Oracle of the Dead(23)
“First, the best news, Decius,” he began. Here at dinner, among close friends and relatives, he was free to address me by my praenomen instead of my title. “You know that Appius Claudius has been going through the senatorial roll like a great scythe, expelling senators for corruption, bribery, debt, and immorality?”
“Everybody knows that,” I said. This Appius Claudius was the brother of my old enemy Clodius, but was a man of the highest rectitude for whom I always had the greatest respect.
“Well, among others, he expelled Sallustius for immorality!”
I laughed so hard that wine shot out of my nose and it was a few minutes before I regained possession of myself. “Wonderful! Too bad it was only immorality, though. He’s guilty of every one of the practices Claudius is so determined to stamp out.”
“One was enough,” said Marcus. “He doesn’t dare show his face in the Forum.”
This Sallustius was a wretched climber I had known for far too long. He was as corrupt as any senator who had ever disgraced the curia, and in those years that was very corrupt indeed. He was always trying to ingratiate himself with me and I could not stand his insinuating manner. In later years, with no further political or criminal activity to distract him, he styled himself a historian.
“On a less happy note,” Marcus went on, “Caesar and the Senate seem to be on a collision course.”
“Well,” I said resignedly, “it’s been coming.” Caesar wanted to retain his extraordinary command in Gaul and Illyria. He also wanted to stand for consul in the elections for the coming year. The problem was, the Senate demanded that he return to Rome to stand for office in the traditional manner, but a Roman propraetor or proconsul lost his imperium the moment he stepped across the pomerium. The Senate already had Caesar’s successor picked out.
“The Senate has decreed that Caesar, if he wants to keep his proconsulship, is to stay north of the Rubicon.” This river was the border between Italy and Caesar’s province.
“He won’t,” I said. “He’ll cross, and he’ll bring all his legions with him. I know him and I know his soldiers. After what he’s accomplished the last ten years, all the victory and loot he’s brought them, those men will lay siege to Rome if he asks them. And he will.”
“Rubbish!” Julia said heatedly. “Caesar will never oppose the Senate with armed force. He has too great a respect for Roman traditions. There are senators who foolishly wish to dishonor him, but he respects that august body like any good Roman. What has Lepidus to say?” Lucius Aemilius Lepidus Paullus, one of that year’s consuls, tried to support Caesar, who had, among other favors, given him the money to restore the ancestral Basilica Aemilia. Unfortunately his colleague, Claudius Marcellus, was Caesar’s deadly enemy and a much more forceful man. Julia’s affection for her uncle led her into the dangerous paths of wishful thinking.
“Lepidus tries, as always, to support Caesar. But that is getting to be a minority position in the Senate. The Assemblies, as always, favor Caesar.”
“Cicero,” Marcus went on, trying to lighten the mood, “has already run from Cilicia. He made huge efforts to prevent having his proconsulship prorogued. He’s already petitioned the Senate for a triumph.”
“A triumph?” I said. “For that trifling victory?” Cicero, that most reluctant of soldiers, had gone to govern Cilicia and had eventually scored a win over what amounted to a pack of bandits.
“His troops hailed him as imperator.” Marcus said.
“The standards of Roman legionaries have fallen if that lot declared Cicero imperator.” Ordinarily I did not speak disparagingly of Cicero, whom I admired above most Romans and counted as a friend. Although in his later career he became foolishly grandiose and self-important. The very thought of the spindly, unmilitary Cicero riding in triumph through Rome for so trifling a victory was deeply embarrassing.
“Curio continues to be controversial,” Marcus went on. “He’s gone over to Caesar wholeheartedly now, after months of vacillating.” Scribonius Curio was the most remarkable Tribune of the People in a long time. His rise to power had been phenomenal, and he was uncommonly effective, proposing and ramming through the Assemblies a program of legislation unprecedented in its scope and volume. Rumor had it that Caesar had suborned him with a bribe of unprecedented extravagance and now it appeared that the bribe had been successful. If so, Curio was a man of character, for in the years to come he hewed faithfully to Caesar, right until his death in Africa. I had always liked him, even when we ran afoul of one another.