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A Friend of Caesar by William Stearns Davis

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"I never admired you more, Imperator."

"Thank you. And will you go aside a little, please? I will need a few
moments for meditation."

Drusus hesitated. His eyes wandered off to the river. In one spot it
was quite deep.

"_Phui!_" said the proconsul, carelessly, "I am too brave for such a
venture now. Leave me on my embankment, like Diogenes and his tub."

Drusus clambered part way up the slope, and seated himself under a
stunted oak tree. The light was growing stronger. The east was
overshot with ripples of crimson and orange, here blending into lines
each more gorgeous than a moment before. The wind was chasing in from
the bosom of Adria, and driving the fleeting mists up the little
valley. The hills were springing out of the gloom, the thrushes were
swinging in the boughs overhead, and pouring out their morning song.
Out from the camp the bugles were calling the soldiers for the march;
the baggage trains were rumbling over the bridge. But still below on
the marge lingered the solitary figure; now walking, now motionless,
now silent, now speaking in indistinct monologue. Drusus overheard
only an occasional word, "Pompeius, poor tool of knaves! I pity him! I
must show mercy to Cato if I can! Sulla is not to be imitated! The
Republic is fallen; what I put in its place must not fall." Then,
after a long pause, "So this was to be my end in life--to destroy the
Commonwealth; what is destined, is destined!" And a moment later
Drusus saw the general coming up the embankment.

"We shall find horses, I think, a little way over the bridge," said
Caesar; "the sun is nearly risen. It is nine miles to Ariminum; there
we can find refreshment."

The Imperator's brow was clear, his step elastic, the fatigues of the
night seemed to have only added to his vigorous good humour. Antiochus
met them. The good man evidently was relieved of a load of anxiety.
The three approached the bridge; as they did so, a little knot of
officers of the rear cohort, Asinius Pollio and others, rode up and
saluted. The golden rim of the sun was just glittering above the
eastern lowlands. Caesar put foot upon the bridge. Drusus saw the blood
recede from his face, his muscles contract, his frame quiver. The
general turned to his officers.

"Gentlemen," he said quietly, "we may still retreat; but if we once
pass this little bridge, nothing is left for us but to fight it out in
arms."

The group was silent, each waiting for the other to speak. At this
instant a mountebank piper sitting by the roadway struck up his ditty,
and a few idle soldiers and wayfaring shepherds ran up to him to catch
the music. The man flung down his pipe, snatched a trumpet from a
bugler, and, springing up, blew a shrill blast. It was the "advance."
Caesar turned again to his officers.

"Gentlemen," he said, "let us go where the omens of the gods and the
iniquity of our enemies call us! _The die is now cast!"_

And he strode over the bridge, looking neither to the right hand nor
to the left. As his feet touched the dust of the road beyond, the full
sun touched the horizon, the landscape was bathed with living,
quivering gold, and the brightness shed itself over the steadfast
countenance, not of Caesar the Proconsul, but of Caesar the Insurgent.

The Rubicon was crossed!




Chapter XVII

The Profitable Career of Gabinius


Very wretched had been the remnants of Dumnorix's band of gladiators,
when nightfall had covered them from pursuit by the enraged
Praenestians. And for some days the defeated assassins led a desperate
struggle for existence on the uplands above the Latin plain. Then,
when the hue and cry aroused by their mad exploit had died away,
Dumnorix was able to reorganize his men into a regular horde of
banditti. In the sheltered valleys of the upper Apennines they found
moderately safe and comfortable fastnesses, and soon around them
gathered a number of unattached highwaymen, who sought protection and
profit in allying themselves with the band led by the redoubtable
lanista. But if Dumnorix was the right arm of this noble company,
Publius Gabinius was its head. The Roman had sorely missed the loss of
the thousand and one luxuries that made his former life worth living.
But, as has been said, he had become sated with almost every current
amusement and vice; and when the freshness of the physical hardships
of his new career was over, he discovered that he had just begun to
taste joys of which he would not soon grow weary.

And so for a while the bandits ranged over the mountains, infested the
roads, stopped travellers to ease them of their purses, or even dashed
down on outlying country houses, which they plundered, and left
burning as beacons of their handiwork. Even this occupation after a
time, however, grew monotonous to Gabinius. To be sure, a goodly pile
of money was accumulating in the hut where he and Dumnorix, his
fellow-leader, made their headquarters; and the bandits carried away
with them to their stronghold a number of slave and peasant girls, who
aided to make the camp the scene of enough riot and orgy to satisfy
the most graceless; but Gabinius had higher ambitions than these. He
could not spend the gold on dinner parties, or bronze statuettes; and
the maidens picked up in the country made a poor contrast to his city
sweethearts. Gabinius was planning a great piece of _finesse_. He had
not forgotten Fabia; least of all had he forgotten how he had had her
as it were in his very arms, and let her vanish from him as though she
had been a "shade" of thin air. If he must be a bandit, he would be an
original one. A Vestal taken captive by robbers! A Vestal imprisoned
in the hold of banditti, forced to become the consort, lawful or
unlawful, of the brigands' chief! The very thought grew and grew in
Gabinius's imagination, until he could think of little else. Dumnorix
and his comrades trusted him almost implicitly; he had been successful
as their schemer and leader in several dark enterprises, that proved
his craft if not his valour. He would not fail in this.

An overmastering influence was drawing him to Rome. He took one or two
fellow-spirits in his company, and ventured over hill and valley to
the suburbs of the city on a reconnoissance, while by night he
ventured inside the walls.

The capital he found in the ferment that preceded the expulsion of the
tribunes, on the fateful seventh of January. Along with many another
evil-doer, he and his followers filched more than one wallet during
the commotions and tumults. He dared not show himself very openly. His
crime had been too notorious to be passed over, even if committed
against a doomed Caesarian like Drusus; besides, he was utterly without
any political influence that would stand him in good stead. But around
the Atrium Vestae he lurked in the dark, spying out the land and
waiting for a glimpse of Fabia. Once only his eye caught a white-robed
stately figure appearing in the doorway toward evening, a figure which
instinct told him was the object of his passion. He had to restrain
himself, or he would have thrown off all concealment then and there,
and snatched her away in his arms. He saved himself that folly, but
his quest seemed hopeless. However weak the patrol in other parts of
the city, there was always an ample watch around the Atrium Vestae.

Gabinius saw that his stay around Rome was only likely to bring him
into the clutches of the law, and reluctantly he started back, by a
night journey in a stolen wagon, for the safer hill country beyond the
Anio. But he was not utterly cast down. He had overheard the street
talk of two equites, whom in more happy days he had known as rising
politicians.

"I hope the consuls are right," the first had said, "that Caesar's army
will desert him."

"_Perpol_," responded the other, "your wish is mine! If the proconsul
really _does_ advance, nothing will stand between him and the city!"

Gabinius kept his own counsel. "In times of war and confusion, the
extremity of the many is the opportunity of the few," was the maxim he
repeated to himself.

When he was well out of the city and moving up the Via Salaria, the
trot and rattle of an approaching carriage drifted up upon him.

"Shall we stop and strip them?" asked Dromo, one of the accompanying
brigands, in a matter-of-fact tone.

"Ay," responded Gabinius, reining in his own plodding draught-horse,
and pulling out a short sword. "Let us take what the Fates send!"

A moment later and Servius Flaccus was being tumbled out of his
comfortable travelling carriage, while one brigand stood guard over
him with drawn sabre, a second held at bay his trembling driver and
whimpering valet, and a third rifled his own person and his
conveyance. There was a bright moon, and the luckless traveller's gaze
fastened itself on the third bandit.

"By all the gods, Gabinius!" cried Servius, forgetting to lisp his
Greekisms, "don't you know me? Let me go, for old friendship's sake!"

Gabinius turned from his task, and held to his nose a glass
scent-bottle he had found in the vehicle.

"Ah! amice," he responded deliberately, "I really did not anticipate
the pleasure of meeting you thus! You are returning very late to Rome
from your Fidenae villa. But this is very excellent oil of rose!"

"Enough of this, man!" expostulated the other. "The jest has gone
quite far enough. Make this horrible fellow lower that sword."

"Not until I have finished making up my package of little articles,"
replied Gabinius, "and," suiting the action to the word, "relieved
your fingers of the weight of those very heavy rings."

"Gabinius," roared Servius, in impotent fury, "what are you doing? Are
you a common bandit?"

"A bandit, my excellent friend," was his answer, "but not a common
one; no ordinary footpad could strip the noble Servius Flaccus without
a harder struggle."

Servius burst into lamentations.

"My box of unguents! My precious rings! My money-bag! You are not
leaving me one valuable! Have you sunk as low as this?"

"Really," returned the robber, "I have no time to convince you that
the brigand's life is the only one worth living. You do not care to
join our illustrious brotherhood? No? Well, I must put these trinkets
and fat little wallet in my own wagon. I leave you your cloak out of
old friendship's sake. Really you must not blame me. Remember
Euripides's line:--

"'Money can warp the judgment of a God.'

Thus I err in good company. And with this, _vale!_"

Flaccus was left with his menials to clamber back into his plundered
carriage. Gabinius drove his horse at topmost speed, and before
morning was saluted by the remainder of the banditti, near their
mountain stronghold. Dumnorix met him with news.

"It is rumoured in the country towns that Caesar is driving all before
him in the north, and will be down on Rome in less days than I have
fingers."

Gabinius clapped his hands.

"And we will be down on Rome, and away from it, before a legionary
shows himself at the gates!"




Chapter XVIII

How Pompeius Stamped with His Feet


I

A messenger to the consuls! He had ridden fast and furious, his horse
was flecked with foam and straining on his last burst of speed. On
over the Mulvian Bridge he thundered; on across the Campus Martius; on
to the Porta Ratumena--with all the hucksters and street rabble
howling and chasing at his heels.

"News! News for the consuls!"

"What news?" howled old Laeca, who was never backward in a street
press.

"Terrible!" shouted the messenger, drawing rein, "Caesar is sweeping
all before him! All Thermus's troops have deserted him at Iguvium.
Attius Varus has evacuated Auximum, and his troops too have dispersed,
or joined Caesar. All the towns are declaring for the enemy. _Vah!_ He
will be here in a few days at most! I am the last of the relay with
the news. I have hardly breathed from Eretum!"

And the courier plunged the spur into his hard-driven mount, and
forced his way into the city, through the mob. "Caesar advancing on
Rome!" The Jewish pedlers took up the tale, and carried it to the
remotest tenement houses of Janiculum. The lazy street-idlers shouted
it shrilly. Laeca, catching sight of Lucius Ahenobarbus, just back from
Baiae, and a little knot of kindred spirits about him, was in an
instant pouring it all in their ears. The news spread, flew, grew. The
bankers on the Via Sacra closed their credit books, raised their
shutters, and sent trusted clerks off to suburban villas, with due
orders how to bury and hide weighty money-bags. The news came to that
very noble lady Claudia, sister-in-law of the consul, just at the
moment when she was discussing the latest style of hairdressing with
the most excellent Herennia; and the cheeks of those patrician ladies
grew pale, and they forgot whether or not it was proper to wear ivory
pins or a jewel-set head-band, at the dinner-party of Lucius Piso that
evening. The news came to Lentulus Crus while he was wrangling with
Domitius as to who should be Caesar's successor as Pontifex
Maximus--and those distinguished statesmen found other things to think
of.

The news flew and grew. The noble senators overheard their slaves
whispering,--how it was rumoured on the street or in the Forum that
Caesar was in full advance on the city, that his cavalry were close to
the gates. Caesar at the gates! Why had they not remembered how rapidly
he could advance? Why had they trusted the assurance of the traitor
Labienus that the legions would desert their Imperator? Resist? By
what means? The walls were walls only in name; the city had long
outgrown them, spreading through a thousand breaches. There was not a
trained soldier this side of Capua, whither Pompeius had departed only
the day before to take command of the Apulian legions. Caesar was
coming! Caesar--whose tribunes the oligarchs had chased from the
Senate! Caesar--whom they had proclaimed a rebel and public enemy! He
was coming like a second Marius, who thirty-eight years before had
swept down on Rome, and taken a terrible vengeance on enemies less
bitter to him than they to the great Julian. "_Moriendum est_,"[157]
had been the only reply to every plea for mercy. And would Caesar now
be more lenient to those who had aimed to blast his honour and shed
his blood?

[157] He has got to die.

Evening drew on, but the calamity was only delayed. There was not a
soldier to confront the invader. Few men that night could sleep. Rich
and poor alike, all trembled. To their imaginations their foe was an
ogre, implacable, unsparing. "Remember how it was in Sulla's day,"
croaked Laeca to Ahenobarbus. "Remember how he proscribed forty
senators and sixteen hundred equites with one stroke. A fine example
for Caesar! And Drusus, who is with the rebels, is little likely to say
a good word in your behalf, eh?"

"The gods blast your tongue!" cried the young man, wringing his hands
in terror; for that Drusus would ruin him, if he gained the chance,
Lucius had not the least doubt in the world.

So passed the night, in fear and panic. When morning came everything
save flight seemed suicide. There was a great government treasure in
the Temple of Saturn. The Senate had voted that the money be delivered
to Pompeius. But the consuls were too demoralized to take away a
denarius. They left the great hoard under mere lock and key--a present
to their bitterest enemy. Then began the great exodus. Hardly a man
had done more than gather a few valuables together: property,
children, wives--all these were left to the avenger. Down the Via
Appia, toward Campania, where was their only safety, poured the
panic-stricken company. Every carriage, every horse, was in service.
The hard-driven chariots of the consuls were the tokens merely of the
swiftest flight. Lentulus Crus fled; Caius Marcellus, his colleague,
was close behind; Domitius fled, with his sons; Cato fled, ironically
exclaiming that they would have to leave everything to Pompeius now,
"for those who can raise up great evils can best allay them." Favonius
fled, whose first words, when he met the Magnus, were to command him
to "stamp on the ground for the legions so sorely needed." Piso,
Scipio, and many another fled--their guilty hearts adding wings to
their goings. Cicero fled--gazing in cynical disgust at the panic and
incompetence, yet with a sword of Damocles, as he believed, hanging
over his head also. "I fear that Caesar will be a very Phalaris, and
that we may expect the very worst," he wrote to his intimate friend
Atticus, who, safe from harm and turmoil, was dwelling under the calm
Athenian sky. A great fraction of the Senate departed; only those
stayed who felt that their loyalty to the advancing Imperator was
beyond dispute, or who deemed themselves too insignificant to fall
beneath his displeasure. In the hour of crisis the old ties of
religion and superstition reasserted themselves. Senators and
magistrates, who had deemed it a polite avocation to mock at the gods
and deny the existence of any absolute ethical standards, now, before
they climbed into their carriages for flight, went, with due ritual,
into the temples of the gods of their fathers, and swore hecatombs of
milk-white Umbrian steers to Capitoline Jove, if the awful deity would
restore them to the native land they then were quitting. And as they
went down from the temples and hastened toward the gates, friends and
clients who could not join their flight crowded after them, sighing,
lamenting, and moaning. Out over the Campagna they streamed, this
company of senators, praetors, consuls--men who had voted thrones to
kings, and decreed the deposition of monarchs; whose personal wealth
was princely, whose lineage the noblest in the world, whose ancestors
had beaten down Etruscan, Gaul, Samnite, and Carthaginian, that their
posterity might enjoy the glory of unequalled empire. And these
descendants fled, fled not before any foe, but before their own guilty
consciences; abandoning the city of their fathers when not a sword had
flashed against her gates! The war had been of their making; to send
Caesar into outlawry the aristocracy had laboured ten long years. And
now the noble lords were exiles, wanderers among the nations. To Capua
they went, to find small comfort there, and thence to join Pompeius in
further flight beyond the seas to Greece. But we anticipate. Enough
that neither Lentulus Crus, nor Domitius, nor Cato, nor the great
Magnus himself, ever saw Rome again.


II

Agias stood in a shop by the Sacred Way watching the stream of
fugitives pouring down toward the Porta Capena. At his side was a
person whom a glance proclaimed to be a fellow-Greek. The stranger was
perhaps fifty, his frame presented a faultless picture of symmetry and
manly vigour, great of stature, the limbs large but not ungainly. His
features were regular, but possessed just enough prominence to make
them free from the least tinge of weakness. The Greek's long, thick,
dark but grey-streaked beard streamed down upon his breast; his hair,
of similar hue, was long, and tossed back over his shoulders in loose
curls. His dress was rich, yet rude, his chiton and cloak short, but
of choice Milesian wool and dyed scarlet and purple; around his neck
dangled a very heavy gold chain set with conspicuously blazing jewels.
The ankles, however, were bare, and the sandals of the slightest and
meanest description. The stranger must once have been of a light, not
to say fair, complexion; but cheeks, throat, arms, and feet were all
deeply bronzed, evidently by prolonged exposure to wind and weather.
Agias and his companion watched the throng of panic-struck exiles. The
younger Greek was pointing out, with the complacency of familiar
knowledge, the names and dignities of the illustrious fugitives.

"Yonder goes Cato," he was saying; "mark his bitter scowl! There goes
Marcus Marcellus, the consular. There drives the chariot of Lucius
Domitius, Caesar's great enemy." And Agias stopped, for his friend had
seized his arm with a sudden grasp, crushing as iron. "Why, by all
the gods, Demetrius, why are you staring at him that way?"

"By Zeus!" muttered the other, "if I had only my sword! It would be
easy to stab him, and then escape in this crowd!"

"Stab him!" cried Agias. "Demetrius, good cousin, control yourself.
You are not on the deck of your trireme, with all your men about you.
Why should you be thus sanguinary, when you see Lucius Domitius? Why
hate him more than any other Roman?"

The consular, unaware of the threat against him, but with a compelling
fear of Caesar's Gallic cavalry lending strength to the arm with which
he plied the whip--for the law against driving inside the city no man
respected that day--whirled out of sight.

Demetrius still strained at his cousin's arm.

"Listen, Agias," he said, still hoarsely. "Only yesterday I ran upon
you by chance in the crowd. We have many things to tell one another,
chiefly I to tell you. Why do I hate Lucius Domitius? Why should you
hate him? Who made you a slave and me an outlaw? Your father died
bankrupt; you know it was said that Philias, his partner, ruined him.
That was truth, but not the whole truth. Philias was under deep
obligations to a certain Roman then in the East, who knew of several
crimes Philias had committed, crimes that would bring him to the cross
if discovered. Do you understand?"

"Hardly," said Agias, still bewildered. "I was very young then."

"I will go on. It was shortly before Pompeius returned to Rome from
the East. Your father had charge of the banking firm in Alexandria,
Philias of the branch at Antioch. I was a clerk in the Antioch
banking-house. I knew that Philias was misusing his partner's name and
credit. The Roman whom I have mentioned knew it too, and had a supple
Greek confidant who shared his spoils and gave the touches to his
schemes. He had good cause to know: he was levying blackmail on
Philias. At last a crisis came; the defalcation could be concealed no
longer. Philias was duly punished; he was less guilty than he seemed.
But the Roman--who had forced from him the money--he was high on the
staff of the proconsul--let his confederate and tool suffer for his
own fault. He kept his peace. I would not have kept mine; I would not
have let the real ruiner of my uncle escape. But the Roman had me
seized, with the aid of his Greek ally; he charged me with treasonable
correspondence with the Parthians. He, through his influence with the
proconsul, had me bound to the oar as a galley slave for life. I would
have been executed but for another Roman, of the governor's suite, who
was my friend. He pleaded for my life; he believed me innocent. He
saved my life--on what terms! But that is not all he did. He bribed my
guards; I escaped and turned outlaw. I joined the last remnants of the
Cilician pirates, the few free mariners who have survived Pompeius's
raid. And here I am in Rome with one of my ships, disguised as a
trader, riding at the river wharf."

"And the name of the Roman who ruined you and my father?" said Agias.

"Was Lucius Domitius. The friend who saved me was Sextus Drusus, son
of Marcus Drusus, the reformer. And if I do not recompense them both
as they deserve, I am not Demetrius the pirate, captain of seven
ships!"

"You will never recompense Sextus Drusus," remarked Agias, quietly.
"He has been dead, slain in Gaul, these five years."

"Such is the will of the gods," said Demetrius, looking down.

"But he has left a son."

"Ah! What sort of a man?"

"The noblest of all noble Romans. He is the Quintus Drusus who saved
my life, as last night I told you."

"Mithras be praised! The name is so common among these Latins that I
did not imagine any connection when you mentioned it. What can I do to
serve him?"

"Immediately, nothing. He is with Caesar, and, as you see, the enemies
of the Imperator are not likely, at present, to work his friends much
mischief. Yet it is singular that his chief enemy and yours are so
near akin. Lucius Ahenobarbus, son of Domitius, is thirsting for
Drusus's blood."

"If I had my sword!" muttered Demetrius, clapping his hand to his
thigh. "It is not too late to run after the fugitives!"

"Come, come," remonstrated Agias, feeling that his newly found cousin
was indeed a fearful and wonderful man after twelve years of lawless
and godless freebooter's life. "At my lodgings we will talk it all
over; and there will be time enough to scheme the undoing of Domitius
and all his family."

And with these words he led the sanguinary sea-king away.

* * * * *

Agias indeed found in Demetrius a perfect mine of bloody romance and
adventure. It had been the banking clerk's misfortune, not his fault,
that every man's hand had been against him and his against every man.
Demetrius had been declared an outlaw to Roman authority; and Roman
authority at that time stretched over very nearly every quarter of the
civilized world. Demetrius had been to India, to intercept the Red Sea
traders. He had been beyond the Pillars of Hercules and set foot on
those then half-mythical islands of the Canaries. He had plundered a
hundred merchantmen; he had fought a score of Roman government
galleys; he had been principal or accessory to the taking of ten
thousand lives. All this had been forced upon him, because there was
no tolerable spot on the planet where he might settle down and be free
from the grasp of punishment for a crime he had never committed.

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