“Well, Clodia,” I said, “it isn’t quite as princely as Ptolemy’s palace, but it’s close.”
She smiled, accepting it as a true compliment. “Isn’t it splendid? There’s hardly a furnishing in the room that hasn’t been forbidden by the censors at one time or another.”
“Sumptuary laws never work,” I said. “The people who pass the laws are the only ones who can afford to break them.” This wasn’t strictly true, because rich freedmen, barred from higher office, were becoming more and more a fixture in the City.
Some of the guests were admiring the wall paintings. These, at least, were not forbiddingly expensive and had been applied to smooth out the effect of knocking three different rooms into one. They were of a style just coming into fashion: a black background with ornamental pillars painted on at intervals. The pillars were strangely spindly and elongated, as if they had been stretched. Here and there along their length were little platforms holding potted plants and bowls of fruit, similarly elongated. Atop the pillars were fanciful terminals consisting of stacked globes or drooping cones. I suppose they were intended to be whimsical, but I found the style dreamlike and faintly disorienting, as if you were seeing something you half-remembered and couldn’t quite place.
“Decius, have you met the tribune Publius Vatinius?” She took me to a tall, soldierly man. He looked like the sort who loves to carry out his superior’s most atrocious orders.
“I am always happy to meet another Caecilius Metellus,” he said. The ubiquity of my family was a byword in Rome.
“Tribune Vatinius was responsible for securing Caesar’s extraordinary commission in Gaul,” Clodia gushed. If there was anything she loved more than luxury it was power politics.
“A most unusual expedient to deal with the Gallic situation,” I said.
“It’s a reform long overdue,” Vatinius asserted.
“Reform? Do you mean this is something we can look forward to seeing again?”
“Of course. We have to stop pretending we live in the days of our ancestors. We have a vast empire all over the world, and we try to govern it as if Rome were still a little Italian city-state. The way we change offices every year is absurd! A man no sooner learns his task or the territory he is to govern when he is out of office.”
“Who would want to hold an office like the quaestorship or the aedileship for more than a year?” I objected.
He chuckled. “Very true. No, I spoke of the offices that hold imperium: praetor and consul. Most specifically, propraetor and proconsul. A one-year stint governing a province was one thing when our holdings were just a few days’ march from Rome, but it’s utterly obsolete now. You can take weeks if not months just getting to your province. Just about the time you’ve learned your way around, it’s time to go home.”
“You can usually get a command prorogued for another year or two,” I said.
“But you never know!” he said with some heat. “And if you want to stand for office again, you have to drop everything and hurry back to Rome, even if you’re in the middle of a war. This new way is better. Caesar goes to Gaul knowing he has five years to sort out that situation and bring it to a satisfactory conclusion. Plus, he has imperium over both Gauls plus Illyricum; so if he has the barbarians on the run, they can’t just duck across the border where he’ll have to coordinate with another proconsul.” It was one of the rules that a promagistrate wielded imperium only within the borders of his assigned province. If he tried to use it outside them he risked being charged with treason.
“It is a well thoughtout policy,” I admitted.
“Believe me, it is the only policy from here on,” he insisted. “And we need further legislation to allow a serving promagistrate to stand for office in absentia. If a legate can run a province or an army in the magistrate’s absence, why not one to conduct an election campaign back home?”
There was considerable justice in his reasoning. The truth was that our ancient system of republican government was dreadfully awkward and unwieldy. It was aimed at thwarting the dangerous practice of concentrating too much power in the hands of one man. Sensible as his solution was (and I had no doubt that it was Caesar’s solution, not his), I still hated the idea of giving anyone that much power for that long a time. After five years, especially if he was victorious in battle, all the legions in Gaul would belong solely to Caesar and to no other. Not that this was anything new. Pompey’s legions were Pompey’s, not Rome’s.
“Oh, and you must know the aedile Calpurnius Bestia,” Clodia said.