The Book of Ancient Bastards (12 page)

When You Sleep with Someone, You’re Sleeping with Everyone They Slept
with, Too

(fl. first century B.C.)

Sulla was also joined by Cethegus, who had been one of his most bitter opponents, along with Cinna and Marius, and had been driven out of Rome by them.
—Appian, The Civil Wars

Not to be confused with a later Cornelius Cethegus (Gaius, likely a relative) who was the most dangerous of fellow Roman bastard Catiline’s allies in the senate during his failed conspiracy, this Cethegus was arguably the most infamous (and successful) turncoat of the late republican period in Rome.

A member of the senate since at least 88 B.C., Cethegus had chosen the losing side in the civil war between Marius and his supporters on one side and Sulla and his faction on the other. After Marius lost that power struggle, his supporters rallied in the fortified city of Praeneste. In no time at all, Sulla’s forces were besieging the city, and this was when Cethegus lost his nerve.

Sneaking out of the city and throwing himself on Sulla’s mercies (a dicey proposition, as the future dictator was predictable only in his lack of predictability), Cethegus offered to change sides and serve in his army. Sulla, ever the cynic, demanded a higher price. In fear of torture and death (at best), Cethegus agreed to his devil’s bargain.

Returning to Praeneste, Cethegus persuaded 5,000 Marian supporters that Sulla had promised them their lives if they left the relative safety of the city’s walls. If they did so, Cethegus promised, on Sulla’s behalf, their lives would be spared.

They weren’t.

Sulla had all 5,000 butchered.

A Bastard and His Hooker

Cethegus parlayed his changing sides into several high-paying government jobs under a munificent Sulla during his dictatorship and after his boss’s death. From there, Cethegus went on to decades of great success in the senate, where he became a power broker, reliably controlling the votes of a number of novus homo (“new man” = commoners) senators who looked to him for guidance. In fact, a decade after Sulla’s death, with the Republic still at war with Mithridates, and the senate about to decide who would lead the latest expedition to the east in order to punish the recalcitrant king of Pontus, a follower of Sulla named Lucullus took an unusual step. He seduced Cethegus’s mistress, a high-class prostitute named Praecia. She in turn used her considerable charms to manipulate Cethegus into supporting Lucullus for command of the army that was going eastward to fight Mithridates. Lucullus got the command, in large part thanks to Cethegus, went east, crushed Mithridates, conquering Armenia in the bargain, and making such a name for himself and reaping such riches that he was able to retire from public life on his return to Rome and live the life of a philosopher. Okay, a really rich philosopher. What Cethegus thought of this is not recorded.

Given Sulla’s reputation for brutality and the straightforward manner in which he went after his enemies, it is inconceivable that Cethegus had no idea what his new boss was up to when he agreed to talk several thousand of his erstwhile comrades-in-arms into walking to their own deaths. And he took the deal.

That alone makes him a bastard, by the standards of any day.

With Friends Like These, Redux

(93–53 B.C.)

Publius Clodius, out from his saffron dress, from his headdress, from his Cinderella slippers and his purple ribbons, from his breast band, from his dereliction, from his lust, is suddenly rendered a democrat.
—Marcus Tullius Cicero

If ever there was a Roman politician who merited the description of gadfly, it was Publius Clodius Pulcher (whose cognomen “Pulcher” means “good-looking”—the cognomen, or third name, was a nickname Romans used to distinguish all those people with the same names from each other). The guy got his brother-in-law’s own troops to mutiny against him, another brother-in-law’s fleet handed over to the enemy, Julius Caesar divorced, Cicero banished, and himself ransomed from pirates for no price other than his (not-so-good) reputation.

A member of the patrician Claudius family, Publius Claudius Pulcher changed his name to the more plebeian-sounding Clodius to build his political reputation within the ranks of the
populares
political party, whose power base was with the common people. Unlike so many other populares politicians, Clodius actually led the common people in a work stoppage while campaigning against Mithridates VI (the ruler of the Greek kingdom of Pontus) under the command of his own brother-in-law, Lucius Licinius Lucullus.

Portraying himself as “the soldier’s friend,” Clodius negotiated terms with a seething Lucullus that ensured his soldiers would receive their due of land, booty, and plunder—and on a timetable, no less! Lucullus sent him back toward Rome just as quickly as he could.

No-Talent Bastard Pirate Ransom

The early first century B.C. was something of a golden age for piracy in the eastern Mediterranean. Publius Clodius Pulcher, as had other young Roman nobles before him, fell into the hands of pirates intent on ransoming him. Sending a message to the king of Cyprus (Rome’s closest ally) requesting he ransom him, Clodius expected the standard fee of twenty talents (a little over 1,400 pounds) of gold to be sent for him, since he was a member of one of Rome’s richest families. Much to Clodius’s embarrassment, the king of Cyprus only sent two talents (a little over 140 pounds) of gold in response. It struck his pirate captors as so funny that this arrogant young Roman could not command so much as his own weight in gold that they set him free without taking anything. Tongues wagged around Rome for years afterward that the only price Clodius paid to be free of captivity was his anal virginity. Several years later, Clodius succeeded in getting the Cypriot king who had so undervalued him deposed and Cyprus converted into a outright Roman possession.

On the way home, Clodius also got himself appointed commander of another brother-in-law’s fleet of Roman ships, which he promptly lost in battle, getting taken prisoner by the aforementioned pirates in the process.

Back in Rome, Clodius quickly acquired a reputation as a rake, bedding several married women in succession, including the wife of the still-absent Lucullus!

A longtime foe of the politician Cicero, Clodius succeeded in getting the great orator exiled (and his expensive hilltop mansion demolished) after Cicero had him put on trial for alleged incest with his own sister. Clodius’s friend and benefactor, the wealthy Marcus Crassus, got Pulcher off by bribing the jury.

Often a precipitator of street gang violence, Pulcher fell victim to it himself at the hands of the slaves of a rival named Milo in 53 B.C., who stabbed him to death in the street. The result: all hell broke loose. Clodius’s supporters took his body straight into the heart of the Senate House, that symbol of conservative
optimates
patrician power, built a funeral pyre for him within it, and burned the Senate House down in the process. You can’t help but think how much that showboater Clodius would have appreciated such a spectacle!

How Rich Is Rich Enough?

(CA. 115–53 B.C.)

O vile, worthless man!
—Marcus Tullius Cicero

The irony of the phrase quoted above is that the words were written about the wealthiest man in Rome. Marcus Licinius Crassus Dives (“Dives” being a Latin nickname meaning “rich”) was born to money, lost it in the proscriptions that marked the first phase of Rome’s civil wars, and made it all back and more by taking cynical advantage of those same proscriptions to dispossess other wealthy unfortunates.

Crassus’s father and brother were killed in a purge, and the family’s considerable property was forfeited to the state, which promptly auctioned it off. It was a lesson the young Crassus never forgot. Coming of age as a supporter of the ruthless, ultimately successful dictator Sulla, Crassus was able to profit from exploiting the system that had dispossessed him when his own family’s enemies had held the levers of power. He quickly amassed a considerable fortune, but that was only a start.

Crassus rapidly branched out into real estate and slave trading, two booming businesses during the late republican era. He was soon the wealthiest man in Rome and, by extension, the entire Mediterranean world.

But wealth was not an end in itself to a Roman like Crassus. Rather, it was a means to an end: power. It was Crassus who eventually put down Spartacus’s slave revolt, hoping for a triumph in the Forum. It was Crassus who bribed Roman judges and juries in order to ensure his supporters escaped punishment for their crimes, and Crassus who got a piece of damned near every bit of trading action that took place in republican Rome. It was Crassus who bankrolled a young, ambitious, and flat-broke politician named Julius Caesar in order to bind the younger man to him. It was Crassus who served as the banker in the first triumvirate with Caesar and Pompey.

And it was Crassus who jockeyed for position with the other triumvirs, bargaining with them to be selected to lead a Roman army east to fight the Persians on Rome’s frontier, hoping, even in his early sixties, to win military glory and with it more permanent political power. In 54 B.C., he got his wish. Too bad his army was crushed at a place called Carrhae.

History Repeats Itself

When Crassus got himself captured at Carrhae, the Persians, cognizant of how their neighbor Mithridates VI had executed a corrupt Roman governor a few decades earlier, copied his methods. Mindful of the wealth of the man they had captured, they dispatched “Crassus the Rich” by, fittingly, pouring molten gold down his throat.