A Pillar of Iron: A Novel of Ancient Rome

  “And you believed Julius,” said Scaevola with amusement. “That is a great flaw in your character, my dear. You are intrinsically convinced that men tell the truth, and are not inherent liars. Julius is a liar. He manipulates truth admirably, so that it serves his purpose. It is probable that he will survive Sulla.”

  “I cannot believe that Julius, whom I love, was responsible for the attack on my life,” said Marcus, shaking his head.

  “I did not say he had plotted against you! I have said only that he is probably a member of that secret brotherhood. Let us consider. Many of our younger Romans are much entranced by the East, especially Egypt. Julius is considerable of an Egyptologist; I know his house on the Palatine is filled with stolen Egyptian treasures. One of the treasures is a small pillar of bronze on which coils a golden serpent with a brilliant crystal in its mouth. You will remember that in Egypt the serpent is sacred and is endowed with marvelous powers, including prophesy and strength. It is the guardian of those on thrones, and those who hold sceptres. It is the nature of the serpent to move in darkness to accomplish his ends, and none can withstand him, for he is obscure and silent and remorseless.”

  “I did not see such an ornament in Julius’ house,” said Marcus.

  “No. It is in his bedroom. He had bought it for a high price. He was so candid that I became suspicious, remembering the ring you had described. When men like Julius are candid and frank, then it is time to beware.”

  “It is all coincidence,” said Marcus, stubbornly.

  Scaevola sighed. “You will believe nothing ill of those to whom you are attached. Suspect all men, and do not overlook yourself. I have survived so far by adhering to that admonition. Let us consider one strong fact: there has been no further attempt on your life. Syrius is a brave slave, but he would be no match for a company of men. Had they not decided to let you live you should be dead by now. Have you not felt safer since you told Julius of your would-be murderers?”

  Marcus started. “Strange. It is true. I did not think of it before.” Then he cried, “Syrius has protected me, or there have been no more attempts!”

  “Believe what you will,” said Scaevola with resignation. “Who can put sense in the head of a virtuous man? But I am a mathematician at heart, and I have considered the odds against you. Syrius or no Syrius, you would not be alive now if someone had not interceded for you. I believe that one to be Julius Caesar. I had not thought him a sentimental man.”

  Scaevola added shrewdly, “Do not struggle against your doubts. Your instincts are better than your intelligence, and your virtues. Once you told me that Julius in himself was a portent. Have you forgotten?”

  Marcus said nothing.

  Scaevola changed the subject. “I have survived so far by not engaging in factions, feuds, and politics. I watch, with detachment, the steady decline of my country. Who can oppose it? Who can restore the Republic and all its virtues? No one. When a nation becomes corrupt and cynical, and prefers the rule of men and not the rule of law, it has entered upon destruction, notably its own. That is history. We have entered on the age of despots, as other nations so entered. Man never learns from the history of nations which died in the past. He pursues the same path to death. It is his nature, which is inherently evil. Let us consider the tribunes, the representatives of the people. Who receives the votes of the people, the virtuous man or the evil man who is extravagant in his promises? The evil man, invariably.”

  Marcus made no comment.

  “It does not even matter that the evil man does not fulfill his promises! The people do not care, do not remind him. It is enough that he is evil, and reflects themselves. The mobs are more comfortable in the climate of malignity than the climate of good, which embarrasses and discomfits them, for it is against their nature. Let us return to Sulla. I have not the slightest doubt that he will soon seize Rome. Among his followers is your old enemy, Catilina. So, you are in danger.”

  Scaevola was startled at the sudden change in Marcus. The young lawyer half-rose to his feet. Even when he subsided again in his chair his hands were clenched on the table and he was breathing heavily. Scaevola waited, his gray brows arched, his lips circled in the form of an O.

  “I despise myself,” said Marcus, in the most quiet of voices. “I should have killed him.” He struck the table with his fist. “I should have killed him. I shall never forgive myself that I did not.”

  “Yet, you spared him. Why are you now so regretful?”

  Marcus knew that Scaevola derided sentimentality. But his emotions overcame him and he lost his calmness and his control. In stammering sentences he told his mentor of Livia. His voice rose to calamitous heights. Tears ran down his face. He beat his breast. His tight throat made his words hoarse and terrible. Finally, overcome with his anguish and despair, he dropped his hands on the table, and sobbed aloud. “I am guilty,” he groaned. “I, myself, killed her, delivered her to evil. I am the weakest and most despicable of men.”

  Scaevola looked on that bent young head and Marcus could not see the compassion on that gross satyr’s face. Wonderful are the arts of Aphrodite, thought the old pontifex maximus. Desperate are her devotees. She is the goddess, truly, of madness.

  He pondered, as Marcus continued to groan and weep, his face hidden. Should not all wise men, and leaders of the people, be castrated by law when they become powerful? Then they would be immune from desire, from insanity, from evil. They would then be governed by reason. Knowing of the law, then, they would accede only if moved by virtue. They would sacrifice their testes for justice and devotion to the welfare of their nation. It was an intriguing thought.

  Scaevola waited until Marcus had gained some control over himself. Not to shame Marcus, he ate tranquilly. When Marcus lifted his head from the table he saw Scaevola calmly devouring dates and drinking wine. This calmness, in view of his own storm, brought rationality to him. He saw the apparently undisturbed little blue eyes of his mentor, and he wiped his own. “I was distraught,” he said.

  “So you were,” said Scaevola. “But you are young. Therefore, I forgive you.

  “Let us consider. You have vowed to kill Catilina. That is ridiculous. You would merely remove him from suffering, make him immune to pain. Is that a triumph? A dead man is serene, though his evil lives after him. It is more intelligent to balk such a man, to frustrate him, to deprive him of his ambitions and desires, than to kill him. Then he dies a thousand deaths.”

  Marcus’ eyes became quiet.

  “Be sure,” said the old man, “that Catilina has desires. He is an ambitious man, like all the Catilinii. He is a patrician, and proud. Discover what he desires, and defeat him.”

  “Who am I?” said Marcus, despairingly. “I am powerless.”

  Scaevola rose. “You are many things. I feel the stirring of prophesy in me. You will do what you desire to do. I feel that in my bones.”

  That night, in the steaming heat of the city, Scaevola in his litter was being carried to the house of his son for supper. He was by nature a fatalist, and though his young lawyers did not know it, he was sickened by Rome and had dire premonitions of the future. Therefore, when his slaves screamed in terror and the curtains of his litter were torn aside, and the litter itself dropped to the street, he made no effort to defend himself or reach for his dagger. By the light of a high-held lantern he saw the faces of his assassins and recognized them. He did not utter a word before he was stabbed to the heart. He died as imperturbably as he had lived, as Romans died.

  “Hail, Carbo!” cried the murderers, brandishing their daggers. They fled into the darkness of the night, which was licked by the red flames of the torches thrust into sockets along the walls. When the guard arrived, their iron-shod sandals clattering on the stones, they found disordered and weeping slaves, and Scaevola lying in his blood on his cushions, his eyes staring ironically.

  When Marcus heard the news the next morning, on his arrival at the house of Scaevola, he could not believe it at first. Then his grief ov
erwhelmed him. He recalled the prophetic words of the great pontifex maximus, and he hated himself for his impotence. He cried to his friends and to the sons of Scaevola, “Who would kill so noble and wise a man, so harmless, so kind?”

  One of his sons said bitterly, “He was not considered harmless. One of the slaves heard the murderers cry, ‘Hail, Carbo!’ Apparently it was believed that my father was dangerous to our pusillanimous Consul.”

  I am utterly alone, thought Marcus, understanding that the dead are not to be pitied but those who remain to mourn them. He went into Scaevola’s office, which was empty. Scaevola’s many friends and clients, whom he had defended, had listened to what was borne on the wings of rumor and were determined not to jeopardize themselves by their appearance in this house. Marcus looked at the long marble table, at the heaps of books, the scrolls, the multitude of signs of the dead Scaevola’s work, the bookshelves, and, above all, at the chair in which he had sat. That chair had been Scaevola’s one touch of luxury in the bare room, for it was of ivory and teak and ebony, beautifully carved. It had been given him by a client. One of the sons followed the weeping Marcus into the office, and saw him touch the chair.

  “He was very devoted to you, Cicero,” said the son. “I know his will. He has bequeathed to you fifty thousand gold sesterces, and this chair, and all his books of law. And the slave, Syrius.”

  Marcus could not speak.

  “He shall be avenged,” said the son. “Do not weep. He shall be avenged. We will weep later.”

  But the murderers were never discovered. The Senators and the tribunes and the Consuls expressed their horror and their anger. Few appeared at the funeral. It was Marcus Tullius Cicero who delivered the funeral oration, clothed in his white toga and with his sword at his side.

  “It is not Scaevola who shall be avenged,” he said, in his powerful orator’s voice. “It is Rome who shall be avenged. For a patriot has been silenced forever, and when patriots die the swords of good men must never be sheathed until those swords are scarlet with the blood of traitors. There were three assassins, it has been said. No, there was a nation of assassins. A corrupt and wicked people assented to this death by their apathy, their greed, their malice, their cowardice, their lack of patriotism. He was sentenced to execution a long time ago. The people are not guiltless.

  “We shall avenge him by never forgetting him, and by opposing tyrants, and the furies and the treacheries in the hearts of evil men. Let his death not have been in vain.”

  Those who listened lifted high their clenched fists and muttered that they would never forget, and Marcus was still too young to discount the oaths of men.

  Carbo had replaced the Consul, Cinna, after the latter’s murder near Thessaly. His dear friend and trusted colleague was the son of old Marius, and therefore a relative of Julius Caesar. While Sulla fought his way to Rome, Carbo ordered the death of the virtuous Senators who had not been corrupted, and the son of Marius carried out his orders. One by one, in those desperate days, all of note who were suspected of sympathizing with Sulla were ruthlessly destroyed. The end of law had begun, not in secret any longer, but openly.

  Julius Caesar had been hiding in the house of Carbo for many days. He said to Carbo, “Scaevola should not have been murdered. I advised against it. The people will remember him; they are already beginning to remember him, if what Pompey has told me is true. He goes about the city. There are outcries against you, my friend.”

  Carbo shrugged. “Who cares for the outcries of rabble? Scaevola was involved with Sulla. We have the evidence, for all his protestations of neutrality. And, who is raising the loudest cries against me in Rome? That plebeian lawyer, that dear friend of yours, my dear Julius! Why did you intervene for him?”

  “Marcus Tullius Cicero?” Julius laughed a little. “That mild and affable man?”

  “Did he not humiliate Catilina? Is not Senator Curius his enemy?”

  “Cicero?” repeated Julius, with an incredulous expression. “It was mere good fortune that he overcame Catilina. Catilina slipped and fell. Cicero is the enemy of no man, and Senator Curius has probably forgotten even his name. Do not catch at shadows, Carbo. Cicero may raise his cries but none listens. He is but a farmer, and innocuous.”

  “He is a lawyer. He has inherited Scaevola’s clients. The magistrates speak well of him. He is gaining riches. You will see that I am aware of this nonentity of yours, Julius. He is not the dove you seem to think he is.”

  Julius was inwardly alarmed at Carbo’s savage expression. But he continued to smile. He said, “I have known Marcus Tullius Cicero since I was five years old, and he has the most timid heart. He has no stomach for intrigue. He is an ‘old’ Roman.”

  “And ‘old’ Romans,” said Carbo grimly, “are our most violent enemies. I say he must die.”

  “I say he must not,” said Julius. “If he dies, then I shall avenge him.”

  Carbo’s eyes narrowed on his gay young accomplice. “You threaten me, Caesar?” he asked in a soft voice.

  “Let us be sensible,” said Julius. “Let us not indulge in death and carnage for mere sport. We are in mortal danger, ourselves, and there is work for us to do. Berate me for a soft heart with regard to Cicero. I smile sheepishly over the accusation. If I thought him dangerous, however, I should not withhold my hand against him. Have I not proved that with regard to others?”

  When Carbo continued to gaze at him in brutal silence, Julius went on, “Scaevola was pontifex maximus, a sacred office. The people no longer believe in the gods, but they fear them. Now they know who fills Scaevola’s sandals—Cicero.”

  “You have said he is not important.”

  “He is no Scaevola, and I have admitted that I have some affection for him. Let him live in peace. I have heard he has some powerful friends who would be greatly annoyed should he expire suddenly.”

  “You,” said Carbo.

  Julius lifted his eyes patiently. “I,” he said. “My annoyance would overwhelm my good temper.”

  “There is more to this concern of yours than I can decipher.”

  “Sentimentality, Carbo. Let us not descend to butchery for the mere wantonness of it. Sulla is approaching Rome.”

  Carbo regarded this elegant and smiling young man with an evil expression. Then he made a dismissing and contemptuous gesture. “I have already forgotten your gentle protégé, Cicero. We now have a civil war on our hands, since Sulla landed on the peninsula. Our armies, under our Consuls, are fighting Sulla’s forces desperately, and so are our Samnites and other discontented Italians. We shall overcome Sulla. Is not Jupiter your patron? It was said that you would overcome your enemies, and that includes Sulla. And it is also said that Sulla has over five thousand names on his proscription list, and you and I are numbered amongst them. We will choke him with his own list!”

  “I detest the military,” said Julius. “I detest the Senate even more, for I belong to the populares party.” He was relieved that Carbo had forgotten Marcus. “I have had a dream.”

  As Julius was now famous among politicians for his epilepsy, considered a sacred disease and full of prophesy, Carbo gave him his full attention. Julius smiled musingly. “I saw the shade of my uncle, Julius. He told me that I would not perish. My uncle said I was under the especial guardianship of Jupiter, and that I would be involved in enormous events.”

  “The events are already at our door,” said Carbo with gloom. But he was interested deeply. If Julius survived, then this meant that Sulla would be defeated and his armies with him.

  In the meantime, Marcus almost forgot his own griefs in the ominous news that riding couriers brought to Rome. Sulla was advancing steadily. The armies flung against him were retreating. If this were so, then Sulla would be at the gates of the city within days.

  Tullius said fearfully to his son, “This is a most direful day for our country. I do not understand this war! Have we not had enough with the Social War? Shall we never be at peace? Where is my Quintus, your brother? Is he st
ill in Gaul, or with our armies, or with’ Sulla?”

  Marcus tried to soothe him, tried to hide his own fears. “Quintus is surely in Gaul. Was not his last letter addressed to us from there? And Quintus is no politician. Let us not become suffocated by the periodical waves of panic which drown the senses of Romans these days. Our family cared nothing for Cinna; we care nothing for Carbo. We are even less concerned with Sulla. We are a quiet family, and we live in peace, and have no enemies. We must work as usual.”

  Tullius wished to believe all this, and so he assented eagerly. But Helvia was not deceived. She questioned Marcus privately in his cubiculum. “My family is not for Sulla,” she said. “You will be known as a member of the house of the Helvii.”

  “Nevertheless, my mother, I am not alarmed. I am only a lawyer, pursuing his tranquil way in the midst of a storm that does not concern us. In the vortex of screaming chaos we must serve law and order. That is my duty. I am doing it.”

  He embraced his mother and said, “We are no longer poor. We have thousands of sesterces now, thanks to the noble Scaevola and all my new clients. Let us consider what we shall do with our money when Rome is at peace again. Scaevola advised the purchase of property. I long for a sweet house on the island of Caprae, or near Naples. A villa, perhaps, with farmland. For, you will remember, I am a farmer at heart.”

  He had many burdens and anxieties, and he was afraid. Often he could not sleep for his dread concerning his brother, his dear Quintus. Was Quintus indeed still in Gaul, or had he been ordered to fight Sulla? Was he, even now, opposing the advance of that formidable man? Was he dead, or in flight?

  There was also Tullius, the father, an invalid who must be protected. There was his mother, daughter of the Helvii, whose relatives were fighting Sulla. The affairs of the family were like chains upon him, making him listless and often physically sick. Yet, he must betray nothing so that his parents might have what could possibly be their final peace.

  He grieved endlessly for Scaevola. But Scaevola seemed still to live, and was not dead in his thoughts as Livia was dead. His sardonic spirit was always at Marcus’ elbow, his voice always in his ears.