“How terrible!” Nobilior said. “What inhuman beasts they must be to do such a thing. I cannot believe this report that their leader is a Roman.” Flavia, on the other hand, sipped sweet Egyptian wine and did not seem unduly shocked by such goings-on.
“Well, if we Romans are nothing else, we are versatile. Personally, it seems to me that no one but a Roman could cause so much trouble with so few ships and men.”
He chuckled. “You are certainly right about that. Sometimes I think that the rest of the world makes it too easy for us. Have you heard how Ptolemy got his throne back?”
“I was in Gaul much of that time, but I heard rumors concerning the passing of heroic bribes.”
“More godlike than heroic,” he said. “It seems that his subjects thought him remiss in allowing us to annex Cyprus. When his brother committed suicide, the subjects drove Auletes from his throne. After all, he had taken the surname Philadelphus: ‘he who loves his brother.’ The Egyptians thought that a bitter irony. But they must have some sort of Ptolemy so they put his daughter Berenice on the throne. According to Ptolemaic custom, a queen cannot rule by herself, so she cast about for a royal husband and eventually chose Archelaus of Pontus.
“Auletes immediately fled to Rome, where he petitioned the Senate to restore him to his throne. Do you know by what right he made this petition?”
I thought back. “He’d been voted the status of ‘friend and ally’ a few years earlier, hadn’t he? I think it was during the consulship of Caesar and Bibulus.”
“He had. He paid handsomely to get that title, too. Pompey and Caesar guaranteed him the title, but they told him it would be expensive—no less than six thousand talents.”
“Six thousand!” Even by the standards of the time that was an enormous bribe.
He nodded. “Six thousand. That represents, roughly, half a year’s income for Egypt. But Auletes is a beggar and everyone knows it, so where do you suppose he came up with the sum?”
This was his story and I’d just eaten his dinner so I played along. “Where?”
“He borrowed it from Rabirius Postumus. Do you know him?” “I met him once, several years ago, at a party at the Egyptian embassy. He’d just been appointed Ptolemy’s financial advisor. Surely even Rabirius wasn’t rich enough to lend six thousand. Crassus couldn’t have come up with that much in one lump sum.”
“Rabirius is an old friend of mine,” Nobilior said complacently. “He took a number of us on as partners in this enterprise. Of course, that was just to have the title so that the Senate would have to back his claims. Getting Rome to provide him with the military force he needed was going to cost a further ten thousand. Mind you, at this time he still owed for part of the original six.”
“I think I see where this is going,” I said. “He agreed to pay, but first we had to restore his throne so he could start looting his own country to pay it off.”
Nobilior smiled. “Exactly. Caesar isn’t the only one who knows how to use indebtedness to his own advantage. Now, by this time, Caesar himself was busy in Gaul, and Pompey had affairs of his own to manage, but there was our friend Aulus Gabinius, waging war in Syria with a perfectly good army at his disposal. He couldn’t break off his war against the Parthians and go to Egypt with his whole force, but Caesar sent him a strong force of auxilia, Gabinius recruited others locally, and off he went, accompanied by Rabirius to keep an eye on everyone’s money.”
“I wonder,” I said, “how the voters would feel if they knew that so many of our wars are just business arrangements? A lot of them still think that things like the glory and honor of the Republic are involved.”
He shrugged. “Nobody objects to the heaps of loot and the cheap slaves our victorious generals bring back. That’s what they really care about. That and keeping the barbarians as far away as possible. There are plenty of voters now alive who remember the Cimbri and Teutones camped a few day’s march from Rome, before Marius crushed them. Remember, kings all over the world bankrupt their kingdoms through foolish wars even when they don’t suffer conquest themselves. Should the Roman people complain because our own wars are so profitable?”
“You have a point.” I wondered what other point he had but suspected that he would get around to it sooner or later.
“A versatile man, our Gabinius,” Flavia observed. She may have had multiple meanings here, but I had too little information to sort them out.
“A Roman statesman has to be versatile,” I pointed out. “Do you remember how Pompey got his extraordinary command against the pirates?” Nobilior asked.