I Am Rome, page 54
Julia family domus
Nightfall
By the time they sat down to eat, there was barely any light left in the leaden sky. The rain had let up and only fell intermittently, as if the gods had taken pity on the soaked, muddied city with the Tiber River straining at its banks.
The family was gathered inside, safe from the inclement weather, as Caesar and Labienus recovered from the attack on the dock, discussing what had happened and, more important, what might occur next.
“It’s justice,” Caesar said. “Our basilica of justice, our Roman law, did nothing for them. So the Macedonians sought it out for themselves in the streets. Or rather on the docks, under a furious sky beside the enraged Tiber.”
“That’s not justice, boy. It’s revenge,” Cotta argued, livid. “By Jupiter! This will bring consequences. There will be more bloodshed, you can be certain!”
“Repeated injustice, Uncle, often leads to violent reactions. Dolabella and all the optimate senators who you seem to have become so cozy with lately have been committing constant injustices when it comes to lands, wealth, and rights. Just a few years ago, the Italic people rebelled against Rome, demanding citizenship and other fair concessions. Now the Macedonians have had to execute one of our shamelessly corrupt senators after our courts denied them justice for his criminal treatment of them. I agree that it is wrong—it diminishes Roman authority and, if it continues, the republic will become ungovernable. We have to make changes, profound transformations, starting with rooting out all the corruption. That’s what this trial was about, Uncle. Only you and your friends didn’t see it, or didn’t care. Rome is headed for another large-scale civil dispute if we don’t undertake a total restructuring of the distribution of rights and obligations—”
“Save your speech, boy,” his uncle interrupted. “Whether or not you are correct, your political career was over the moment you agreed to take part in the trial against Dolabella. Your first appearance in the forum was a resounding failure. Hortensius destroyed you. I’d be shocked if you could even become elected councilman. I told you to stay out of it.”
“You played dirty,” Caesar snapped, looking at his mother.
Aurelia sighed and lowered her head.
“We did what we always do. I have to use any resources at my disposal to discredit an opponent’s witnesses,” Cotta said.
“So there are no limits to how far you’ll go?” Labienus asked.
“There are no limits in a trial, boy, no, there are not. I told you a thousand times not to get in over your head, by all the gods.”
“You are a traitor to this family,” Caesar said, furious.
“I’m sorry, Aurelia,” Cotta said, seeing the pained look on his sister’s face. “I warned him not to get involved, but he wouldn’t listen. Your son never listens to reason, only to unwise advice,” he said, throwing a glance at Cornelia.
The girl was about to respond, but Caesar placed a firm hand on his wife’s shoulder and she bit her tongue.
“This trial has been a strain on everyone,” Aurelia said. “We all acted as we thought best and we all had our own reasons, but now it’s time to put the whole thing behind us and try to heal our familial bonds. I sense that tumultuous times are again upon us and we’ll need each other now more than ever. We have to stick together.”
“I hear something…outside,” said Caesar.
Everyone stopped to listen. Silence, not even the patter of rain, since the storm had finally relented.
Aurelius Cotta thought his nephew was simply trying to change the subject, to avoid the unpleasant conversation. But the boy needed to face the truth. His cursus honorum was already unsalvageable, but if he continued talking about reforming Rome, he’d surely meet a violent death in a matter of months, weeks even. Especially now that Dolabella had been murdered. The more radical senators would demand revenge and Caesar could easily be one of their first targets.
“I don’t hear anything,” said Cotta.
Julius Caesar ignored him and walked to the far corner of the room. The densely packed Suburra that spread out all around the residence in a maze of narrow streets was home to thousands of poor families, the maligned plebes of Rome.
“Yes, I hear something,” said Cornelia, who had stood up to join her husband.
She stopped beside him as he nodded and held up a hand so that no one would speak.
Cotta sighed and shook his head, looking down at the floor.
Labienus took a sip of wine. It tasted of bitter defeat.
Aurelia walked into the atrium and looked up at the star-studded sky, not a cloud in sight. She heard something as well. It was as if a crowd of people were all shouting in unison. By the gods! She hoped it wasn’t the senators’ daggermen already coming for her son in retaliation for what the Macedonians had done to Dolabella.
“Do you hear it now?” Caesar asked.
Labienus tilted his head. He heard it too. He set his cup down and walked over to where Caesar and Cornelia stood.
Cotta frowned. He heard something now as well. The sound of shouting, a mob moving closer, howling something incomprehensible.
Aurelia turned to the slaves: “Open the windows to the street!” And then added, terrified, “But keep the door locked!”
The domina’s orders were carried out and the shouts from the crowd surging the alleyways of the Suburra suddenly became clear: “Caesar! Caesar! Caesar!”
Julius Caesar turned slowly to his mother. She blinked. She couldn’t believe what was happening. Cotta, beside her, was equally incredulous, his face showing absolute bewilderment.
“Caesar! Caesar! Caesar!”
The shouts…cheers…came ever closer. The people of Rome had been abandoned, left utterly leaderless as their representatives had been murdered, one by one, for the past decade, leaving the all-powerful Senate in total control. Gaius Marius was dead, Saturninus dead, the Gracchi dead, Drusus, Glaucia, Cinna, and Lepidus, all dead, along with so many others. But they had just found someone to replace those men. Someone young and energetic who had not been afraid to take on the formidable Dolabella before a corrupt tribunal. He’d known that the unscrupulous senator would buy the best lawyers; he’d known that the water clock adjusters would rob him of his time; he’d known that the odds were stacked against him. But he had tried anyway, because it was the right thing to do. And yes, he had lost. But the Roman people didn’t seem to care about that loss; it had been rigged, like everything else…
“Caesar! Caesar! Caesar!”
The unprecedented courage, boldness, and self-confidence that the young Caesar had shown before the corrupt senators had sparked a flame of hope. Maybe, just maybe, things could change.
“Caesar! Caesar! Caesar!”
“Are you sure, Uncle, that I’ve truly lost this trial?” said Caesar. “The verdict might not have gone in my favor, but it seems that the people view things differently, don’t you think?”
Aurelius Cotta served himself a cup of wine, filling it to the brim. He drank steadily until he’d emptied its contents. His nephew was exultant as the cheers grew louder in the street.
“Caesar! Caesar! Caesar!”
It was the first time that the Roman people would gather to chant that name. The first in a long history of that name chanted in unison across the centuries. With Caesar, many things would happen for the first time in history.
The young lawyer stopped before his uncle. He was waiting for an answer to his question.
“The people, as you say, boy, might see things differently, but the senators do not. And they are the ones in charge.”
“You predicted a few moments ago that I had reached the end of my political career, that my cursus honorum was hopeless,” Caesar continued defiantly, “but I think perhaps this trial is not the end of anything. No, it’s the start of everything. The start of something big.”
“Caesar! Caesar! Caesar!”
His eyes still fixed on his uncle, Julius Caesar gave his orders: “Open the doors! I will greet the people of Rome!”
The slaves hesitated and looked to Aurelia, but the matrona gave no response. It was not her place to contradict the wishes of the pater familias, and so the doors to the Julia family domus were thrown wide.
“As your uncle, because you are family, out of love for your mother, I have to warn you, boy: the senators will come for you. All the cheering in the world won’t change the fact that a death sentence hangs over your head. You should leave Rome, at least for a time. Until things calm down.”
Caesar turned to his uncle, prepared to respond…
Inside the Senate building
That same night
News of Dolabella’s death reached the senators along with the news that crowds were cheering for Caesar in the streets of the Suburra.
They all agreed that something should be done, but no one dared to make a rash decision.
Their top leader, Metellus, was in Hispania fighting Sertorius’s popular rebellion. There seemed to be no way to put an end to the scourge of populares abroad. And now, suddenly, right here in Rome, was another figure for them to rally around: Caesar.
“The entire Suburra is cheering for him!” a senator exclaimed as he joined the other optimates gathered after the trial to discuss the developing situation.
“It would be unwise to kill him…Not tonight…” said another.
At that moment, Marcus Tullius Cicero stepped forward and stood at the center of the group, beside Pompey. Cicero had kept silent throughout the entire trial. Although he moved freely through the Senate, he was not clearly affiliated with the optimates and was not allied with the populares by any means. He always expressed perplexing opinions.
All the senators, including Pompey, gave him their attention.
“It would be unwise to kill him, but we should encourage him to leave Rome,” Cicero said. “We cannot allow the young Julius Caesar to think he can win in the streets of Rome what he is unable to win in our halls of justice.”
No one responded.
Someone had to set Caesar straight. At only twenty-three years old, he was already beginning to intimidate those in power.
“I will go,” said Pompey, rising, his voice calm.
Everyone agreed. With Metellus gone from Rome, Pompey was beginning to emerge as their leader in the city.
Julia family domus
Caesar turned to his uncle. “I appreciate your advice, because I know that you give it as a concerned uncle. So I will follow it; I will leave Rome.”
Gaius Julius Caesar, accompanied by Cornelia, crossed the threshold of the Julia family domus. The Roman people welcomed him warmly, shouting his name. The young man had dared to stand up to the greedy senators who hoarded the wealth and power for themselves, leaving the people they governed exhausted, submissive, stripped of all resources. He was so young, so inexperienced, so alone. But he was also something else: he was Marius’s nephew.
“Caesar! Caesar! Caesar!”
Julius Caesar paused for an instant and turned to his uncle Cotta and his mother.
“You were right, Mother.”
“Right about what?” she asked.
“I’m not strong enough to take on the senators,” he said. “But I will get stronger, Mother. I will get stronger.”
Cotta sighed.
Aurelia looked at her son, her eyes brimming. She was afraid for him, but she was filled with pride. Her son’s unflagging bravery helped assuage her fears.
The cheers continued all around.
“Caesar! Caesar! Caesar!”
“Come, Cornelia, come with me. And you, Labienus, are you coming too?”
Cornelia and Labienus both stepped forward. Julius Caesar, flanked by his wife and his best friend, walked out to greet the people of Rome.
Epilogus
Streets of the Suburra
77 B.C.
Pompey was escorted by two hundred veterans loyal to the optimates as well as another hundred daggermen and retired gladiators on the Senate’s payroll. He knew that the streets would be chaotic and that the Suburra was a dangerous place for senators. But, as he had hoped, the more prudent Romans took to the safety of their homes as soon as they saw Gnaeus Pompey appear between the insulae with his display of military might.
Julia family domus
“You know the senators are going to kill him eventually, don’t you?” Cotta said to his sister.
“It’s possible,” Aurelia admitted. “But maybe, by the time they manage it, he’ll have changed everything. This is just the beginning. My boy is going to make his mark on the world. And neither you nor the senators will be able to stop him. My son descends directly from Julus, son of Aeneas. The blood of Venus and Mars runs through his veins. And I pray to Venus and Mars that they might protect him and guide him in peace, and in war. Because there will be wars, this I know. It is his destiny.”
Outside, the cheering continued: “Caesar! Caesar! Caesar!”
Streets of the Suburra, Rome
Caesar, accompanied by Cornelia and Labienus, greeted the cheering crowd with a wide smile. Suddenly, from the southern end of the street, the cheers began to die down as the people were pushed aside to make way for the sturdy, corpulent figure of Gnaeus Pompey, escorted by dozens and dozens of armed men.
“Are they coming to arrest you?” Cornelia asked, gripping her husband’s arm.
“I don’t think so,” Caesar answered quietly. “Not here, not now, before all of Rome. That would only make me legendary in the people’s eyes.”
“Are they coming to kill you, then?” she asked, even more terrified.
Caesar looked around. He saw that many of the people who had been recently cheering for him had not fled but had instead picked up stones or were flashing knives, their sharp blades gleaming in the light of the torches they carried.
“The senators only kill when it’s easy for them,” Caesar said. “They’re here for another reason.”
Pompey stopped a few steps from Caesar. He had also noticed the stones and knives held by the mob gathered there in the street. He knew that if he tried to arrest Caesar or attack him, rioting would break out across the city. And with the bulk of the Roman legions off in Hispania fighting Sertorius’s rebellion, it was no time to incite a popular uprising in Rome. Pompey chose to be firm but cautious.
“I’ve come to give you some advice,” he said.
“What is your advice?” Caesar asked, standing tall.
Cornelia was pressed against him, looking at the ground, trembling, but trusting in her husband’s boldness and bravery. Labienus stood on the other side of him, as defiant as Caesar himself, ready to charge into combat for his friend and fight to the death if necessary.
“My advice is that you leave Rome,” Pompey said.
A few beats of silence followed as Caesar and Pompey locked eyes in an intense, powerful stare. It was a clash of two emerging titans, a foreshadowing of what would become a confrontation of dimensions as yet unfathomable to those gathered on the streets of the Suburra in the center of Rome. It had started with the trial of a corrupt senator, but, thanks to Caesar, it had become something much larger. It could so easily lead to total chaos…
Caesar knew it was not the time or the place for violence. He’d learned that from Marius: fight only in the right place, at the right time.
“Very well,” Caesar responded. “I’ll leave Rome.”
Pompey gave an almost imperceptible sigh of relief.
The soldiers and daggermen seemed to relax as well, and the citizens crowding the streets lowered their stones and knives. They were disappointed. Yet another leader abandoning them.
“I will leave,” Caesar said again, “but I will return.”
And as soon as he had uttered those words, he turned around, accompanied by Cornelia and Labienus, and began walking back to his house.
But I will return! the Roman people had heard him say.
The cheers resumed, with even more enthusiasm than before: “Caesar! Caesar! Caesar!”
Pompey, sure that he and Caesar would encounter each other again, turned on his heels. His men opened a path for him through the crowd of people cheering incessantly for the loser of the trial against Dolabella.
“Caesar! Caesar! Caesar!”
Victory or defeat, sometimes, is a matter of perspective.
A ship on the open ocean, Mare Internum
Two days after the battle at the port of Rome
Perdiccas’s arms were bandaged, but his wounds were not deep. Aeropus, Myrtale’s father, had perished in the conflict with Dolabella’s men. Archelaus was weak, but resting in the ship’s hold, recovering. Old Orestes hadn’t had the strength for another journey and so had remained in Rome.
Myrtale embraced Perdiccas from behind.
“What do you think will become of that noble old man?” she asked.
They had been talking about Orestes as they climbed up to the deck.
“The Roman lawyer said he’d look after him,” Perdiccas responded.
“Julius Caesar?”
“Yes.”
“Do you think he will keep his promise?”
“He’s never gone back on his word. His justice failed us, but it failed him as well. He fulfilled his commitment, and he helped us board this ship to flee Rome. He’ll look after old Orestes. I’m sure of it.”
They were standing on the ship’s bow.
Myrtale hugged Perdiccas tightly.
“As soon as we arrive in Thessaloniki we shall marry,” he announced. “And put all of this behind us.”
