The Grass Crown (82 page)

“Italians are not foreign enemies. Even when I sack their towns, there will be no slaves. I’d rather see them dead.”

From Aeclanum, Sulla turned south on the Via Appia and marched his contented troops to Compsa, the second Hirpini stronghold. Like its sister town, its walls were made of wood. But news of the fate of Aeclanum had spread faster than Sulla had moved; when he arrived, Compsa was waiting with all its gates open and the magistrates outside. This time Sulla was inclined to be merciful. Compsa was spared a sack.

From Compsa the general sent a letter back to Catulus Caesar in Capua and told him to send two legions under the brothers Aulus and Publius Gabinius into Lucania. Their orders were to take every town off Marcus Lamponius and free up the Via Popillia all the way to Rhegium. Then Sulla bethought himself of another useful man, and added a post scriptum that Catulus Caesar should include the junior legate Gnaeus Papirius Carbo in the Lucanian expedition.

In Compsa, Sulla received two messages. One informed him that Herculaneum had finally fallen during a strongly contested attack two days before the Ides of June, but that Titus Didius had been killed during the fighting.

“Make Herculaneum pay,” wrote Sulla to Catulus Caesar.

Sulla’s second message came across country from Apulia, and was from Gaius Cosconius.

After a remarkably easy and uneventful voyage, I landed my legions in an area of salt lagoons near the fishing village of Salapia exactly fifty days after leaving Puteoli. All went precisely as planned. We disembarked at night in complete secrecy, attacked Salapia at dawn and burned it to the ground. I made sure every person in the vicinity was killed so that no one could send news of our arrival to the Samnites.

From Salapia I marched to Cannae and took it without a fight, after which I forded the Aufidius River and advanced on Canusium. Not more than ten miles further on, I met a large Samnite host led by Gaius Trebatius. Battle could not be avoided. Since I was very much outnumbered and the ground was not favorable to me, the engagement was a bloody one, and costly to me. But costly to Trebatius as well. I decided to fall back on Cannae before I lost more men than I could afford, got my soldiers into good order and recrossed the Aufidius with Trebatius on my tail. Then I saw what my ploy should be, pretended we were in a panic, and hid behind a hill on the Cannae bank of the river. The trick worked. Sure of himself, Trebatius began to ford the Aufidius with his troops in some disarray. My men were calm and eager to continue the fight. I wheeled them at a run through a full circle, and we fell on Trebatius while he was still in the river. The result was a complete victory for Rome. I have the honor to inform you that fifteen thousand Samnites died at the Aufidius crossing. Trebatius and the few survivors fled to Canusium, which has prepared for a siege. I have obliged it.

I left five cohorts of my men, including the wounded, in front of Canusium under the command of Lucius Lucceius, then took the fifteen cohorts remaining to me and headed north toward Frentani country. Ausculum Apulium surrendered without a fight. So did Larinum.

As I write this report, I have just received news from Lucius Lucceius that Canusium has capitulated. Following his orders from me, Lucius Lucceius has sacked the town and killed everyone, though it would appear Gaius Trebatius himself escaped. As we have no facilities to cope with prisoners and I cannot afford to have enemy soldiers running loose in my rear, the destruction of all in Canusium was my only alternative. I trust this does not displease you. From Larinum I shall continue to advance toward the Frentani, awaiting news of your own movements and further orders.

Sulla laid the letter down with great satisfaction and shouted for Metellus Pius and his two senior tribunes of the soldiers, as both these young men were proving excellent.

Having given them Cosconius’s news and listened with what patience he could muster to their marveling (he had told no one of Cosconius’s voyage), Sulla proceeded to issue new orders.

“It’s time we contained Mutilus himself,” he said. “If we do not, he’ll fall on Gaius Cosconius in such numbers not one Roman man will be left alive, and that’s scant reward for a brave campaign. My sources of information tell me that at the moment Mutilus is waiting to see what I do before he decides whether to go after me or Gaius Cosconius. What Mutilus hopes is that I turn south on the Via Appia and concentrate my efforts around Venusia—which is strong enough to occupy all my attention for a considerable length of time. Once he hears positive confirmation of this, he’ll look for Gaius Cosconius. So today we pull up stakes and we set off to the south. However, with darkness we reverse the direction of our march and leave the road completely. It’s rough and hilly country between here and the upper Volturnus, but that’s the way we’re going. The Samnite army has been encamped halfway between Venafrum and Aesernia for far too long, but Mutilus shows no sign of moving. We have almost a hundred and fifty miles of very difficult marching before we reach him. Nevertheless, gentlemen, we’re going to be there in eight days, and fit to fight.”

No one attempted to argue; Sulla always pushed his army unmercifully, but such was its morale since Nola that it felt itself—and Sulla—equal to anything. The sack of Aeclanum had done wonders for the soldiers too, as Sulla had held nothing back out of the meager spoils for himself or his officers save a few women, and not the best women at that.

The march to Mutilus, however, took twenty-one days, not the original estimate of eight. Of roads there were none, and the hills were crags which often had to be skirted tortuously. Though inwardly Sulla fretted, he was wise enough to turn a cheerful and considerate face toward legionaries and officers both, and made sure his army maintained a certain degree of comfort. In certain ways the winning of his Grass Crown had made a tenderer man of Sulla, ways all aimed at his ownership of his army. If the terrain had been as easy as he had thought it was going to be, he would have pushed them; as it was, he could see the necessity of keeping them in good spirits and accepting the inevitable. If Fortune still favored him, he would find Mutilus where he expected to find him; and Sulla thought Fortune was still on his side.

Thus it was the end of Quinctilis when Lucullus rode into Sulla’s camp, face eager.

“He’s there!” cried Lucullus without ceremony.

“Good!” said Sulla, smiling. “That means his luck has run out, Lucius Licinius—because mine hasn’t. You can pass that message on to the troops. Does Mutilus look as if he’s planning to move soon?”

“He looks more as if he’s giving his men a long holiday.”

“They’re fed up with this war, and Mutilus knows it,” said Sulla contentedly. “Besides which, he’s a worried man. He’s been sitting in the same camp for over sixty days, and every fresh piece of news he gets only makes his decision as to where to go next more difficult. He’s lost western Campania, and he’s in the process of losing Apulia.”

“So what do we do?” asked Lucullus, who had a natural martial streak and was loving his learning from Sulla.

“We make smokeless camp on the wrong side of the last ridge leading down to the Volturnus, and there we wait. Keeping very quiet,” said Sulla. “I’d like to strike as he’s preparing to move. He must move soon, or lose the war without another fight. If he were Silo, he might elect that course. But Mutilus? He’s a Samnite. He hates us.”

Six days later Mutilus decided to move. What Sulla couldn’t know was that the Samnite leader had just received word of a terrible battle outside Larinum between Gaius Cosconius and Marius Egnatius. Though he had kept his own army idle, Mutilus hadn’t permitted Cosconius to use northern Apulia like a parade ground. He had sent a big and experienced army of Samnites and Frentani under Marius Egnatius to contain Cosconius. But the little Roman force was in high fettle, trusted its leader completely, and had got into the habit of deeming itself unconquerable. Marius Egnatius had gone down in defeat and died on the field together with most of his men, appalling news for Mutilus.

Not long after dawn Sulla’s four legions issued out of the concealing ridge and fell on Mutilus. Caught with his camp half dismantled and his troops in disorder, the Samnite stood no chance. Badly wounded himself, he fled with the remnants of his army to Aesernia, and shut himself up inside. Once more this beleaguered city girded itself to withstand a siege—only now it was Rome on the outside, Samnium within.

While he was still dealing with the aftermath of the rout, Sulla was informed of the victory against Marius Egnatius by letter from Cosconius himself, and looked exultant. No matter how many pockets of resistance remained, the war was over. And Mutilus had known it for over sixty days.

Leaving a few cohorts at Aesernia under the command of Lucullus to keep Mutilus locked up, Sulla himself marched to the old Samnite capital of Bovianum. This was a formidably fortified town, possessing three separate citadels connected by mighty walls. Each citadel faced in a different direction, built to watch one of the three roads at the junction of which Bovianum sat, deeming itself invulnerable.

“You know,” said Sulla to Metellus Pius and Hortensius, “one thing I always noticed about Gaius Marius in the field—he was never enamored of the mechanics behind taking towns. To him, nothing mattered except pitched battle. Whereas I find taking towns quite fascinating. If you look at Bovianum, it appears impregnable. But make no mistake—it will fall today.”

He made his word good by tricking the town into thinking his entire army was sitting below the citadel facing the road from Aesernia; in the meantime, one legion sneaked through the hills and attacked the citadel looking south to Saepinum. When Sulla saw the huge column of smoke arising from the Saepinum tower—his prearranged signal—he attacked the Aesernia tower. Less than three hours later Bovianum submitted.

Sulla quartered his soldiers inside Bovianum instead of putting them into camp and used the town as his base while he scoured the countryside for miles around to make sure southern Samnium was properly subdued—and incapable of raising fresh troops.

Then, leaving Aesernia besieged by men sent from Capua, and with his own four legions reunited, Sulla conferred with Gaius Cosconius. It was the end of September.

“The east is yours, Gaius Cosconius!” he said cheerfully. “I want the Via Appia and the Via Minucia completely freed up. Use Bovianum as your headquarters, it makes a superb garrison. And be as merciless or as merciful as you see fit. The most important thing is to keep Mutilus penned up inside Aesernia and prevent any reinforcements from reaching him.”

“How are things to the north of us?” asked Cosconius, who had heard virtually nothing since he had sailed from Puteoli in March.

“Excellent! Servius Sulpicius Galba has cleaned up most of the Marrucini, Marsi and Vestini. He says Silo was on the field, but escaped. Cinna and Cornutus have occupied all the Marsic lands, and Alba Fucentia is ours again. The consul Gnaeus Pompeius Strabo has reduced the Picentes and the rebel parts of Umbria to ruins. However, Publius Sulpicius and Gaius Baebius are still sitting in front of Asculum Picentum—which must surely be at death’s door from starvation, but continues to hold out.”

“Then we have won!” said Cosconius in tones of awe.

“Oh, yes. We had to win! An Italy without Rome in total command? The gods wouldn’t countenance that,” said Sulla.

Six days after the beginning of October he arrived in Capua to see Catulus Caesar and make the necessary arrangements for the wintering of his armies. Traffic was flowing once more down the Via Appia and the Via Minucia, though the town of Venusia held out stubbornly, powerless to do more than watch Roman activity on the great road running alongside it. The Via Popillia was safe for the passage of armies and convoys from Campania to Rhegium, but was still unsafe for small parties of travelers, as Marcus Lamponius clung to the mountains still, concentrating his energies now upon sorties little more impressive than brigand attacks.

“However,” said Sulla to a happy Catulus Caesar as he prepared to leave for Rome at the end of November, “by and large, I think we can safely say the peninsula is ours again.”

“I’d prefer to wait until Asculum Picentum is ours before I say that,” said Catulus Caesar, who had worked indefatigably for two years in a thankless job. “The whole business started there, Lucius Cornelius. And it’s still holding out.”

“Don’t forget Nola,” said Sulla, and snarled.

But the days of Asculum Picentum were numbered. Riding his Public Horse, Pompey Strabo brought his army to join that of Publius Sulpicius Rufus in October, and spread a wall of Roman soldiers all the way around the city; not even a rope let down from the ramparts could now go undetected. His next move was to sever the city from its water supply—an enormous undertaking, since the water was led off the gravel beneath the bed of the Truentius River at hundreds of different points. But Pompey Strabo displayed considerable engineering skill, and took pleasure in supervising the work himself.

In attendance upon the consul Strabo was his most despised cadet, Marcus Tullius Cicero; as Cicero could draw quite well and took a self-invented shorthand with extreme accuracy and rapidity, the consul Strabo found him very useful in situations like the one gradually depriving Asculum Picentum of water. As terrified of his commander as he was appalled at his commander’s utter indifference to the plight of those within the city, Cicero did as he was told and remained dumb.

In November the magistrates of Asculum Picentum opened the main gates and crept out to tender the city’s submission to Gnaeus Pompeius Strabo.

“Our home is now yours,” said the chief magistrate with great dignity. “All we ask is that you give us back our water.”

Pompey Strabo threw back his grizzled yellowish head and roared with laughter. “What for?” he asked ingenuously. “There won’t be anyone left to drink it!”

“We are thirsty, Gnaeus Pompeius!”

“Then stay thirsty,” said Pompey Strabo. He rode into Asculum Picentum on his Public Horse at the head of a party comprising his legates—Lucius Gellius Poplicola, Gnaeus Octavius Ruso, and Lucius Junius Brutus Damasippus—plus his tribunes of the soldiers, his cadets, and a picked contingent of troops five cohorts strong.

While the soldiers immediately spread out through the town with smooth discipline to round up every inhabitant and inspect every house, the consul Strabo proceeded to the forum-marketplace. It still bore the scars of the time when Gaius Vidacilius had occupied it; where the magistrates’ tribunal had once stood there now lay a tumbledown pile of charred log fragments, the remains of the pyre Vidacilius had climbed upon to burn himself to death.

Chewing the vicious little switch he used to chastise his Public Horse, the consul Strabo looked about him carefully, then jerked his head at Brutus Damasippus.

“Put a platform on top of that pyre—and make it quick,” he said to Damasippus curtly.

Within a very short time a group of soldiers had torn down doors and beams from the buildings closest by and Pompey Strabo had his platform, complete with a set of steps. Upon it was placed his ivory curule chair and a stool for his scribe.

“You, come with me,” he said to Cicero, mounted the steps and seated himself on his curule chair, still wearing his general’s cuirass and helm, but with a purple cloak depending from his shoulders instead of his red general’s cloak. Hands full of wax tablets, Cicero hastily put them on the deck next to his stool and huddled himself upon it, one tablet open on his lap, his bone stylus ready. This was, he presumed, to be an official hearing.

“Poplicola, Ruso, Damasippus, Gnaeus Pompeius Junior—join me,” said the consul with his customary abruptness.

His heart slowing a little, Cicero’s fright evaporated sufficiently for him to take in the scene while he waited to write his first official words down. Obviously the town had taken some precautions before opening its gates, for a great mound of swords, mail-shirts, spears, daggers, and any other objects which might be deemed weapons reared itself outside the city meeting hall.

The magistrates were brought forward and made to stand just beneath the makeshift tribunal. Pompey Strabo began his hearing, which consisted of his saying,

“You are all guilty of treason and murder. You are not Roman citizens. You will be flogged and beheaded. Think yourselves lucky I do not give you a slaves’ fate, and crucify you.”

Every sentence was carried out then and there at the foot of the tribunal, while the horrified Cicero, controlling his rising gorge by fixing his eyes rigidly on the tablet in his lap, made meaningless squiggles in the wax.

The magistrates disposed of, the consul Strabo proceeded to pronounce the same sentence upon every male between eighty and thirteen his soldiers could find. To expedite matters he set fifty soldiers to flog and fifty soldiers to decapitate. Other men were set to comb the mound of weaponry outside the meeting hall in search of suitable axes, but in the meantime the executioners were directed to use their swords; with practice they became so good at beheading their maimed and exhausted victims with swords that they refused the axes. However, at the end of an hour only three hundred Asculans had been dispatched, their heads fixed on spears and nailed to the battlements, their bodies tossed into a pile at one side of the forum.

“You’ll have to improve your performance,” said Pompey Strabo to his officers and men. “I want this done today, not eight days from now! Set two hundred men to flogging and two hundred more to beheading. And be quick about it. You have no teamwork and very little system. If you don’t develop both, you might find yourselves on the receiving end.”

“It would be much easier to starve them to death,” said the consul’s son, observing the carnage dispassionately.

“Easier by far. But not legal,” said his father.

Over five thousand Asculan males perished that day, a slaughter which was to live on in the memory of every Roman present, though none voiced disapproval, and none said a word against it afterward. The square was literally awash with blood; the peculiar stench of it—warm, sweetish, foetid, ferrous—rose like a mist into the sunny mountain air.

At sunset the consul rose, stretching, from his curule chair. “Back to camp, everyone,” he said laconically. “We’ll deal with the women and children tomorrow. There’s no need to set a guard inside. Just lock the gates and patrol outside.” He gave no orders as to disposal of the bodies or cleaning the blood away, so both were left to lie undisturbed.

On the morrow the consul returned to his tribunal, unmoved by the prospect he viewed, while his soldiers held those still alive in groups just outside the perimeter of the forum. His sentence was the same for all:

“Leave this place immediately, taking only what you wear with you. No food, no money, no valuables, no keepsakes.”

Two years of siege had left Asculum Picentum a pitifully poor place; of money there was little, of valuables less. But before the banished were allowed to leave the city they were searched, and none was permitted to return to her home from whence she had been shepherded; each group of women and children was simply driven through the gates like sheep and pushed then through the lines of Pompey Strabo’s army into lands stripped completely bare by occupying legions. No cry for help, no weeping crone or howling child was succored; Pompey Strabo’s troops knew better than that. Those women of beauty went to the officers and centurions, those women with any kind of appeal went to the soldiers; and when they were finished with, those who still lived were driven out into the devastated countryside a day or two behind their mothers and children.

“There’s nothing worth taking to Rome for my triumph,” said the consul when it was all done and he could get up from his curule chair. “Give what there is to my men.”

Cicero followed his general down off the tribunal and gazed gape-mouthed at what seemed the world’s vastest slaughteryard, beyond nausea now, beyond compassion, beyond all feeling. If this is war, he thought, may I never know another one. And yet his friend Pompey, whom he adored and knew to be so kind, could toss his beautiful mane of yellow hair unconcernedly back from his temples and whistle happily through his teeth as he picked his way between the deep congealed pools of flyblown blood in the square, his beautiful blue eyes containing nothing save approval as they roamed across the literal hills of headless bodies all around him.

“I had Poplicola save two very delectable women for us cadets,” said Pompey as he fell behind to make sure Cicero didn’t trip into a bath of blood. “Oh, we’ll have a good time! Have you ever watched anyone do it? Well, if you haven’t, tonight’s the night!”

Cicero drew in a sobbing breath. “Gnaeus Pompeius, I do not lack backbone,” he said heroically, “but I have neither the stomach nor the heart for war. After witnessing what’s happened here during the past two days, I couldn’t become excited if I watched Paris doing it to Helen! As for Asculan women—just leave me out of the whole thing, please! I’ll sleep in a tree.”

Pompey laughed, threw his arm about his friend’s thin bent shoulders. “Oh, Marcus Tullius, you are the most desiccated old Vestal I’ve ever met!” he said, still chuckling. “The enemy is the enemy! You can’t possibly feel sorry for people who not only defied Rome, but murdered a Roman praetor and hundreds of other Roman men and women and children by tearing them apart! Literally! However, go and sleep in your tree if you must. I’ll take your poke myself.”

They passed out of the square and walked down a short wide street to the main gates. And there it all was again. A row of grisly trophies with tattered necks and bird-pecked faces that marched across the battlements as far as the eye could see in either direction. Cicero gagged, but had acquired so much experience in keeping from disgracing himself forever in the eyes of the consul Strabo that he did not now disgrace himself in front of his friend, who rattled on, oblivious.

“There was nothing here worth displaying in a triumph,” Pompey was saying, “but I found a really splendid net for trapping wild game birds. And my father gave me several buckets of books—an edition of my great-uncle Lucilius neither of us has ever seen. We think it must be the work of a local copyist, which makes it well worth having. Quite beautiful.”

“They have no food and no warm clothes,” said Cicero.

“Who?”

“The women and children banished from this place.”

“I should hope not!”

“And what happens to that mess inside?”

“The bodies, you mean?”

“ Yes, I mean the bodies. And the blood. And the heads.”

“They’ll rot away in time.”

“And bring disease.”

“Disease to whom? When my father has the gates nailed shut forever, there won’t be a single living person left inside Asculum Picentum. If any of the women and children sneak back after we leave, they won’t be able to get in. Asculum Picentum is finished. No one will ever live in it again,” said Pompey.

“I see why they call your father The Butcher,” said Cicero, beyond caring whether what he said offended.

Pompey actually took it as a compliment; he had odd gaps in his intelligence where his personal beliefs were too strong to tickle, let alone undermine. “Good name, isn’t it?” he said gruffly, afraid that the strength of his love for his father was becoming a weakness. He picked up his pace. “Please, Marcus Tullius, do get a move on! I don’t want those other cunni starting without me when it was I had the clout to get us the women in the first place.”

Cicero hurried. But hadn’t finished. “Gnaeus Pompeius, I have something to tell you,” he said, beginning to pant.

“Oh, yes?” asked Pompey, mind clearly elsewhere.

“I applied for a transfer to Capua, where I think my talents will prove of better use in the winding up of this war. I wrote to Quintus Lutatius, and I’ve had an answer. He says he will be very glad of my services. Or Lucius Cornelius Sulla will.”

Pompey had stopped, staring at Cicero in amazement. “What did you want to do that for?” he demanded.

“The staff of Gnaeus Pompeius Strabo is soldierly, Gnaeus Pompeius. I am not soldierly.” His brown eyes gazed with great earnestness and softness into the face of his puzzled mentor, who was not quite sure whether to laugh or lose his temper. “Please, let me go! I shall always be grateful to you, and I shall never forget how much you’ve helped me. But you’re not a fool, Gnaeus Pompeius. The staff of your father isn’t the right place for me.”

The storm clouds cleared, Pompey’s blue eyes glittered happily. “Have it your own way, Marcus Tullius!” he said. Then sighed. “Do you know, I shall miss you?”