Roma - Saylor Steven - Страница 121
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“It’s bad news, isn’t it? Please, Lucius, tell me at once!”
“It’s not what you think.” He rushed to embrace her, as much to comfort himself as to reassure her. “I saw something…terrible…on the way home. Terrible! But the new list—”
“Was Gaius on the list, or not?” Julia pulled away from his embrace. Her fingers dug painfully into his arms.
“No, Julia, no! Calm yourself. His name wasn’t there.”
“Not yet,” said a rasping voice from the shadows. “But they will post my name any day now. So my informers tell me.”
Julia released her grip on Lucius and hurried to the hunched figure in the shadows. “Little brother, what are you doing out of bed? You’re much too ill to be up.”
Gaius Julius Caesar was only eighteen, but his face was haggard and he moved like an old man, stiff and bent.
He was unshaven, and his matted, unkempt hair made a mockery of his name; generations ago, his branch of the Julius family had taken the cognomen Caesar, meaning “possessor of a fine head of hair.”
“I’m feeling much better, sister. Really, I am. The fever’s broken. The chills are gone.”
“They’ll be back. That’s how the quartan ague runs its course. It comes and goes until it’s entirely spent.”
“Are you my physician now, as well as my sister?”
Julia kissed his forehead. “You are cooler than you were before. Do you think you could swallow some broth? You must keep up your strength.”
In the dining room, Lucius held up a small silver dish with both hands. He bowed his head, and intoned a prayer.
“Asylaeus, we offer the best morsels of the meal to you—you, who were especially worshipped by Father Romulus; you, patron of vagabonds, fugitives, and exiles; you, whose ancient altar on the Capitoline offered a place of sanctuary to those who could find it nowhere else. Keep safe this cherished visitor in my home, my brother by marriage, young Gaius. Grant him asylum here in the shelter of my house. To you, Asylaeus, I make this prayer.”
“Asylaeus, protect my brother!” said Julia.
“Protect us all,” whispered Gaius.
Lucius reclined on the couch next to Julia. He picked at bits of roasted pork on a silver dish. His stomach was empty, but after the horrors he had seen that day, the sight of charred flesh revolted him. Julia likewise had no appetite, but Gaius quickly finished one cup of broth and started on another.
Gaius saw that Lucius was staring at him. He managed a weak smile. “You did a brave thing today, brother-in-law, going down to the Forum to read the new list. I thank you for it.”
Lucius shrugged. “I did it for my own peace of mind. As long as you’re not officially on the list, Julia and I can’t be punished for keeping a wanted man under our roof.”
“I shall move on tomorrow, I promise.”
“Nonsense!” said Julia. “You can stay here for as long as you like.”
Lucius groaned inwardly, but Gaius spared him the awkwardness of objecting.
“Thank you, sister, but for my own safety I need to keep moving. As soon as I’m able, I must leave the city and get as far away from Italy as I can. If it weren’t for this damned ague, I’d be gone already. Sulla wants me dead.”
Lucius shook his head. “How did it come to this? In our grandfathers’ time, Gaius Gracchus was beheaded and his killer collected a bounty, and the bodies of the Gracchi were thrown in the Tiber, without proper burial, but decent Romans were outraged. Now scores of heads are added every day to the display on the Rostra, and men do nothing. The headless bodies of citizens are dumped in the river like refuse from the fish market, without a thought. Did you hear the latest outrage? Sulla disinterred and then deliberately desecrated the body of your uncle, Marius, the one man who might have stopped his madness. He cut the corpse into pieces and smeared it with feces, gouged the eyes from their sockets, and cut out the tongue. What an age we live in! Strong men no longer fear the gods. Wickedness has no limits.”
Gaius turned pale. “Is it true, about Marius? Would even Sulla commit such an abomination?”
“Everyone is whispering about it. Why shouldn’t it be true? Sulla will stop at nothing to punish his enemies. He tortures them while they live. Now he desecrates their corpses after they die.”
Gaius stared into his cup of broth. His expression was a blank, but Lucius knew that his brother-in-law was deep in thought. By nature, young Gaius was analytical and dispassionate. Brought low by sickness and finding himself in precarious circumstances, he nonetheless held his emotions in check. Lucius envied his self-control.
“You ask how it came to this, Lucius. You hint at the answer when you mention the Gracchi. In the days of our grandfathers, the destiny of Roma lay upon one of two paths—the way of the Gracchi, or the way of their enemies. Their enemies won. The wrong path was taken. Nothing has gone right since.
“Gaius Gracchus attempted to expand the rights of common citizens, and to extend those rights to our allies. His selfish, short-sighted enemies thwarted his legislation, but the problems arising from injustice and inequity didn’t go away. Instead, a long, bloody war erupted between us and our Italian allies. What the Gracchi might have accomplished peacefully was instead settled by bloodshed and brute force. What a waste!
“Because the Gracchi saw a better future, they were destroyed. Their enemies got away with murder, and ever since, men in power have never hesitated to use violence. When the Gracchi were killed, people were shocked to see Romans kill Romans. Now we’ve suffered a full-scale civil war, and a catastrophe that would have been unthinkable to our ancestors—a Roman army laid siege to Roma herself!”
In retrospect, the civil war of which Gaius spoke had perhaps been inevitable. Roma’s expanding foreign wars led to the mustering of ever-larger armies, and the acquisition of ever-greater wealth by her military commanders. An era of conquest had given rise to a generation of warlords whose power grew to exceed that of the Senate. Driven more by personal ambition and mutual suspicion than by politics, the warlords turned on one another. In the brief but ferocious civil war that resulted, it was Sulla, surviving his rivals Marius and Cinna, who emerged as the last man standing. Sulla had marched on Roma, laid siege to the city, and then forced the Senate to declare him dictator.
“Now the winner holds the city in his grip,” said Gaius. “He piously vows to restore the Republic and the lawful rule of the Senate, but not before he purges the state of all his enemies and potential enemies, and divides their property among his henchmen.”
Gaius lowered his eyes and gazed into the cup of broth. Because Marius had been his uncle, and because Gaius had recently married Cornelia, whose father Cinna had been another of Sulla’s rivals, he was certain to be counted among Sulla’s enemies.
“That such a monster should rule over us is proof of our decadence,” declared Julia. “The gods are angered. They punish us. In olden times, ‘dictator’ was a title of great honor and respect. Our ancestors were blessed to have a dictator like Cincinnatus, a man who rose up to save the state and then retired. After Sulla, ‘dictator’ shall forever be a dirty word.”
“A monster, as you say,” muttered Lucius, nervously gnawing at his thumbnail. “A madman! Do you remember when the first proscription list was posted? Men gathered at the posting wall to read the names. How shocked we were to see eighty names on the list—eighty! Eighty citizens stripped of all protection, eighty good Romans reduced to animals fit to be hunted down and slaughtered. We were outraged at Sulla’s impunity, appalled at such a number. And then, the next day, there was an addendum to the list—two hundred more names. And the next day, two hundred more! On the fourth day, Sulla made a speech about restoring law and order. Someone dared to ask him just how many men he intended to proscribe. His tone was almost apologetic, like a magistrate who’d fallen behind in his duties. ‘So far, I’ve proscribed as many enemies as I’ve been able to remember, but undoubtedly a few have escaped my recollection. I promise you, as soon as I can remember them, I’ll proscribe those men, as well.’”
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