The Grass Crown

  "Do what you like with the cunni, boys!" roared Marius, beaming. "Only do try to distinguish between my friends and my enemies!"

  Horrified, Cinna stood watching his world disintegrate, utterly powerless to intervene. His soldiers were either on their way home or still in their camp on the Vatican plain; Marius's "Bardyaei"—as he called his slave followers because so many of them were from this Dalmatian tribe of Illyrians—now owned the city of Rome. And, owning it, treated it more pitilessly than a crazed drunkard the wife he hates. Men were cut down for no reason, houses invaded and robbed, women defiled, children murdered. A lot of it was senseless, causeless; but there were other instances too—men whom Marius hungered to see dead, or perhaps merely fancied he would like to see dead—the Bardyaei were not clever at distinguishing between Marius's various moods.

  For the rest of the day and far into the night, Rome screamed and howled, and many died or wished they could die. In some places huge flames leaped skyward, screams turned to high and maddened shrieks.

  Publius Annius, who loathed Antonius Orator above all others, led a troop of cavalry to Tusculum, where the Antonii had an estate, and took great pleasure in hunting down Antonius Orator and killing him. The head was brought back to Rome amid great jubilation, and planted on the rostra.

  Fimbria chose to take his squadron of horsemen up onto the Palatine, looking first for the censor Publius Licinius Crassus and his son Lucius. It was the son Fimbria spied as he sped up the narrow street toward the safety of home; spurring his horse, Fimbria came alongside him and, bending in the saddle, ran his sword through Lucius Crassus's back. Seeing it happen and powerless to prevent the same fate happening to him, the father drew a dagger from the recesses of his toga and killed himself. Luckily Fimbria had no idea which door in that alleyway of windowless walls belonged to the Licinii Crassi, so the third son, Marcus— not yet of an age to be a senator—was spared.

  Leaving his men to decapitate Publius and Lucius Crassus, Fimbria took a few troopers and went looking for the Brothers Caesar. Two of them he found in the one house, Lucius Julius and his younger brother, Caesar Strabo. The heads of course were kept for the rostra, but Fimbria dragged the trunk and limbs of Caesar Strabo out to the tomb of Quintus Varius, and there "killed" him all over again as an offering for the man Caesar Strabo had prosecuted, and who had taken his own life so slowly, so painfully. After that he went looking for the oldest brother, Catulus Caesar, but was found by a messenger from Marius before he found his quarry; Catulus Caesar was to be spared to stand his trial.

  In the next morning's light the rostra bristled with heads on spears—Ancharius, Antonius Orator, Publius and Lucius Crassus, Lucius Caesar, Caesar Strabo, the ancient Scaevola Augur, Gaius Atilius Serranus, Publius Cornelius Lentulus, Gaius Nemetorius, Gaius Baebius, and Octavius. Bodies littered the streets, a pile of unimportant heads lay against the angle where the tiny temple of Venus Cloacina tucked itself into the Basilica Aemilia, and Rome stank of coagulating blood.

  Indifferent to all save the pursuit of his revenge, Marius walked to the well of the Comitia to hear his own newly elected tribune of the plebs, Publius Popillius Laenas, convene the Plebeian Assembly. Of course no one came to attend, but the meeting went ahead anyway after the Bardyaei chose rural tribes for themselves as part of their new citizenship package. Quintus Lutatius Catulus Caesar and Lucius Cornelius Merula flamen Dialis were immediately indicted for treason.

  "But I shall not wait for the verdict," said Catulus Caesar, eyes red from weeping at the fate of his brothers and so many of his friends.

  He said this to Mamercus, whom he had summoned urgently to his house. "Take Lucius Cornelius Sulla's wife and daughter and flee at once, Mamercus, I beg of you!

  The next to be indicted will be Lucius Sulla, and everyone even remotely attached to him will die—or worse, in Dalmatica's case—and in the case of your own wife, Cornelia Sulla."

  "I had thought to remain," said Mamercus, looking exhausted. "Rome will need men untouched by this horror, Quintus Lutatius."

  "Yes, Rome will. But she won't find them among those who stay, Mamercus. I do not intend to live a moment longer than I have to. Promise me you'll bundle up Dalmatica, Cornelia Sulla, all the various children, and send them to safety in Greece. With yourself as their escort. Then I can get on and do what I have to do."

  So Mamercus promised, heavyhearted, and did much that day to safeguard the mobile and monetary property of Sulla, Scaurus, Drusus, the Servilii Caepiones, Dalmatica, Cornelia Sulla, and himself. By nightfall he and the women and children were through the Porta Sanqualis, least popular of Rome's gates, and heading for the Via Salaria; it seemed a safer way to go than south to Brundisium.

  As for Catulus Caesar, he sent little notes to Merula the flamen Dialis, and to Scaevola Pontifex Maximus. Then he had his slaves light every brazier his house possessed and put them in his principal guest suite, so newly plastered its walls exuded the pungent odor of fresh lime. Having sealed every crack and opening with rags, Catulus Caesar sat himself down in a comfortable chair and opened a scroll which contained the last books of the Iliad, his favorite literature. When Marius's men broke down the door, they found him still sitting upright and naturally in his chair, the scroll tidily in his lap; the room was choked with noxious fumes, and the corpse of Catulus Caesar was quite cold.

  Lucius Cornelius Merula never saw his note from Catulus Caesar, as it found him already dead. After reverently placing his apex and his laena in a tidily folded bundle beneath the statue of the Great God in his temple, Merula went home, got into a hot bath, and opened his veins with a bone knife.

  Scaevola Pontifex Maximus read his note.

  I know, Quintus Mucius, that you have elected to throw in your lot with Lucius Cinna and Gaius Marius.

  I can even begin to understand why. Your girl is pledged to Young Marius, and that is a tidy fortune to toss away. But you are wrong. Gaius Marius is diseased of mind, and the men who follow him are little better than barbarians. I do not mean his slaves. I mean men like Fimbria, Annius, and Censorinus. Cinna is a good enough fellow in many ways, but he cannot possibly control Gaius Marius. Nor can you.

  By the time you get this, I will be dead. It seems to me infinitely preferable to die than to live out the rest of my life as an exile—or, briefly, as one of Gaius Marius's many victims. My poor, poor brothers! It pleases me to choose my own time, place and method of dying. Did I wait until tomorrow, none of those would be mine.

  I have finished my memoirs, and I freely admit that it pains me not to be present to hear the comments when they are published. However, they will live, though I do not. To safeguard them—they are anything but complimentary to Gaius Marius!—I have sent them with Mamercus to Lucius Cornelius Sulla in Greece. When Mamercus comes back in better days, he has undertaken to publish them. And to send a copy to Publius Rutilius Rufus in Smyrna, to pay him back for being so venomous about me in his own writings.

  Look after yourself, Quintus Mucius. It would be most interesting to see how you manage to reconcile your principles with necessity. I could not. But then, my children are safely married.

  Tears in his eyes, Scaevola screwed the small sheet of paper up into a ball and thrust it into the middle of a brazier, for it was cold and he was old enough now to feel the cold. Fancy killing his old uncle the Augur! Harmless. They could talk until they were black in the face that it was all a terrible mistake. Nothing that had happened in Rome since New Year's Day was a mistake. Warming his hands and sniffling his tears away, Scaevola stared at the glowing coals contained within the bronze tripod, having no idea that Catulus Caesar's last impressions of life were much the same.

  The heads of Catulus Caesar and Merula flamen Dialis were added to the rostra's mounting collection before dawn of the third day of Gaius Marius's seventh consulship; Marius himself spent long moments contemplating Catulus Caesar's head—still handsome and haughty—before allowing Popillius Laenas to convene another Plebeian Assembly.
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  This meeting directed its spleen at Sulla, who was condemned and voted a public enemy; all his property was confiscated, but not for the greater good of Rome. Marius let his Bardyaei loot Sulla's magnificent new house overlooking the Circus Maximus, then let them burn it to the ground. The property of Antonius Orator suffered a similar fate. However, neither man left any indication as to where his money was secreted, and none ever turned up in a Roman bank, at least recognizably. Thus the slave legion did very well out of Sulla and Antonius Orator, whereas Rome did no good at all. So angry was Popillius Laenas that he sent a party of public slaves to sift through the ashes of Sulla's house after they cooled, looking for hidden treasure. The image cupboards containing Sulla and his ancestors had not been in the house when the Bardyaei plundered it; nor had the priceless citrus-wood table. Mamercus was very efficient. So was Sulla's new steward, Chrysogonus. Between the two of them and a small army of slaves under strict instructions not to appear either furtive or guilty, they stripped the best out of half a dozen of Rome's most beautiful houses in less than a day and put the best into hiding in places no one would dream of looking.

  During the first days of Marius's seventh consulship he never went home to his house, nor set eyes upon Julia; even Young Marius had been sent out of the city before New Year's Day and put to work discharging the men Marius felt he would no longer need. At the beginning he seemed to fear that Julia would seek him out, and hedged himself behind his Bardyaei, under strict orders to escort his wife home should she appear in the Forum. But when three days went by without a sign of her, he relaxed somewhat, the only evidence of his state of mind the endless letters he kept writing to his son adjuring him to stay where he was, not to come to Rome.

  "He's quite mad, but he's also quite sane—he knows he could never look Julia in the face after that bloodbath," said Cinna to his friend Gaius Julius Caesar, that moment returned to Rome from Ariminum, where he had been helping Marius Gratidianus keep Servilius Vatia inside Italian Gaul.

  "Where is he living, then?" asked Marius's ashen brother-in-law, maintaining a steady voice by sheer willpower.

  "In a tent, if you'd believe that. There it is, see? Pitched alongside the Pool of Curtius, in which he has his bath. But he never seems to sleep anyway. When he isn't carousing with the worst of his slaves and that monster Fimbria, he's walking, walking, walking, nosing into this and that for all the world like one of those little old grannies who poke their walking sticks through everything they see. Nothing is sacred!" Cinna shivered. "I can't control him. I have no idea what's in his mind—or what he's likely to do next. I doubt he knows himself."

  The rumors of insanities within Rome had started to impinge upon Caesar's journey when he reached Veii, but so strange and muddled were the stories that he took no credence in them beyond altering his route. Instead of proceeding across the Campus Martius and calling in to say hello to his cousin-by-marriage Sertorius, Caesar took a diverticulum the moment he crossed the Mulvian Bridge and headed for the Colline Gate; his information about recent events in Rome was current enough for him to know that Pompey Strabo's army was no longer encamped there, and he knew Pompey Strabo was dead. At Veii he had discovered Marius and Cinna were consuls, one reason why he paid little attention to the rumors of unbelievable violence in the city. But when he reached the Colline Gate he found it occupied by a century of soldiers.

  "Gaius Julius Caesar?" asked the centurion, who knew the legates of Gaius Marius quite well.

  "Yes," said Caesar, growing anxious.

  "I have a message from the consul Lucius Cinna that you are to go straight to his offices in the temple of Castor.''

  Caesar frowned. "I will be happy to do that, centurion, but I would prefer to go home first."

  "The message is, at once, Lucius Julius," said the centurion, managing to make it sound both courteous and an order.

  Stifling his anxiety, Caesar rode straight down the Vicus Longus heading for the Forum.

  The smoke which had marred the perfect blue of a cloudless sky from as far away as the Mulvian Bridge was now a pall, and cinders floated on the air; in growing horror his eyes took in the sight of dead bodies—men, women, children—sprawled here and there on the sides of this wide straight thoroughfare. By the time he reached the Fauces Suburae his heart was thudding, and every part of him wanted to turn uphill, ride at the gallop to his home to make sure his family was unharmed. But instinct said he would do better by his family to go where he had been ordered to go. Clearly there had been war in the streets of Rome, and in the far distance toward the jumbled insulae of the Esquiline he could hear shouts, screams, howls. Not a single living person could he see looking down the Argiletum; he turned instead into the Vicus Sandalarius and came into the Forum at its middle, where he could skirt the buildings and arrive at the temple of Castor and Pollux without entering the lower Forum.

  Cinna he found at the foot of the temple steps, and from him learned what had happened.

  "What do you want of me, Lucius Cinna?" he asked, having seen the big tent sprawled by the Pool of Curtius.

  "I don't want any thing of you, Gaius Julius," said Cinna.

  "Then let me go home! There are fires everywhere, I must see that my family is all right!"

  "I didn't send for you, Gaius Julius. Gaius Marius himself did. I simply told the gate guards to make sure you came to me first because I thought you'd be in ignorance of what's happening."

  "What does Gaius Marius want me for?" asked Caesar, trembling.

  "Let's ask him," said Cinna, starting to walk.

  The bodies now were headless; almost fainting, Caesar saw the rostra and its decorations.

  "Oh, they're friends!" he cried, tears springing to his eyes. "My cousins! My colleagues!"

  "Keep your manner calm, Lucius Julius," said Cinna tonelessly. "If you value your life, don't cry, don't pass out. His brother-in-law you may be, but since New Year's Day I wouldn't put it past him to order the execution of his wife or his son."

  And there he stood about halfway between the tent and the rostra, talking to his German giant, Burgundus. And to Caesar's thirteen-year-old son.

  "Gaius Julius, how good to see you!" rumbled Marius, clasping Caesar in his arms and kissing him with ostentatious affection; the boy, Cinna noticed, winced.

  "Gaius Marius," said Caesar, croaking.

  "You were always efficient, Gaius Julius. Your letter said you'd be here today, and here you are. Home in Rome. Ho ro, ho ro!" Marius said. He nodded to Burgundus, who stepped away quickly.

  But Caesar's eyes were on his son, who stood amid the bloody shambles as if he didn't see any of it, his color normal, his face composed, his eyelids down.

  "Does your mother know you're here?" Caesar blurted, looking for Lucius Decumius and finding him lurking in the lee of the tent.

  "Yes, Father, she knows," said Young Caesar, voice deep.

  "Your boy's really growing up, isn't he?" asked Marius.

  "Yes," said Caesar, trying to appear collected. "Yes, he is."

  "His balls are dropping, wouldn't you say?"

  Caesar reddened. His son, however, displayed no embarrassment, merely glanced at Marius as if deploring his crassness. Not an atom of fear in him, Caesar noted, proud in spite of his own fear.

  "Well now, I have a few things to discuss with both of you," Marius said affably, including Cinna in his statement. "Young Caesar, wait with Burgundus and Lucius Decumius while I talk to your tata." He watched until he was sure the lad was out of hearing distance, then turned to Cinna and Caesar with a gleeful look on his face. "I suppose you're all agog, wondering what business I could have that concerns you both?"

  "Indeed," said Caesar.

  "Well now," he said—this phrase had become one of his favorites, and was uttered regularly—"I probably know Young Caesar better than you do, Gaius Julius. I've certainly seen more of him these last few years. A remarkable boy," said Marius, voice becoming thoughtful, eyes now holding something slyly malicious.
"Yes indeed, a truly extraordinary boy! Brilliant, you know. More intelligent than any fellow I've ever met. Writes poetry and plays, you know. But just as good at mathematics. Brilliant. Brilliant. Strong-willed too. Got quite a temper when he's provoked. And he's not afraid of trouble—or making trouble, for that matter."

  The malicious gleam increased, the right corner of Marius's mouth turned up a little. "Well now, I said to myself after I became consul for the seventh time and fulfilled that old woman's prophecy about me—I am very fond of this lad! Fond enough of him to want to see him lead a more tranquil and even kind of life than I for one have led. He's a terrific scholar, you know. So, I asked myself, why not ensure him the position he will need in order to study? Why subject the dear little fellow to the ordeals of—oh, war— the Forum—politics?"

  Feeling as if they trod on the crumbling lip of a volcano, Cinna and Caesar stood listening, having no idea where Gaius Marius was leading them.

  "Well now," Marius went on, "our flamen Dialis is dead. But Rome can't do without the special priest of the Great God, now can she, eh? And here we have this perfect child, Gaius Julius Caesar Junior. Patrician. Both parents still living. Therefore the ideal candidate for flamen Dialis. Except that he isn't married, of course. However, Lucius Cinna, you have an unbetrothed girl-child who is a patrician and has both parents still living. If you married her to Young Caesar, every criterion would be met. What a wonderfully ideal flamen and flaminica Dialis they would make! No need to worry about finding the money to see your boy climb the cursus honorum, Gaius Julius, and no need to worry about finding the money to dower your girl, Lucius Cinna. Their income is provided by the State, they are housed at the expense of the State, and their future is as august as it is assured." He stopped, beamed upon the two transfixed fathers, held out his right hand. "What do you say?"