“A strange wedding night,” she said when she couldn’t fit in another morsel. “Do you intend to bed me, Caesar?”
He looked horrified. “No, of course not! I can’t think of anything more repellent, for me as well as for you. There’s time enough, little one. Years and years. First you must have Nero’s child, and recover from that. How old are you? How old were you when you married Nero?”
“I am twenty-one, Caesar. I married Nero when I was fifteen.”
“That’s disgusting! No girl should be married at fifteen—it isn’t Roman. Eighteen is the proper age. No wonder you were so unhappy. I swear that you won’t be unhappy with me. You’ll have leisure and love.”
Her face changed, became frustrated. “I have had too much leisure, Caesar, that has been my greatest trouble. Reading and writing letters, spinning, weaving—nothing that mattered! I want a job of some kind, proper work! Nero kept few women servants, but the Atrium Vestae swarmed with women carpenters, plasterers, tilers, bricklayers, physicians, dentists—there was even a veterinarian who came to minister to Appuleia’s lapdog. I envied them!”
“I hope the lapdog was a bitch,” he said, smiling.
“Definitely. Lady cats and lady dogs. Theirs is a lovely life in the Atrium Vestae, I think. Peaceful. But the Vestals have work to do, and from what the housekeeper said, it obsesses them. Everyone of value must have work, and because I have none, I have no value. I love you, Caesar, but what am I to do when you aren’t here?”
“You won’t be idle, so much I promise you. Why do you think I married you, of all women? Because I looked into your eyes and saw the spirit of a true workmate there. I need a true helper by my side, someone I can trust literally with my life. There are so many things I don’t have time for, things better suited to a woman, and when we are lying together in our bed, I am going to ask for counsel from a woman—you. Women see things differently, and that is important. You are educated and highly intelligent, Livia Drusilla. Take my word for it, I intend to work you.”
Now it was her turn to smile. “How do you know I have all those qualities? One look into my eyes hints at baseless assumptions.”
“I was busy with your spirit.”
“Yes, I understand that.”
Octavian got up hastily, then sat down again. “I was going to lead you to lie on that couch—you must be exhausted,” he said. “But it wouldn’t rest your bones, it would punish them. So that’s your first job, Livia Drusilla. Furnish this basilica of a place as befits the First Man in Rome.”
“But it isn’t women’s work to buy furniture! That is the man’s privilege.”
“I don’t care whose privilege it is, I don’t have the time.”
Visions of color schemes and styles were crowding into her head; she beamed. “How much money may I spend?”
“As much as it needs. Rome is poor and I’ve spent much of my inheritance alleviating her woes, but I’m not a pauper yet. Citrus wood, chryselephantine, ebony, enamels, Carrara marble—whatever you like.” Suddenly he seemed to remember something, and did get to his feet. “I’ll be back in a moment,” he said.
When he returned he was carrying something wrapped in a red cloth, put it on the table. “Open it, my beloved wife. It’s your wedding gift.”
A necklace and earrings lay within the cloth, of pearls the color of moonlight, seven strings connected to a pair of gold plates that rested on the back of the neck and hooked together. The earrings each had seven pearl tassels linked to a gold plate that rested on the earlobe, a hook welded to its back.
“Oh, Caesar!” she breathed, entranced. “They’re beautiful!”
He grinned, delighted at her delight. “As I’m rather noted for my parsimony, I won’t tell you how much they cost, but I was lucky. Faberius Margarita had just gotten them in. The pearls are so perfectly matched that he thinks it was made for a queen—Egypt or Nabataea, probably, since they bring the pearls from Taprobane. But this never adorned a royal neck or royal ears, because it was stolen. Probably quite a long time ago. Faberius found it in Cyprus and bought it for—well, not quite as much as I paid for it, but not cheaply, at any rate. I give it to you because old Faberius and I both believe no one has ever worn it, or prized it. Therefore it is yours to wear as its first owner, meum mel.”
She let him link the pearls around her neck, slip the hooks through the holes in her ears, then stood and let him admire her, so filled with joy that she couldn’t speak. Servilia’s strawberry pearl paled into insignificance when compared to this—seven whole strands! Old Clodia had a necklace with two strands, but not even Sempronia Atratina could boast more than three.
“Bedtime,” he said then, briskly, and took her elbow. “You have your own suite of rooms, but if you prefer a different one—I don’t know what kind of view you like—just tell Burgundinus, our steward. Do you like Sophonisba? Will she do?”
“I’m straying in the Elysian Fields,” she said, allowing him to guide her. “So much trouble and expense on my behalf! Caesar, I looked at you and loved you, but now I know that every day that I am with you will see me love you more.”
VICTORIES AND DEFEATS
39 B.C. to 37 B.C.
11
Publius Ventidius was a Picentine from Asculum Picentum, a big walled city on the Via Salaria, the old salt road that connected Firmum Picenum with Rome. Six hundred years ago the peoples of the Latin plain had learned to mine salt from the flats of Ostia; salt was a scarce and highly marketable commodity. Very soon the trade passed into the hands of merchants living in Rome, a tiny city on the Tiber River fifteen miles upstream from Ostia. Historians like Fabius Pictor stated categorically that it was salt made Rome the biggest city in Italia, and its people the most powerful.
Be that as it may, when Ventidius was born into a wealthy and aristocratic Asculan family the year before Marcus Livius Drusus was assassinated, Asculum Picentum had become the hub of southern Picenum. Set in a valley between the foothills and the high peaks of the Apennines, well protected by its towering walls from raids by the Marrucini and the Paeligni, the neighboring Italian tribes, Asculum was the center of a prosperous area of apple, pear, and almond orchards, which meant it also sold excellent honey, as well as jam made from what fruit was not suitable to be sent fresh to the Forum Holitorium in Rome. Its women ran a cottage industry of fine fabrics in a particularly fetching shade of blue obtained from a flower peculiar to the region.
But Asculum became notorious for quite a different reason: it was here that the first atrocity of the Italian War was committed when the inhabitants, fed up with being discriminated against by a small number of resident Roman citizens, slaughtered two hundred resident Romans and a visiting Roman praetor at a performance of a Plautus play. When two legions under Divus Julius’s uncle, Sextus Caesar, arrived to exact punishment, it shut its gates and underwent a two-year siege. Sextus Caesar died of a lung complaint during a very cold winter, and was succeeded by Gnaeus Pompeius Strabo Carnifex. This cross-eyed Picentine warlord was proud of the achievements that had earned him the nickname of the Butcher, but he was to be eclipsed by his son, Pompey the Great. Accompanied by his seventeen-year-old son and his son’s friend Marcus Tullius Cicero, Pompey Strabo proceeded to demonstrate that he utterly lacked mercy. He devised a way to divert the city’s water supply, which was obtained from an aquifer layer beneath the bed of the Truentius River. But submission wasn’t nearly enough for Pompey Strabo, bent on teaching the Asculans that they couldn’t murder a Roman praetor by tearing him into literal small pieces. He flogged and beheaded every male Asculan between the ages of fifteen and seventy, an exercise in logistics that was hard to solve for a man in a hurry. Having left five thousand headless bodies to rot in the marketplace, Pompey Strabo then drove thirteen thousand women, children, and old men out of the city and into the teeth of a bitter winter without food or warm clothing. It was after this orgy of butchery that Cicero, sickened beyond measure, transferred to the service of Sulla in the southern thea
ter of the war.
Little Ventidius was four years old, and was spared the fate of his mother, grandmother, aunts, and sisters, all of whom perished in the Apennine snows. For he was one of a number of very young boys whom Pompey Strabo saved to walk in his triumph—a triumph that scandalized men of decency in Rome. Triumphs were supposed to be held for victories over foreign foes, not Italians. Thin, hungry, covered in sores, little Ventidius was pushed and prodded along that two-mile march from the Campus Martius to the Forum Romanum, then expelled from Rome to fend for himself. He was now five years of age.
But the Italians, be they Picentines or Marsi, Marrucini or Frentani, Samnites or Lucani, were of the same race as the Romans, and just as hard to kill. Stealing food when he couldn’t beg it, Ventidius got as far as Reate, which was Sabine country. There a mule farmer named Considius gave him employment mucking out the stables of his brood mares. These sturdy horses of special bloodlines were mated with stud donkeys to produce superb mules that went for high prices to the Roman legions, which couldn’t exist without top-quality mules at the rate of six hundred to the legion. That Reate was the center of this industry lay in its situation on the Rosea Rura, a bowl of perfect grazing grass; be it actual fact or mere superstition, everyone believed that mules raised on the Rosea Rura were better than any others.
He was a good little boy, wiry and strong, and worked himself to a standstill. With his mop of fair curls and a pair of bright blue eyes, Ventidius soon discovered that if he looked at the women of the establishment with a mixture of longing and admiration, he would get extra rations and blankets to cover himself when he slept in a nest of aromatic straw.
At twenty he was a big young man, heavily muscled due to hard labor, and remarkably knowledgeable about breeding mules. Cursed with a ne’er-do-well son, Considius promoted Ventidius to manage his estate while the son went off to Rome, there to drink, dice, and whore himself to death. That left Considius with one child, a daughter, who had long fancied Publius Ventidius, and now was emboldened to ask her father if she could marry him. Considius said yes; when he died, he willed his five hundred iugera of the Rosea Rura to Ventidius.
Because Ventidius was as intelligent as he was hardworking, he made a greater success of his muleteering than some Sabines who had been engaged in the industry for centuries; he even managed to survive those ten hideous years when the lake that fed Rosea Rura grass was drained to provide an irrigation canal for the strawberry farmers of Amiternum. Luckily the Senate and People of Rome regarded mules as more important than strawberries, so the canal was filled in and the Rosea Rura regained its fertility.
But he didn’t really want to spend his life as a muleteer. When the Gadetanian banker Lucius Cornelius Balbus became Caesar’s praefectus fabrum, responsible for supplying his legions, Ventidius cultivated Balbus and secured an audience with Caesar. To whom he confided his secret ambition: Ventidius wanted to enter Roman politics, reach the praetorship, and general armies.
“I’ll be a mediocre politician,” he said to Caesar, “but I know I can general the legions.”
Caesar believed him. Leaving his mule ranch to the care of his eldest son and Considia, he became one of Caesar’s legates, and upon Caesar’s death transferred his allegiance to Mark Antony. Now here it was at last, the great command he had dreamed of.
“Pollio has gotten eleven legions together, and doesn’t need more than seven,” Antony said to him before he left Rome. “I can give you eleven, and Pollio will donate you four of his. Fifteen legions and whatever cavalry you can rake up in Galatia should see you able to hold your own against Labienus and Pacorus. Choose your own legates, Ventidius, and remember your limitations. You are to conduct a containing action against the Parthians until I can finally get into the field myself. Leave the beating to me.”
“Then, Antonius, with your permission I’ll take Quintus Poppaedius Silo with me as my chief legate.” Ventidius grinned, trying to conceal his elation. “He’s a good man, inherited his father’s military skill.”
“Splendid. Sail from Brundisium as soon as the equinoctial gales have blown themselves out—you can’t march the Via Egnatia, it’s too slow. Sail to Ephesus and start your campaign by driving Quintus Labienus out of Anatolia. If you get to Ephesus by May, you’ll have plenty of time.”
Brundisium had no objection to lowering its mighty harbor chain and allowing Ventidius and Silo to load their 66,000 men, 6,000 mules, 600 wagons, and 600 field pieces aboard 500 troop transports that had magically appeared at the harbor entrance from some undisclosed source. A part of Antony’s hoard, probably.
“The men will be crammed in like sardines in a jar, but they won’t have much opportunity to grumble about sailing all the way,” said Silo to Ventidius. “They can do the rowing. We should fit everything in, even the artillery.”
“Good. Once we round Cape Taenarum the worst will be over.”
Silo looked anxious. “What about Sextus Pompeius, who now owns the Peloponnese and Cape Taenarum?”
“Antonius assured me that he won’t attempt to stop us.”
“I hear he’s very busy in the Tuscan Sea again.”
“I don’t care what he does in the Tuscan Sea, as long as he leaves the Ionian Sea alone.”
“Where did Antonius get so many transports? There are more here than Pompeius Magnus or Caesar managed to gather.”
“He collected them after Philippi and hung on to them, hauled them out of the water along the Adriatic shore of Macedonia and Epirus. A good many of them were beached around the Bay of Ambracia, where he’s also got a hundred warships. In fact, Antonius has more warships than Sextus. Unfortunately, they’re coming to the end of their seagoing lives, ship sheds notwithstanding. He has a huge fleet at Thasos, and another in Athens. He pretends the Athenian one is the only one, but now you know that isn’t true. I’m trusting you, Silo. Don’t disappoint me.”
“My mouth is sewn shut, you have my oath on it. But why is Antonius hanging on to them, and why the secrecy?”
Ventidius looked surprised. “Against the day when he goes to war with Octavianus.”
“I pray that day never comes,” said Silo, shivering. “The secrecy means he has no intention of defeating Sextus.” He seemed puzzled, angry. “When my father led the Marsi and then all the Italian peoples against Rome, transports and war fleets belonged to the state, not to individual commanders. Now that Italia and Rome are on an equal footing as far as entitlements go, the state is sitting on the back benches while its commanders occupy the front benches. There’s something wrong when men like Antonius regard the property of the state as their private property. I’m loyal to Antonius and will remain loyal, but I cannot approve of the way things are.”
“Nor can I,” Ventidius said gruffly.
“It’s the innocents will suffer if it comes to civil war.”
Ventidius thought about his childhood and grimaced. “I suppose the gods are more prone to protect those rich enough to offer them the best sacrifices. What’s a dove or a chicken compared to a pure white bull? Besides, it’s better to be a genuine Roman, Silo, we both know that.”
A handsome man with his father’s unsettling yellow-green eyes, Silo nodded. “Well, with Marsi in your legions, Ventidius, we’ll win in the East. A holding action? Is that what you want?”
“No.” Ventidius looked scornful. “This is my best chance at a decent campaign, so I intend to go as far as I can as fast as I can. If Antonius wants the glory, he should be here in my place, not keeping one eye on Octavianus and the other on Sextus. Does he think all of us, from Pollio to me, don’t know?”
“Do you really think we can beat the Parthians?”
“We can have a good try, Silo. I’ve seen Antonius general, and he’s no better than I am, if as good. Certainly he’s no Caesar!” His ship slid over the submerged harbor chain and heeled into a northwest wind. “Ah, I like the sea! Good-bye, Brundisium, good-bye Italia!” cried Ventidius.
In Ephesus the fifteen legio
ns sat down in several immense camps around that port city, one of the most beautiful in the world. Its houses had marble façades, it boasted a huge theater, had dozens of magnificent temples, and the precinct, of Artemis in her guise as fertility goddess, for which reason her statues showed her girdled from shoulders to waist with bulls’ testicles.
While Silo went the rounds of the fifteen legions and kept a stern eye on training and drills, Ventidius found a rock with a natural seat in it and sat down to think in peace and quiet. He had noticed a detachment of five hundred slingers sent by Polemon, the son of Zeno, who was attempting to rule Pontus without official sanction from Antony.
After he paused to watch them practice, the slingers had fascinated Ventidius. Astonishing, how far a man with a very shallow leather pouch on a supple leather thong could throw a stone missile! More than that, the missile flew through the air at an amazing velocity. Hard enough to drive a Parthian horse archer from the battlefield? Now that was a question!
From the first day of planning this campaign, Ventidius had intended to be content with nothing less than a triumph. So he had fretted about the legendary Parthian horse archer, who pretended to flee the field and fired his arrows backward over his horse’s haunches. With perfect logic Ventidius had assumed that the bulk of the Parthian troops would be horse archers, who never ventured close enough to the infantry to be cut down. But perhaps these slingers…
No one had told him that Pacorus had pinned his success upon cataphracts, warriors in chain mail from head to foot mounted on big horses in chain mail from head to knees. Pacorus had no horse archers at all. The reason for this shocking lack of information about the Enemy was thanks to Mark Antony, who hadn’t asked for a report on the Parthian forces. Nor had any other Roman. Like Ventidius, everyone at Antony’s side had simply assumed that the Parthian army was more horse archer than cataphract. Such had a Parthian army always been: why should this one be different?