The Grass Crown (111 page)

Cinna and his six tribunes of the plebs were not trapped as was the gathering; they came down off the speaker’s platform and ran for their lives. Only some two thirds of those below were so fortunate. When Octavius came to view his handiwork, several thousand members of the upper Classes of the Centuriate Assembly lay dead on the Field of Mars. Octavius was angry, as he had wanted Cinna and his tribunes of the plebs killed first; but even men who hired themselves out to murder defenseless victims had a code, and deemed it too perilous to assassinate magistrates in office.

Quintus Lutatius Catulus Caesar and his brother Lucius Julius Caesar were staying together at Lanuvium. They heard of the massacre all Rome was calling Octavius’s Day scant hours after it happened, and came hurrying back to Rome to confront Octavius.

“How could you?” asked Lucius Caesar, weeping.

“Appalling! Disgusting!” said Catulus Caesar.

“Don’t give me that sanctimonious claptrap! You knew what I was going to do,” said Gnaeus Octavius scornfully. “You even agreed it was necessary. And—provided you didn’t have to be an actual part of it!—you gave your tacit consent. So don’t come whining to me! I procured you what you wanted—tame Centuries. The survivors won’t vote for Cinna’s laws now, no matter what inducements he tries to hold out to them.”

Shaken to the core, Catulus Caesar glared at Octavius. “Never in my life have I condoned violence as a political technique, Gnaeus Octavius! Nor do I admit I gave any kind of consent for this, tacit or otherwise! If you construed consent out of anything my brother or I said, you were mistaken. Violence is bad enough—but this! A massacre! Absolute anathema!”

“My brother is right,” said Lucius Caesar, wiping away his tears. “We are branded, Gnaeus Octavius. The most conservative of men are now no better than Saturninus or Sulpicius.”

Seeing that nothing he could say would convince this disciple of Pompey Strabo that he had acted wrongly, Catulus Caesar drew himself together with what dignity he could muster. “I hear the Campus Martius has been a field of horror for two days, senior consul. Relatives trying to identify bodies and take them for last rites, your minions scooping bodies up before any relatives have had a chance to see them, throwing them into a vast lime pit between the leeks and lettuces of the Via Recta—tchah! You have turned us into a breed of men worse than mere barbarians, for we know better than barbarians! I find myself becoming more and more unwilling to live.”

Octavius sneered. “Then I suggest you go and open your veins, Quintus Lutatius! This isn’t the Rome of your august ancestors, you know. It’s the Rome of the Brothers Gracchi, Gaius Marius, Saturninus, Sulpicius, Lucius Sulla and Lucius Cinna! We’ve got ourselves into such a chaotic mess that nothing works anymore—if it did, there would be no need for massacres like Octavius’s Day.”

Stunned, the Brothers Caesar understood that Gnaeus Octavius Ruso was actually proud of that name.

“Who gave you the money to hire your assassins, Gnaeus Octavius? Was it Marcus Antonius?” Lucius Caesar asked.

“He contributed heavily, yes. He has no regrets.”

“He wouldn’t! He’s an Antonius when all is said and done!” snapped Catulus Caesar. He got to his feet, slapping his hands against his thighs. “Well, it’s over, and we’ll never live it down. But I want no part of it, Gnaeus Octavius. I feel too much like Pandora after she opened her box.”

Lucius Caesar asked a question. “What’s happened to Lucius Cinna and the tribunes of the plebs?”

“Gone,” said Octavius laconically. “They’ll be proscribed, of course. Hopefully very soon.”

Catulus Caesar stopped at the door of Octavius’s study to look back sternly. “You cannot deprive a consul in office of his consular imperium, Gnaeus Octavius. This whole thing started in the first place because the opposition tried to remove Lucius Sulla’s consular right to command Rome’s armies from him. That cannot be done! But no one tried to deprive him of his office as consul. It can’t be done. There is nothing in Roman law, constitution, or precedent that can give any magistrate—or governing body—or comitia—the authority to prosecute or discharge a curule magistrate ahead of the end of his term. You can sack a tribune of the plebs if you go about it in the right way, you can sack a quaestor if he’s delinquent in his duty, you can expel them from the Senate or deprive them of their census. But you cannot sack a consul or any other curule magistrate during his term of office, Gnaeus Octavius.”

Gnaeus Octavius looked smug. “Now I’ve found the secret of success, Quintus Lutatius, I can do anything I want.” As Lucius Caesar followed his brother to the door, Octavius called after them, “There’s a meeting of the Senate tomorrow. I suggest you be there.”

No Jerusalem or Antioch, Rome had little patience or truck with prophets and soothsayers; the augurs conducted the rites of auspication in the true Roman spirit, knowing full well that they possessed no insight for the future course of events—strictly according to the books and charts.

There was, however, one genuinely Roman specimen of the prophet, a patrician of the gens Cornelia, and named Publius Cornelius Culleolus. Quite how he had earned his unfortunate nickname nobody remembered, as Culleolus was an ancient who had always seemed an ancient. He lived precariously on a small income derived from his Scipionic family, and was commonly to be seen in the Forum sitting on top of the two steps which led up into the tiny round temple of Venus Cloacina, older than the Basilica Aemilia, and incorporated into it when it was built. Neither a Cassandra nor a religious zealot, Culleolus confined his forecasts to the outcome of important political and State events; he never predicted the end of the world, nor the coming of some new and infinitely more powerful god. But he had predicted the war against Jugurtha, the coming of the Germans, Saturninus, the Italian war, and the war in the East against Mithridates—which last, he asserted, would go on for a full generation. Because of these successes, he now enjoyed a reputation which was almost great enough to offset the ridiculousness of his cognomen; Culleolus meant Little Ball-sack.

At dawn on the morning after the Brothers Caesar returned to Rome, the Senate met for the first time since the massacre of Octavius’s Day, its members dreading this session more than any in living memory. Until now, the worst outrages perpetrated in the name of Rome had been the work of individuals or the Forum crowd; but the massacre of Octavius’s Day came uncomfortably close to being labeled as the work of the Senate.

Sitting on the top step of the temple of Venus Cloacina, Publius Cornelius Culleolus was such a fixture that none of the Conscript Fathers hurrying by noticed him—though he noticed them, and rubbed his hands gleefully together. If he did what Gnaeus Octavius Ruso had paid him lavishly to do—and did it successfully—he would never have to sit on those hard steps again, he could retire at last from the prophesying business.

The senators lingered in the Curia Hostilia portico, a collection of small groups all talking about Octavius’s Day and audibly wondering how it could possibly be dealt with in debate. A shrill screech brought all heads around; all eyes became riveted upon Culleolus, who had risen onto his toes, spine arched, arms outstretched, fingers knotted, foam bubbling from between his contorted lips. As Culleolus did not prophesy in a frenzy, everyone assumed he was having a fit. Some of the senators and most of the Forum frequenters continued to watch, fascinated, while a few went to the seer’s aid and tried to lower him to the ground. He fought them blindly with teeth and nails, mouth opening ever wider, and then he cried out a second time. Not a noise. Words.

“China! Cinna! Cinna! Cinna! Cinna!” he howled.

Suddenly Culleolus had a very intent audience.

“Unless Cinna and his six tribunes of the plebs are sent into exile, Rome will fall!” he shrieked, twisting and tottering, then shrieked it again, and again, and again, until he collapsed to the ground and was carried away, inanimate.

The startled senators then discovered that the consul Octavius had been trying for some time to convene his meeting, and hurried into the Curia Hostilia.

However the senior consul might have been going to explain the hideous events on the Campus Martius would never now be known; Gnaeus Octavius Ruso chose instead to focus his attention (and the attention of the House) upon the extraordinary possession of Culleolus—and upon what Culleolus had cried out for all the Forum to hear.

“Unless the junior consul and six of the tribunes of the plebs are banished, Rome will fall,” said Octavius thoughtfully. “Pontifex Maximus, flamen Dialis, what do you have to say about this amazing business of Culleolus?”

Scaevola Pontifex Maximus shook his head. “I think that I must decline to comment, Gnaeus Octavius.”

Mouth open to insist, Octavius saw something in Scaevola’s eyes that caused him to change his mind; this was a man whose innate conservatism led him to condone much, but also a man not easily intimidated or hoodwinked. On more than one occasion in the House he had roundly condemned the conviction of Gaius Marius, Publius Sulpicius and the rest, and asked for their pardon and recall. No, best not antagonize the Pontifex Maximus; Octavius knew he had a far more gullible witness in the flamen Dialis, and had besides provided that innocent worthy with a fearful omen.

“Flamen Dialis?” asked Octavius solemnly.

Looking extremely perturbed, Lucius Cornelius Merula the flamen Dialis rose to his feet. “Lucius Valerius Flaccus Princeps Senatus, Gnaeus Octavius, curule magistrates, consulars, Conscript Fathers. Before I comment upon the words of the seer Culleolus, I must first tell you of a happening in the temple of the Great God yesterday. I was ritually cleansing his cella when I found a tiny pool of blood upon the floor behind the plinth of the Great God’s statue. Beside it was the head of a bird—a merula, a blackbird! My own namesake! And I, who am forbidden under our most ancient and reverenced laws to be in the presence of death, was looking upon—I don’t know! My own death? The Great God’s death? I did not know how to interpret the omen, so I consulted the Pontifex Maximus. He did not know either. We therefore summoned the decemviri sacris faciundis and asked them to consult the Sibylline Books, which had nothing to say of any help.”

Wrapped as he was in the double-layered circular cape of his calling, it was perhaps not illogical that Merula should visibly be sweating, except that he did not normally do so; his round smooth face beneath the spiked ivory helmet he wore shone with sweat. He swallowed, went on. “But I have got ahead of myself. When I first found the head of the blackbird I looked for the rest of its body, and discovered that the creature had made a nest for itself in a crevice beneath the golden robe of the Great God’s statue. And there in the nest were six baby blackbirds, all dead. As far as I can tell, a cat must have got in, caught the mother bird and eaten it—all save the head, that is. But the cat could not reach the baby birds, which died of starvation.”

The flamen Dialis shivered. “I am polluted. After this session of the House I must continue the ceremonies which will resanctify my own person and the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus. That I am here is as a result of my cogitations upon the omen—not so much the death of the merula as the entire phenomenon. It was not, however, until I heard Publius Cornelius Culleolus say what he said in the midst of his truly extraordinary prophetic frenzy that I understood the proper meaning.”

The House was absolutely hushed, every face turned to see the priest of Jupiter, so well known as an honest—almost naive—man, that what he said had to be taken very seriously.

“Now Cinna,” the flamen Dialis went on, “does not mean blackbird. But it does mean ashes, and that is what I reduced the dead bird’s head and the bodies of its six children to—ashes. I burned them in accordance with the ritual of purification. Amateur interpreter though I am, to me at this moment the omen uncannily resembles a personification of Lucius Cornelius Cinna and his six tribunes of the plebs. They have defiled the Great God of Rome, who stands in much danger because of them. The blood means that more strife and public turmoil will ensue because of the consul Lucius Cinna and those six tribunes of the plebs. I am in no doubt of it.”

The House began to buzz, thinking Merula was finished, but quietened when he began to speak again.

“One more thing, Conscript Fathers. While I stood in the temple waiting for the Pontifex Maximus, I looked up for consolation into the smiling face of the Great God’s statue. And it was frowning!” He shuddered, white-faced.

“I fled into the open air, I could not bring myself to continue to wait within.”

Everyone shuddered. The buzzing began again.

Gnaeus Octavius Ruso rose to his feet, looking to the Brothers Caesar and Scaevola Pontifex Maximus much as the cat must have looked after it devoured the merula in the temple. “I think, members of this House, that we must repair outside to the Forum, and from the rostra tell everyone what has happened. And ask for opinions. After which, the House will sit again.”

So the tale of Merula’s phenomenon in the temple and Culleolus’s prophecy were told from the rostra; those who had gathered to hear looked awed and afraid, especially after Merula gave his interpretation and Octavius announced that he would seek the dismissal of Cinna and the six tribunes of the plebs. Not one man present objected.

In the House again shortly afterward, Gnaeus Octavius Ruso repeated his opinion that Cinna and the tribunes of the plebs must go.

Then Scaevola Pontifex Maximus rose to speak. “Princeps Senatus, Gnaeus Octavius, Conscript Fathers. As all of you are aware, I am one of the greatest ever exponents of the Roman constitution and the laws which compose it. In my opinion, there is no legal way to dismiss a consul from office before his term is ended. However, it may be that approximately the same effect can be achieved religiously. We cannot doubt that Jupiter Optimus Maximus has indicated his concern in two separate ways—through the medium of his own flamen, and through the medium of an old man whom we all know to be a worthy seer. In consideration of these two almost concurrent events, I suggest that the consul Lucius Cornelius Cinna be pronounced nefas. This does not strip him of his office as consul, but—as it renders him religiously odious—it disbars him from carrying out his duties as consul. The same is true of the tribunes of the plebs.”