The Grass Crown (95 page)

“You are not well enough, Gaius Marius,” said Sulla without any expression on his face or in his voice.

“I’m well enough to know that money is of no moment!” snapped Marius. “Pontus is the German threat all over again! And who won against the Germans? Gaius Marius! Fellow members of this august body, you must give the command in this war to me! I am the only man here who can win it!”

Up from his seat rose Flaccus Princeps Senatus, a mild man not famous for his courage. “If you were young enough and well enough, Gaius Marius, no more fervent adherent would you have than I. But Lucius Cornelius is right. You are not well enough. You are too old. You have had two strokes. We cannot give the command in this war to a man who is likely to be felled again at just the moment when his talents are likely to be most needed. We do not know what causes a stroke, Gaius Marius, but we do know that a man who has had one stroke will go on to have more. As you have. As you will! No, Conscript Fathers, as your Princeps Senatus I say that we cannot even consider Gaius Marius to lead this campaign. I second the motion that the command be given to our senior consul, Lucius Cornelius.”

“Fortune will see me through,” said Marius stubbornly.

“Gaius Marius, accept the opinion of the Princeps Senatus in the spirit in which it was tendered,” said Sulla calmly. “No one holds you lightly, least of all me. But facts are facts. This House cannot run the risk of entrusting the conduct of any war to one who has had two strokes and is now seventy years old.”

Marius subsided, but it was plain he had not reconciled himself to the House opinion; he sat with both hands grappled around his knees and the right corner of his mouth turned down to match the left.

“Lucius Cornelius, will you take the command?” asked Quintus Lutatius Catulus Caesar.

“Only if the House gives it to me by a clear majority, Quintus Lutatius. Not otherwise,” said Sulla.

“Then let there be a division,” said Flaccus Princeps Senatus.

Only three men stood in opposition when the senators trooped from their makeshift places in this makeshift meeting chamber—Gaius Marius, Lucius Cornelius Cinna, and the tribune of the plebs Publius Sulpicius Rufus.

“I don’t believe it!” muttered the censor Crassus to his colleague, Lucius Caesar. “Sulpicius?”

“He’s been acting most peculiarly ever since the news of the massacre came,” said Lucius Caesar. “Keeps saying—well, you’ve heard him!—that Mithridates made no distinction between Romans and Italians. I imagine he’s now regretting the fact that he was one who never wanted to see the Italians enfranchised.”

“Why should that prompt him to stand with Gaius Marius?”

Lucius Caesar shrugged. “I don’t know, Publius Licinius! I really don’t know.”

Sulpicius stood with Marius and Cinna because they stood against the Senate. For no other reason. When he had heard the news from Rutilius Rufus in Smyrna, Sulpicius had undergone a profound change, and had not managed since to live without pain. Without guilt. Without an agonized confusion of mind that could get little further than one fact: a foreign king had made no distinction between the men of Rome and the men of Italy. And if a foreign king lumped Romans and Italians together, then in the eyes of the rest of the world there was no difference between them. The nature and activities of the one were the same as the other.

An ardent patriot and intensely conservative, when the war against the Italians had broken out Sulpicius had espoused the Roman cause with all his considerable heart. A quaestor in the year Drusus had died, he had found himself entrusted with increasingly responsible duties—and had acquitted himself brilliantly. Thanks to his own efforts, many Italians had died. Thanks to his consenting to it, the inhabitants of Asculum Picentum had suffered more terribly than barbarians deserved to suffer. Those thousands of little Italian boys who had walked in Pompey Strabo’s triumphal parade, and then been ejected from the city without food, clothing, or money, to live or to die according to the strength of will in their immature bodies. Who did Rome think she was, to inflict such terrible punishment upon people who were kinsfolk? How did Rome truly differ from the King of Pontus? His attitude at least was unequivocal! He at least had not shrouded his motives in righteousness and superiority. Nor for that matter had Pompey Strabo. It was the Senate had equivocated.

Oh, what was right? Who was right? If one Italian man, one Italian woman, one Italian child had managed to survive the massacre and turned up in Rome, how could he, Publius Sulpicius Rufus, ever look that poor survivor in the face?

How did he, Publius Sulpicius Rufus, truly differ from King Mithridates? Had he not killed many thousands of Italians? Had he not been a legate under Pompey Strabo, and consented to that man’s atrocities?

But amid all this pain and confusion inside Sulpicius’s mind there were also coherent thoughts—or rather, thoughts he felt were coherent, valid, logical.

Rome was not really to blame. The Senate was. The men of his own class, including himself. In the Senate—in himself!—lay the wellsprings of Roman exclusivity. The Senate had murdered his friend Marcus Livius Drusus. The Senate had stopped giving out the Roman citizenship in the aftermath of the war against Hannibal. The Senate authorized the destruction of Fregellae. The Senate, the Senate, the Senate… The men of his own class. Including himself.

Well, they would now have to pay. Including himself. It was time, decided Sulpicius, that the Senate of Rome ceased to be. No more ancient ruling families, no more wealth and power concentrated in the hands of so few that injustices as monumental as the Italian injustice could be perpetrated to an ultimate end. We are wrong, he thought. We must pay. The Senate has to go. Rome must be handed over to the People, who are our pawns, for all that we insist they are sovereign. Sovereign? Not while there’s a Senate! While there is ever a Senate, the People’s sovereignty is in name only. Not the Head Count, of course. The People. The men of the Second and Third and Fourth Classes, who are by far the largest bulk of Romans, yet have the least power. The truly wealthy and powerful knights of the First Class are indistinguishable from the Senate in every way. So they too must go.

Standing with Marius and Cinna (Why was Cinna in opposition? What tied him to Gaius Marius all of a sudden?), Sulpicius looked at the packed mass of senators facing him. There stood his good friends Gaius Aurelius Cotta (appointed a senator at twenty-eight because the censors had taken Sulla’s words to heart and were trying to fill that exclusive body, the Senate, with appropriate men) and the junior consul, Quintus Pompeius Rufus, dutifully clustered with the rest—couldn’t they see their guilt? Why did they stare at him as if he were the guilty one? But he was! He was! He knew it. They had absolutely no idea.

And if they do not understand, thought Sulpicius, then I will bide my time until this new war—oh, why are we always at war?—is organized. Men like Quintus Lutatius and Lucius Cornelius Sulla will be a part of it, they will not be in Rome to oppose me. I will wait. I will bide my time. And kill the Senate. Kill the First Class.

“Lucius Cornelius Sulla,” said Flaccus Princeps Senatus, “take command of the war against Mithridates in the name of the Senate and the People of Rome.”

“Only where are we to find the money?” asked Sulla later over dinner in his new house.

With him were the Brothers Caesar, the flamen Dialis Lucius Cornelius Merula, the censor Publius Licinius Crassus, the banker and merchant Titus Pomponius, the banker Gaius Oppius, Quintus Mucius Scaevola Pontifex Maximus, and Marcus Antonius Orator, just returned to the Senate after a protracted illness. Sulla’s guest list was designed to answer his question—if it could be answered at all.

“Is there nothing in the Treasury?” asked Antonius Orator, unable to believe this. “I mean, we all know how the urban quaestors and the tribunes of the Treasury behave—they’re forever insisting that the place is empty when there’s actually plenty.”

“Believe it, Marcus Antonius, there is nothing,” said Sulla firmly. “I’ve been to the Treasury myself several times—and I’ve been very careful not to let anyone know I was coming.”

“What about the temple of Ops?” asked Catulus Caesar.

“Empty too.”

“Well,” said Scaevola Pontifex Maximus, “there is the gold hoarded by the Kings of Rome against just such an emergency.”

“What gold?” asked several in chorus, including Sulla.

“I didn’t know about it myself until I became Pontifex Maximus, honestly!” said Scaevola defensively. “It’s in the basement of the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus—about—oh, something under two hundred talents.”

“Wonderful!” said Sulla ironically. “No doubt when Servius Tullius was King of Rome, that was enough to fund the war to end all wars. Nowadays it’s about enough to keep four legions in the field for six months. I’d better hurry!”

“It’s a start,” said Titus Pomponius comfortably.

“Why can’t you bankers lend the State a couple of thousand talents?” asked Crassus Censor, who loved money dearly, but had not nearly as much of it as he wanted—just the tin concessions across Spain, and he’d been too busy to police those as closely as they needed.

“Because we don’t have it to lend,” said Oppius patiently.

“Also, most of us use banks in Asia Province for housing our surplus reserves—which means, I have no doubt, that Mithridates is now the owner of our reserves,” said Titus Pomponius, and sighed.

“You must have money here!” said Crassus Censor, snorting.

“We do. But not enough to lend the State,” maintained Oppius.

“Res facta or res ficta?”

“Fact, Publius Licinius, truly.”

“Does everyone here agree that this present crisis is even more serious than the Italian crisis?” asked Lucius Cornelius Merula, priest of Jupiter.

“Yes, yes!” snapped Sulla. “Having interviewed the man in person once, flamen Dialis, I can assure you that if Mithridates is not stopped, he will crown himself King of Rome!”

“Then since we would never get permission from the People to sell off the ager publicus, there’s only one more way to raise money short of imposing new taxes,” said Merula.

“What?”

“We can sell all the property the State still owns in the vicinity of the Forum Romanum. We don’t have to go to the People to do that.”

An appalled silence descended.

“We couldn’t be selling the State’s assets at a worse time,” said Titus Pomponius mournfully. “It’s a buyer’s market.”

“I’m afraid I don’t even know what land the State owns around the Forum except for the priests’ houses,” said Sulla, “and we can’t possibly sell them.”

“I agree, to sell them would be nefas,” said Merula, who lived in one of the State Houses. “However, there is other property. The slopes of the Capitol inside the Fontinalis Gate, and also facing the Velabrum. Prime land for big houses. There is also a large tract which includes the general market and the Macellum Cuppedenis. Both areas could be subdivided.”

“I refuse to countenance the sale of everything,” said Sulla strongly. “The market areas, yes. They’re just markets and a playing field for the College of Lictors. Some of the Capitol—facing the Velabrum west of the Clivus Capitolinus—and from the Fontinalis Gate down as far as the Lautumiae. But nothing on the Forum itself, and nothing on the Capitol facing the Forum itself.”

“I’ll buy the markets,” said Gaius Oppius.

“Only if no one offers more,” said Pomponius, whose mind had been running the same way. “To be fair about it—and to get the best price—everything will have to be auctioned.”

“Perhaps we should try to keep the general market area and sell only the Cuppedenis market,” said Sulla, who found himself loathing the need to auction off such wonderful assets.

“I think you’re right, Lucius Sulla,” said Catulus Caesar.

“I agree with that,” said Lucius Caesar.

“If we sell the Cuppedenis, I suppose that will mean increased rents for the spice and flower merchants,” said Antonius Orator. “They won’t thank us!”

But Sulla had thought of another alternative. “How about we borrow the money?” he asked.

“Where?” asked Merula suspiciously.

“From the temples of Rome. Pay them back out of the spoils. Juno Lucina, Venus Libitina, Juventas, Ceres, Juno Moneta, Magna Mater, Castor and Pollux, both Jupiter Stators, Diana, Hercules Musarum, Hercules Olivarius—they’re all rich.”

“No!” cried Scaevola and Merula together.

A quick glance from face to face told Sulla he would get no support from anyone. “All right, then, if you won’t let Rome’s temples pay for my campaign, would you object to the temples of Greece?” he asked.

Scaevola frowned. “Nefas is nefas, Lucius Sulla. The gods are the gods, in Greece or in Rome.”

“Yes, but Greece’s gods are not Rome’s gods, now are they?”

“Temples are sacrosanct,” said Merula stubbornly.

Out leaped the other creature inside Sulla; it was the first time some of those present had seen it, and it terrified them. “Listen,” he said, teeth showing, “you can’t have it all ways, and that goes for the gods too! I’ll grant you the gods of Rome, but there’s not one man here who doesn’t understand how much it costs to keep legions in the field! If we can scrape two hundred talents of gold together, I can get six legions as far as Greece. that’s a pretty paltry force to pit against a quarter of a million Pontic soldiers—and I would remind you that a Pontic soldier is not a naked German barbarian! I’ve seen the troops of Mithridates, and they are armed and trained much like Roman legionaries. Not as good, I imagine, but far better than naked German barbarians if only because they are protected by armor and trained to discipline. Like Gaius Marius in the field, I intend to keep my men alive. And that means money for forage and money for the upkeep of all equipment. Money we don’t have—money you won’t allow the gods of Rome to give me. So I am warning you—and I mean every word!—when I reach Greece, I take the money I need from Olympia, Dodona, Delphi, and anywhere else I can find it. Which means, flamen Dialis, Pontifex Maximus, that you’d better put in some hard work with our Roman gods, and hope that these days they have more clout than the Greek gods!”