Caesar's Women (90 page)

“He hasn't left much room to criticize the actual law if it's as respectable as he makes out. There won't be any catches.”

“Are you saying you're in favor of it?” roared Cato.

“Of course I'm not!” Bibulus snapped. “What I'm saying is that our blocking it will look spiteful rather than constructive.”

Cato looked blank. “Do you care?”

“Not really, but I was hoping for a reworked version of Sulpicius or Rullus—something we could pick at. There's no point in making ourselves more odious to the People than necessary.”

“He's too good for us,” said Metellus Scipio gloomily.

“No, he isn't!” yelled Bibulus. “He won't win, he won't!”

When the House met five days later the subject bruited was the Asian publicani; this time there were no buckets full of chapters, merely a single scroll Caesar held in his hand.

“This matter has been stalled for well over a year, during which a group of desperate tax-farming men has been destroying good Roman government in four eastern provinces—Asia, Cilicia, Syria and Bithynia-Pontus,” said Caesar, voice hard. “The sums the censors accepted on behalf of the Treasury have not been met even so. Every day this disgraceful state of affairs continues is one more day during which our friends the socii of the eastern provinces are squeezed remorselessly, one more day during which our friends the socii of the eastern provinces curse the name of Rome. The governors of these provinces spend their time on the one hand placating deputations of irate socii and on the other having to supply lictors and troops to assist the tax-farmers in squeezing.

“We have to cut our losses, Conscript Fathers. That simple. I have here a bill to present to the Popular Assembly asking it to reduce the tax revenues from the eastern provinces by one third. Give me a consultum today. Two thirds of something is infinitely preferable to three thirds of nothing.”

But of course Caesar didn't get his consultum. Cato talked the meeting out with a discussion of the philosophy of Zeno and the adaptations Roman society had forced upon it.

Shortly after dawn the next day Caesar convoked the Popular Assembly, filled it with Crassus's knights, and put the matter to the vote.

“For,” he said, “if seventeen months of contiones on this subject are not enough, then seventeen years of contiones will not suffice! Today we vote, and that means that release for the publicani need be no further away than seventeen days from now!”

One look at the faces filling the Well of the Comitia told the boni that opposition would be as perilous as fruitless; when Cato tried to speak he was booed, and when Bibulus tried to speak the fists came up. In one of the quickest votes on record, the Treasury's revenues from the eastern provinces were reduced by one third, and the crowd of knights cheered Caesar and Marcus Crassus until they were hoarse.

“Oh, what a relief!” said Crassus, actually beaming.

“I wish they were all that easy,” said Caesar, sighing. “If I could act as quickly with the lex agraria it would be over before the boni could organize themselves. Yours was the only one I didn't need to call contiones about. The silly boni didn't understand that I'd just—do it!”

“One thing puzzles me, Caesar.”

“What's that?”

“Well, the tribunes of the plebs have been in office for a month, yet you haven't used Vatinius at all. Now here you are promulgating your own laws. I know Vatinius. A good client I'm sure, but you'll be charged for every service.”

“We'll be charged, Marcus,” Caesar said gently.

“The whole Forum is confused. A month of tribunes of the plebs without a single law or fuss.”

“I have plenty of work for Vatinius and Alfius, but not yet. I'm the real lawyer, Marcus, and I love it. Legislating consuls are rare. Why should I let Cicero have all the glory? No, I'll wait until I'm having real trouble with the lex agraria, then I'll unleash Vatinius and Alfius. Just to confuse the issue.”

“Do I really have to read all that paper?'' asked Crassus.

“It would be good because you might have some bright ideas. There's nothing wrong with it from your point of view, of course.”

“You can't trick me, Gaius. There is just no way in the world that you can settle eighty thousand people on ten iugera each without using both the Ager Campanus and the Capuan land.”

“I never thought I would trick you. But I have no intention of pulling the curtain away from that beast's cage yet.”

“Then I'm glad I got out of latifundia farming.”

“Why did you?”

' Too much trouble, not enough profit. All those iugera with some sheep and some shepherds, a lot of strife chaining up the work gangs—the men in it are fribbles, Gaius. Look at Atticus. Much and all as I detest the man, he's too clever to graze half a million iugera in Italy. They like to say they graze half a million iugera, and that's about what it amounts to. Lucullus is a perfect example. More money than sense. Or taste, though he'd dispute it. You'll get no opposition from me, nor from the knights. Grazing the public land under lease from the State is a recreation for senators, not a business for knights. It might give a senator his million-sesterces census, but what are a million sesterces, Caesar? A piddling forty talents! I can make that in a day on”—he grinned, shrugged—“best not say. You might tell the censors.”

Caesar picked up the folds of his toga and started to run across the lower Forum in the direction of the Velabrum. “Gaius Curio! Gaius Cassius! Don't go home, go to your censors' booth! I have something to report!”

Under the fascinated gaze of several hundred knights and Forum frequenters, Crassus gathered the folds of his toga about him and set off in pursuit, shouting: “Don't! Don't!”

Then Caesar stopped, let Crassus catch up, and the two of them howled with laughter before setting off in the direction of the Domus Publica. How extraordinary! Two of the most famous men in Rome running all over the place? And the moon wasn't even waxing, let alone full!

* * *

All through January the duel between Caesar and the boni over the land bill continued unabated. At every meeting set aside in the Senate to discuss it, Cato filibustered. Interested to see whether the technique could still work at all, Caesar finally had his lictors haul Cato out of his place and march him off to the Lautumiae, the boni following in his wake applauding, Cato with his head up and the look of a martyr on his horselike face. No, it wasn't going to work. Caesar called off his lictors, Cato returned to his place, and the filibuster went on.

Nothing else for it than to take the matter to the People without that elusive senatorial decree. He would now have to run it in contio right through the month of February, when Bibulus had the fasces and could more legally oppose the consul without them. So would the vote be in February, or March? No one really knew.

“If you're so against the law, Marcus Bibulus,” cried Caesar at that first contio in the Popular Assembly, “then tell me why! It isn't enough to stand there baying that you'll oppose it, you must tell this lawful assemblage of Roman People what is wrong with it! Here am I offering a chance to people without a chance, doing so without bankrupting the State and without cheating or coercing those who already own land! Yet all you can do is say you oppose, you oppose, you oppose! Tell us why!”

“I oppose because you're promulgating it, Caesar, for no other reason! Whatever you do is cursed, unholy, evil!”

“You're speaking in riddles, Marcus Bibulus! Be specific, not emotional; tell us why you oppose this absolutely necessary piece of legislation! Give us your criticisms, please!”

“I have no criticisms to make, yet still I oppose!”

Considering that several thousand men had packed into the Comitia well, noise from the crowd was minimal. There were new faces in it, it was not composed entirely of knights, nor of young men belonging to Clodius, nor of professional Forum frequenters; Pompey was bringing his veterans into Rome in preparation for a vote or a fight, no one knew which. These were hand-picked men, evenly numbered across the thirty-one rural tribes and therefore immensely valuable as voters. But also handy in a fight.

Caesar turned to Bibulus and held out his hands, pleading. “Marcus Bibulus, why do you obstruct a very good and very much needed law? Can't you find it in yourself to help the People rather than hinder them? Can't you see from all these men's faces that this isn't a law the People will refuse? It's a law that the whole of Rome wants! Are you going to punish Rome because you don't like me, one single man named Gaius Julius Caesar? Is that worthy of a consul? Is that worthy of a Calpurnius Bibulus?”

“Yes, it's worthy of a Calpurnius Bibulus!” the junior consul cried from the rostra. “I am an augur, I know evil when I see it! You are evil, and everything you do is evil! No good can come of any law you pass! For that reason, I hereby declare that every comitial day for the rest of this year is feriae, a holiday, and that therefore no meeting of People or Plebs can be held for the rest of the year!” He drew himself up onto his toes, fists clenched by his sides, the massive pleats of toga upon his left arm beginning to unravel because his elbow was not crooked. “I do this because I know I am right to take recourse in religious prohibitions! For I tell you now, Gaius Julius Caesar, that I don't care if every single benighted soul in the whole of Italia wants this law! They will not get it in my year as consul!”

The hatred was so palpable that those not politically attached to either of the consuls shivered, furtively tucked thumb under middle and ring finger to let index and little fingers stick up in two horns—the sign to ward off the Evil Eye.

“Rub around him like servile animals!” Bibulus screamed to the crowd. “Kiss him, pollute him, offer yourselves to him! If that's how much you want this law, then go ahead and do it! But you will not get it in my year as consul! Never, never, never!”

The boos began, jeers, shouts, curses, catcalls, a rising wave of vocal violence so enormous and terrifying that Bibulus pulled what he could of his toga onto his left arm, turned and left the rostra. Though only far enough away to be safe; he and his lictors stood on the Curia Hostilia steps to listen.

Then magically the abuse changed to cheers which could be heard as far away as the Forum Holitorium; Caesar produced Pompey the Great and led him to the front of the rostra.

The Great Man was angry, and anger lent him words as well as power delivering them. What he said didn't please Bibulus, nor Cato, now standing with him.

“Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus, will you lend me your support against the opponents of this law?” cried Caesar.

“Let any man dare draw his sword against your law, Gaius Julius Caesar, and I will take up my shield!” Pompey bellowed.

Then Crassus was there on the rostra too. “I, Marcus Licinius Crassus, declare that this is the best land law Rome has ever seen!” he shouted. “To those of you assembled here who might be concerned over your property, I give you my word that no man's property is in danger, and that all men interested can expect to see a profit!”

Shaken, Cato turned to Bibulus. “Ye gods, Marcus Bibulus, do you see what I see?” he breathed.

“The three of them together!”

“It isn't Caesar at all, it's Pompeius! We've been going for the wrong man!”

“No, Cato, not that. Caesar is the personification of evil. But I do see what you see. Pompeius is the prime mover. Of course he is! What does Caesar stand to gain except money? He's working for Pompeius, he's been working for Pompeius all along. Crassus is in it too. The three of them, with Pompeius the prime mover. Well, it's his veterans stand to benefit, we knew that. But Caesar threw dust in our eyes with his urban poor—shades of the Gracchi and Sulpicius!”

The cheering was deafening; Bibulus drew Cato away, walked down the Curia Hostilia steps and into the Argiletum.

“We change our tactics a little, Cato,” he said as distance made it easier to hear. “From now on we aim first for Pompeius.”

“He's easier to break than Caesar,” said Cato between his teeth.

“Anyone is easier to break than Caesar. But don't worry, Cato. If we break Pompeius, we break up the coalition. Once Caesar has to fight alone, we'll get him too.”

“That was a clever trick, to declare the rest of the year's comitial days feriae, Marcus Bibulus.”

“I borrowed it from Sulla. But I intend to go a great deal further than Sulla, I assure you. If I can't stop their passing laws, I can render those laws illegal,” said Bibulus.

“I begin to think Bibulus a little demented,” said Caesar to Servilia later that day. “This sudden talk of evil is quite hair-raising. Hatred is one thing, but this is something more. There's no reason in it, no logic.” The pale eyes looked washed out: Sulla's eyes. “The People felt it too, and they didn't like it. Political smears are one thing, Servilia, we all have to cope with them. But the sort of things Bibulus came out with today put the differences between us on an inhuman plane. As if we were two forces, I for evil, he for good. Exactly how it came out that way is a puzzle to me, except that perhaps total lack of reason and logic must appear to the onlooker as a manifestation of good. Men assume evil needs to be reasonable, logical. So without realizing what he did, I believe Bibulus put me at a disadvantage. The fanatic must be a force for good; the thinking man, being detached, seems evil by comparison. Is this all just too preposterous?”

“No,” she said, standing over him as he lay upon the bed, her hands moving strongly and rhythmically over his back. “I do see what you mean, Caesar. Emotion is very powerful, and it lacks all logic. As if it existed in a separate compartment from reason. Bibulus wouldn't bend when by all the rules of conduct he should have been embarrassed, disadvantaged, humiliated, forced to bend. He couldn't tell anyone there why he opposed your bill. Yet he persisted in opposing it, and with such zeal, such strength! I think things are going to get worse for you.”

“Thank you for that,” he said, turning his head to look at her, and smiling.

“You'll get no comfort from me if truth gets in the way.” She ceased, sat down on the edge of the bed until he moved over and made room for her to lie down beside him. Then she said, “Caesar, I realize that this land bill is partly to gratify our dear Pompeius—even a blind man can see that. But today when the three of you were standing side by side, it looked like much more than a disinterested attempt to solve one of Rome's most persistent dilemmas—what to do with discharged veteran troops.”