“Good. We don’t need more patrician involvement in this. It’s too bad there’s no long-distance running at the Flaminius on the calends. We might have caught him there.”
“I’ve been thinking about that,” I told him. “If he’s an enthusiast about Greek athletics, he might show up anyway, to watch the others compete. When is the calends?”
He shrugged. “Is this one of the thirty-one day months?”
“I’ve forgotten. It’s not that far off, but I hope we get this cleared up before then. Caesar was never a patient man and lately he’s become even less so.”
“Do you think Asklepiodes is right and Caesar is ill? What’s going to happen if he just drops dead?”
“I don’t like the prospect,” I admitted. “Everybody dies and Caesar is no exception, but if he dies now, the sort of men who will contend over the government fill me with dismay. Cicero is the best of them, but he has no real influence anymore, he’s just a senior voice in the Senate. It will be the likes of Antonius and Lepidus, maybe Cassius, and he’s not a bad man, just too reactionary. Sextus Pompey could return to Rome and have a try. With Caesar dead nobody would stop him and it would be civil war between him and Antonius inside a year.” I shook my head. “It’s a bad prospect.”
“So what happens if Caesar lives?” Hermes asked.
“Not good, but better. I don’t care about his building and engineering projects, but I’d like to see him finish his government reforms and his reordering of the constitution. Sulla did that and it’s served us well for a long time. If Caesar would do that and back down from office, handing off his powers as he retires, we just might make it through the next few years without a war of Roman against Roman and emerge with a stable political order. If he accomplishes that, Caesar’s name will live forever.”
“And if he dies soon?”
“He’ll be forgotten in a few years,” I pronounced, “just another failed political adventurer.” A fat lot I knew.
* * *
The man in question was recruiting manpower for his upcoming war. Most of the veterans of the long wars in Gaul had been given their discharges, though many were eager to rejoin the standards. Caesar had proven that he brought victory and loot, the two most important things to a Roman soldier. He was brilliant and he was lucky, and the latter was the most important qualification a general could have. Give a legionary a choice between a strong disciplinarian who is also a skilled tactician and a commander who is lucky, and he will pick the lucky one every time. To his soldiers, consistent good luck such as Caesar displayed was a sure sign that the gods loved him, and what more than that could one ask?
The legions numbered First, Second, Third, and Fourth since ancient times had been under the personal command of the consuls, and all four fell to Caesar’s command as dictator. It was these legions he was bringing up to full strength. The time was long past when a large army could be raised from the district around Rome, so Caesar was combing all of Italy and Cisalpine Gaul for recruits and sending them to his training camps. Most of these were located in Campania, since that district was extremely fertile and could support the troops, and because there were still wide public lands there, unclaimed by our greedier senators and equites, though they were hard at work on that problem. Good land never stayed out of aristocratic hands for long.
I, personally, thought that Caesar had finally taken on too great a task. Fighting brave but ill-organized Gauls was one thing; Parthia was quite another. Parthia was a vast, sprawling empire, and heir to the Persian Empire of the Great Kings. Of course, that was part of Parthia’s charm, as far as Caesar was concerned. Only Alexander had ever conquered Persia, and Caesar would inevitably be dubbed the new Alexander, should he succeed in doing the same.
Unfortunately, King Phraates was no Darius. Darius had been a palace-bred monarch who brought his harem with him on campaign and ran at the first reverse in battle. Phraates was a hard-living soldier-king. His Parthians were tough horse-archers recently off the eastern steppes who had invaded the empire and reinvigorated the tired old Persian blood.
Romans have always excelled in open battle, where we can close with the enemy and defeat him hand-to-hand. The Roman soldier with pilum and short sword is unmatched at this sort of combat. We are also preeminent at engineering and siege warfare. Unfortunately, the Parthians refused to oblige us by fighting our way. They are nomadic bowmen and think hand-to-hand combat undignified. At Carrhae they rode around the legions of Crassus in circles, pouring in volley after volley of arrows. The Romans crouched under their shields and waited for them to run out of arrows. Thus it had always happened before, but not this time. The Parthians brought up camels loaded with arrows and the storm never stopped. The Roman army couldn’t fight and it couldn’t run, so it died. A small band under Cassius managed to cut their way free and escaped. A pitiful remnant surrendered and was marched off into slavery.