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A Friend of Caesar by William Stearns Davis

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A Friend of Caesar

A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic

Time, 50-47 B.C.

By William Stearns Davis





"Others better may mould the life-breathing brass of the image,
And living features, I ween, draw from the marble, and better
Argue their cause in the court; may mete out the span of the heavens,
Mark out the bounds of the poles, and name all the stars in their turnings.
_Thine_ 'tis the peoples to rule with dominion--this, Roman, remember!--
These for thee are the arts, to hand down the laws of the treaty,
The weak in mercy to spare, to fling from their high seats the haughty."

--VERGIL, _AEn._ vi. 847-858.


New York
Grosset & Dunlap Publishers
1900




To My Father

William Vail Wilson Davis

Who Has Taught Me More
Than All My Books




Preface


If this book serves to show that Classical Life presented many phases
akin to our own, it will not have been written in vain.

After the book was planned and in part written, it was discovered that
Archdeacon Farrar had in his story of "Darkness and Dawn" a scene,
"Onesimus and the Vestal," which corresponds very closely to the scene,
"Agias and the Vestal," in this book; but the latter incident was too
characteristically Roman not to risk repetition. If it is asked why such
a book as this is desirable after those noble fictions, "Darkness and
Dawn" and "Quo Vadis," the reply must be that these books necessarily
take and interpret the Christian point of view. And they do well; but
the Pagan point of view still needs its interpretation, at least as a
help to an easy apprehension of the life and literature of the great age
of the Fall of the Roman Republic. This is the aim of "A Friend of
Caesar." The Age of Caesar prepared the way for the Age of Nero, when
Christianity could find a world in a state of such culture, unity, and
social stability that it could win an adequate and abiding triumph.

Great care has been taken to keep to strict historical probability; but
in one scene, the "Expulsion of the Tribunes," there is such a confusion
of accounts in the authorities themselves that I have taken some slight
liberties.

W. S. D.

Harvard University,
January 16,1900.




Contents


Chapter Page

I. Praeneste 1

II. The Upper Walks of Society 21

III. The Privilege of a Vestal 37

IV. Lucius Ahenobarbus Airs His Grievance 50

V. A Very Old Problem 73

VI. Pompeius Magnus 102

VII. Agias's Adventure 117

VIII. "When Greek Meets Greek" 146

IX. How Gabinius Met with a Rebuff 159

X. Mamercus Guards the Door 172

XI. The Great Proconsul 198

XII. Pratinas Meets Ill-Fortune 217

XIII. What Befell at Baiae 241

XIV. The New Consuls 262

XV. The Seventh of January 277

XVI. The Rubicon 302

XVII. The Profitable Career of Gabinius 329

XVIII. How Pompeius Stamped with His Feet 334

XIX. The Hospitality of Demetrius 364

XX. Cleopatra 387

XXI. How Ulamhala's Words Came True 409

XXII. The End of the Magnus 433

XXIII. Bitterness and Joy 448

XXIV. Battling for Life 464

XXV. Calm after Storm 496




Chapter I

Praeneste


I

It was the Roman month of September, seven hundred and four years after
Romulus--so tradition ran--founded the little village by the Tiber which
was to become "Mother of Nations," "Centre of the World," "Imperial
Rome." To state the time according to modern standards it was July,
fifty years before the beginning of the Christian Era. The fierce
Italian sun was pouring down over the tilled fields and stretches of
woodland and grazing country that made up the landscape, and the
atmosphere was almost aglow with the heat. The dust lay thick on the
pavement of the highway, and rose in dense, stifling clouds, as a mule,
laden with farm produce and driven by a burly countryman, trudged
reluctantly along.

Yet, though the scene suggested the heat of midsummer, it was far from
being unrefreshing, especially to the eyes of one newly come. For this
spot was near "cool Praeneste," one of the favourite resorts of Latium to
the wealthy, invalid, or indolent of Rome, who shunned the excessive
heat of the capital. And they were wise in their choice; for Praeneste,
with its citadel, which rose twelve hundred feet over the adjoining
country, commanded in its ample sweep both the views and the breezes of
the whole wide-spreading Campagna. Here, clustering round the hill on
which stood the far-famed "Temple of Fortune," lay the old Latin town of
the Praenestians; a little farther westward was the settlement founded
some thirty odd years before by Sulla as a colony. Farther out, and
stretching off into the open country, lay the farmhouses and villas,
gardens and orchards, where splendid nuts and roses, and also wine, grew
in abundant measure.

A little stream ran close to the highway, and here an irrigating
machine[1] was raising water for the fields. Two men stood on the
treadmill beside the large-bucketed wheel, and as they continued their
endless walk the water dashed up into the trough and went splashing down
the ditches into the thirsty gardens. The workers were tall,
bronze-skinned Libyans, who were stripped to the waist, showing their
splendid chests and rippling muscles. Beside the trough had just come
two women, by their coarse and unpretentious dress evidently slaves,
bearing large earthen water-pots which they were about to fill. One of
the women was old, and bore on her face all the marks which a life of
hard manual toil usually leaves behind it; the other young, with a
clear, smooth complexion and a rather delicate Greek profile. The
Libyans stopped their monotonous trudge, evidently glad to have some
excuse for a respite from their exertions.

[1] Water columbarium.

"Ah, ha! Chloe," cried one of them, "how would you like it, with your
pretty little feet, to be plodding at this mill all the day? Thank the
Gods, the sun will set before a great while. The day has been hot as
the lap of an image of Moloch!"[2]

[2] The Phoenician god, also worshipped in North Africa, in whose idol
was built a fire to consume human sacrifices.

"Well, Hasdrubal," said Chloe, the younger woman, with a pert toss of
her head, "if my feet were as large as yours, and my skin as black and
thick, I should not care to complain if I had to work a little now and
then."

"Oh! of course," retorted Hasdrubal, a little nettled. "Your ladyship
is too refined, too handsome, to reflect that people with black skins
as well as white may get heated and weary. Wait five and twenty years,
till your cheeks are a bit withered, and see if Master Drusus doesn't
give you enough to make you tired from morning till night."

"You rude fellow," cried Chloe, pouting with vexation, "I will not
speak to you again. If Master Drusus were here, I would complain of
you to him. I have heard that he is not the kind of a master to let a
poor maid of his be insulted."

"Oh, be still, you hussy!" said the elder woman, who felt that a life
of labour had spoiled what might have been quite the equal of Chloe's
good looks. "What do you know of Master Drusus? He has been in Athens
ever since you were bought. I'll make Mamercus, the steward, believe
you ought to be whipped."

What tart answer Chloe might have had on the end of her tongue will
never be known; for at this moment Mago, the other Libyan, glanced up
the road, and cried:--

"Well, mistress, perhaps you will see our master very soon. He was due
this afternoon or next day from Puteoli, and what is that great cloud
of dust I see off there in the distance? Can't you make out carriages
and horsemen in the midst of it, Hasdrubal?"

Certainly there was a little cavalcade coming up the highway. Now it
was a mere blotch moving in the sun and dust; then clearer; and then
out of the cloud of light, flying sand came the clatter of hoofs on
the pavement, the whir of wheels, and ahead of the rest of the party
two dark Numidian outriders in bright red mantles appeared, pricking
along their white African steeds. Chloe clapped her little hands,
steadied her water-pot, and sprang up on the staging of the treadmill
beside Mago.

"It is he!" she cried. "It must be Master Drusus coming back from
Athens!" She was a bit excited, for an event like the arrival of a new
master was a great occurrence in the monotonous life of a country
slave.

The cortege was still a good way off.

"What is Master Drusus like?" asked Chloe "Will he be kind, or will he
be always whipping like Mamercus?"

"He was not in charge of the estate," replied Lais, the older woman,
"when he went away to study at Athens[3] a few years ago. But he was
always kind as a lad. Cappadox, his old body-servant, worshipped him.
I hope he will take the charge of the farm out of the steward's hands."

[3] A few years at the philosophy schools of that famous city were
almost as common to Roman students and men of culture as "studying
in Germany" to their American successors.

"Here he comes!" cried Hasdrubal. "I can see him in the nearest
carriage." And then all four broke out with their salutation, "_Salve!
Salve, Domine!_"[4] "Good health to your lordship!"

[4] Master, "Lord" of slaves and freedmen.

A little way behind the outriders rolled a comfortable, four-wheeled,
covered carriage,[5] ornamented with handsome embossed plate-work of
bronze. Two sleek, jet-black steeds were whirling it swiftly onward.
Behind, a couple of equally speedy grey mules were drawing an open
wagon loaded with baggage, and containing two smart-looking
slave-boys. But all four persons at the treadmill had fixed their eyes
on the other conveyance. Besides a sturdy driver, whose ponderous
hands seemed too powerful to handle the fine leather reins, there were
sitting within an elderly, decently dressed man, and at his side
another much younger. The former personage was Pausanias, the freedman
and travelling companion[6] of his friend and patron, Quintus Livius
Drusus, the "Master Drusus" of whom the slaves had been speaking.
Chloe's sharp eyes scanned her strange owner very keenly, and the
impression he created was not in the least unfavourable. Drusus was
apparently of about two and twenty. As he was sitting, he appeared a
trifle short in stature, with a thick frame, solid shoulders, long
arms, and large hands. His face was distinctively Roman. The features
were a little irregular, though not to an unpleasant extent. The
profile was aquiline. His eyes were brown and piercing, turning
perpetually this way and that, to grasp every detail of the scene
around. His dark, reddish hair was clipped close, and his chin was
smooth shaven and decidedly firm--stern, even, the face might have
been called, except for the relief afforded by a delicately curved
mouth--not weak, but affable and ingenuous. Drusus wore a dark
travelling cloak,[7] and from underneath it peeped his tunic, with its
stripe of narrow purple--the badge of the Roman equestrian order.[8]
On his finger was another emblem of nobility--a large, plain, gold
ring, conspicuous among several other rings with costly settings.

[5] _Rheda_.

[6] Most wealthy Romans had such a _major domo_, whose position was
often one of honour and trust.

[7] _Paenula_.

[8] The second order of the Roman nobility.

"_Salve! Salve, Domine!_" cried the slaves a second time, as the
carriage drew near. The young master pushed back the blue woollen
curtains in order to gain a better view, then motioned to the driver
to stop.

"Are you slaves of mine?" was his question. The tone was interested
and kindly, and Mago saluted profoundly, and replied:--

"We are the slaves of the most noble Quintus Livius Drusus, who owns
this estate."

"I am he," replied the young man, smiling. "The day is hot. It grows
late. You have toiled enough. Go you all and rest. Here, Pausanias,
give them each a philippus,[9] with which to remember my home-coming!"

[9] A Greek gold piece worth about $3.60 at the time of the story.
At this time Rome coined little gold.

"_Eu! Eu! Io!_[10] _Domine!_" cried the slaves, giving vent to their
delight. And Chloe whispered to Lais: "You were right. The new master
will be kind. There will not be so many whippings."

[10] Good! Good! Hurrah!

But while Pausanias was fumbling in the money-bags, a new instance of
the generosity of Drusus was presented. Down a by-path in the field
filed a sorrowful company; a long row of slaves in fetters, bound
together by a band and chain round the waist of each. They were a
disreputable enough gang of unkempt, unshaven, half-clothed wretches:
Gauls and Germans with fair hair and giant physiques; dark-haired
Syrians; black-skinned Africans,--all panting and groaning, clanking
their chains, and cursing softly at the two sullen overseers, who,
with heavy-loaded whips, were literally driving them down into the
road.

Again Drusus spoke.

"Whose slaves are these? Mine?"

"They are your lordship's," said the foremost overseer, who had just
recognized his newly come employer.

"Why are they in chains?" asked Drusus.

"Mamercus found them refractory," replied the guard, "and ordered them
to be kept in the underground prison,[11] and to work in the chain
gang."

[11] _Ergastulum_.

The young man made a motion of disgust.

"Bah!" he remarked, "the whole _familia_[12] will be in fetters if
Mamercus has his way much longer. Knock off those chains. Tell the
wretches they are to remain unshackled only so long as they behave.
Give them three skins to-night from which to drink their master's
health. Drive on, Cappadox!"

[12] Slave household.

And before the fettered slaves could comprehend their release from
confinement, and break out into a chorus of barbarous and uncouth
thanksgivings and blessings, the carriage had vanished from sight down
the turn of the road.


II

Who was Quintus Livius Drusus? Doubtless he would have felt highly
insulted if his family history had not been fairly well known to every
respectable person around Praeneste and to a very large and select
circle at Rome. When a man could take Livius[13] for his gentile name,
and Drusus for his cognomen, he had a right to hold his head high, and
regard himself as one of the noblest and best of the imperial city.
But of course the Drusian house had a number of branches, and the
history of Quintus's direct family was this. He was the grandson of
that Marcus Livius Drusus[14] who, though an aristocrat of the
aristocrats, had dared to believe that the oligarchs were too strong,
the Roman Commons without character, and that the Italian freemen were
suffering from wrongs inflicted by both of the parties at the capital.
For his efforts to right the abuses, he had met with a reward very
common to statesmen of his day, a dagger-thrust from the hand of an
undiscovered assassin. He had left a son, Sextus, a man of culture and
talent, who remembered his father's fate, and walked for a time warily
in politics. Sextus had married twice. Once to a very noble lady of
the Fabian gens, the mother of his son Quintus. Then some years after
her death he took in marriage a reigning beauty, a certain Valeria,
who soon developed such extravagance and frivolity, that, soon after
she bore him a daughter, he was forced "to send her a messenger"; in
other words, to divorce her. The daughter had been put under the
guardianship of Sextus's sister-in-law Fabia, one of the Vestal
virgins at Rome. Sextus himself had accepted an appointment to a
tribuneship in a legion of Caesar in Gaul. When he departed for the
wars he took with him as fellow officer a life-long friend, Caius
Cornelius Lentulus; and ere leaving for the campaign the two had
formed a compact quite in keeping with the stern Roman spirit that
made the child the slave of the father: Young Quintus Drusus should
marry Cornelia, Lentulus's only child, as soon as the two came to a
proper age. And so the friends went away to win glory in Gaul; to
perish side by side, when Sabinus's ill-fated legion was cut off by
the Eburones.[15]

[13] Every Roman had a _praenomen_, or "Christian name"; also a gentile
name of the gens or clan to which he belonged; and commonly in addition
a cognomen, usually an epithet descriptive of some personal peculiarity
of an ancestor, which had fastened itself upon the immediate descendants
of that ancestor. The _Livii Drusi_ were among the noblest of the Roman
houses.

[14] Died in 91 B.C.

[15] In 54 B.C.

The son and the daughter remained. Quintus Drusus had had kindly
guardians; he had been sent for four years to the "University" at
Athens; had studied rhetoric and philosophy; and now he was back with
his career before him,--master of himself, of a goodly fortune, of a
noble inheritance of high-born ancestry. And he was to marry Cornelia.
No thought of thwarting his father's mandate crossed his mind; he was
bound by the decree of the dead. He had not seen his betrothed for
four years. He remembered her as a bright-eyed, merry little girl, who
had an arch way of making all to mind her. But he remembered too, that
her mother was a vapid lady of fashion, that her uncle and guardian
was Lucius Cornelius Lentulus Crus, Consul-elect,[16] a man of little
refinement or character. And four years were long enough to mar a
young girl's life. What would she be like? What had time made of her?
The curiosity--we will not call it passion--was overpowering. Pure
"love" was seldom recognized as such by the age. When the carriage
reached a spot where two roads forked, leading to adjacent estates,
Drusus alighted.

[16] The two Roman consuls were magistrates of the highest rank, and
were chosen each year by the people.

"Is her ladyship Cornelia at the villa of the Lentuli?" was his demand
of a gardener who was trimming a hedge along the way.

"Ah! Master Drusus," cried the fellow, dropping his sickle in delight.
"Joy to see you! Yes, she is in the grove by the villa; by the great
cypress you know so well. But how you have changed, sir--"

But Drusus was off. The path was familiar. Through the trees he caught
glimpses of the stately mazes of colonnades of the Lentulan villa,
surrounded by its artificially arranged gardens, and its wide
stretches of lawn and orchard. The grove had been his playground. Here
was the oak under which Cornelia and he had gathered acorns. The
remnants of the little brush house they had built still survived. His
step quickened. He heard the rush of the little stream that wound
through the grove. Then he saw ahead of him a fern thicket, and the
brook flashing its water beyond. In his recollection a bridge had here
crossed the streamlet. It had been removed. Just across, swayed the
huge cypress. Drusus stepped forward. At last! He pushed carefully
through the thicket, making only a little noise, and glanced across
the brook.

There were ferns all around the cypress. Ivies twined about its trunk.
On the bank the green turf looked dry, but cool. Just under the tree
the brook broke into a miniature cascade, and went rippling down in a
score of pygmy, sparkling waterfalls. On a tiny promontory a marble
nymph, a fine bit of Greek sculpture, was pouring, without respite,
from a water-urn into the gurgling flood. But Drusus did not gaze at
the nymph. Close beside the image, half lying, half sitting, in an
abandon only to be produced by a belief that she was quite alone,
rested a young woman. It was Cornelia.

Drusus had made no disturbance, and the object on which he fastened
his eyes had not been in the least stirred out of a rather deep
reverie. He stood for a while half bashful, half contemplative.
Cornelia had taken off her shoes and let her little white feet trail
down into the water. She wore only her white tunic, and had pushed it
back so that her arms were almost bare. At the moment she was resting
lazily on one elbow, and gazing abstractedly up at the moving ocean of
green overhead. She was only sixteen; but in the warm Italian clime
that age had brought her to maturity. No one would have said that she
was beautiful, from the point of view of mere softly sensuous Greek
beauty. Rather, she was handsome, as became the daughter of Cornelii
and Claudii. She was tall; her hair, which was bound in a plain knot
on the back of her head, was dark--almost black; her eyes were large,
grey, lustrous, and on occasion could be proud and angry. Yet with it
all she was pretty--pretty, said Drusus to himself, as any girl he had
seen in Athens. For there were coy dimples in her delicate little
chin, her finely chiselled features were not angular, while her cheeks
were aglow with a healthy colour that needed no rouge to heighten. In
short, Cornelia, like Drusus, was a Roman; and Drusus saw that she was
a Roman, and was glad.

Presently something broke the reverie. Cornelia's eyes dropped from
the treetops, and lighted up with attention. One glance across the
brook into the fern thicket; then one irrepressible feminine scream;
and then:--

"Cornelia!" "Quintus!"

Drusus sprang forward, but almost fell into the brooklet. The bridge
was gone. Cornelia had started up, and tried to cover her arms and
shake her tunic over her feet. Her cheeks were all smiles and blushes.
But Drusus's situation was both pathetic and ludicrous. He had his
fiancee almost in his arms, and yet the stream stopped him. Instantly
Cornelia was in laughter.

"Oh! My second Leander," she cried, "will you be brave, and swim again
from Abydos to Sestos to meet your Hero?"

"Better!" replied Drusus, now nettled; "see!" And though the leap was
a long one he cleared it, and landed close by the marble nymph.

Drusus had not exactly mapped out for himself the method of
approaching the young woman who had been his child playmate. Cornelia,
however, solved all his perplexity. Changing suddenly from laughter
into what were almost tears, she flung her arms around his neck, and
kissed him again and again.

"Oh, Quintus! Quintus!" she cried, nearly sobbing, "_I am_ so glad you
have come!"

"And I am glad," said the young man, perhaps with a tremor in his
voice.

"I never knew how I wanted you, until you are here," she continued; "I
didn't look for you to-day. I supposed you would come from Puteoli
to-morrow. Oh! Quintus, you must be very kind to me. Perhaps I am very
stupid. But I am tired, tired."

Drusus looked at her in a bit of astonishment.

"Tired! I can't see that you look fatigued."

"Not in body," went on Cornelia, still holding on to him. "But here,
sit down on the grass. Let me hold your hands. You do not mind. I want
to talk with you. No, don't interrupt. I must tell you. I have been
here in Praeneste only a week. I wanted to get away from Baiae.[17] I
was afraid to stay there with my mother."

[17] The famous watering-place on the Bay of Naples.

"Afraid to stay at that lovely seashore house with your mother!"
exclaimed Drusus, by no means unwilling to sit as entreated, but
rather bewildered in mind.

"I was afraid of Lucius Ahenobarbus, the consular[18] Domitius's
second son. _I don't like him! there!_" and Cornelia's grey eyes lit
up with menacing fire.

[18] An ex-consul was known by this title.

"Afraid of Lucius Ahenobarbus!" laughed Drusus. "Well, I don't think I
call him a very dear friend. But why should he trouble you?"

"It was ever since last spring, when I was in the new theatre[19]
seeing the play, that he came around, thrust himself upon me, and
tried to pay attentions. Then he has kept them up ever since; he
followed us to Baiae; and the worst of it is, my mother and uncle
rather favour him. So I had Stephanus, my friend the physician, say
that sea air was not good for me, and I was sent here. My mother and
uncle will come in a few days, but not that fellow Lucius, I hope. I
was so tired trying to keep him off."

[19] Built by Pompeius the Great, in 55-54 B.C.

"I will take care of the knave," said Drusus, smiling. "So this is the
trouble? I wonder that your mother should have anything to do with
such a fellow. I hear in letters that he goes with a disreputable
gang. He is a boon companion with Marcus Laeca, the old Catilinian,[20]
who is a smooth-headed villain, and to use a phrase of my father's
good friend Cicero--'has his head and eyebrows always shaved, that he
may not be said to have one hair of an honest man about him.' But he
will have to reckon with me now. Now it is my turn to talk. Your long
story has been very short. Nor is mine long. My old uncle Publius
Vibulanus is dead. I never knew him well enough to be able to mourn
him bitterly. Enough, he died at ninety; and just as I arrive at
Puteoli comes a message that I am his sole heir. His freedmen knew I
was coming, embalmed the body, and wait for me to go to Rome to-morrow
to give the funeral oration and light the pyre. He has left a fortune
fit to compare with that of Crassus[21]--real estate, investments, a
lovely villa at Tusculum. And now I--no, _we_--are wealthy beyond
avarice. Shall we not thank the Gods?"

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We do not know the women's names, but their voices are quite distinct. All are pregnant. But while the first woman awaits the birth of her baby with a moon-like serenity, the other two are not so lucky. One, whose previous pregnancies have failed to go to term, is experiencing a heartbreaking late miscarriage; the other is a young student whose accidental pregnancy will end in her child being put up for adoption.

Sylvia Plath's only play was never intended for the stage, being broadcast instead on BBC radio in August 1962. Less than six months later, Plath killed herself, but not before the burst of astonishing creative energy that produced her extraordinary, terrifying Ariel poems.

Anyone who knows Plath's poetry will see the connection between Three Women and Plath's subsequent poems, particularly in the way she talks about the agony of childbirth, the rush of love for this tiny alien being, and both the wonder and wounded rawness of motherhood. It is a beautiful piece, full of startling imagery that draws you in through the sheer intensity of its femaleness, and because it so precisely articulates the emotions that are often thought but seldom voiced by women - certainly not in the early 1960s - about men, motherhood and our relationship to our bodies.

It's been 20 years since there has been an attempt at a professional stage version and - in a theatre world that happily accepts the poetic offerings of Sarah Kane and Debbie Tucker Green, or the staged possibilities of The Waves, one of Plath's own inspirations for the piece, I see no reason why it shouldn't be brought to life. Sadly, it doesn't breathe here, in a production by Robert Shaw that is clearly a labour of love, but which never finds a way to give the internal a physical reality. Plath's poetry, like most babies, is more robust than it appears - and won't break if treated with a little less reverence and considerably more grit.

Instead, what we are offered is tinkling piano music, mournful mood lighting, an innocuous pale setting, as well as three perfectly good but indisputably ladylike performances that capture none of the wounded redness of Plath's poetry, and do her the disservice of making her sound bleached and somewhat prissy. It's a pity. What might have been a wonder ends up a mere curiosity.

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