“Here’s Antonius,” somebody muttered. The seditious talk silenced. That is how serious these men were. The great Antonius swaggered up to us, his toga draped carelessly. He only wore one to formal occasions like a Senate meeting, preferring to go about in a tunic that was briefer than most, the better to show off his magnificent physique. He had a wonderful build and a great many battle scars, and was inordinately proud of both, as well as of that endowment of which Fulvia had spoken.
“Well, it looks official now,” Antonius said without greeting anyone formally. “No turning back from this war now that Caesar’s dressed that Greekling down so publicly.”
“You didn’t find it rude?” Cicero said dryly.
“Rude? You can’t be rude to an enemy. You can speak forcefully, though.”
“On a basis of forcefulness, then,” Cicero said, “I cannot find fault with the proceedings.”
“I think Caesar should have beheaded the lot,” Antonius said, “then pickled the heads in brine and send them to Phraates. That’s the sort of language a Parthian understands.”
“Or an Antonius,” Cicero said, “but, as a wise dispensation of our ancestors would have it, Rome can have only one dictator at a time.”
“Of course there can be only one dictator,” Antonius said. “What use would it be to have two?”
“What, indeed?” said Cicero, with the air of a man hurling catapult stones at a rabbit. The others suppressed grins, but I watched Antonius and did not like what I saw. His own little smile of amusement was confident. He was far shrewder than his enemies guessed and his show of genial boneheadedness was a pose.
“Will he take you with him, Marcus?” I asked.
His expression soured. “No, it’s still the city prefecture. Calpurnius and Cassius are to go, though.”
“You’ll have your chance,” Calpurnius Piso said. “Once Caesar has added Parthia to the empire, he may want to take India.”
“That would be something,” Antonius said, brightening. “Awful long march, though.”
In time we went off in search of lunch. A great many taverns had sprung up all around Pompey’s theater complex. I joined a couple of senators of no great reputation at a table beneath an awning and ordered heated, spiced wine. The day was cool but clear, the air free of the many stenches that pervade Rome in the summer. Hermes found me there just as a heaping platter of sausages arrived. He had spent the morning exercising at the Statilian school and upon arrival he sat, snatched up a sausage and bit it in two all in a single motion.
“Did you speak with Asklepiodes?” I asked him.
He swallowed. “I did. The old boy’s at his wits’ end. He can’t stand it that somebody’s found a way to kill people that he can’t understand. He keeps wailing that he needs to find something he calls the fulcrum. Half the boys have sore necks because he’s been experimenting on them.”
“It’s good to have a dedicated researcher,” I remarked.
“What’s all this, Metellus?” asked one of the senators, so I had to give them a shortened version of my problem.
“Why does Caesar care so much about it?” said the other senator. “They were just foreigners.”
“He has a way of taking things personally,” I told them.
After lunch I went back to the Senate chamber Pompey had built into his theater complex. Several senators were seated on the bench once occupied by the tribunes of the people, unoccupied since the dictatorship usurped their power of veto.
“You look like a pack of schoolboys about to be disciplined by the master,” I observed.
“I expect he plans to assign us parts of Parthia to govern, as soon as he’s conquered the place,” said Caius Aquilius, an acerbic man.
“I’d rather have Egypt,” said Sextus Numerius, “but it’ll probably go to his brat, Caesarion, when the boy’s older. A Roman general has never fathered a king of Egypt before, but Caesar has no respect for precedent.”
These men belonged to a generation that never hesitated to speak out about their leaders. Even a common Forum idler would berate a consul to his face. All that is gone now.
“Decius Caecilius!” came Caesar’s voice from within. I left the others and found Caesar seated by Pompey’s statue, a couple of folding desks nearby, piled with papers, scrolls, and wax tablets. Two of his secretaries stood by with writing kits. He could wear out whole relays of secretaries with his dictation of speeches, endless letters, and dispatches. Still, he found time to write poems and plays. The latter were not distinguished, though. Caesar’s gift was for the prose narrative, at which he was peerless.