The Tribune's Curse(15)
“Decius Caecilius! Allow me to be first to congratulate you on your election!” He grasped my hand and clapped me warmly on the shoulder, a sure sign that he wanted something from me. I was pretty sure I knew what it was.
“You are being a bit precipitate, but thank you anyway.”
“Nonsense. We both know you’re going to win, Metellus that you are, eh?” He grinned, a ghastly sight that exposed teeth as long as my fingers.
“Ah, so rumor has it.” I had always disliked and feared Crassus, but this senile attempt at geniality was doubly unsettling. The Senate was full of dotty old men, but we didn’t entrust the fate of legions to them.
“Exactly, exactly. Not a cheap office, aedile. Games, upkeep of the streets, walls, and gates—they’re in shocking disrepair, you know. Next year is going to be a bad one on the aediles. Several of them have already come to me to help them with the burden.”
“And I am sure that you received them with your famed generosity.” He was as well-known for miserliness as for wealth, and he never turned a sestertius loose without expecting a fat return. Naturally, the irony sailed right past him.
“As always, as always, my boy. And I could do as much for you.”
This was getting to be the theme of the day. The prospect was not made less tempting through repetition. I longed to grasp at it, but the repulsion Crassus always inspired in me made me draw back.
“But then you would expect my support in the Senate for your war, Marcus Licinius.”
He nodded. “Naturally.”
“But I oppose it. At least the Gauls and the Germans gave Caesar some slight excuse to make war on them. The Parthians have done nothing.”
He looked honestly puzzled. “What of that? They’re rich.” Always a good-enough reason for Crassus and his like.
“Call me old-fashioned, Consul, but I think Rome was a better state when we only made war to protect ourselves and our allies, and to honor treaty obligations. We’ve filled the City with other people’s wealth and ruined our farmers with a flood of cheap, foreign slaves. I would like to see an end to this.”
He leered hideously. “You are living in the past, Decius. I am far older than you, and I remember no such Rome. My own grandfather did not serve such a Rome. The wars with Carthage taught us that the biggest wolf with the sharpest teeth rules the pack. If we cease warring long enough for a single generation to grow up in peace, our teeth will grow dull and a younger, fiercer wolf will eat us.” His voice steadied, and his eyes cleared, and, for a moment, I saw the young Marcus Licinius Crassus who had clawed his way to the top of the Roman heap during the City’s bloodiest and most savage period, the civil wars of Marius and Sulla.
“The subjugation of Gaul will provide us with insurrections to put down for many years to come,” I said. “Caesar is even talking about an expedition to Britannia.”
“Caesar is still young enough to be thinking about such things. There is still one war to be fought in the East, and I intend to win it and come back to Rome and celebrate my triumph. Other members of your family have not been so delicate in their feelings for foreign kings. I strongly suggest that you consult with the greater men among them before making any unwise decisions. Good evening to you, Metellus!” He snapped out this last in a vicious whisper; then he whirled and stalked off.
I maintained my insouciant pose, but I was all but trembling in my toga. Yes, we still wore togas to dinner parties back then. It was Caesar who introduced the far more comfortable synthesis as acceptable evening wear, and that was only after his stay at Cleopatra’s court. Milo found me standing like that, and he wasn’t fooled. He knew me far better than anyone else, except, perhaps, Julia.
“You look like a man with a viper crawling under his tunic. What did the old man say to you?”
I told him succinctly. I had few secrets from Milo, and we cooperated on most political matters.
“Personally,” he said, “I don’t know why you don’t take him up on it. It really costs you nothing, and he’s sure to die before he makes it back home, no matter how the war goes. His deterioration these last two years has been shocking.”
“Clodius said almost the same thing to me earlier today.”
“Even that little weasel is capable of wisdom from time to time.”
“I’d rather not be known as another of Crassus’s toadies, even if some of the other Caecilians have given in.” My family, although still powerful in the Assemblies, had produced no men of great distinction recently. Metellus Pius was dead and his war against Sertorius all but forgotten. The conquest of Crete by Metellus Creticus really hadn’t amounted to much. The Big Three understood that only recent glory counted for anything.