The Grass Crown (52 page)

That of course brought Varius cursing to his feet, despite the fact that, as a pedarius, he was not allowed to speak.

Sextus Caesar summoned all his paucity of breath, and roared for order so loudly that order was restored. “Marcus Aemilius, Leader of this House, I see you wish to speak. You have the floor.”

Scaurus was angry. “I will not see this House degenerate to the level of a cock-pit because we are disgraced by curule magistrates of a quality not fit to clean vomit off the streets! Nor will I make reference to the right of any man to sit in this august body! All I want to say is that if this House is to survive—and if Rome is to survive—we must be as liberal to the Italians in the matter of our citizenship as we have been to certain men sitting in this House today.”

But Philippus was on his feet. “Sextus Julius, when you gave the Leader of the House permission to speak, you did not acknowledge that I wished to speak. As consul, I am entitled to speak first.”

Sextus Caesar blinked. “I thought you had done, Lucius Marcius. Are you not done, then?”

“No.”

“Then please, will you get whatever it is you have to say over with? Do you mind waiting until the junior consul has his say, Leader of the House?”

“Of course not,” said Scaurus affably, and sat down.

“I propose,” said Philippus weightily, “that this House strike each and every one of the laws of Marcus Livius Drusus off the tablets. None has been passed legally.”

“Arrant nonsense!” said Scaurus indignantly. “Never in the history of the Senate has any tribune of the plebs gone about his legislating with more scrupulous attention to the laws of procedure than Marcus Livius Drusus!”

“Nonetheless, his laws are not valid,” said Philippus, whose nose was apparently beginning to throb greatly, for he began to pant, fingers fluttering around the shapeless blob in the middle of his face. “The gods have indicated their displeasure.”

“My meetings met with the approval of the gods too,” said Drusus flatly.

“They are sacrilegious, as the events throughout Italy over the past ten months clearly demonstrate,” said Philip-pus. “I say that the whole of Italy has been torn apart by manifestations of divine and godly wrath!”

“Oh, really, Lucius Marcius! Italy is always being torn apart by manifestations of divine and godly wrath,” said Scaurus wearily.

“Not the way it has been this year!” Philippus drew a breath. “I move that this House recommend to the Assembly of the Whole People that the laws of Marcus Livius Drusus be annulled, on the grounds that the gods have demonstrated marked displeasure. And, Sextus Julius, I will see a division. Now.”

Scaurus and Marius were both frowning, sensing in this something as yet hidden, but unable to see what it was. That Philippus would be defeated was certain. So why, after such a brief and uninspiring address, was he insisting upon a division?

The House divided. Philippus lost by a large majority. He then lost his temper, screaming and ranting until he spat; the urban praetor, Quintus Pompeius Rufus, near him on the dais, pulled his toga ostentatiously over his head to ward off the saliva rain.

“Greedy ingrates! Monumental fools! Sheep! Insects! Offal! Butcher’s scraps! Maggots! Pederasts! Fellators! Violators of little girls! Dead flesh! Whirlpools of avarice!” were but some of the names Philippus hurled at his fellow senators.

Sextus Caesar allowed him sufficient time to run down, then had his chief lictor pound the bundle of rods on the floor until the rafters boomed.

“Enough!” he shouted. “Sit down and be quiet, Lucius Marcius, or I will have you ejected from this meeting!”

Philippus sat down, chest heaving, nose beginning to drip a straw-colored fluid. “Sacrilege!” he howled, drawing the word out eerily. After which he did sit quietly.

“What is he up to?” whispered Scaurus to Marius.

“I don’t know. But I wish I did!” growled Marius.

Crassus Orator rose. “May I speak, Sextus Julius?”

“You may, Lucius Licinius.”

“I do not wish to talk about the Italians, or our cherished Roman citizenship, or the laws of Marcus Livius,” Crassus Orator said in his beautiful, mellifluous voice. “I am going to talk about the office of consul, and I will preface my remarks with an observation—that never in all my years in this House have I seen and heard the office of consul abused, abashed, abased as it has been in these last days by Lucius Marcius Philippus. No man who has treated his office—the highest in the land!—the way Lucius Marcius Philippus has, ought to be allowed to continue in it! However, when the electors put a man in office he is not bound by any code save those of his own intelligence and good manners, and the many examples offered him by the mos maiorum.

“To be consul of Rome is to be elevated to a level just a little below our gods, and higher by far than any king. The office of consul is freely given and does not rest upon threats or the power of retribution. For the space of one year, the consul is supreme. His imperium outranks that of any governor. He is the commander-in-chief of the armies, he is the leader of the government, he is the head of the Treasury—and he is the figurehead of every last thing the Republic of Rome has come to mean! Be he patrician or be he New Man, be he fabulously rich or relatively poor, he is the consul. Only one man is his equal, and that man is the other consul. Their names are inscribed upon the consular fasti, there to glitter for all time.

“I have been consul. Perhaps thirty men sitting here today have been consuls, and some of them have been censors as well. I shall ask them how they feel at this moment—how do you feel at this moment, gentlemen consulars, after listening to Lucius Marcius Philippus since the beginning of this month? Do you feel as I feel? Unclean? Disgraced? Humiliated? Do you think it right that this third-time-lucky occupant of our office should go uncensured? You do not? Good! Nor, gentlemen consulars, do I!”

Crassus Orator turned from the front rows to glare fiercely at Philippus on the curule dais. “Lucius Marcius Philippus, you are the worst consul I have ever seen! Were I sitting in Sextus Julius’s chair, I would not be one tenth as patient as he! How dare you swish round the vici of our beloved city preceded by your twelve-lictor escort, calling yourself a consul? You are not a consul! You are not fit to lick a consul’s boots! In fact, if I may borrow a phrase from our Leader, you are not fit to clean vomit off the streets! Instead of being a model of exemplary behavior to your juniors in this assemblage and to those outside in the Forum, you conduct yourself like the worst demagogue who ever prated from the rostra, like the most foul-mouthed heckler who ever stood at the back of any Forum crowd! How dare you take advantage of your office to hurl vituperations at the members of this House? How dare you imply that other men have acted illegally?” He pointed his finger at Philippus, drew a breath, and roared, “I have put up with you long enough, Lucius Marcius Philippus! Either conduct yourself like a consul, or stay at home!”

When Crassus Orator resumed his place the House applauded strenuously; Philippus sat looking at the ground with head at an angle preventing anyone from seeing his face, while Caepio glared indignantly at Crassus Orator.

Sextus Caesar cleared his throat. “Thank you, Lucius Licinius, for reminding me and all who hold this office who and what the consul is. I take as much heed of your words as I hope Lucius Marcius has. And, since it seems none of us can conduct ourselves decently in this present atmosphere, I am concluding this meeting. The House will sit again eight days from now. We are in the midst of the ludi Romani, and I for one think it behooves us to find a more fitting way to salute Rome and Romulus than acrimonious and ill-mannered meetings of the Senate. Have a good holiday, Conscript Fathers, and enjoy the games.”

Scaurus Princeps Senatus, Drusus, Crassus Orator, Scaevola, Antonius Orator and Quintus Pompeius Rufus repaired to the house of Gaius Marius, there to drink wine and talk over the day’s events.

“Oh, Lucius Licinius, you squashed Philippus beautifully!” said Scaurus happily, gulping at his wine thirstily.

“Memorable,” said Antonius Orator.

“And I thank you too, Lucius Licinius,” said Drusus, smiling.

Crassus Orator accepted all this approval with becoming modesty, only saying, “Yes, well, he asked for it, the fool!”

Since Rome was still very hot, everyone had doffed his toga on entering Marius’s house and repaired to the cool fresh air of the garden, there to loll comfortably.

“What I want to know,” said Marius, seated on the coping of his peristyle pool, “is what Philippus is up to.”

“So do I,” said Scaurus.

“Why should he be up to anything?” asked Pompeius Rufus. “He’s just a bad-mannered lout. He’s never been any different.”

“No, there’s something working in the back of his grubby mind,” said Marius. “For a moment there today, I thought I’d grasped it. But then it went, and I can’t seem to remember.”

Scaurus sighed. “Well, Gaius Marius, of one thing you can be sure—we’ll find out! Probably at the next meeting.”

“It should be an interesting one,” said Crassus Orator, and winced, massaged his left shoulder. “Oh, why am I so tired and full of aches and pains these days? I didn’t give a very long speech today. But I was angry, that’s true.”

The night was to prove that Crassus Orator paid a higher price for his speech than he would have cared to, had he been asked. His wife, the younger Mucia of Scaevola the Augur, woke up at dawn quite chilled; cuddling against her husband for warmth, she discovered him horribly cold. He had died some hours earlier, at the height of his career and the zenith of his fame.

To Drusus, Marius, Scaurus, Scaevola, and those of similar ideas, his death was a catastrophe; to Philippus and Caepio, it was a judgment in their favor. With renewed enthusiasm Philippus and Caepio moved among the pedarii of the Senate, talking, persuading, coaxing. And felt themselves in excellent case when the Senate reconvened after the ludi Romani were over.

“I intend to ask again for a division upon the question as to whether the laws of Marcus Livius Drusus should be kept on the tablets,” said Philippus in a cooing voice, apparently determined to conduct himself like a model consul. “I do understand how tired of all this opposition to the laws of Marcus Livius many of you must be, and I am aware that most of you are convinced that the laws of Marcus Livius are absolutely valid. Now I am not arguing that the religious auspices were not observed, that the Comitial proceedings were not conducted legally, and that the consent of the Senate was not obtained before any move in the Comitia was made.”

He stepped to the very front of the dais, and spoke more loudly. “However, there is a religious impediment in existence! A religious impediment so large and so foreboding that we in all conscience cannot possibly ignore it. Why the gods should play such tricks is beyond me, I am no expert. But the fact remains that while the auguries and the omens were interpreted favorably before each and every meeting of the Plebeian Assembly held by Marcus Livius, up and down Italy were godly signs indicating a huge degree of divine wrath. I am an augur myself, Conscript Fathers. And it is very clear to me that sacrilege has been done.”

One hand went out; Philippus’s clerk filled it with a scroll Philippus peeled apart.

“On the fourteenth day before the Kalends of January—the day Marcus Livius promulgated his law regulating the courts and his law enlarging the Senate in the Senate—the public slaves went to the temple of Saturn to ready it for the next day’s festivities—the next day, if you remember, was the opening day of the Saturnalia. And they found the woolen bonds swaddling the wooden statue of Saturnus soaked with oil, a puddle of oil upon the floor, and the interior of the statue dry. The freshness of this leakage was not in doubt. Saturnus, everyone agreed at the time, was displeased about something!

“On the day that Marcus Livius Drusus passed his laws on the courts and the size of the Senate in the Plebeian Assembly, the slave-priest of Nemi was murdered by another slave, who, according to the custom there, became the new slave-priest. But the level of the water in the sacred lake at Nemi suddenly fell by a whole hand, and the new slave-priest died without doing battle, a terrible omen.

“On the day that Marcus Livius Drusus promulgated in the Senate his law disposing of the ager publicus, there was a bloody rain on the ager Campanus, and a huge plague of frogs on the ager publicus of Etruria.

“On the day that the lex Livia agraria was passed in the Plebeian Assembly, the priests of Lanuvium discovered that the sacred shields had been gnawed by mice—a most dreadful portent, and immediately lodged with our College of Pontifices in Rome.

“On the day that the tribune of the plebs Saufeius’s Board of Five was convened to commence parceling out the ager publicus of Italy and Sicily, the temple of Pietas on the Campus Martius near the Flaminian Circus was struck by lightning, and badly damaged.

“On the day the grain law of Marcus Livius Drusus was passed in the Plebeian Assembly, the statue of Diva Angerona was discovered to have sweated profusely. The bandage sealing her mouth had slipped down around her neck, and there were those who swore that they had heard her whispering the secret name of Rome, delighted that she could speak at last.

“On the Kalends of September, the day upon which Marcus Livius Drusus introduced in this House his proposed bill to give the Italians our precious citizenship, a frightful earthquake utterly destroyed the town of Mutina in Italian Gaul. This portent the seer Publius Cornelius Culleolus has interpreted as meaning that the whole of Italian Gaul is angry that it too is not to be rewarded with the citizenship. An indication, Conscript Fathers, that if we award the citizenship to peninsular Italy, all our other possessions will want it too.

“On the day that he publicly chastised me in this House, the eminent consular Lucius Licinius Crassus Orator died mysteriously in his bed, and was ice-cold in the morning.

“There are many more portents, Conscript Fathers,” said Philippus, hardly needing to raise his voice, so hushed was the chamber. “I have cited only those which actually occurred on the selfsame day as one of Marcus Livius Drusus’s laws was either promulgated or ratified, but I give you now a further list.