port facilities at Leptis Minor the ships had to be brought in very close to a long beach and the troops ordered to jump into shallow water, wade ashore. Caesar went first, of course. But his fabled luck deserted him; he jumped, tripped and fell full length in the knee-deep water. A terrible omen! Every single pair of watching eyes widened, a thousand throats gasped, rumbled. Up he came with the agility of a cat, both hands clenched into fists above his head, sand trickling from them down his arms. "Africa, I have you in my hold!" he shouted, turning the omen into a propitious one. Nor had he neglected the old legend that Rome couldn't win in Africa without a Scipio present. The Republicans had Metellus Scipio in the command tent, but Caesar's purely titular second-in-command was Scipio Salvitto, a disreputable scion of the family Cornelius Scipio whom he had plucked out of a Roman brothel. A complete nonsense, Caesar knew; Gaius Marius had conquered in Africa without a Scipio in sight, though Sulla was a Cornelian. None of which had much significance compared to the fact that his legions were continuing to mutiny. The Ninth and Tenth were joined by the Fourteenth in a mutiny first quelled in Sicily, but which flared up again the moment they were landed in Africa. He paraded them, flogged a few and concentrated upon the five men, including the un-elected tribune of the soldiers Gaius Avienus, who had done most of the damage. The five were put aboard a ship with all their belongings and sent back to Italy, disgraced, discharged and stripped of every entitlement from land to booty. "If I were a Marcus Crassus, I would decimate you!" he cried to the assembled men. "You deserve no mercy! But I cannot execute men who have fought for me bravely!" Naturally the news that Caesar's legions were disaffected reached the Republicans; Labienus began to whoop in delight. "What a situation!" Caesar said to Calvinus, with him as usual. "Of my eight legions, three consist of raw, unblooded recruits, and of my five veteran legions, three are untrustworthy." "They'll fight for you with all their customary verve," Calvinus said comfortably. "You have a genius for handling them that fools like Marcus Crassus never had. Yes, I know you loved him, but a general who decimates is a fool." "I was too weak," Caesar said. "A comfort to know you have weaknesses, Gaius. A comfort to them as well. They don't think the worse of you for clemency." He patted Caesar's arm. "There won't be any more mutinies. Go and drill your raw recruits." Advice that Caesar followed, to discover that his luck was back. Exercising his three legions of raw recruits, he stumbled by chance upon Titus Labienus and a larger force, and evaded defeat by typical Caesarean boldness. Labienus ceased to whoop.

Reports of all this had percolated to Publius Sittius; he and his two kings began to fear that Caesar, very outnumbered, would be overpowered. What, wondered Sittius, could Mauretania do to help? Nothing in Africa Province because the Mauretanian army was similar to the Numidian one: it consisted of lightly armed cavalry who fought as lancers rather than at close quarters. Nowhere near enough ships were available to transport troopers and horses a thousand miles by sea. Therefore, Publius Sittius decided, the best thing to do was to invade Numidia from the west and lure King Juba back to defend his own kingdom. That would leave the Republicans very short of cavalry and deny them one of their sources of supplies. The moment he heard that the impudent Sittius had invaded, Juba panicked and withdrew westward in a hurry. "I do not know how long we can keep Juba out of the way," said Sittius in a letter to Caesar, "but my kings and I hope that his absence will at least give you a breathing space."

A breathing space that Caesar utilized to good effect. He sent Gaius Sallustius Crispus and one legion to the big island of Cercina in the bight, where the Republicans had amassed huge stores of grain. Though it was after harvest time, the African province's grain was denied him, for the Bagradas River's wheat latifundia lay west of the Republican lines; Caesar's territory around Leptis Minor was the poorest land in the province, and south to Thapsus it was even poorer. "What the Republicans have forgotten," Caesar said to Sallust, recovered from his stoning at Abella, "is that Gaius Marius settled Cercina with his veterans. My father was the one who did it for him, so the Cercinans know the name of Caesar very well. You have this job, Sallustius, because you can draw the birds down from the trees with words. What you have to do is remind the children and grandchildren of Gaius Marius's veterans that Caesar is Marius's nephew, that their loyalties must lie with Caesar. Talk well, and you won't have to fight. I want the Cercinans to hand over Metellus Scipio's hoard of grain willingly. If we have it, we'll eat for however long we're in Africa." While Sallust sailed off with his legion on the short voyage to Cercina, Caesar fortified his position and started to send letters of commiseration to the wheat plutocrats of the Bagradas and the Catada, whom Metellus Scipio was needlessly antagonizing. Having taken sufficient grain to feed his troops without bothering to pay for it, Metellus Scipio, for reasons best known to himself, pursued a scorched-earth policy, burned the fields wherein the coming year's crops were sprouting. "It rather sounds," said Caesar to his nephew Quintus Pedius, "as if Metellus Scipio thinks the Republicans are going to lose." "Whoever wins must lose," said Quintus Pedius, a farmer to his very core. "We'd better hope this business finishes itself in time to plant a second time. The bulk of the winter rains are still to come, and burned stubble ploughed in is beneficial." "Let's hope Sallustius succeeds" was Caesar's answer. Two nundinae after his departure, Sallust and his legion were back, Sallust wreathed in smiles. Apprised of the situation, the Cercinans unanimously declared for Caesar, undertook to keep the major part of the grain there, defend it against Republican grain transports when they came, and send it to Caesar as he needed it. "Excellent!" said Caesar. "Now all we have to do is force a general engagement and get this wretched affair over with." Easier said than done. With Juba absent, neither Metellus Scipio in the command tent nor Labienus in the field wanted a general engagement with someone as slippery as Caesar, even if his veterans were disaffected. Caesar wrote to Publius Sittius and told him to withdraw.

More time actually dragged on than the calendar indicated, for the College of Pontifices at Caesar's direction had declared an intercalation following the month of February: twenty-three extra days. This little month, called Mercedonius, had to be taken into account when both sides said that March seemed as if it would never end. The Republican legions, camped around Hadrumetum, and the Caesarean legions, camped around Leptis Minor, had to suffer two full months of relative inertia while Juba in western Numidia tried to lay his hands on the wily Publius Sittius, who finally received Caesar's letter and withdrew toward the end of March. Juba hurried back to Africa Province.

* * *

Even so, Caesar had to force an engagement, the Republicans were so wary of him. They skirmished, then withdrew, skirmished, then withdrew. Very well, they would have it thus! Caesar must attack Thapsus from its landward side. Not very far south of Leptis Minor, the city was already under massive blockade from the sea, but Labienus had fortified it heavily, and it still held out. Shadowed by Metellus Scipio and Labienus in joint command of the entire Republican army, including Juba and his squadron of war elephants, Caesar marched his legions out of Leptis Minor in the direction of Thapsus at the beginning of April. A typical feature of that brackish, inhospitable coastline gave Caesar his long-awaited chance: a flat, sandy spit about a mile and a half wide and several miles long. On one side of it lay the sea, on the other a huge salt lagoon. Inwardly exulting, Caesar led his army on to the spit, and kept marching in very tight formation until every man he had was penned into the spit. What he gambled on was that Labienus wouldn't divine why he marched in a modified agmen quadratum instead of the usual eight-man-wide snake; agmen quadratum was a march in wide columns of troops, which reduced the length of the forces while it increased their breadth. Knowing Labienus, he would simply assume that Caesar expected to be attacked by the shadowing Republican army, and wanted to hustle his men off the spit as quickly as he could. In reality, it was Caesar who intended to attack. The moment Caesar marched into the spit, Labienus saw what he had to do, and raced to do it. While the bulk of his infantry under Afranius and Juba closed Caesar off from retreat out of the spit, Labienus and Metellus Scipio led the cavalry and the fast-moving veteran legions around the landward side of the lagoon and positioned themselves at the far end of the spit to meet Caesar's advance head-on. Caesar's bugles sounded: his army promptly split into two halves, with Gnaeus Domitius Calvinus leading the half which reversed its direction and charged at Afranius and Juba behind, while Caesar and Quintus Pedius led the half still moving forward in a charge at Labienus and Metellus Scipio. All Caesar's crack legions were at the head and rear of his army, with the raw recruits in the middle. The moment the two halves went in opposite directions, the recruits were behind the crack troops. Thapsus, as the battle came to be called, was a rout. All smarting from Caesar's disapproval allied to his clemency, his veterans, particularly the Tenth, fought perhaps better than in all their long careers. By the end of the day, ten thousand Republican dead littered the field, and organized resistance in Africa was over. The most disappointing thing about Thapsus to Caesar was the dearth of prominent captives. Metellus Scipio, Labienus, Afranius, Petreius, Sextus Pompey, the governor Attius Varus, Faustus Sulla and Lucius Manlius Torquatus all fled, as did King Juba. "I very much fear it will go on somewhere else," Calvinus said to Caesar afterward. "In Spain, perhaps." "If it does, then I'll go to Spain," Caesar said grimly. "The Republican cause has to die, Calvinus, otherwise the Rome I want to make will revert back to the boni conception of the mos maiorum." "Then the one you have to eliminate is Cato." "Not eliminate, if by that you mean kill. I don't want any of them dead, but most particularly Cato. The rest may see the error of their ways, Cato never will. Why? Because that part of his mind is missing. Yet he must stay alive, and he must enter my Senate. I need Cato as an exhibit." "He won't consent to that." "He won't know that he is," Caesar said positively. "I'm going to write a protocol governing conduct in the Senate and the comitia no filibustering, for example. Time limits for speeches. And no allegations about fellow members without definite proof." "We march for Utica, then?" "We march for Utica."

2

A courier from Metellus Scipio brought the news of the defeat at Thapsus to Utica, but the man was not more than a few hours ahead of refugees from the battlefield, none of them having higher rank than a junior military tribune. "Lucius Torquatus, Sextus Pompeius and I are joining Gnaeus Pompeius's fleet in Hadrumetum," said Metellus Scipio's brief note. "As yet we have no idea of our next destination, but it will not be Utica unless you request that, Marcus Cato. If you can rally enough men to resist Caesar, then we will fight with you." "But Caesar's troops were disaffected," Cato said hollowly to his son. "I was sure we'd beat him!" Young Cato didn't answer: what was there to say? After writing to Metellus Scipio to tell him not to bother with Utica, Cato sat drawn up into himself for the rest of that awful day, then at dawn of the next he took Lucius Gratidius and set out to see the Thapsus refugees, who had clustered together in an old camp on Utica's outskirts. "There are enough of us to give Caesar one more fight," he said to their senior, a minor legate named Marcus Eppius. "I have five thousand good, trained young men in the city who are willing to join those of you here. And I can rearm you." Eppius shook his head. "No, Marcus Cato, we've had enough." He shivered, lifted his hand in the sign to ward off the Evil Eye. "Caesar is invincible, we know that now. We captured one of the Tenth's centurions, Titius, whom Quintus Metellus Scipio examined himself. Titius admitted that the Ninth, the Tenth and the Fourteenth had mutinied twice since leaving Italy. Even so, when Caesar sent them into battle, they fought like heroes for him." "What happened to this centurion Titius?" "He was executed." And that, thought Cato, is really why I ought never have put Metellus Scipio in the command tent. Or Labienus. Caesar would have pardoned a brave captive centurion. As should all men. "Well, I suggest that all of you make your way to Utica's harbor and board the transports waiting there," Cato said cheerily. "They belong to Gnaeus Pompeius, who I gather is thinking of going west to the Baleares and Spain. I'm sure he won't insist that you accompany him, so if you prefer to return to Italy, tell him." He and Lucius Gratidius returned to Utica. Yesterday's panic had settled, though the city wasn't going about its wartime business as it had during the months of Cato's prefecture. The three hundred most prominent citizens were already waiting in the marketplace for Cato to tell them what he wanted them to do. They genuinely loved him, as did almost all Uticans, for he had been scrupulously fair, willing to listen to their grievances, unfailingly optimistic. "No," he said, quite gently for Cato, "I can no longer make decisions for you. You must decide for yourselves whether to resist Caesar or sue for pardon. If you want to know what I think you should do, I think you should sue for pardon. The alternative would be to withstand siege, and your fate would be no different from the fates of Carthage, Numantia, Avaricum, Alesia. Caesar is an even greater master of siege than Scipio Aemilianus. The result would be the destruction of this beautiful, immensely rich city, and the deaths of many of its citizens. Caesar will levy a huge fine, but you'll have the ongoing prosperity to pay it. Sue for pardon." "If we freed our slaves and put them to military service as well, Marcus Cato, we might survive a siege," said one citizen. "That would be neither moral nor legal," Cato said sternly. "No government should have the authority to order any man to free his slaves if he doesn't want to." "What if the freeing were voluntary?" another asked. "Then I would condone it. However, I urge you not to resist. Talk about it among yourselves, then summon me back." He and Gratidius walked across to sit on the stone coping of a fountain, where young Cato joined them. "Will they fight, Father?" "I hope not." "I hope they do," said Gratidius, a little tearfully. "If they don't, I'm out of a job. I hate the thought of submitting tamely to Caesar!" Cato did not reply, his eyes on the debating Three Hundred. The decision was swift: Utica would sue for pardon. "Believe me," said Cato, "it is the best way. Though I above all men have no cause to love Caesar, he is a merciful man who has been clement since the beginning of this sad business. None of you will suffer physical harm, or lose your property." Some of the Three Hundred had decided to flee; Cato promised them that he would organize transport for them from among the ships belonging to the Republican cause. "And that's that," he said with a sigh when he, young Cato and Gratidius were ensconced in the dining room. Statyllus came in, looking apprehensive. "Pour me some wine," said Cato to Prognanthes, his steward. The others stilled, turned wondering eyes on the master of the house, who took the clay beaker. "My task is done, why shouldn't I?" he asked, sipped, and retched. "How extraordinary!" he exclaimed. "I've lost my taste for wine." "Marcus Cato, I have news," Statyllus said. The food came in on the echo of his words: fresh bread, oil, a roast fowl, salads and cheeses, some late grapes. "You've been away all morning, Statyllus," Cato said, biting into a leg of roast fowl. "How good this tastes! What news are you so afraid of?" "Juba's horsemen are looting the countryside." "We could expect nothing else. Now eat, Statyllus."

Next day came word that Caesar was approaching rapidly, and that Juba had gone in the direction of Numidia. Cato watched from his window as a deputation from the Three Hundred rode out to treat with the conqueror, then turned his eyes to the harbor, a frenzy of activity as refugees and soldiers boarded ships. "This evening," he said, "we'll have a nice dinner party. Just the three of us, I think. Gratidius is a good man, but he doesn't appreciate philosophy." He said it with such pleasure that young Cato and Statyllus stared at each other in puzzlement; was he indeed so glad that his task was over? And what did he intend to do now that it was over? Surrender to Caesar? No, that was inconceivable. Yet he had issued no orders to pack their few clothes and books, made no attempt to secure passage room on a ship. The prefect's fine house on the main square contained a proper bathroom; in midafternoon Cato ordered the bath filled, and went to enjoy a leisurely soak. By the time he emerged the dining room was set for the party, and the two other diners were reclining, young Cato on the couch to the right, Statyllus on the couch to the left, with the middle one for Cato. When he walked in, young Cato and Statyllus stared at him openmouthed. The long hair and beard were gone, and Cato wore his senatorial tunic with the broad purple band of the latus clavus down its right shoulder. He looked magnificent, years younger, though all trace of red was gone from his hair, combed now in its customary style. The many months of abstention from wine had returned his grey eyes to their old luminousness, and the lines of dissipation were gone. "Oh, I'm so hungry!" he said, taking the lectus medius. "Prognanthes, food!" It wasn't possible to be gloomy; Cato's mood was too infectious. When Prognanthes produced a superior vintage of a smooth red wine, he tasted it gingerly, pronounced it good, and sipped occasionally from his goblet. When only the wine, two fine cheeses and some grapes remained on the tables, and all the servants save Prognanthes had gone, Cato settled into his couch with his elbow comfortably disposed on a bolster, and gave a huge sigh of satisfaction. "I shall miss Athenodorus Cordylion," he said, "but you'll have to take his place, Marcus. What did Zeno think was real?" Oh, I am back at school! thought young Cato, and answered automatically. "Material things. Things that are solid." "Is my couch solid?" "Yes, of course." "Is God solid?" "Yes, of course." "And did Zeno think the Soul was solid?" "Yes, of course." "Which came first of all solid things?" "Fire." "And after fire?" "Air, then water, then earth." "What must happen to air, water and earth?" "They must return to fire at the end of the cycle." "Is the Soul fire?" "Zeno thought so, but Panaetius didn't agree." "Where else can we look for the Soul than Zeno and Panaetius?" Young Cato floundered, looked for help to Statyllus, who was gazing at Cato in growing consternation. "We can look at Socrates through Plato," Statyllus said, his voice trembling. "Though he found great fault with Zeno, Socrates was the perfect Stoic. He cared nothing for his material welfare, nor for heat and cold, nor for passions of the flesh." "Do we look for the Soul in the Phaedrus or the Phaedo?" Statyllus spoke, drawing a gasping breath. "The Phaedo. In it, Plato discusses what Socrates said to his friends just before he drank the cup of hemlock." Cato laughed, flung his hands out. "All good men are free, all bad men are slaves let's look at the Paradoxes!" The subject of the Soul seemed forgotten as the three embarked upon one of Cato's favorite subjects. Statyllus was deputed to adopt the Epicurean point of view, young Cato the Peripatetic, while Cato, true to himself, remained a Stoic. The arguments flew back and forth amid laughter, a quick give-and-take of premises so well known that each answer was automatic. A growl of distant thunder came; Statyllus got up and went to look out the south window at the mountains. "A terrible storm is coming," he said; then, more softly, "A terrible storm." He reclined again to take up the cudgels about freedom and slavery on behalf of the Epicureans. The wine was working insidiously on Cato, who hadn't noticed its creeping effects. Suddenly, violently, he pitched his goblet out the south window. "No, no, no!" he roared. "A free man who consents to slavery of any kind is a bad man, and that's that! I don't care what form the slavery takes lascivious pleasure food wine punctuality making money the man who enslaves himself to it is a bad man! Wicked! Evil! His Soul will leave his body so fouled, so encrusted with filth that she sinks down, down, down to Tartarus, and there she stays forever! Only the good man's Soul can soar into the aether, into the realms of God! Not the gods, but God! And the good man never succumbs to any kind of slavery! Any kind! Any kind!" Statyllus had scrambled up during this impassioned speech, gone to huddle next to young Cato. "If you get a chance," he whispered, "go to his sleeping room and steal his sword." Young Cato jumped, turned terrified eyes on Statyllus. "Is that what all this is about?" "Of course it is! He's going to kill himself." Cato ran down, sat shuddering and glaring at his audience. Without warning he lurched to his feet and reeled to his study, where the two sitting on the couch could hear him rummaging among his pigeonholes of books, throwing scrolls around. "Phaedo, Phaedo, Phaedo!" he was calling, giggling too. Eyes rolling in his head, young Cato gaped at Statyllus, who gave him a push. "Go, Marcus! Steal his sword now!" Young Cato dashed to his father's roomy sleeping quarters and snatched the sword, hanging by its baldric from a hook on the wall. Back to the dining room, where he saw Prognanthes standing with the wine flagon in his hand. "Here, take this and hide it!" he said, giving the steward Cato's sword. "Hurry! Hurry!" Prognanthes left just in time; Cato reappeared with a scroll in his hand. He threw it down on the lectus medius and turned in the direction of the atrium. "It's coming on dusk, I have to give the password to the gate sentries," he said curtly, and vanished, shouting for a waterproof sagum; it was going to rain. The storm was drifting closer; flashes of lightning began to bathe the dining room in glowing blue-white flickers, for no one had yet lit the lamps. Prognanthes came in with a taper. "Is the sword hidden?" young Cato asked him. "Yes, domine. The master won't find it, rest assured." "Oh, Statyllus, he can't! We mustn't let him!" "We won't let him. Hide your sword too." Some time later Cato returned, threw his wet cape into a corner, and picked up the Phaedo from the couch. Then he went to Statyllus, embraced him and kissed him on both cheeks. After that it was young Cato's turn. How utterly alien, the feeling of his father's arms around him, those dry lips on his face, his mouth. Inside his mind were only memories of the day he had howled into Porcia's rough dress when his father had called them to his study to inform them that he had divorced their mother for adultery with Caesar, and that they would never, never see her again. Even for a moment. Even to say goodbye. Little Cato had wept desolately for his mama, and his father had told him not to unman himself. That to unman himself for such a paltry reason was not a right act. So many memories of a hard father, one who inflicted his own pitiless ethic upon all those around him. And yet and yet how proud he was to be the great Cato's son! So now he unmanned himself and wept. "Please, Father, don't!" "What?" Cato asked, eyes widening in surprise. "Not retire to read my Phaedo?" "It doesn't matter." Young Cato mourned. "It doesn't matter."

The Soul, the Soul, whom the Greeks thought female. How right it seemed, listening to the storm outside, that the natural world should echo the tempest within his heart? mind? body? We do not even know that, so how can we know anything about the Soul, her purity or lack of purity? Her immortality? I need to have her proved to me, proved beyond a shadow of a doubt! Several multiple lamps burning, he sat down in a chair and opened the scroll between his hands, reading the Greek slowly; it was always easier for Cato to separate the words in a Greek text than a Latin one, why he didn't know. Reading the words of Socrates as he asked Simmias one of his famous questions: Socrates taught by asking questions.

"Do we believe in death?" "Yes," said Simmias. "Death is the separation of Soul and body. To be dead is the end result of this separation."

Yes, yes, yes, it must be so! What I am is more than mere body, what I am contains the white fire of my Soul, and when my body is dead, my Soul is free. Socrates, Socrates, reassure me! Give me the strength and purpose to do what I must do!

"To enjoy pure knowledge, we must shed our bodies.... The Soul is made in the image of God, and is immortal, and has intelligence, and is uniform, and cannot change. She is immutable. Whereas the body is made in the image of humankind. It is mortal. It has no intelligence, it has many shapes, and it disintegrates. Can you deny this?" "No." "So if what I say is true, then the body must decay, but the Soul cannot."

Yes, yes, Socrates is right, she is immortal! She will not dissolve when my body dies! Enormously relieved, Cato put the book in his lap and looked at the wall, his eyes seeking his sword. At first he thought what he saw was the aftereffect of the wine, then his mortal eyes, so filled with false visions, acknowledged the truth: his sword had gone. He transferred the book to his side table and rose to strike a copper gong with a muted hammer. The sound thrummed away into the darkness, torn by lightning, enhanced by thunder. A servant came. "Where is Prognanthes?" Cato asked. "The storm, domine, the storm. His children are crying." "My sword is gone. Fetch me my sword at once." The servant bowed and vanished. Some time later, Cato struck the gong again. "My sword is gone. Fetch it at once." This time the man looked afraid, nodded and hurried off. Cato picked up the Phaedo and continued to read it to its end, but the words didn't impinge. He struck the gong a third time. "Yes, domine?" "Send every servant to the atrium, including Prognanthes." He met them there and looked angrily at his steward. "Where is my sword, Prognanthes?" "Domine, we have searched and searched, but it cannot be found." Cato moved so fast that no one actually saw him stride across the room to punch Prognanthes, just heard the crack! of Cato's fist against the steward's massive jaw. He fell unconscious, but no servant went to help him, just stood shivering, staring at Cato. Young Cato and Statyllus erupted into the room. "Father, please, please!" Young Cato wept, throwing his arms about his father. Who shook him off as if he stank. "Am I a madman, Marcus, that you deny me my protection against Caesar? Do you deem me incompetent, that you dare to take my sword? I don't need it to take my own life, if that's what's worrying you taking my own life is simple. All I have to do is hold my breath or dash my head against a wall. My sword is my right! Bring me my sword!" The son fled, sobbing wildly, while four of the servants took hold of the inanimate Prognanthes and carried him away. Only two of the lowliest slaves remained. "Bring me my sword," he said to them. The noise of its coming preceded it, for the rain had died to a gentle murmur; the storm was passing out to sea. A toddling child brought it in, both hands around its ivory eagle hilt, the tip of the blade making a scraping sound as the little fellow dragged it doggedly behind him across the floor. Cato bent and picked it up, tested its point and edges; still razor sharp. "I am my own man again," he said, and returned to his room. Now he could reread the Phaedo and make sense of it. Help me, Socrates! Show me that my fear is needless!

"Those who love knowledge are aware that their Souls are no more than attached to their bodies as with glue or pins. Whereas those who do not love knowledge are unaware that each pleasure, each pain is a kind of nail fastening the Soul to the body like a rivet, so that she emulates the body, and believes that all her truths arise from the body ... Is there an opposite to life?" "Yes." "What is it?" "Death." "And what do we call the thing that owns no death?" "Immortal." "Does the Soul own death?" "No." "Then the Soul is immortal?" "Yes." "The Soul cannot perish when the body dies, for the Soul does not admit of death as a part of herself." There it is, manifest, the truth of all truths.

Cato rolled and tied the Phaedo, kissed it, then lay down upon his bed and fell into a deep, dreamless sleep while the storm muttered and grumbled into a profound calm. In the middle of the night his right hand woke him, stabbing, throbbing; he gazed at it in dismay, then struck the gong. "Send for the physician Cleanthes," he told the servant, "and summon Butas here to see me." His agent came with suspicious celerity; Cato eyed him with irony, realizing that at least a third of Utica knew that its prefect had demanded his sword. "Butas, go down to the harbor and make sure that those trying to board vessels are all right." Butas went; outside he paused to whisper to Statyllus. "He can't be thinking of suicide, he's too concerned with the present. You imagine things." So the household cheered up, and Statyllus, who had been on the point of fetching Lucius Gratidius, changed his mind. Cato wouldn't thank him for sending a centurion to plead with him! When the physician Cleanthes arrived, Cato held out his right hand. "I've broken it," he said. "Splint it so I can use it." While Cleanthes worked at an impossible task, Butas returned to inform Cato that the weather had played havoc with the ships, and that many refugees were in a state of confusion. "Oh, poor things!" said Cato. "Come back at dawn and let me know more, Butas." Cleanthes coughed delicately. "I have done the best I can, domine, but may I remain in your house a while longer? I am told that the steward Prognanthes is still unconscious." "Oh, him! His jaw is like his name a rocky shelf. He broke my hand, a wretched nuisance. Yes, go and tend him if you must." He was awake when Butas reported at dawn that the situation on the waterfront had settled down. As the agent left, Cato lay down on his bed. "Close the door, Butas," he said. The moment the door shut, he took the sword from where he had propped it against the end of his narrow bed and attempted to maneuver it into the traditional position, drive it upward under his rib cage into his chest just to the left of the sternum. But the broken hand refused to obey, even when he tore the splint off it. In the end he simply plunged the blade into his belly as high as he could, and sawed from side to side to enlarge the rent in his abdomen wall. As he groaned and hacked, determined to succeed, to liberate his pure and unsullied Soul, his traitorous body suddenly snatched control from his will, jerked massively; Cato fell off the bed and sent an abacus flying into the gong with a clatter and a huge, sonorous boom. The household came running from all directions, Cato's son in the lead, to find Cato on the floor in a spreading lake of blood, entrails strewn around him in steaming heaps. The grey eyes were wide open, unseeing. Young Cato was howling hysterically, but Statyllus, too far into shock to weep, saw Cato's eyes blink. "He's alive! He's still alive! Cleanthes, he's alive!" The physician was already kneeling beside Cato; he glared up at Statyllus. "Help me, you idiot!" he barked. Together they gathered up Cato's bowels and put them back inside his abdomen, Cleanthes cursing and pushing, shaking the mass until it settled and he could draw the edges of the wound together comfortably. Then he took his curved needle and some clean linen thread and sewed the awful gash tightly, each stitch separate but in close proximity; dozens of them. "He's so strong he might live," he said, standing back to review his handiwork. "It all depends how much blood he's lost. We must thank Asklepios that he's unconscious."

Cato came up out of a peaceful place into a terrible agony. A hideous wail of pain erupted, neither shriek nor groan; his eyes opened to see many people crowded around him, his son's face repulsive with tears and snot, Staryllus emitting whimpers, the physician Cleanthes turning with wet hands from a bowl of water, and clusters of slaves, a crying babe, keening women. "You will live, Marcus Cato!" Cleanthes cried triumphantly. "We have saved you!" The cloud cleared from Cato's eyes. They traveled downward to the bloody linen towel across his middle. His left hand moved, twitched, pulled the towel away to see the Tyrian purple, distended expanse of his belly gashed from side to side in a ragged tear, now neatly sewn up with crimson embroidery. "My Soul!" he screamed, shuddered, and screwed up every part of himself that had always fought, fought, fought, no matter what the odds; both hands went to the stitches, ripped and tore with frenzied strength until the wound was gaping open, then he began to pull the shiny, pearly intestines out, fling them away. No one moved to stop him. Paralyzed, his son and his friend and his physician watched him destroy himself piece by piece, his mouth gaping silently. Suddenly he spasmed hugely. The grey eyes, still open, took on the look of death, irises fled before the expanding black pupils; finally came a faint gold sheen, death's ultimate patina. Cato's Soul was gone.

The city of Utica burned him the next day on a huge pyre of frankincense, myrrh, nard, cinnamon and Jericho balsam, his body wrapped in Tyrian purple and cloth-of-gold. He would have hated it, Marcus Porcius Cato, the enemy of all ostentation. He had done as much as he could, given the shortness of the time at his disposal to prepare for death; there were letters for his poor devastated son, for Statyllus, and for Caesar, gifts of money for Lucius Gratidius and Prognanthes the steward, still inanimate. But he left no word for Marcia, his wife.

When Caesar rode into the main square mounted on Toes, his scarlet paludamentum carefully draped across the handsome chestnut horse's haunches, the ashes had been collected from the pyre, but the pyre itself still sat, a blackened, aromatic heap, in the midst of a silently watching populace. "What is this?" Caesar asked, skin crawling. "The pyre of Marcus Porcius Cato Uticensis!" shrilled the voice of Statyllus. The eyes were so cold they looked eerie, inhuman; without any change of expression Caesar slid from the horse to the paving stones, his cloak falling behind him gracefully. To Utica, he looked every inch the conqueror. "His house?" he asked Statyllus. Statyllus turned and led the way. "Is his son here?" Caesar asked, Calvinus entering behind him. "Yes, Caesar, but very upset by his father's death." "Suicide, of course. Tell me about it." "What is there to tell?" Statyllus asked, shrugging. "You know Marcus Cato, Caesar. He would not submit to any tyrant, even a clement one." A fumble inside the sleeve of his black tunic produced a slender scroll. "He left this for you." Caesar took it, examined the seal, a cap of liberty with the words M PORC CATO around it. Not a reference to his own fight against what he saw as tyranny, but a reference to his great-grandmother, the daughter of a slave.

I refuse to owe my life to a tyrant, a man who flouts the Law by pardoning other men, just as if the Law gave him the right to be their master. The Law does not.

Dying to read it, Calvinus despaired that he would ever get the chance. Then the strong, tapering fingers crushed the note, threw it away. Caesar looked down at his fingers as if at a stranger's, drew a breath that was neither sigh nor growl. "I grudge you your death, Cato, just as you grudged me your life," he said harshly. Young Cato shuffled out, supported by two servants. "Could you not persuade your father to wait, at least to see me, talk to me?" "You know Cato a great deal better than I do, Caesar," the young man said. "He died as he lived very hard." "What do you plan to do now that your father's dead? You know that all his property is confiscate." "Ask you for a pardon and make a living somehow. I am not my father." "You're pardoned, just as he would have been." "May I ask a favor, Caesar?" "Yes, of course." "Statyllus. May he travel to Italy with me? My father left him the money to go to Marcus Brutus, who will take him in." "Marcus Brutus is in Italian Gaul. Statyllus may join him." And that was the end of it. Caesar swung on his heel and walked out, Calvinus behind him after he'd retrieved the note. A valuable archive. Outside, Caesar threw off the mood as if it had never been. "Well, I could expect nothing else from Cato," he said to Calvinus. "Always the worst of my enemies, always out to foil me." "An absolute fanatic, Caesar. From the day of his birth, I suspect. He never understood the difference between life and philosophy." Caesar laughed. "The difference? No, my dear Calvinus, not the difference. Cato never understood life. Philosophy was his way of dealing with something he didn't have the ability to grasp. Philosophy was his manual of behavior. That he chose to be a Stoic reflected his nature purification through self-denial." "Poor Marcia! A cruel blow." "The cruel blow was in loving Cato, who refused to be loved."

3

Among the Republican high command, only Titus Labienus, the two Pompeys and governor Attius Varus reached Spain. Publius Sittius was back in action for Kings Bocchus and Bogud of the Mauretanias; the moment he received word of Caesar's victory at Thapsus, he sent out his trusty fleet to sweep the seas and himself invaded Numidia by land. Metellus Scipio and Lucius Manlius Torquatus sailed aboard a group of ships that elected to hug the African coast; Gnaeus and Sextus Pompey, in Gnaeus's original fleet, decided to strike across open water and revictual in the Balearic Isles. Labienus sailed with them, not trusting Metellus Scipio's judgement, and loathing the man besides. Publius Sittius's fleet encountered the Africa-hugging ships and attacked with such enthusiasm that capture was inevitable. Like Cato, Metellus Scipio and Torquatus chose suicide over a pardon from Caesar. In hopeless disarray, the Numidian army of light armed horse was no match for the invading Sittius, who swept them up before him and advanced inexorably through Juba's kingdom. Marcus Petreius and King Juba had gone to Juba's capital of Cirta, only to find its gates locked and the populace too afraid of Caesar's vengeance to let them inside. The two men sought shelter in a villa Juba kept not far from Cirta, and there agreed to fight a duel to the death as the most honorable way left. The outcome was a foregone conclusion: Juba was much younger and stronger than Petreius, who had grown old and grizzled in Pompey the Great's service. Petreius died in the duel, but when Juba tried to inflict the death stroke upon himself, he found that his arms were too short. A slave held his sword, and Juba ran on it. The most distressing tragedy of all was Lucius Caesar's son, who was captured and released on his own cognizance to stay in a villa on the outskirts of Utica until Caesar had time to deal with him. It was staffed by some of Caesar's own servants, and in its grounds were a few cages of wild animals found among Metellus Scipio's abandoned baggage; Caesar took them to use in the games he planned to celebrate in his dead Julia's honor, for a vindictive Senate had denied her funeral games. Cato and Ahenobarbus. Perhaps the aura of suspicion surrounding this only member of the Julii Caesares who had sided with the Republicans had eaten into his core, or perhaps some innate mental instability had always been there; whatever the reason, Lucius Caesar Junior was soon joined by a group of Republican legionaries, took over the villa, and tortured Caesar's servants to death. Having no more human victims, Lucius Caesar Junior then tortured the animals to death. When the legionaries decamped, Lucius Caesar Junior did not. A horrified tribune sent to check on him found him wandering the villa covered in blood, mumbling and raving alternately. Like Ajax after the fall of Troy, he seemed to think the beasts were his enemies. Caesar decided that he would have to stand trial, deeming it absolutely necessary that his cousin's only son be dealt with publicly, and trusting that the military court would see for itself that Lucius Caesar Junior was hopelessly demented. Pending trial, he was left locked inside the villa under guard. Oh, shades of Publius Vettius! When some soldiers came to put Lucius Caesar Junior into chains and bring him to Utica for the court-martial, they discovered him dead but not by his own hand. Who had sneaked in and murdered him remained a mystery, but not even the most insignificant member of Caesar's staff thought Caesar implicated. Many were the rumors about Caesar Dictator, yet that particular calumny was never put forward. After conducting the funeral as Pontifex Maximus, Caesar sent Lucius's son's ashes home to him with as much explanation as he thought Lucius could bear.

Utica was pardoned too, but Caesar reminded the Three Hundred that during his first consulship thirteen years ago he had passed a lex Julia which had greatly benefited the city. "The fine is levied at two hundred million sesterces, to be paid in six-monthly installments over a period of three years. Not to me, citizens of Utica. Directly to the Treasury of Rome." A huge fine! Eight thousand talents of silver. Since Utica could not deny that it had aided the Republicans and had lauded, adored and gladly harbored Cato, Caesar's most obdurate enemy, the Three Hundred accepted its fate meekly. What could they do about it, especially when the money had to be paid directly to the Roman Treasury? This was one tyrant not out to enrich himself. Republican owners of wheat latifundia in the Bagradas and Catada valleys suffered too; Caesar auctioned their properties at once, thus ensuring that those who continued to farm wheat on a large scale in Africa Province were very definitely his clients. An action he regarded as vital for Rome's welfare who knew what the future might hold? From Africa Province he proceeded to Numidia, where he put up all Juba's personal property for auction before dismantling the kingdom of Numidia completely. The eastern portion, which was the most fertile, was incorporated into the African province as Africa Nova; Publius Sittius received a fine strip of territory on Africa Nova's western boundary as his personal fief provided that he held it for the Rome of Caesar and Caesar's heir. Bogud and Bocchus received the western end of Numidia, but Caesar left it up to the two kings to sort out the boundaries between themselves.

On the last day of May he quit Africa for Sardinia, leaving Gaius Sallustius Crispus behind to govern the Roman provinces. That hundred-and-fifty-mile voyage took twenty-seven days; the seas were mountainous, his ship leaked, had to put into every tiny isle On the way, was blown far to the east, then blown far to the west. Exasperating, not because Caesar was prone to seasickness he was not but because the ship moved too much for him to read, write, or even think lucidly. Harbor made at last, he raised Republican Sardinia's tithe to one-eighth, and levied a special fine of ten million sesterces on the town of Sulcis for actively abetting the Republicans. Two days into Quinctilis and he was ready to sail for Ostia or Puteoli, whichever port the winds and weather made feasible; then the equinoctial gales began to roar as if what had plagued his ship on the way to Sardinia had been but a gentle zephyr. Caesar looked at Carales harbor and condescended to heed his captain's plea not to sail. The gales blew for three nundinae without let, but at least sitting on dry land he could read and write, catch up on the mountain of correspondence.

Time for thought didn't come until finally he set sail for Ostia; the wind was blowing from the southwest, so Ostia at the mouth of the Tiber it would be.

The war will go on, unless Gaius Trebonius in Further Spain can capture Labienus and the two Pompeii before they have time to organize fresh resistance. A better man than Trebonius does not exist, but the pity of it is that when he arrived in his province he found it in no mood to co-operate after the predatory governorship of Quintus Cassius. That is the trouble, Caesar. You cannot do everything yourself, and for every Gaius Trebonius, there is a Quintus Cassius. For every Calvinus, there is an Antonius. Spain is on the lap of the gods, there's no point in wasting time fretting about Spain at the moment. Think rather, that so far the war has gone all Caesar's way, and that Africa confirms Pharsalus in the world's eyes. So many dead! So much talent and ability wasted on battlefields. And what about the Phaedo, eh? It took time to get the story out of Statyllus, but a hint that perhaps Caesar would renege on his promise to let Statyllus go to Brutus soon had the whole of that unspeakable suicide laid bare for Caesar's inspection. Oh, immensely cheering to learn that the tempered, indestructible steel of Cato's persona was so totally fractured underneath. When the time came to die, he feared to die. Had first to convince himself that he would live forever by reading the Phaedo. How fascinating. It is some of the most beautiful, poetic Greek ever written, but the man who wrote it was speaking at second hand, and neither he nor Socrates, the supreme philosopher, was valid in logic, in reason, in common sense. Phaedo, Phaedrus and the rest are full of sophistry, sometimes downright dishonest, and commit the same old philosophical crime: they arrive at conclusions that suit them and please them, rather than at the truth. As for Stoicism, what philosophy is narrower, what other code of spiritual conduct can breed the ultimate fanatic so successfully? What it boils down to is that Cato couldn't do the deed without first knowing that he would enjoy a life thereafter. And sought confirmation in the Phaedo. This comforts Caesar, who craves no life hereafter. What can death be, except an eternal sleep? The only immortality a man can ever have is to live on in the memories and stories of the gens humana for time immemorial. A fate sure to happen for Caesar, but a fate that Caesar will exert every effort to make sure does not happen for Cato. Without Cato, there would have been no civil war. It is for that I cannot ever forgive him. It is for that Caesar cannot forgive him. Ah, but Caesar's life grows lonelier, even with the death of Cato. Bibulus, Ahenobarbus, Lentulus Crus, Lentulus Spinther, Afranius, Petreius, Pompeius Magnus, Curio. Rome has become a city of widows, and Caesar has no real competition. How can Caesar excel without opposition to drive him? Though not, though never, opposition from his legions. Caesar's legions. Ninth, Tenth, Twelfth, Fourteenth, their standards loaded down with honors, their share of booty sufficient to give the rankers Third Class status in the Centuries, their centurions Second Class status. Yet they mutinied. Why? Because they were idle, poorly supervised and prey to the mischief men like Avienus cannot resist making. Because some men within them have given them the notion that they can dictate terms of service to their generals. Their mutiny is not forgiven but, more important, it is not forgotten. No man from a mutinous legion will ever get land in Italy, or a full share of the booty after Caesar triumphs. After Caesar triumphs. Caesar has waited fourteen years to triumph, cheated out of his Spanish one when he came back from Further Spain as praetor. The Senate forced him to cross the pomerium into the city to declare his candidacy for the consulship, so he lost his imperium and his triumph. But this year he will triumph, so splendidly that Sulla's and Pompeius Magnus's triumphs will seem mean, small. This year. Yes, this year. There will be time, for this year Caesar will put the calendar to rights at last, tie the seasons to the months in a proper 365-day year, with an extra day every four years to keep both in perfect step. If Caesar does no more for Rome than that, his name will live on long after he himself is dead. That is all that immortality can ever be. Oh, Cato, with your longing for an immortal soul, your fear of dying! What is there to be afraid of, in dying?

The ship heeled, quivered; the wind was changing, getting up, swinging around to the southeast. He could almost smell Egypt of Nilus on its breath the sweet, slightly fetid stench of inundation-soaked black soil, the alien blossoms in alien gardens, the fragrance of Cleopatra's skin.

Cleopatra. Caesar does miss her, though he thought he would not. What will the little fellow look like? She says in her letters, like Caesar, but Caesar will see him more dispassionately. A son for Caesar, but not a Roman son. Who will be Caesar's Roman son, the son he adopts in his will? Wherever Caesar's life is going, it is time and more than time that he made his will. Yet how can a man poise the balance between an untried, unknown sixteen-year-old and a man of thirty-seven? Pray there is time to poise the balance. The Senate has voted Caesar the dictatorship for ten years, with the powers of a censor for three years and the right to let his preferences be known when the candidates apply for election as magistrates. A good letter to receive before leaving Africa.

A voice whispers: where are you going, Gaius Julius Caesar? And why does it seem to matter so little? Is it that you have done all that you wanted to do, though not in the way and with the constitutional sanction you yearned for? No sense in ruing what has been done and cannot be undone. No, it cannot be undone, even for a million gold crowns studded with rubies or emeralds or ocean pearls the size of pebbles.

But without rivals, victory is hollow. Without rivals, how can Caesar shine?

The sting in winning is to be left the only one alive on the field.

VI

Trying Times, Thankless Tasks

From SEXTILIS (AUGUST) until the end of DECEMBER of 46 B.C.

The Domus Publica had changed for the better on its exterior. Its ground floor was built of tufa blocks and had the old, rectangular windows, then Ahenobarbus Pontifex Maximus had added an opus incertum upper story faced with bricks and having arched windows. Caesar Pontifex Maximus added a temple pediment over the main entrance and gave the entire outside of the ugly building a more uniform look by facing it in polished marble. Inside it maintained its venerable beauty, for Caesar, Pontifex Maximus now for seventeen years, permitted no neglect. Time, he thought, having finally returned from Sardinia, to start giving receptions, to suggest to Calpurnia that she host the Bona Dea celebrations in November; if Caesar Dictator was to be stranded in Rome for many months, he may as well create a splash. His own quarters were on the ground floor; a bedroom and study, and, where his mother used to live, two offices for his chief secretary, Gaius Faberius. Who greeted him with slightly overdone pleasure, and wouldn't meet his eyes. "Are you so offended that I didn't take you to Africa? I'd thought to give you a rest from travel, Faberius," Caesar said. Faberius jumped, shook his head. "No, Caesar, of course I wasn't offended! I was able to get a great deal of work done in your absence, and see something of my family." "How are they?" "Very happy to move to the Aventine. The Clivus Orbius has gone sadly downhill." "Orbian hill downhill. Good pun," said Caesar, and left it at that. But with a mental note to find out what was worrying this oldest among his secretaries. When he entered his wife's quarters upstairs he wished he had not, for Calpurnia had guests: Cato's widow, Marcia, and Cato's daughter, Porcia. Why did women choose peculiar friends? Still, it was too late to retreat now. Best to brazen it out. Calpurnia, he noticed, was growing into her beauty. At eighteen she had been a pleasant-looking girl, shy and quiet, and he knew perfectly well that her conduct during the years of his absence had been irreproachable. Now in her late twenties, she had a better figure, a great deal more composure, and was arranging her hair in a new, highly flattering style. His advent didn't fluster her in the least, despite the vexation that being caught with these two women must have caused her. "Caesar," she said, rising and coming to kiss him lightly. "Is that the same cat I gave you?" he asked, pointing to a rotund ball of reddish fur on a couch. "Yes, that's Felix. He's getting old, but his health is good." Caesar had advanced to take Marcia's hand and smile at Porcia in a friendly way. "Ladies, a sad meeting. I would have given much to ensure a happier one." "I know," said Marcia, blinking away tears. "Was he was he well before ?" "Very well, and much loved by all of Utica. So much so that the people of that city have given him a new cognomen Uticensis. He was very brave," said Caesar, making no attempt to sit. "Naturally he was brave! He was Cato!" said Porcia in that same loud, harsh voice her father had owned. How like him she was! A pity that she was the girl, young Marcus the boy. Though she would never have begged a pardon would be fleeing to Spain, or dead. "Are you living with Philippus?" he asked Marcia. "For the time being," she said, and sighed. "He wants me to marry again, but I don't wish to." "If you don't wish to, you shouldn't. I'll speak to him." "Oh yes, by all means do that!" Porcia snarled. "You're the King of Rome, whatever you say must be obeyed!" "No, I am not the King of Rome, nor do I want to be," Caesar said quietly. "It was meant kindly, Porcia. How are you faring?" "Since Marcus Brutus bought all Bibulus's property, I live in Bibulus's house with Bibulus's youngest son." "I'm very glad that Brutus was so generous." Taking in the sight of several more cats, Caesar used them as an excuse to bolt. "You're lucky, Calpurnia. These creatures make my eyes water and my skin itch. Ave, ladies." And he escaped.

Faberius had put his important correspondence on his desk; frowning, he noted one scroll whose tag bore a date in May. Vatia Isauricus's seal. Before he opened it, he knew it held bad news.

Syria is without a governor, Caesar. Your young cousin Sextus Julius Caesar is dead. Did you by any chance meet a Quintus Caecilius Bassus when you passed through Antioch last year? In case you did not, I had better explain who he is. A Roman knight of the Eighteen, who took up residence in Tyre and went into the purple-dye business after serving with Pompeius Magnus during his eastern campaigns. He speaks fluent Median and Persian, and it is now being bandied about that he has friends at the court of the King of the Parthians. Certainly he is enormously rich, and not all his income is from Tyrian purple. When you imposed those heavy penalties on Antioch and the cities of the Phoenician coast for so strongly supporting the Republicans, Bassus was gravely affected. He went to Antioch and looked up some old friends among the military tribunes of the Syrian legion, all men who had served with Pompeius Magnus. The next thing, governor Sextus Caesar was informed that you were dead in Africa Province and the Syrian legion was restive. He called the legion to an assembly intending to calm its men down, but they murdered him and hailed Bassus as their new commander. Bassus then proclaimed himself the new governor of Syria, so all your clients and adherents in northern Syria fled at once to Cilicia. As I happened to be in Tarsus visiting Quintus Philippus, I was able to act swiftly, sent a letter to Marcus Lepidus in Rome, and asked him to send Syria a governor as quickly as possible. According to his reply, he has dispatched Quintus Cornificius, who should answer well. Cornificius and Vatinius fought a brilliant campaign in Illyricum last year. However, Bassus has entrenched himself formidably. He marched to Antioch, which shut its gates and refused to let him in. So our friend the purple merchant marched down the road to Apameia: in return for many trade favors, it declared for Bassus, who entered it and has set himself up there, calling Apameia the capital of Syria. He has worked a great deal of mischief, Caesar, and he is definitely in league with the Parthians. He's made an alliance with the new king of the Skenite Arabs, one Alchaudonius who, incidentally, was one of the Arabs with Abgarus when he led Marcus Crassus into the Parthian trap at Carrhae. Alchaudonius and Bassus are very busy recruiting troops for a new Syrian army. I imagine that the Parthians are going to invade, and that Bassus's Syrian army will join them to move against Rome in Cilicia and Asia Province. This means that both Quintus Philippus and I are also recruiting, and have sent warning to the client-kings. Southern Syria is quiet. Your friend Antipater is making sure the Jews stay out of Bassus's plans, and has sent to Queen Cleopatra in Egypt for men, armaments and food supplies against the day when the Parthians invade. The rebuilding and fortification of Jerusalem's walls may turn out to be more vital than even you envisioned. There have been Parthian raids up and down the Euphrates, though the territory of the Skenite Arabs has not suffered. You may have thought that the eastern end of Our Sea was pacified, but I doubt that Rome will ever be able to say that about any part of her world. There's always someone lusting to take things off her.

Poor young Sextus Caesar, the grandson of his uncle, Sextus. That branch of the family the elder branch had had none of Caesar's fabled luck. The patrician Julii Caesares used three first names Sextus, Gaius and Lucius. If a Julius Caesar had three sons, the first was Sextus, the second Gaius, and the third Lucius. His own father was the second son, not the first, and only the marriage of his father's elder sister to the fabulously wealthy New Man Gaius Marius had given his father the money to stay in the Senate and ascend the cursus honorum, the ladder to the senior magistracies. His father's younger sister had married Sulla, so Caesar could rightly say that both Marius and Sulla were his uncles. Very handy through the years! His father's elder brother, Sextus, had died first, of a lung inflammation during a bitter winter campaign of the Italian civil war. Lungs! Suddenly Caesar remembered where he had previously seen the stigmata he had noticed in young Gaius Octavius. Uncle Sextus! He'd had the same look about him: the same narrow rib cage, small chest. There had not been a moment to ask Hapd'efan'e, and now he could offer the priest-physician more information. Uncle Sextus had suffered from the wheezes, used to go to the Fields of Fire behind Puteoli once a year to inhale the sulphur fumes that belched out of the earth amid splutters of lava and licks of flame. He remembered his father saying that the wheezes cropped up from time to time in a Julius Caesar, that it was a family trait. A family trait young Gaius Octavius had inherited? Was that why the lad didn't attend the youths' drills and exercises on the Campus Martius regularly? Caesar summoned Hapd'efan'e. "Has Trogus given you a nice room, Hapd'efan'e?" he asked. "Yes, Caesar. A beautiful guest suite that overlooks the big peristyle. I have the space to store my medicaments and my instruments, and Trogus has found me a lad for my apprentice. I like this house and I like the Forum Romanum they are old." "Tell me about the wheezes." "Ah!" said the priest-physician, dark eyes widening. "You mean a wheezing noise when a patient breathes?" "Yes." "But on expiration, not on inspiration." Caesar wheezed experimentally. "Breathing out, definitely." "Yes, I know of it. When the air is still and reasonably dry and the season is neither blossoms nor harvest, the patient is quite well unless some painful emotion troubles him. But when the air is full of pollen or little bits of straw or dust, or is too humid, the patient is distressed when he breathes. If he is not removed from the irritation, he goes into a fully fledged attack of wheezing, coughs until he retches, goes blue in the face as he struggles for every breath. Sometimes he dies." "My Uncle Sextus had it, and did die, but apparently of a lung inflammation due to exposure to extreme cold. Our family physician called it dyspnoea, as I remember," said Caesar. "No, it is not dyspnoea. That is a constant struggle for breath, rather than episodic," said Hapd'efan'e firmly. "Can this episodic non-dyspnoea run in families?" "Oh, yes. The Greek name for it is asthma." "How best to treat it, Hapd'efan'e?" "Certainly not the way the Greeks do, Caesar! They advocate bloodletting, laxatives, hot fomentations, a potion of hydromel mixed with hyssop, and lozenges made from galbanum and turpentine resin. The last two may help a little, I admit. But in our medical lore, it is said that asthmatics are suffused with sensitive feelings, that they take things to heart when others do not. We treat an attack with inhalation of sulphur fumes, but work more on avoiding attacks. We advise the patient to stay away from dust, tiny particles of grass or straw, animal hair or fur, pollen, heavy sea vapors," said Hapd'efan'e. "Is it present for life?" "In some cases, Caesar, yes, but not always. Children who suffer from it sometimes grow out of it. A harmonious home life and general tranquillity are helpful." "My thanks, Hapd'efan'e." One of his worries about young Gaius Octavius had just been elucidated, though finding a solution would be hugely difficult. The boy shouldn't be let near horses or mules yes, that had been true of Uncle Sextus as well! Military training was going to be almost impossible, yet it was absolutely obligatory for a man with aspirations to be consul. All very well for Brutus! His family was so powerful, so ancestor-rich, and his fortune so vast that no colleague or peer would ever be indelicate enough to refer to Brutus's lack of martial spirit. Whereas Octavius lacked imposing ancestors on his father's side, and bore his father's name. The patrician Julian blood was distaff blood, not manifest in his name. Poor fellow! His road to the consulship would prove hard, perhaps insuperable. If he lived to get that far. Caesar got up to pace, bitterly disappointed. There didn't seem to be enough of a chance that Gaius Octavius would survive to warrant making the lad Caesar's heir. Back to Marcus Antonius what a hideous prospect!

Lucius Marcius Philippus had extended an invitation to dinner at his spacious house on the Palatine to "celebrate your return to Rome" said the gracefully written note. Cursing the waste of time but aware that family obligations insisted they attend, Caesar and Calpurnia arrived at the ninth hour of daylight to find themselves the only guests. Equipped with a dining room able to hold six couches, Philippus usually filled all six, but not today. Some warning alarm sounded; Caesar doffed his toga, made sure his thin layer of hair covered his scalp he grew it long forward from the crown and let the servant offer him a bowl of water to wash his feet. Naturally he was put in the locus consularis, the place of honor on Philippus's own couch, with young Gaius Octavius at its far end from Caesar; Philippus took the middle position. His elder son wasn't present was that the reason for his sense that something was wrong? Caesar wondered. Was he here to be informed that Philippus was divorcing his wife for adultery with his son? No, no, of course not! That wasn't the kind of news passed on at a dinner party with the wife sitting there. Marcia wasn't present either; just Atia and her daughter, Octavia, joined Calpurnia on the three chairs opposite the only occupied couch. Calpurnia looked delicious in an artfully draped lapis blue gown that echoed the color of her eyes; she was wearing the new sleeves, cut open from the shoulder and pinched together at intervals down the outer arm with little jeweled buttons. Atia had chosen a lavender blue that suited her fair beauty, and the young girl was exquisitely garbed in pale pink. How like her brother she was! The same masses of waving golden hair, his oval face, high cheekbones and nose with the sliding upward tilt. Her eyes alone were different, a clear aquamarine. When Caesar smiled at Octavia she smiled back to reveal perfect teeth and a dimple in her right cheek; their eyes met, and Caesar drew an involuntary breath of astonishment. Aunt Julia! Aunt Julia's gentle, peaceful soul looked out at him, warmed him to the marrow. She is Aunt Julia all over again. I shall give her a bottle of Aunt Julia's perfume and rejoice. This girl will inspire love in all who meet her, she is a pearl beyond price. From her face he turned to gaze at her brother, to see an unqualified affection. He adores her, this elder sister. The meal was quite up to Philippus's standards, and included his favorite party fare a smooth, yellowish mass of cream churned with eggs and honey inside an outer barrel filled with a mixture of snow and salt. It was brought at the gallop from the Mons Fiscellus, Italy's highest mountain. The two young people spooned up the icy, melting poultice ecstatically, as did Calpurnia and Philippus. Caesar refused it. So did Atia. "Between the eggs and the cream, Uncle Gaius, I simply dare not," she laughed, but nervously. "Here, have some strawberries." "For Philippus, out of season means nothing," said Caesar, growing ever more intrigued at the apprehension in the air. He lay back against his bolster and eyed Philippus mockingly, one fair brow raised. "There has to be a reason for this occasion, Lucius. Enlighten me." "As my note said, a celebration of your return to Rome. Ah however, there is an additional reason to celebrate, I admit," said Philippus as smoothly as his iced cream. Caesar braced himself. "Since my great-nephew has been a man for nearly eight months, it can't concern him. Therefore it must concern my great-niece. Is she betrothed?" "She is," said Philippus. "Where's the prospective bridegroom?" "On his Etrurian estates." "May I ask his name?" "Gaius Claudius Marcellus Minor," said Philippus airily. "Minor." "Well, it couldn't be Major! He's still abroad, unpardoned." "I wasn't aware that Minor had been pardoned." "Since he did nothing wrong and remained in Italy, why does he need a pardon?" Philippus asked, beginning to sound truculent. "Because he was senior consul when I crossed the Rubicon, and made no attempt to persuade Pompeius Magnus and the boni to reach an accommodation with me." "Come, Caesar, you know he was ill! Lentulus Crus did all the work, though as junior consul he didn't hold the fasces for January. Once sworn in, Marcellus Minor was obliged to take to his bed, and there he remained for many moons. Since none of the physicians could find a reason for his sickness, I've always been of the opinion that it was Minor's way of avoiding the displeasure of his far more militant brother and first cousin." "A coward, you're implying." "No, not a coward! Oh, sometimes you're too much the lawyer, Caesar! Marcellus Minor is simply a prudent man with the foresight to see that you can't be beaten. It's no disgrace for any man to deal craftily with his more unperceptive relatives," said Philippus, grimacing. "Relatives can be a terrible nuisance look at me, handicapped with a mother like Palla and a half brother who tried to murder his own father! Not to mention my father, who tergiversated perpetually. They're the reasons why I adopted Epicureanism and have remained resolutely neutral all my political life. And look at you, with Marcus Antonius!" Philippus scowled and clenched his fists, then disciplined himself to relax. "After Pharsalus, Marcellus Minor made a good recovery, and he's been attending the Senate ever since you left for Africa. Not even Antonius objected to his presence, and Lepidus welcomed him." Caesar kept his face expressionless, but his eyes didn't thaw. "Does this match please you, Octavia?" he asked, looking at her, and remembering that Aunt Julia had gone to Gaius Marius in a spirit of self-sacrifice, though apparently she had loved him. Caesar preferred to remember the pain Marius caused her. Octavia shivered. "Yes, it pleases me, Uncle Gaius." "Did you ask for this match?" "It is not my place to ask," she said, the pink fading from her cheeks and lips. "Have you met him, this forty-five-year-old?" "Yes, Uncle Gaius." "And you can look forward to married life with him?" "Yes, Uncle Gaius." "Is there anyone you would prefer to marry?" "No, Uncle Gaius," she whispered. "Are you telling me the truth?" The big, terrified eyes lifted to his; her skin was ashen now. "Yes, Uncle Gaius." "Then," said Caesar, putting down his strawberries, "I offer you my felicitations, Octavia. However, as Pontifex Maximus, I forbid marriage confarreatio. An ordinary marriage, and you will retain the full control of your dowry." As pale as her daughter, Atia rose to her feet with rare clumsiness. ' "Calpurnia, come and see Octavia's wedding chest." The three women left very quickly, heads down. Voice conversational, Caesar addressed Philippus. "This is a very strange alliance, my friend. You have betrothed Caesar's great-niece to one of Caesar's enemies. What gives you the right to do that?" "I have every right," Philippus said, dark eyes burning. "I am the paterfamilias. You are not. When Marcellus Minor came to me with his offer, I considered it by far the best I've had." "Your status as paterfamilias is debatable. Legally I would have said she's in her brother's hand, now he's of age. Did you consult her brother?" "Yes," said Philippus between his teeth, "I did." "And what was your answer, Octavius?" The official man slid off the couch and transferred himself to the chair opposite Caesar, a place from which he could look at his great-uncle directly. "I considered the offer carefully, Uncle Gaius, and advised my stepfather to accept it." "Give me your reasons, Octavius." The lad's breathing had become audible, a moist rattle on every expiration, but he was clearly not about to back down, even though the emotional strain, according to Hapd'efan'e, was of an order to produce wheezing. "First of all, Marcellus Minor had come into possession of the estates of his brother, Marcus, and his first cousin, Gaius Major. He bought them at auction. When you listed the estates confiscate, Uncle, you did not list Minor's, so my stepfather and I assumed Minor was an eligible suitor. Thus his wealth was my first reason. Secondly, the Claudii Marcelli are a great family of plebeian nobles with consuls going back many generations, and strong ties to the patrician Cornelii of the Lentulus branch. Octavia's children by Marcellus Minor will have great social and political clout. Thirdly, I do not consider that the conduct of either this man or his brother, Marcus the consul, has been dishonest or unethical, though I admit that Marcus was a terrible enemy to you. But he and Minor adhered to the Republican cause because they deemed it right, and you of all men, Uncle Gaius, have never castigated men for that. Had the suitor been Gaius Marcellus Major, my decision would have been different, for he lied to the Senate and lied to Pompeius Magnus. Offenses you and I and all decent men find abhorrent. Fourthly, I watched Octavia very closely when they met, and talked to her afterward. Though you may not like him, Uncle, Octavia liked him very well. He is not ill looking, he is well-read, cultured, good-natured and besottedly in love with my sister. Fifthly, his future position in Rome depends heavily upon your favor. Marriage to Octavia strengthens that position. Which leads me to my sixth point, that he will be an excellent husband. I doubt Octavia will ever be able to reproach him for infidelity or treatment I for one would find repellent." Octavius squared his narrow shoulders. "Such are my reasons for thinking him a suitable husband for my sister." Caesar burst out laughing. "Good for you, young man! Not even Caesar could have been more dispassionate. I see that when I call the Senate to a meeting, I'll have to make much of Gaius Claudius Marcellus Minor, crafty enough to pretend illness, shrewd enough to buy his brother's and his first cousin's property, and enterprising enough to cement his position with Caesar Dictator by a politic marriage." He straightened on the couch. "Tell me, Octavius, if the situation were to change and an even more desirable marriage offer for your sister were to surface, would you break off the engagement?" "Of course, Caesar. I love my sister very much, but we take pains to make our women understand that they must always help us enhance our careers and our families by marrying where they are instructed to marry. Octavia has wanted for nothing, from the most expensive clothes to an education worthy of Cicero. She is aware that the price of her comfort and privilege is obedience." The wheezing was dying away; Octavius had come through his ordeal relatively unscathed. "What's the gossip?" Caesar asked Philippus, who had sagged in relief. "I hear that Cicero is at his villa in Tusculum writing a new masterpiece," Philippus said uneasily. This had not been a restful dinner, and he could already feel a need for laserpicium. "I detect a note of ominousness. The subject?" "A eulogy on Cato." "Oh, I see. From that, I deduce that he still refuses to take his place in the Senate?" "Yes, though Atticus is trying to make him see sense." "No one can!" said Caesar savagely. "What else?" "Poor little Varro is beside himself. While Master of the Horse Antonius used his authority to strip Varro of some of his nicer estates, which he put in his own name. The income is handy now that he isn't Master of the Horse. The moneylenders are dunning him for repayment of the loan he took out to buy that monument to bad taste, Pompeius's palace on the Carinae." "Thank you for that snippet of information. I will attend to it," Caesar said grimly. "And one other thing, Caesar, which I think you should know about, though I'm afraid it will come as a blow." "Deal the blow, Philippus." "Your secretary, Gaius Faberius." "I knew something was wrong. What's he done?" "He's been selling the Roman citizenship to foreigners." Oh, Faberius, Faberius! After all these years! It seems no one save Caesar himself can wait one or two months more for his share of the booty. My triumphs are imminent, and Faberius's share would have earned him knight's status. Now he gets nothing. "Is his graft on a grand scale?" "Grand enough to buy a mansion on the Aventine." "He mentioned a house." "I wouldn't exactly call Afranius's old place a mere house." "Nor would I." Caesar swung himself backward on the couch and waited for the servant to slip on his shoes, buckle them. "Octavius, walk me home," he commanded. "Calpurnia can stay to talk to the women a little longer I'll send a litter for her. Thank you, Philippus, for the welcome home party and for the gossip. Most illuminating." The awkward guest gone, Philippus donned backless slippers and shuffled to his wife's sitting room, where he found Calpurnia and Octavia examining piles of new clothing while Atia watched. "Did he settle down?" Atia whispered, coming to the door. "Once Octavius spoke his piece, his mood became sanguine. Your son is a remarkable fellow, my dear." "Oh, the relief! Octavia really does want this marriage." "I think Caesar will make Octavius his heir." Her face went to stark terror. "Ecastor, no!"

As Philippus's commodious house lay on the Circus Maximus side of the Palatine and looked more west than north, Caesar and his companion, both togate, walked down to the upper Forum, then turned at the shopping center corner to descend the slope of the Clivus Sacer to the Domus Publica. Caesar stopped. "Tell Trogus to send a litter for Calpurnia, would you?" he asked Octavius. "I want to inspect my new additions."

Octavius was back in a moment; they resumed their walk down into the gathering shadows. The sun was low, bronzing the arched stories of the Tabularium and subtly changing the colors of the temples encrusting the Capitol above it. Though Jupiter Optimus Maximus dominated the higher hump and Juno Moneta the Arx, which was the lower hump, almost every inch of space was occupied by a temple to some god or aspect of a god, the oldest among them small and drab, the newest glowing with rich colors and glittering with gilding. Only the slight depression between the two humps, the Asylum, contained any free ground, planted with pencil pines and poplars, several ferny trees from Africa. The Basilica Julia was completely finished; Caesar stood to regard its size and beauty with great satisfaction. Of two high stories, his new courthouse had a faade of colored marbles, Corinthian columns separated by arches in which stood statues of his ancestors from Aeneas through Romulus to that Quintus Marcius Rex who had built the aqueduct, and Gaius Marius, and Sulla, and Catulus Caesar. His mother was there, his first wife, Cinnilla, both Aunts Julia, and Julia, his daughter. That was the best part about being ruler of the world; he could erect statues of whomever he liked, including women. "It's so wonderful that I come to look at it often," said Octavius. "No more postponing the courts because of rain or snow." Caesar passed to the new Curia Hostilia, home of the Senate. The Well of the Comitia had gone to make room for it; he had built a new, much taller and larger rostra that faced up the full length of the Forum, adorned with statues and the columns that held the captured ships' beaks from which the rostra had gotten its name. There had been mutters that he was disturbing the mos maiorum with so much change, but he ignored them. Time that Rome looked better than places like Alexandria and Athens. Cato's new Basilica Porcia remained at the foot of the Hill of the Bankers because, though it was small, it was very recent and sufficiently attractive to warrant preserving. Beyond the Basilica Porcia and the Curia Hostilia was the Forum Julium, a huge undertaking that had meant resuming the business premises facing on to the Hill of the Bankers and excavating the slope to flatness. Not only that, but the Servian Walls had intruded upon its back, so he had paid to relocate these massive fortifications in a jog that went around his new forum. It was a rectangular open space paved in marble and surrounded on all four sides with a colonnade of splendid Corinthian pillars of purple marble, their acanthus leaf capitals gilded. A magnificent fountain decorated with statues of nymphs played in the middle of the space, while its only building, a temple to Venus Genetrix, stood at the back atop a high podium of steps. The same purple marble, the same Corinthian pillars, and atop the peak of the temple's pediment, a golden biga a statue of Victory driving two winged horses. The sun was almost gone; only the biga now reflected its rays. Caesar produced a key and let them into the cella, just one big room with a glorious honeycombed ceiling ornamented by roses. The paintings hung on its walls made Octavius catch his breath. "The 'Medea' is by Timomachus of Byzantium," Caesar said. "I paid eighty talents for it, but it's worth much more." It certainly is! thought the awed Octavius. Startlingly lifelike, the work showed Medea dropping the bloody chunks of the brothers she had murdered into the sea to slow her father down and enable her and Jason to escape. "The Aphrodite arising from the sea foam and the Alexander the Great are by the peerless Apelles a genius." Caesar grinned. "However, I think I'll keep the price I paid to myself. Eighty talents wouldn't cover one of Apelles's seashells." "But they're here in Rome," Octavius said fervently. "That alone makes a matchless painting worth the price. If Rome has them, then Athens or Pergamum don't." The statue of Venus Genetrix Venus the Ancestress stood in the center of the back wall of the cella, painted so well that the goddess seemed about to step down off her golden pedestal. Like the statue of Venus Victrix atop Pompey's theater, she bore Julia's face. "Arcesilaus did it," Caesar said abruptly, turning away. "I hardly remember her." "A pity. Julia was" his voice shook "a pearl beyond price. Any price at all." "Who did the statues of you?" Octavius asked. A Caesar in armor stood to one side of Venus, a togate Caesar on the other. "Some fellow Balbus found. My bankers have commissioned an equestrian statue of me to go in the forum itself, on one side of the fountain. I commissioned a statue of Toes to go on the other side. He's as famous as Alexander's Bucephalus." "What goes there?" Octavius asked, pointing to an empty plinth of some black wood inlaid with stones and enamel in most peculiar designs. "A statue of Cleopatra with her son by me. She wanted to donate it, and as she says it will be solid gold, I didn't like to put it outside, where someone enterprising might start shaving bits off it," Caesar said with a laugh. "When will she arrive in Rome?" "I don't know. As with all voyages, even the last, it depends on the gods." "One day, said Octavius, "I too will build a forum." "The Forum Octavium. A splendid ambition."

Octavius left Caesar at his door and commenced the uphill battle to Philippus's house, never more conscious of his chronic shortness of breath than when toiling uphill. Dusk was drawing in, a chill descending; day's trappings going, night's coming, thought Octavius as the whirr of small bird wings was replaced by the ponderous flap of owls. A vast, billowing cloud reared above the Viminal, shot with a last gasp of pink. I notice a change in him. He seems tired, though not with a physical weariness. More as if he understands that he will not be thanked for his efforts. That the petty creatures who creep about his feet will resent his brilliance, his ability to do what they have no hope of doing. "As with all voyages, even the last" why did he phrase it so? Just beyond the ancient, lichen-whiskered columns of the Porta Mugonia the hill sloped more acutely; Octavius paused to rest with his back pressed to the stone of one, thinking that the other looked like a brooding lemur escaped from the underworld, between its tubby body and its mushroom-cap hat. He straightened, struggled on a little farther, stopped opposite the lane that led to the Ox Heads, certainly the worst address on the Palatine. I was born in a house on that lane; my father's father, a notorious miser, was still alive and my father hadn't come into his inheritance. Then before we could move, he was dead, and Mama chose Philippus. A lightweight to whom the pleasures of the flesh are paramount. Caesar despises the pleasures of the flesh. Not as a philosophy, like Cato, simply as unimportant. To him, the world is stuffed with things that need setting to rights, things that only he can see how to fix. Because he questions endlessly, he picks and chews, gnaws and dissects, pulls whatever it is into its component parts, then puts them together again in a better, more practical way. How is it that he, the most august nobleman of them all, is not impaired by his birth, can see beyond it into illimitable distances? Caesar is classless. He is the only man I know or have read about who comprehends both the entire gigantic picture and every smallest detail in it. I want desperately to be another Caesar, but I do not have his mind. I am not a universal genius. I can't write plays and poems, give brilliant extemporaneous speeches, engineer a bridge or a siege platform, draft great laws effortlessly, play musical instruments, general flawless battles, write crisp commentaries, take up shield and sword to fight in the front line, travel like the wind, dictate to four secretaries at once, and all those other legendary things he does out of the vastness of his mind. My health is precarious and may grow worse, I stare that in the face every day. But I can plan, I have an instinct for the right alternative, I can think quickly, and I am learning to make the most of what few talents I have. If we share anything in common, Caesar and I, it is an absolute refusal to give up or give in. And perhaps, in the long run, that is the key. Somehow, some way, I am going to be as great as Caesar. He started the plod up the Clivus Palatinus, a slight figure that gradually merged into the gloom until it became a part of it. The Palatine cats, hunting for mouse or mate, slunk from shadow to shadow, and an old dog, half of one ear missing, lifted its leg to piss on the Porta Mugonia, too deaf to hear the bats.

Gaius Faberius, who had been with Caesar for twenty years, was dismissed in disgrace; Caesar convened a meeting of the Popular Assembly to witness the destruction of the tablets upon which the names of Faberius's false citizens were inscribed. "Due note has been taken of these names, and none will ever receive our citizenship!" he told the crowd. "Gaius Faberius has refunded the moneys paid to him by the false citizens, and said moneys will be donated to the temple of Quirinus, the god of all true Roman citizens. Furthermore, Gaius Faberius's share of my booty will be put back into the general pool for division." Caesar took a stroll across his new, taller rostra, went down its steps and escorted the tiny figure of Marcus Terentius Varro on to its top. "Marcus Antonius, come here!" he called. Knowing what was coming, the scowling Antony ascended, stood to face Varro as Caesar informed the listening assembly that Varro had been a good friend to Pompey the Great, but never involved in the Republican conspiracy. The Sabine nobleman, a great scholar, received the deeds of his properties back, plus a fine of one million sesterces Caesar levied against Antony for causing Varro such distress. Then Antony had publicly to apologize. "It's not important," Fulvia crooned when Antony stalked into her house immediately after the meeting. "Marry me, and you'll have the use of my fortune, darling Antonius. You're divorced now, there's no impediment. Marry me!" "I hate to be obligated to a woman!" Antony snapped. "Gerrae!" she gurgled. "Look at your two wives." "They were forced on me, you're not. But Caesar's finally set the dates for his triumphs, so I'll be getting my share of the Gallic booty in less than a month. Therefore I'll marry you." His face twisted into hate. "Gaul first, then Egypt for King Ptolemy and Princess Arsino, then Asia Minor for King Pharnaces, and finally Africa for King Juba. Just as if Caesar's never heard of the word Republicans! What a farce! I could kill him! I mean, he appoints me his Master of the Horse, which cuts me out of any of the booty for Egypt, Asia Minor or Africa I had to sit in Italy instead of serving with him! And have I had any thanks? No! He just shits on me!" An agitated nursemaid hurried in. "Domina, domina, little Curio has fallen over and hit his head!" Fulvia gasped, threw her hands in the air and was off at a run. "Oh, that child! He'll be the death of me!" she wailed. Three men had witnessed this rather unromantic interlude: Poplicola, Cotyla and Lucius Tillius Cimber. Cimber had entered the Senate as a quaestor the year before Caesar crossed the Rubicon, and supported his cause in the House. Unlike Antony, he could look forward to a share of the Asian and African booty, but they were nothing compared to what Antony would collect for Gaul. His vices were expensive, his association with Poplicola and Cotyla of some years' duration, and his acquaintance with Antony had burgeoned since Antony's return to Italy after Pharsalus. What he hadn't realized until this illuminating scene was the depth of Antony's hatred for his cousin Caesar; he truly did look as if he could do murder. "Didn't you say, Antonius, that you're bound to be Caesar's heir?" Poplicola asked casually. "I've been saying it for years, what's that to the point?" "I think Poplicola is trying to find a way to introduce the matter into our conversation," Cotyla said smoothly. "You're Caesar's heir, correct?" "I have to be," Antony said simply. "Who else is there?" "Then if it irks you to depend on Fulvia for money because you love her, you do have another source, not so? Compared to Caesar, Fulvia's a pauper," Cotyla said. Arrested, eyes gleaming redly, Antony looked at him. "Are you implying what I infer, Cotyla?" Cimber moved quietly out of Antony's line of sight, drawing no attention to his presence. "We're both implying it," Poplicola said. "All you have to do to get out of debt permanently is kill Caesar." "Quirites, that's a brilliant idea!" Antony's fists came up, clenched in exultation. "It would be so easy too." "Which one of us should do it?" Cimber asked, inserting himself back into the action. "I'll do it myself. I know his habits," Antony said. "He works until the eighth hour of night, then goes to bed for four hours and sleeps like the dead. I can go in over the top of his private peristyle wall, kill him and be out again before anybody knows I'm there. The tenth hour of night. And later, if there are any enquiries, the four of us will have been sitting drinking in old Murcius's tavern on the Via Nova." "When will you do it?" asked Cimber. "Oh, tonight," Antony said cheerfully. "While I'm still in the mood." "He's a close kinsman," said Poplicola. Antony burst into laughter. "What a thing for you to say, Lucius! You tried to murder your own father." All four men laughed uproariously; when Fulvia returned, she found Antony in an excellent humor. Well after midnight Antony, Poplicola, Cotyla and Cimber staggered into old Murcius's tavern very much the worse for wear, and usurped the table right at the back with the excuse that it was handy to the window in case anyone wanted to vomit. When the Forum watchman's bell announced the tenth hour of night, Antony slipped out of the window while Cotyla, Cimber and Poplicola clustered around their table and continued their rowdy banter as if Antony were still a part of it. They expected him to be away some small while, as the Via Nova was perched atop a thirty-foot cliff; Antony would have to run a short distance to the Kingmakers' Steps, which would bring him to the back of the Porticus Margaritaria and the Domus Publica. He returned quite quickly, looking furious. "I don't believe it!" he gasped, out of breath. "When I got to the peristyle wall, there were servants sitting on top of it with torches!" "Is this a new thing, for Caesar to mount a watch?" Cimber asked curiously. "I don't know, do I?" snarled Antony. "This is the first time I've ever tried to sneak into the place during the night."

Two days later Caesar summoned the Senate to the very first meeting of that body since his return; the venue was Pompey's Curia on the Campus Martius behind his hundred-pillared courtyard and the vast bulk of his theater. Though it meant a fairly long walk, those summoned breathed a sigh of relief. Pompey's Curia had been specifically built for meetings of the Senate, and could accommodate everyone in comfort and proper gradation. As it lay outside the pomerium, in the days when the Curia Hostilia of the Forum had existed, it was mostly used for discussing foreign war, a subject considered inappropriate for pomerium-confined meetings. Caesar was already ensconced on the podium in his curule chair, a folding table in front of him loaded with documents he had to find time to read, wax tablets and a steel stylus used to gouge writing in the wax. He took no notice as men dribbled in, had their slaves set up their stools on the correct tier: the top one for pedarii, senators allowed to vote but not speak; the middle one for holders of junior magistracies, namely ex-aediles and ex-tribunes of the plebs; and the front, lowest tier for ex-praetors and consulars. Only when Fabius, his chief lictor, tapped him on the shoulder did Caesar lift his head and gaze about. Not too bad on the back benches, he thought. So far he had appointed two hundred new men, including the three centurions who had won the corona civica. Most were scions of the families who made up the Eighteen senior Centuries, but some were from prominent Italian families, and a few, like Gaius Helvius Cinna, from Italian Gaul. The "unsuitable" appointments had not met with approval from those of Rome's old noble families who regarded the Senate as a body purely for them. The word had gone around that Caesar was filling the Senate with trousered Gauls and ranker legionaries, along with rumors that he intended to make himself King of Rome. Every day since he had come back from Africa someone asked Caesar when he was going to "restore the Republic" a question he ignored. Cicero was being very vocal about the deteriorating exclusivity of the Senate, an attitude heightened by the fact that he himself was not a Roman of the Romans, but a New Man from the country. The more of his like filled the Senate, the less his own triumph in attaining it against all the odds. He was, besides, a colossal snob. A few men Caesar had yearned to see there were sitting on the front benches: the two Manius Aemilius Lepiduses, father and son; Lucius Volcatius Tullus the elder; Calvinus; Lucius Piso; Philippus; two members of the Appius Claudius Pulcher gens. And some men not so yearned for: Marcus Antonius and Octavia's betrothed, Gaius Claudius Marcellus Minor. But no Cicero. Caesar's lips thinned. No doubt too busy eulogizing Cato to attend. The podium was quite crowded. Himself and Lepidus, the two consuls, and six of the praetors, including his staunch ally Aulus Hirtius and Volcatius Tullus's son. That boor Gaius Antonius had his behind on the tribunician bench, along with the other, equally uninspiring, holders of the tribunate of the plebs. Enough, thought Caesar, counting more than a quorum. He rose to pull a fold of toga over his head and say the prayers, waited for Lucius Caesar to take the auspices, then got down to business. "Some sad news first, conscript fathers," he said in his usual deep voice; the acoustics in Pompey's Curia were good. "I have had word that the last of the Licinii Crassi, Marcus the younger son of the great consular, has died. He will be missed." He swept on without looking as if his next item of news was going to cause a sensation, and so caught the senators unaware. "I have to draw a second unpleasantness to your attention. Namely, that Marcus Antonius has made an attempt on my life. He was seen trying to enter the Domus Publica at an hour when I am known to be asleep, and the interior deserted. His garb was not formal a tunic and a knife. Nor was his mode of entry formal the wall of my private peristyle." Antony sat, rigid with shock how did Caesar know? No one had seen him, no one! "I mention this with no intention of pursuing the matter. I simply draw your attention to it, and take leave to inform all of you that I am not as unprotected as I may seem. Therefore those of you who do not approve of my dictatorship or of my methods! had best think twice before deciding that you will rid Rome of this tyrant Caesar. I tell you frankly that my life has been long enough, whether in years or renown. However, I am not yet so tired of it that I will do nothing to avert its being terminated by a deed of murder. Remove me, and I can assure you that Rome will suffer far greater ills than Caesar Dictator. Rome's present situation is much the same as it was when Lucius Cornelius Sulla took up the dictatorship she needs one strong hand, and in me she has that hand. Once I have set my laws in place and made sure that Rome will survive to grow ever greater, I will lay down my dictatorship. However, I will not do that until my work is entirely finished, and that may take many years. So be warned, and cease these pleas that I 'return the Republic' to its former glory. "What glory? " he thundered, making his appalled audience jump. "I repeat, what glory? There was no glory! Just a fractious, obstinate, conceited little group of men jealously defending their privileges. The privilege of going to govern a province and rape it. The privilege of granting business colleagues the opportunity to go to a province and rape it. The privilege of having one law for some, and another law for others. The privilege of putting incompetents in office simply because they bear a great name. The privilege of voting to quash laws that are desperately needed. The privilege of preserving the mos maiorum in a form suitable for a small city-state, but not for a worldwide empire." They were sitting bolt upright, their faces slack. For some, it had been a long time since this Caesar had last bellowed his radical ideas to the House; for others, this was the first time. "If you believe that all Rome's wealth and privilege should remain in the Eighteen from which you come, senators, then I will cut you down to size. I intend to restructure our society to distribute wealth more equally. I will make laws encouraging the growth of the Third and Fourth Classes, and enhance the lot of the Head Count by encouraging them to emigrate to places where they can rise into higher classes. Further to this, I am introducing a means test on the distribution of free grain so that men who can afford to buy grain will no longer be able to obtain it free. At present there are three hundred thousand recipients of the free grain dole. I will cut that figure in half overnight. I will also make it impossible for a man to free slaves in order to benefit from the grain dole. How am I going to do this? By holding a new kind of census in November. My census agents will go from door to door throughout Rome, Italy, and all the provinces. They will assemble mountains of facts about housing, rents, hygiene, income, population, literacy and numeracy, crime, fire, and the number of children, aged and slaves in every family. My agents will also ask members of the Head Count if they would like to emigrate abroad to the colonies I will found. Since Rome now has a huge surplus of troop transport ships, I will use them." Piso spoke. "Be he rich or poor, Caesar, every Roman citizen is entitled to the free grain dole. I warn you that I will oppose any attempt to impose a means test!" he said loudly. "Oppose all you like, Lucius Piso, the law will come into effect anyway. I will not be gainsaid! Nor do I advise you to oppose it will harm your career. The measure is fair and just. Why should Rome pay out her precious moneys to men like you, well able to buy grain?" asked Caesar, voice hard. There were mutterings, dark looks; the old, high-handed, arrogant Caesar was back with a vengeance. However, the faces on the back benches, though alarmed, were not angry. They owed their position to Caesar, and they would vote for his laws. "There will be innumerable agrarian laws," Caesar continued, "but there's no need for fury, so don't get furious. Any land I buy in Italy and Italian Gaul for retiring legionaries will be paid for up-front and at full value, but most of the agrarian legislation will involve foreign land in the Spains, the Gauls, Greece, Epirus, Illyricum, Macedonia, Bithynia, Pontus, Africa Nova, the domain of Publius Sittius, and the Mauretanias. At the same time as some of our Head Count and some of our legionaries go to settle in these colonies, I will also grant the full citizenship to deserving provincials, physicians, schoolteachers, artisans and tradesmen. If resident in Rome, they will be enrolled in the four urban tribes, but if resident in Italy, in the rural tribe common to the district wherein they live." "Do you intend to do anything about the courts, Caesar?" asked the praetor Volcatius Tullus in an attempt to calm the House. "Oh, yes. The tribunus aerarius will disappear from the jury list," the Dictator announced, willing to be sidetracked. "The Senate will be increased to one thousand members, which will, with the knights of the Eighteen, provide more than enough jurors for the courts. The number of praetors will go to fourteen per year to enable swifter hearings in the busier courts. By the time that my legislation is done, there will hardly be any need for the Extortion Court, because governors and businessmen in the provinces will be too hamstrung to extort. Elections will be better regulated, so the Bribery Court will also stultify. Whereas ordinary crimes like murder, theft, violence, embezzlement and bankruptcy need more courts and more time. I also intend to increase the penalty for murder, but not in a way that disturbs the mos maiorum. Execution for crime and imprisonment for crime, two concepts alien to Roman thought and culture, will not be introduced. Rather, I will increase the time of exile and make it absolutely impossible for a man sentenced to exile to take his money with him." "Aiming for Plato's ideal republic, Caesar?" Piso sneered; he was taking the greatest offense. "Not at all," Caesar said genially. "I'm aiming for a just and practical Roman republic. Take violence, for example. Those desirous of organizing street gangs will find it much harder, for I am going to abolish all clubs and sodalities save those that are harmless of intent Jewish synagogues, trade and professional guilds and the burial clubs, of course. Crossroads colleges and other places where troublemakers can meet on a regular basis will disappear. When men have to buy their own wine, they drink less." "I hear," said Philippus, who was a huge landowner, "a tiny rumor that you have plans to break up latifundia." "Thank you for reminding me, Lucius Philippus," said Caesar, smiling broadly. "No, latifundia will not be broken up unless the state has bought them for soldier land. However, in future no owner of a latifundium will be allowed to run it entirely on slaves. One-third of his employees must be free men of the region. This will help the jobless rural poor as well as local merchants." "That's ridiculous!" yelled Philippus, dark face flushed. "You're going to introduce legislation to tamper with everything! A man will soon have to apply for permission to fart! You, Caesar, are deliberately setting out to strip Rome of any kind of First Class! Where do you get these insane ideas from? Help the rural poor indeed! A man has rights, and one of them is the right to run his businesses and enterprises exactly how he wants! Why should I have to pay wages to one-third of my latifundia workers when I can buy cheap slaves and not pay them at all?" "Every man should pay his slaves a wage, Philippus. Can't you see," Caesar asked, "that you have to buy your slaves? Then you have to build ergastula to house them, buy food to feed them, and use up twice as many workers to supervise these unwilling men? If you were any good at arithmetic or you had agents who could add up two and two, you'd soon realize that employing the free is cheaper. You don't have the initial outlay, and you don't need to house or feed free men. They go home each night and eat out of their own gardens because they have wives and children to grow for them." "Gerrae!" Philippus growled, subsiding. "What, no sumptuary laws?" Piso asked. "Sheaves of them," Caesar answered readily. "Luxuries will be severely taxed, and while I will not forbid the erection of expensive tombs, the man who builds one will have to pay Rome's Treasury the same amount of money he pays his tomb builder." He looked down at Lepidus, who hadn't said a word, and raised a brow. "Junior consul, just one more thing and you can dismiss the meeting. There will be no debate." He turned back to the House and proceeded to tell it that he intended to bring the calendar into line with the seasons for perpetuity, so this year would be 455 days long: Mercedonius was over, but a 67-day period called Intercalaris would also be added following the last day of December. New Year's Day, when eventually it came, would be exactly where it was supposed to be, one-third of the way through winter. "There isn't a name for you, Caesar," Piso declared as he left, his whole body trembling. "You're a a a freak!"

Miming injured innocence to those who stared at him, Antony waited to get Caesar to himself. "What do you mean, Caesar, to come out with that assassination rot? Then you barged on about returning the Republic to its days of glory without even giving me a chance to defend myself!" He pushed his face aggressively close to Caesar's. "First you humiliate me in public, now you've accused me of attempted murder in the Senate! It isn't true ask any of the three men I was with all that night at Murcius's tavern!" Caesar's eyes wandered to Lucius Tillius Cimber, descending from the top left-hand tier with his stool slave following him. What an interesting man. Full of useful information. "Do go away, Antonius, he said wearily. "As I've already indicated, I have no intention of pursuing the matter. However, I felt that your playing the fool with murder was an excellent excuse to inform the House that I'm not so easily gotten rid of. In the financial soup worse than ever, eh?" "I'm marrying Fulvia and shortly I'll have my share of the Gallic booty," Antony countered. "Why do I need to murder you?" "One question, Antonius how do you know which night the attempt was made if you didn't make it? I neglected to mention the date. Of course you tried! In a temper, following the Varro apology. Now go away." "I despair for Antonius," said Lucius Caesar, approaching. Almost to the doorway, his lictors passed outside, Caesar turned to look back down the ostentatious hall with its splendid marbles and not-quite-right color scheme typical of its author! And there at the rear of the platform accommodating the curule magistrates stood the statue of Pompey the Great in his white marble toga with the purple marble border, his face, hands, right arm and calves painted to the perfect tones of his skin, even including the faint freckles. The bright gold hair was superbly done, the vivid blue eyes seeming to sparkle with life. "A very good likeness," Lucius said, following his cousin's gaze. "I hope you don't mean to emulate Magnus and put a statue of yourself behind the curule magistrates in your new Curia?" "It's not a bad idea, Lucius, when you think about it. If I were away for ten years, every time the Senate met in its Curia it would be reminded of the fact that I'll be back." They moved outside, passed through the colonnade and emerged on the road back to town. "One thing I meant to ask you, Lucius. How did young Gaius Octavius go when he served as city prefect?" "Didn't you ask him in person, Gaius?" "He didn't mention it, and I confess it slipped my mind." "You need have no fears, he did very well. Praefectus urbi notwithstanding, he occupied the urban praetor's booth with a lovely mixture of humility and quiet confidence. He handled the inevitable one or two contentious situations like a veteran very cool, asked all the right questions, delivered the proper verdict. Yes, he did very well." "Did you know that he suffers the wheezing sickness?" Lucius stopped. "Edepol! No, I didn't." "It represents a dilemma, doesn't it?" "Oh, yes." "Yet I think it has to be him, Lucius." "There's time enough." Lucius put an arm around Caesar's shoulders, squeezed them comfortingly. "Don't forget Caesar's luck, Gaius. Whatever you decide carries Caesar's luck with it."

2

Cleopatra arrived in Rome at the end of the first nundinum in September. She was conveyed from Ostia in a curtained litter, an enormous procession of attendants before her and behind her, including a detachment of the Royal Guard in their quaint hoplite gear, but mounted on snow-white horses with purple tack. Her son, a little unwell, traveled in another litter with his nursemaids, and a third one held King Ptolemy XIV, her thirteen-year-old husband. All three litters had cloth-of-gold curtains, the jewels in the gilded woodwork flashing in the bright sun of a beautiful early summer's day, ostrich-feather plumes caked in gold dust nodding at all four corners of the faience-tiled roofs. Each was borne by eight powerfully built men with plummy black skin, clad in cloth-of-gold kilts and wide gold collars, big feet bare. Apollodorus rode in a canopied sedan chair at the head of the column, a tall gold staff in his right hand, his nemes headdress cloth-of-gold, his fingers covered with rings, the chain of his office around his neck. The several hundred attendants wore costly robes, even the humblest among them; the Queen of Egypt was determined to make an impression. They had started out at dawn with a good percentage of Ostia escorting them, and as Ostia drew farther away, others took their place; anyone who had occasion to be on the Via Ostiensis that morning thought it more fun to join the royal parade than go about normal business. Cornelius the lictor, deputed to act as guide, picked them up a mile from the Servian Walls and viewed his charge with an awe bordering on profound oh, what a tale he'd have to tell when he got back to the College of Lictors! It was noon by this time, and Apollodorus stared at the looming ramparts in relief. But then Cornelius led them around the outskirts of the Aventine to the wharves of the Port of Rome, there to halt. The Lord High Chamberlain began to frown; why were they not entering the city, why was her majesty in this decrepit, seedy neighborhood? "We boat across the river here," Cornelius explained. "Boat? But the city is to our right!"

"Oh, we're not entering the city," Cornelius said in affable innocence. "The Queen's palace is across the Tiber at the foot of the Janiculan Hill, which makes this the easiest place to cross wharves on both sides." "Why isn't the Queen's palace inside the city?" "Tch, tch, that would never do," said Cornelius. "The city is forbidden to any anointed sovereign because to enter it means crossing the sacred pomerium and laying down all imperial power." "Pomerium?" asked Apollodorus. "The invisible boundary of the city. Within it, no one has imperium except the dictator." By this time half the Port of Rome had gathered to gawk, as had grooms, stablehands, slaughtermen and shepherds from the Campus Lanatarius. Cornelius was wishing that he had brought other lictors to keep the crowds at bay what a circus! And so Rome's lowly regarded it, a wonderful, unexpected circus on an ordinary working day. Luckily for the Egyptians a succession of barges drew into the wharf; the litters and sedan chair were quickly conveyed on board the first of them, and the horde of attendants pushed on to the others with the Royal Guard bringing up the rear, dismounted and soothing their fractious horses. Apollodorus's frown gathered mightily when they were offloaded into the mean alleys of Transtiberim, where he was forced to order the Royal Guards into tight formation around the litters to prevent the dirty, ragged inhabitants from gouging jewels out of the litter posts with their knives even the women seemed to carry knives. Nor was he amused when, after yet another long plod, he found that the Queen's palace had no walls to keep the Transtiberini out! "They'll give up and go home," said the unconcerned Cornelius, leading the way through an arch into a courtyard. Apollodorus's answer was to swing the Royal Guard across this entrance and tell it to stay there until the Transtiberini went home. What kind of place was this, that there were no walls to exclude the dross of humanity from the residences of their betters? And what kind of place was this, that her majesty's only deputed escort was one lictor minus his fasces? Where was Caesar? The Queen's belongings had preceded her by sufficient time to ensure that when she emerged from her litter and walked into the vast atrium, her eyes could rest on a properly outfitted interior, from paintings and tapestries on the walls to rugs, chairs, tables, couches, statues, her huge collection of pedestals containing busts of all the Ptolemies and their wives an air of inhabited comfort. She was not in a good mood. Naturally she had peeked between the curtains at this alien landscape of rearing hills, seen the massive Servian Walls, the terra-cotta roofs dotting the hills inside them, the tall thin pines, the leafy trees, the pines shaped like parasols. A shock for her as well as Apollodorus when they bypassed the city and entered a dockland dominated by a tall mount of broken pots and festering rubbish. Where was the guard of honor Caesar should have sent? Why had she been ferried across that that creek to a worse slum, then hustled to nowhere? For that matter, why hadn't Caesar answered any of the barrage of notes she had sent him since arriving in Ostia, save for the first? And that terse communication simply told her to move into her palace as soon as she wished! Cornelius bowed. He knew her from Alexandria, though he was inured enough to eastern rulers to understand that she would not recognize him. Nor did she; her majesty was in a huff. "I am to give you Caesar's compliments, your majesty," he said. "As soon as he finds the time, he'll visit you." "As soon as he finds the time, he'll visit me," she echoed to Cornelius's receding back. "He'll visit! Well, when he does, he'll wish he hadn't!" "Calm down and behave yourself, Cleopatra," said Charmian firmly; brought up from infancy with their queen, she and Iras stood in no fear of her, divined her every mood. "It's very nice," Iras contributed, gazing about. "I love the huge pool in the middle of the room, and how cunning to put dolphins and tritons in it." She looked up at the sky with less approval. "You'd think they'd put a roof over it, wouldn't you?" Cleopatra sat on her temper. "Caesarion?" she asked. "He's been taken straight to the nursery, but don't worry, he's improving." For a moment the Queen stood uncertainly, chewing her lip; then she shrugged. "We are in a strange land of high mountains and peculiar trees, so I suppose we must expect the customs to be equally strange and peculiar. Since apparently Caesar isn't going to come at a run to welcome me, there's no point in keeping my regalia on. Where are the nursery and my private rooms?" Changed into a plain Greek gown and reassured that Caesarion was indeed improving, she toured the palace with Charmian and Iras. On the small side, but adequate, was their verdict. Caesar had given her one of his own freedmen, Gaius Julius Gnipho, as her Roman steward, who would be in charge of things like purchasing food and household items. "Why are there no gauze curtains to shield the windows, and none around the beds?" Cleopatra asked. Gnipho looked bewildered. "I'm sorry, I don't understand." "Are there no mosquitoes here? No night moths or bugs?" "We have them aplenty, your majesty." "Then they must be kept outside. Charmian, did we bring any linen gauze with us?" "Yes, more than enough." "Then see it's put up. Around Caesarion's cot at once." Religion had not been neglected; Cleopatra had carried a select pantheon with her, of painted wood rather than solid gold, dressed in their proper raiment Amun-Ra, Ptah, Sekhmet, Horus, Nefertem, Osiris, Isis, Anubis, Bastet, Taweret, Sobek and Hathor. To care for them and her own needs she had brought a high priest, Pu'em-re, and six mete-en-sa to assist him. The agent, Ammonius, had been to Ostia to see his queen on several occasions, and had made sure that the builders provided one room with plastered walls; this would be the temple, once the mete-en-sa had painted the walls with the prayers, the spells and the cartouches of Cleopatra, Caesarion and Philadelphus. Her mood dropping inexorably toward depression, Cleopatra fell to abase herself before Amun-Ra. The formal prayer, in old Egyptian, she spoke aloud, but after it was finished she remained on her knees, hands and brow pressed to the cold marble floor, and prayed silently. God of the Sun, bringer of light and of life, preserve us in this daunting place to which we have taken your worship. We are far from home and the waters of Nilus, and we have come only to keep faith with thee, with all our gods great and small, of the sky and the river. We have journeyed into the West, into the Realm of the Dead, to be quickened again, for Osiris Reincarnated cannot come to us in Egypt. Nilus inundates perfectly, but if we are to maintain the Inundation, it is time that we bear another child. Help us, we pray, endure our exile among these unbelievers, keep our Godhead intact, our sinews taut, our heart strong, our womb fruitful. Let our Son, Ptolemy Caesar Horus, know his divine Father, and grant us a sister for him so that he may marry and keep our blood pure. Nilus must inundate. Pharaoh must conceive again, many times.

When Cleopatra had set out from Alexandria with her fleet of ten warships and sixty transports, her excitement had infected everyone who traveled with her. For Egypt in her absence she had no fears; Publius Rufrius guarded it with four legions, and Uncle Mithridates of Pergamum occupied the Royal Enclosure. But by the time they put into Paraetonium for water, her excitement had evaporated who could have imagined the boredom of looking at nothing but sea? At Paraetonium the fleet's speed increased, for Apeliotes the East Wind began to blow and pushed them west to Utica, very quiet and subdued after Caesar's war. Then Auster, the South Wind, came along to blow them straight up the west coast of Italy. When the fleet made harbor in Ostia, it had been at sea from Alexandria for only twenty-five days. There in Ostia the Queen had waited aboard her flagship until all her goods had been brought ashore and word came that her palace was ready for occupation. Bombarding Caesar with letters, standing at the rail every day hoping to see Caesar being borne out to see her. His terse note had said only that he was in the midst of drafting a lex agraria, whatever that might be, and could not spare the time to see her. Oh, why were his communications always so unemotional, so unloving? He spoke as if she were some ordinary suppliant ruler, a nuisance for whom he would find time when he could. But she wasn't ordinary, or a suppliant! She was Pharaoh, his wife, the mother of his son, Daughter of Amun-Ra! Caesarion had chosen to come down with a fever while they were moored in that ghastly, muddy harbor. Did Caesar care? No, Caesar didn't care. Hadn't even replied to that letter. Now here she was, as close to Rome as she was going to get, if Cornelius the lictor was right, and still no Caesar. At dusk she consented to eat what Charmian and Iras brought her but not until it had been tasted. A member of the House of Ptolemy did not simply give a little of the food and drink to a slave; a member of the House of Ptolemy gave the food and drink to the child of a slave known to love his children dearly. An excellent precaution. After all, her sister Arsino was here in Rome, though, not being an anointed sovereign, no doubt she lived within its walls. Housed by a noblewoman named Caecilia, Ammonius had reported. Living on the fat of the land. The air was different, and she didn't like it. After dark it held a chill she had never experienced, though it was supposed to be early summer. This cold stone mausoleum contributed to the miasma that curled off the so-called river, which she could see from the high loggia. So damp. So foreign. And no Caesar. Not until the middle hour of the night by the water clock did she go to bed, where she tossed and turned until finally she fell asleep after cock crow. A whole day on land, and no Caesar. Would he ever come?

What woke her was an instinct; no sound, no ray of light, no change in the atmosphere had the power Cha'em had inculcated in her as a child in Memphis. When you are not alone, you will wake, he had said, and breathed into her. Since then, the silent presence of another person in the room would wake her. As it did now, and in the way Cha'em had taught her. Open your eyes a tiny slit, and do not move. Watch until you identify the intruder, only then react in the appropriate way. Caesar, sitting in a chair to one side of the bed at its foot, looking not at her but into that distance he could summon at will. The room was light but not bright, every part of him was manifest. Her heart knocked at her ribs, her love for him poured out in a huge spate of feeling, and with it a terrible grief. He is not the same. Immeasurably older, so very tired. His bones are such that his beauty will persist beyond death, but something is gone. His eyes have always been pale, but now they are washed out, making that black ring around the irises starker still. All her own resentments and irritations seemed suddenly too petty to bear; she curved her lips into a smile, pretended to wake and see him, lifted her arms in welcome. It is not I who needs succor. His eyes came back from wherever they had been and saw her; he smiled that wonderful smile, twisted out of the enveloping toga as he rose in a way she could never fathom. Then his arms were around her, clutching her like a drowning man a spar. They kissed, first an exploration of the softness of lips, then deeply. No, Calpurnia, he is not like this with you. If he were, he would not need me, and he needs me desperately. I sense it all through me, and I answer it all through me. "You're rounder, little scrag," he said, mouth in the side of her neck, smooth hands on her breasts. "You're thinner, old man," she said, arching her back. Her thoughts turned inward to her womb as she opened herself to him, held him strongly but tenderly. "I love you," she said. "And I you," he said, meaning it. There was divine magic in mating with an anointed sovereign, he had never felt that so intensely before, but Caesar was still Caesar; his mind never entirely let go, so though he made ardent love to her for a long time, he deprived her of his climax. No sister for Caesarion, never a sister for Caesarion. To give her a girl was a crime against all that Jupiter Optimus Maximus was, that Rome was, that he was. She wasn't aware of his omission, too satisfied herself, too swept out of conscious thought, too devastated at being with him again after almost seventeen months. "You're sopping with juice, time for a bath," he said to reinforce her delusion; Caesar's luck that she produces so much moisture herself. Better that she doesn't know. "You must eat, Caesar," she said after the bath, "but first, a visit to the nursery?" Caesarion was fully recovered, had woken his usual cheerful, noisy self. He flew with arms outstretched to his mother, who picked him up and showed him proudly to his father. I suppose, thought Caesar, that once I looked much like this. Even I can see that he's inarguably mine, though I recognize it mostly in the way he echoes my mother, my sisters. His regard is the same steady assessment Aurelia gave her world, his expression isn't mine. A beautiful child, sturdy and well nourished, but not fleshy. Yes, that's genuine Caesar. He won't run to fat the way the Ptolemies do. All he has of his mother are the eyes, though not in color. Less sunk in their orbits than mine, and a darker blue than mine. He smiled, said in Latin, "Say ave to your tata, Caesarion." The eyes widened in delight, the child turned his head from this stranger to his mother's face. "That's my tata?" he asked in quaintly accented Latin. "Yes, your tata's here at last." The next moment two little arms were reaching for him; Caesar took him, hugged him, kissed him, stroked the fine, thick gold hair, while Caesarion cuddled in as if he had always known this strange man. When she went to take him from Caesar, he refused to go back to his mother. In his world he has missed a man, thought Caesar, and he needs a man. Dinner forgotten, he sat with his son on his lap and found out that Caesarion's Greek was far better than his Latin, that he did not indulge in baby talk, and uttered his sentences properly parsed and analyzed. Fifteen months old, yet already an old man. "What do you want to be when you grow up?" Caesar asked. "A great general like you, tata." "Not Pharaoh?" "Oh, pooh, Pharaoh! I have to be Pharaoh, and I'll be that before I grow up," said the child apparently not enamored of his regnant destiny. "What I want to be is a general." "Whom would you war against?" "Rome's and Egypt's enemies." "All his toys are war toys," Cleopatra said with a sigh. "He threw away his dolls at eleven months and demanded a sword." "He was talking then?" "Oh yes, whole sentences." Then the nursemaids bore down and took him off to feed him; expecting tears and protests, Caesar saw in some amazement that his son accepted the inevitable quite happily. "He doesn't have my pride or temper," he said as they walked through to the dining room, having promised Caesarion that tata would be back. "Sweeter natured." "He's God on earth," she said simply. "Now tell me," she said, settling into Caesar's side on the same couch, "what is making you so tired." "Just people," he said vaguely. "Rome doesn't appreciate the rule of a dictator, so I'm continually opposed." "But you always said you wanted opposition. Here, drink your fruit juice." "There are two kinds of opposition," he said. "I wanted an atmosphere of intelligent debate in the Senate and comitia, not endless demands to 'bring back the Republic' as if the Republic were some vanished entity akin to Plato's Utopia. Utopia!" He made a disgusted sound. "The word means 'Nowhere'! When I ask what's wrong with my laws, they complain that they're too long and complicated to read, so they won't read them. When I ask for good suggestions, they complain that I've left them nothing to suggest. When I ask for co-operation, they complain that I force them to co-operate whether they want to or not. They admit that many of my changes are highly beneficial, then turn around and complain that I change things, that change is wrong. So the opposition I get is as devoid of reason as Cato's used to be." "Then come and talk to me," she said quickly. "Bring me your laws and I'll read them. Tell me your plans and I'll offer you constructive criticism. Try out your ideas on me and I'll give you a considered opinion. If another mind is what you need, my dearest love, mine is the mind of a dictator in a diadem. Let me help you, please." He reached out to take her hand, held it to his lips and kissed it, the shadow of a smile filling his eyes with some of the old vigor and sparkle. "I will, Cleopatra, I will." The smile grew, his gaze became more sensuous. "You've budded into a very special beauty, my love. Not a Praxiteles Aphrodite, no, but motherhood and maturity have turned you into a deliriously desirable woman. I missed your lion's eyes."

* * *

Said Cicero to Marcus Junius Brutus in a letter written two nundinae later:

You will miss the Great Man's triumphs, my dear Brutus, sitting up there amid the Insubres. Lucky you. The first one, for Gaul, is to be held tomorrow, but I refuse to attend. Therefore I see no reason to delay this missive, bursting as it is with news amorous and marital. The Queen of Egypt has arrived. Caesar has set her up in high style in a palace beneath the Janiculan Hill far enough upstream to look across Father Tiber at the Capitol and the Palatine rather than at the stews of the Port of Rome. None of us was privileged to see her own private triumphal parade as she came up the Via Ostiensis, but gossip says it was awash in gold, from the litters to the costumes. With her she brought Caesar's presumed son, a toddling babe, and her thirteen-year-old husband, King Ptolemy the something-or-other, a surly, adipose lad with nothing to say for himself and a very healthy fear of his big sister/wife. Incest! The game the whole family can play. I said that about Publius Clodius and his sisters once, I remember. There are slaves, eunuchs, nursemaids, tutors, advisers, clerks, scribes, accountants, physicians, herbalists, crones, priests, a high priest, minor nobles, a royal guard two hundred strong, a philosopher or four, including the great Philostratus and the even greater Sosigenes, musicians, dancers, mummers, magicians, cooks, dishwashers, laundresses, dressmakers, and various skivvies. Naturally she carries all her favorite pieces of furniture, her linens, her clothing, her jewels, her money chests, the instruments and apparatuses of her peculiar religious worship, fabrics for new robes, fans and feathers, mattresses, pillows, bolsters, carpets and curtains and screens, her cosmetics, and her own supply of spices, essences, balms, resins, incenses and perfumes. Not to forget her books, her mirrors, her astronomical tools and her own private Chaldaean soothsayer. Her retinue is said to number well over a thousand, so of course they don't fit into the palace. Caesar has built them a village on the periphery of Transtiberim, and the Transtiberini are livid. It is war to the death between the natives and the interlopers, so much so that Caesar has issued an edict promising that all Transtiberini who raise a knife to slice the nostrils or ears of a detested foreigner will be transported to one of his new colonies whether they like it or not. I have met the woman incredibly haughty and arrogant. She threw a reception for us Roman peasants with Caesar's official blessing, had some sumptuous barges pick us up near the Pons Aemilius and then, upon disembarking, we were ferried in litters and sedan chairs spewing cushions and fur rugs. She held court an exact description in the huge atrium, and invited us to make free of the loggia as well. She's a pathetic dab of a thing, comes up to my navel, and I am not a tall man. A beak of a nose, but the most extraordinary eyes. The Great Man, who is infatuated, calls them lion's eyes. It shamed me to witness his conduct with her he's like a boy with his first prostitute. Manius Lepidus and I prowled around a little and found the temple. My dear Brutus, we were aghast! No less than twelve statues of these things the bodies of men or women, but the heads of beasts hawk, jackal, crocodile, lion, cow, et cetera. The worst was female, had a grossly swollen belly and great pendulous breasts, all crowned with a hippopotamus's head absolutely revolting! Then the high priest came in he spoke excellent Greek and offered to tell us who was who better to say, which was which in that bizarre and off-putting pantheon. He was shaven-headed, wore a pleated white linen dress, and a collar of gold and gems around his neck that must be worth as much as my whole house. The Queen was dolled up in cloth-of-gold from head to foot her jewels could buy you Rome. Then Caesar came out of some inner sanctum carrying his child. Not at all shy! Smiled at us as if we were new subjects, greeted us in Latin. I must say that he looks very like Caesar, Oh yes, it was a royal occasion, and I begin to suspect that the Queen is working on Caesar with a view to making him the King of Rome. Dear Brutus, our beloved Republic grows ever farther away, and this landslide of new legislation will end in stripping the First Class of all its old entitlements. On a different note, Marcus Antonius has married Fulvia now there's a woman I really loathe! I daresay you have heard that Caesar said in the House that Antonius had tried to murder him. Much as I deplore Caesar and all he stands for, I am glad that Antonius didn't succeed. If Antonius were the dictator, things would be much worse. More interesting still is the marriage between Caesar's great-niece Octavia and Gaius Claudius Marcellus Minor. Yes, you read aright! He's done very well for himself, while his brother and first cousin sit in exile, their property gone Marcellus Minor's way, I add. There has been one extremely fascinating consequence of this alliance that almost made me wish I could bend my principles and attend the Senate. It happened during a meeting of the Senate Caesar convoked to discuss his first group of agrarian laws. As the senators dispersed afterward, Marcellus Minor asked Caesar to pardon his brother, Marcus, who is still on Lesbos. When Caesar said no several times, would you believe that Marcellus Minor fell to his knees and begged ? With that repellent man Lucius Piso adding his voice, though he didn't fall to his knees. They say that Caesar looked utterly taken aback, quite horrified. Retreated until he collided with Pompeius Magnus's statue, roaring at Marcellus Minor to get up and stop making a fool of himself. The upshot was that Marcus Marcellus is now pardoned. Marcellus Minor is going around saying that he intends to return all brother Marcus's estates to him. He won't be able to do the same for cousin Gaius Marcellus, as I hear he has expired of some creeping disease. Brother Marcus will come home after visiting Athens, we are told by Marcellus Minor. Of course I am not enamored of any of the Claudian Marcelli, as you know. Whatever caused them to renounce their patrician status and join the Plebs is too far in the past to be known, but the fact that they did that does say something about them, doesn't it? I will write again when I have more news.

After Caesar explained Rome's aversion to kings and queens and the religious significance in crossing the pomerium, the Queen of Egypt's natural indignation at not being able to go inside the city faded. Every place had its taboos, and Rome's were all tied to the notion of the Republic, to an abhorrence of absolute rule that verged on the fanatical and could and did breed fanatics like Marcus Porcius Cato Uticensis, whose appalling suicide was still the talk of Rome. To Cleopatra, absolute rule was a fact of life, but if she couldn't enter the city, then she couldn't enter the city. When she wept at the thought that she wouldn't see Caesar triumph, he told her that a knight friend of his banker Oppius's, one Sextus Perquitienus, had offered to let her share his loggia with him. As his house was built on the back cliff of the Capitol overlooking the Campus Martius, Cleopatra would be able to see the start of the parade, and follow it until it turned the corner of the Capitol back cliff to enter the city through the Porta Triumphalis, a special gate opened solely for triumphs. The veteran legionaries from the Gallic campaign were to march in this first triumph, which actually meant a mere five thousand men; only a few in each of the legions numbered during Gallic War times were still under the Eagles, as Rome still did not maintain a long-serving regular army. Though the eldest of the Gallic War veterans was but thirty-one years old if he had enlisted at seventeen, the natural attrition of war weariness, wounds and retirement had taken a huge toll. But when the order of march was issued, the Tenth found to its dismay that it would not be in the lead. The Sixth had been given that honor. Having mutinied three times, the Tenth had fallen from Caesar's favor, and would go last. The original eleven legions numbered between the Fifth Alauda and the Fifteenth contributed these five thousand veterans, kitted in new tunics, with new horsehair plumes in their helmets, and carrying staves wreathed in laurels actual weapons were not allowed. The standard-bearers wore silver armor, and the Aquilifers, who carried each legion's silver Eagle, wore lion skins over their silver armor. No compensation to the unhappy Tenth, which decided to take a peculiar revenge. This was one triumph that the consuls of the year could participate in, as the triumphator, whose imperium had to outweigh all others, was Dictator. Therefore Lepidus sat with the other curule magistrates upon the podium of Castor's in the Forum. The rest of the Senate led the parade; most of them were Caesar's new appointees, so the senators at around five hundred made an imposing body of marchers too few in purple-bordered togas, alas. Behind the Senate came the tubilustra, a hundred-strong band of men blowing the gold horse-headed trumpets an earlier Ahenobarbus had brought back from his campaign in Gaul against the Arverni. Then came the carts carrying the spoils, interspersed with large flat-topped drays that served as floats to display incidents from the campaign played by actors in the correct costumes and surrounded by the right props. The staff of Caesar's bankers, who had had the gigantic task of organizing this staggering spectacle, had been driven almost to the point of madness trying to find sufficient actors who looked like Caesar, for he featured prominently in most of the float enactments, and everyone in Rome knew him. All the famous scenes were there: a model of the siege terrace at Avaricum; an oaken Veneti ship with leather sails and chain shrouds; Caesar at Alesia going to the rescue of the camp where the Gauls had broken in; a map of the double circumvallation at Alesia; Vercingetorix sitting cross-legged on the ground as he submitted to Caesar; a model of the mesa top and its fortress at Alesia; floats crowded with outlandish long-haired Gauls, said long hair stiffened into grotesque styles with limey clay, their tartans bright and bold, their longswords (of silvered wood) held aloft; a whole squadron of Remi cavalry in their brilliant outfits; the famous siege of Quintus Cicero and the Seventh against the full might of the Nervii; a depiction of a Britannic stronghold; a Britannic war chariot complete with driver, spearman and pair of little horses; and twenty more pageants. Every cart or float was drawn by a team of oxen garlanded with flowers, trapped in scarlet, bright green, bright blue, yellow. Intermingled with all these fabulous displays, groups of whores danced in flame-colored togas, accompanied by capering dwarves wearing the patchwork coats of many colors called centunculi, musicians of every kind, men blowing gouts of fire from their mouths, magicians and freaks. No gold crowns or wreaths were exhibited, as the Gauls had tendered none to Caesar, but the carts of spoils glittered with gold treasures. Caesar had found the accumulated hoard of the Germanic Cimbri and Teutones at Atuatuca, and had also plundered centuries of precious votives held by the Druids at Carnutum. Next came the sacrificial victims, two pure white oxen to be offered to Jupiter Optimus Maximus when the triumphator reached the foot of the steps to his temple on the Capitol. A destination some three miles away, for the procession wended a path through the Velabrum and the Forum Boarium, then into the Circus Maximus, went once right around it, up it again and out its Capena end to the Via Triumphalis, and finally down the full length of the Forum Romanum to the foot of the Capitoline mount, where it stopped. Here those prisoners of war doomed to die were taken to be strangled in the Tullianum; here the floats and lay participants disbanded; here the gold was put back into the Treasury; and here the legions turned into the Vicus Iugarius to march back to the Campus Martius through the Velabrum, there to feast and wait until their money was distributed by the legion paymasters. It was only the Senate, the priests, the sacrificial animals and the triumphator who continued up the Clivus Capitolinus to Jupiter Optimus Maximus, escorted now by special musicians who blew the tibicen, a flute made from the shinbone of a slain enemy. The two white oxen were smothered in garlands and ropes of flowers and had gilded horns and hooves; they were shepherded, already drugged, by the popa, the cultarius, and their acolytes, who would expertly perform the killing. After them came the College of Pontifices and the College of Augurs in their particolored togas of scarlet and purple stripes, each augur bearing his lituus, a curliqued staff that distinguished him from the pontifices. The other, minor sacerdotal colleges in their specific robes followed, the flamen Martialis looking very strange in his heavy circular cape, wooden clogs, and ivory apex helmet. At Caesar's triumphs there would be no flamen Quirinalis, as Lucius Caesar marched as Chief Augur instead of his other role; and also no flamen Dialis, for that special priest of Jupiter was actually Caesar, long since released from his duties. The next section of the parade was always very popular with the crowd, as it consisted of the prisoners. Each was clad in his or her very best regalia, gold and jewels, looking the picture of health and prosperity; it was no part of the Roman triumph to display prisoners ill-treated or beaten down. For this reason, they were kept hostage in some rich man's house while they waited for their captor to triumph. Rome of the Republic did not imprison. King Vercingetorix came first; only he, Cotus and Lucterius were to die. Vercassivellaunus, Eporedorix and Biturgo and all the other, more minor prisoners of war would be sent back to their peoples unharmed. Once, many years earlier, Vercingetorix had wondered at the prophecy which said he would wait six years between his capture and his death; now he knew. Thanks to civil war and other things, it had taken Caesar six years to achieve his triumph over Long-haired Gaul. The Senate had decreed a very special privilege for Caesar: he was to be preceded by seventy-two rather than the Dictator's usual twenty-four lictors. Special dancers and singers were to weave their way between the lictors, hymning Caesar Triumphator. So by the time that Caesar's turn to move actually came, the procession had already been under way for two long summer hours. He rode in the triumphal chariot, a four-wheeled, extremely ancient vehicle more akin to the ceremonial car of the King of Armenia than to the two-wheeled war chariot; his was drawn by four matched grey horses with white manes and tails, Caesar's choice. Caesar wore triumphal regalia. This consisted of a tunic embroidered all over in palm leaves and a purple toga lavishly embroidered in gold. On his head he wore the laurel crown, in his right hand he carried a laurel branch, and in his left the special twisted ivory scepter of the triumphator, surmounted by a gold eagle. His driver wore a purple tunic, and at the back of the roomy car stood a man in a purple tunic who held a gilded oak-leaf crown over Caesar's head, and occasionally intoned the warning given to all triumphators: "Respice post te, hominem te memento!"1 Though Pompey the Great had been too vain to subscribe to the old custom, Caesar did. He painted his face and hands with bright red minim, an echo of the terra-cotta face and hands possessed by the statue of Jupiter Optimus Maximus in his temple. The triumph was as close to emulating a god as any Roman ever came. Right behind the triumphal car walked Caesar's war horse, the famous Toes with the toes (actually the current one of several such over the years Caesar bred them from the original Toes, a gift from Sulla), the General's scarlet paludamentum draped across him. To Caesar it would have been unthinkable to triumph without giving Toes, the symbol of his fabled luck, his own little triumph. After Toes came the throng of men who considered that Caesar's Gallic campaign had liberated them from enslavement; they all wore the cap of liberty on their heads, a conical affair that denoted the freed man. Next, those of his Gallic War legates in Rome at this time, all in dress armor and mounted on their Public Horses. And, in last place, the army, five thousand men from eleven legions who shouted "Io triumphe!" as they marched. The bawdy songs would come later, when there were more ears to hear them and chuckle. When Caesar stepped into the triumphal car its left front wheel came off, pitching him forward on to the front wall, sending the triumphal intonator toppling, and setting the horses to nervous whinnying and rearing. A collective gasp went up from all those who saw it happen. "What is it? Why are people so shocked?" Cleopatra asked of Sextus Perquitienus, who had gone chalk white. "A frightful omen!" he whispered, holding up his hand in the sign to ward off the Evil Eye. Cleopatra followed suit. The delay was minimal; as if by magic, a new wheel appeared and was fitted swiftly. Caesar stood to one side, his lips moving. Though Cleopatra could not know it, he was reciting a spell. Lucius Caesar, Chief Augur, had come running. "No, no," Caesar said to him, smiling now. "I will expiate the omen by climbing the steps of Jupiter Optimus Maximus on my knees, Lucius." "Edepol, Gaius, you can't! There are fifty of them!" "I can, and I will." He pointed to a flagon strapped to the car wall On its inside. "I have a magic potion to drink." Off went the triumphal chariot, and soon the army was marching to bring up the parade's rear, two miles behind the Senate. In the Forum Boarium the triumphator had to stop and salute the statue of Hercules, always naked save on a triumphal day, when he too was clad in triumphal regalia. A hundred and fifty thousand people were jammed into the long bleachers of the Circus Maximus; the roars and cheers which went up when Caesar entered could be heard by Cleopatra's servants in her palace. But by the time that the car had made its way up one side of the spina, around its Capena end, down the other side, then up again toward the Capena exit, the army was all inside, and the crowd was worn out by cheering. So when the Tenth began to sing its new marching song, everyone quietened to listen.

"Make way for him, seller of whores Take note of his fine head of hair His other head bangs cunty doors He fucks 'em all, in bed or chair In Bithynia he sold his arse His admiral was short some fleets So Caesar shit a fleet of class Between the kingly linen sheets He's never lost a single battle Though his tally's about fifty He rounds 'em up like mooing cattle Our King of Rome neat and nifty!"

Caesar called to Fabius and Cornelius, tailing the seventy-two lictors ahead of him. "Go tell the Tenth that if they don't stop singing that song, I'll strip them of their share of the booty and discharge them minus their land!" he snapped. The message was conveyed and the ditty promptly ceased, but many were the debates in the College of Lictors as to which of the verses gave Caesar the most offense; the conclusion Fabius and Cornelius reached was that the reference to selling his arse had gotten under Caesar's skin, but a few of the other lictors were in favor of the "King of Rome" phrase. Certainly it wasn't the bawdiness of the Tenth's song; that was standard practice.

* * *

By the time the long business had ended, night was falling. Division of the spoils would have to wait until the morrow. The Field of Mars turned into a camp, for all the retired veterans were there too, having watched the triumph from the crowds. A man's share had to be collected in person unless, as happened in the case of Caesar's triumph, many of the veterans lived in Italian Gaul. Groups of them had clubbed together and armed one representative with an authorizing document, which would contribute to the difficulties the legion paymasters inevitably suffered. The rankers each received 20,000 sesterces (more than the pay for twenty years of service); junior centurions received upward of 40,000 sesterces, and the top centurions 120,000 sesterces. Huge bonuses, more than any army's in history, even the army of Pompey the Great after he conquered the East and doubled the entire contents of the Treasury. Despite this bounty, the soldiers of all ranks went away angry. Why? Because Caesar had set aside a small percentage and given it to the free poor of Rome, who each received 400 sesterces, 36 pounds of oil, and 15 modii of wheat. What had the free poor done to deserve a share? Though the free poor were ecstatic, the army was anything but. The general military consensus was that Caesar was up to something, but what? After all, there was nothing to stop a free poor man from enlisting in the legions, so why was Caesar gifting men who hadn't?

The triumphs for Egypt, Asia Minor and Africa followed in quick succession, none as spectacular as Gaul, but nonetheless above the standard of nine out of ten triumphs. The Asia triumph contained a float of Caesar at Zela surrounded by all his crowns: above the scene was a large, beautifully lettered placard that read VENI, VIDI, vici. Africa was last, and the least approved of by Rome's elite, for Caesar let his anger destroy his common sense and used the floats to deride the Republican high command. There was Metallus Scipio indulging in pornography, Labienus mutilating Roman troops, and Cato guzzling wine. The triumphs were not the end of the extra entertainments that year. Caesar also gave magnificent funeral games for his daughter, Julia, who had been very much loved by the ordinary Roman people; she had grown up in the Subura, surrounded by the ordinary people, and never held herself above them. Which was why they had burned her in the Forum Romanum, and why her ashes lay in a magnificent tomb on the Campus Martius unheard of. There were plays in Pompey's stone theater and in temporary wooden ones erected wherever there was space enough; the comedies Of Plautus, Ennius and Terence were popular, but everyone liked the simple Atellan mime best. This was a farce stuffed with ludicrous stock characters and played minus masks. However, all tastes had to be catered for, so one small venue was reserved for highbrow drama by Sophocles, Aeschylus and Euripides. Caesar also instituted a competition for new plays, and offered a generous prize for the best effort. "You really ought to write plays as well as histories, my dear Sallustius," he said to Sallust, whom he liked very much. As well for Sallust that he did; Sallust had been recalled from his governorship of Africa Province after he plundered the place unashamedly. The matter had been hushed up when Caesar personally paid out millions in compensation to aggrieved grain and business plutocrats; yet here was Caesar, still liking Sallust. "No, I'm not a playwright," said Sallust, shaking his head in revulsion at the mere thought. "I'm too busy writing a very accurate history of Catilina's conspiracy." Caesar blinked. "Ye gods, Sallustius! Then I hope that you're lauding Cicero to the skies." "Anything but," said the unrepentant looter of his province cheerfully. "I blame the whole affair on Cicero. He manufactured a crisis to distinguish his consulship above banality." "Rome might become as hot as Utica when you publish." "Publish? Oh no, I daren't publish, Caesar." He giggled. "At least, not until after Cicero's dead. I hope I don't have to wait twenty years!" "No wonder Milo horsewhipped you for philandering with his darling Fausta," said Caesar, laughing. "You're incorrigible." Plays were not the entirety of Julia's funeral games. Caesar tented in the whole of the Forum Romanum and his own Forum Julium and gave gladiatorial games, wild-beast shows, combats between condemned prisoners of war, and exhibitions of the latest martial craze, fencing with long, whippy swords useless in a battle. After which he gave a public banquet for all of Rome on no less than 22,000 tables. Among the delicacies were 6,000 fresh water eels he had to borrow from his friend Lucilius Hirrus, who refused to sell them; his price was replacement. The wines flowed like water, the tables groaned with food, and there was enough left over to enable the poor to heft home sacks of goodies to augment their menu for some time to come.