Rome For Sale, page 23
“I demand a full explanation and satisfaction!” shouted his father.
Sempronia looked at him coolly. “Very well,” she said, and started to strip. The old man watched her, disconcerted at last. She stood in the middle of the floor above her discarded clothes. “Go out, Aulus dear,” she went on, “and bring along the most respectable-looking passers, so that I can show them the kind of company this father of yours persists in frequenting.”
Defeated, the old man pushed his son savagely in the back. “Come on out of this at once.”
“Do stay, Aulus dear,” said Sempronia in her sweetest voice.
Fulvius lost his head. He threw himself on the floor. “I won’t go,” he sobbed. “Tell him you love me, Sempronia. I did it all for love.”
His father kicked him hard in the ribs. “Get up!” he shouted, and called to the two slaves who were standing in the porch. “Carry him out.” They grasped Fulvius, carried him out, and, at their master’s orders, threw him down in the mud of the roadway. Fulvius, dazed, rose up, staggering. “Come along,” said his father, beating at him with the end of the staff held short. “We’ll make an example of you. You must have thought that I was near death when you tried such tricks. I’ll outlive you, you whoremonger, you.”
11
Sempronia, left alone, felt too indolent to dress. She stepped out of the clothes and wandered, with her hands clasped behind her, out of the house by a side-passage into the small garden-courtyard. There she threw herself down on a plot of grass hardly bigger than a couch and looked up at the summer-sky of blue mealy with white-gold. No one lived but herself; no sound of the city penetrated; the house was silent. How quickly one could throw off the sophisticated life with the clothes that represented it. She felt perfectly innocent, a newborn babe of quietude in a world of blue and gold and green. She would go away to some mountain-nook all on her own, live on milk and honey, and ask for no companions. One had not been alone till one had been naked and alone, with nothing visible but a branch against the sky. There was strength in being alone, and innocence returned. Who would have thought it?
She sat up. The quiet was a trap. The blue and gold and green were closing in to crush her out of existence, barbaric trappings on the chariot of silence. Toppling hooves of light would beat her out of existence. She saw the stucco of the house-wall with relief. The sky was too far away.
“Hey, someone,” she called in a voice that sounded small, coming from such a distance. A boy appeared. “Bring me my clothes.” She would have a party to-night; she would ask everyone she knew; and she would wear as many clothes as she could wear without melting away from heat. She would wear all her jewels, even if she looked vulgar and her hard-up friends stole half of them as soon as they saw her getting drunk. Anything was better than being alone.
12
July came on, and the date of the elections was nearing. It was clear however that the frightened Senate was loath to have the day appointed. July was a month of harvest, and some old rites dealing with this lingered on, such as the Romping of the Girls, their fighting one another in two parties, their sacrificing under a wild fig tree in the Field of Mars. But these rites were overshadowed by the great Games of Apollo that took up the second quarter of the month. Whatever politics were being mooted, the games must be staged. Apollo, the bright invader from Greece who had been invoked less than 150 years before as a protector against plague, was now an important god of the Roman populace, among whom were so many Greek slaves or freemen.
There were plays to be viewed, and on the last day Games in the Circus, charioteers, foot-races, wrestling, boxing, and a hunting-display. The plays were the chief items; and to make the Tragedies of interest to a crowd that considered them old-fashioned and rather stupid, the producers racked their brains for stupendous effects that held up the action indefinitely but amused the audience. If Menelaus arrived, his retinue marched on, followed by several hundred asses with rich baggage; if Agamemnon set out for a war, his army marched and manoeuvred across the specially huge wooden stage; if Helen appeared, it was in the most gorgeous of costumes accompanied by a bevy of beauties almost equally striking in their show of the latest fashions; if Pentheus was to suffer for blasphemy, the stage revealed a prolonged Bacchic Festival. The only use of the Trojan War was to provide an occasion for building the great Wooden Horse. But even so, the spectators stamped and hissed sometimes, bored, and keen to hear the famous singers in favourite arias.
On the second day during the production of Hecuba, Curio, an expert on the stage, held forth in his corner on the theory of the drama; and instead of booing, the audience roundabouts turned to listen to his words, ignoring the parade of Trojan warriors in the full kit of Roman legionaries.
“The day of the legitimate drama’s over,” announced Curio, standing up and addressing Marcus Antonius, who paid no heed but continued winking at a pretty girl further along. “By overdoing realism it’s disrupted itself. Consequently we see it dividing into its component parts. Drama and song and character. The mime is taking over the character-definition. There’s no heroes or heroines left in the world; there’s only pathetic or ludicrous people stuck in a social quagmire. I prophesy that the coming art-form is the ballet with musical or vocal accompaniment. And probably the voice-part will branch off and become a separate type of art. Already Tragedy is nothing but a string of airs punctuated by processions and gesticulations.”
The people could not hear all he said, but they gathered that he considered the singers of more value than the play.
“Take off the army,” they bawled. “Pay the army’s wages. Take them away and send on Hypsipyle to sing.”
“I’ll give them a song,” said Antonius, and threw out his chest, taking a deep breath. “Something with a tune in it.”
Curio thumped him in the ribs. “You inartistic lump of swine-flesh! If you dare sing, there’ll be a riot.”
“I’m going to sing,” insisted Antonius, and opening his mouth he emitted the first stentorian note of a drinking song. At that moment some seats at the other end, where the poorest spectators were closely packed together, gave way. There were screams and bellows, the crash and rattle of breaking wood, the thud of falling bodies.
Antonius looked pleased in the direction of the noise. “Well, I don’t need to worry now. That’s livened things up a bit. Let’s go and have a drink.”
“No,” said Curio. “Here comes Hecuba’s Lament.”
“Edepol,” groaned Antonius, “she hasn’t even got a pretty face. She looks as if she’s swallowed a baby-elephant and got it stuck in the wrong places.”
Hypsipyle, the famous soprano with the over-developed chest to which Antonius objected, stood bowing as much as her corsage permitted in the middle of the stage, dressed in a saffron-coloured gown broidered with gold.
“Come on outside,” said Antonius. “Let’s see if someone with a thirst has got ahead of us and dried up all the taverns. I thought there was going to be a tune on the Babylonian bagpipes.”
VI - THE ELECTIONS
I
The price of money continued to soar and many of the financiers began foreclosing, fearing that in a few months the chance would be taken from them. Distress grew. It seemed that the bankers were playing into Catalina’s hands, cramming into a handful of weeks the baleful effects of their whole policy; but the conservative spokesmen were doing their best to calm the middle-class by claiming that the distress was temporary, caused merely by the threat of revolution, and that confidence in the government was alone necessary to put a stop to it. That confidence could only be expressed be rejecting Catalina. Therefore, reject Catalina: money would become cheap again and industry flourish.
The radicals replied that events had started on their final spin and that whatever happened a crash was inevitable; the voters had merely to choose whether they wished to watch the crash impotently or to place in power a man who could apply remedies. Interest must be abolished, and as a first step all debts cancelled. Then some method of state-control and aid would be devised.
Whenever there was an assembly, there was a riot. In the poorer quarters the houses of tradesmen, especially of bakers, were being broken into. Some moneylenders, including a few Jews, had been murdered; and it was said that the Jews were sacrificing young gentile children to their god, who was circumcised yet had no body—the kind of superstition that such villains would hold. A Jewess had fainted after being forced by a crowd to eat some pig’s trotters—a sure sign of a guilty conscience. But on the whole, though tending to violence, the mob was good-natured. It preferred to chase moneylenders and pelt them with mud and rotten vegetables; the murders were mostly accidental, the result of someone being trodden on by a great number of excited people.
Police-methods were still primitive in this city of over a million inhabitants; for the ædiles who supervised the order of Rome were more concerned in winning popularity and providing magnificent shows than in cleaning up the streets. They were in office only for a year. What was the use of undertaking reforms that your successor would let lapse? The enormous debts into which they ran for the shows necessitated that all their efforts should be put into forging ahead for the provincial appointment that alone could recoup them.
Catalina and the other candidates had donned the chalk-whited gown and walked about the streets accompanied by their retinues and nomenclators, slaves trained to memorise names and prompt their masters; for nothing flattered the citizens more than to be hailed by name, even though they knew it was the slave’s memory and not the master’s that had functioned. It was usual for every kind of bribery to be used: small gifts, subscriptions, special tickets for shows, free dinners and drinks, and lump sums to the district-associations. At this work Murena, come enriched from Asia, was far ahead of his rivals; for Silanus relied on transparent nobility, Catalina on his revolutionary programme, and Sulpicius flatly refused to bribe at all. But it was necessary for each man to be endlessly smiling, to lend a ready ear to any chatterer and complainant, to keep the doors of his house open twenty-four hours daily.
All elections were noisily enjoyed by the populace; for besides what bribery-money circulated, these were the days on which they tasted the fare of their betters. The taste for fine foods had been started among all classes, and the plebs remembered throughout the year the pheasants, pigeons, and even peacocks that came their way at election-banquets. For a few weeks they drank good wines and forgot the stuff that rasped their tongues and teeth on other days. But this year the excitement and merry-making was intensified by the feeling that it was merely the first round of an unceasing good time. Oppression and starvation would be no more. Mankind, or at least the Romans, would live in an eternal succession of delectable dinners, stirring shows, and flattering speeches.
Catalina caught this part of the people’s reaction, and it disquieted him. What would happen when the disillusionment came? The solution of things could not be found by an act of repudiation. He knew that as well as his critics; and it seemed to him at moments that he was leading the people on a delusive quest at the end of which they could only turn on him and murder him. There would have to be harder work and much self-sacrifice before liberty could be made real, and then it wouldn’t be quite this kind of liberty; that at least was clear. Yet he sympathised with the rowdy simplicity of the popular wish. Why shouldn’t the people enjoy themselves and disregard work? It was the privilege for which their betters fought.
Perhaps this ingenuous confidence of the people would turn to madness when it found itself foiled. At these moments he hoped that he would fail of election so that he could escape the dreadful responsibility of facing the angered mob and telling them that they must still suffer and toil, though in a new cause. Would they think him only a fraud? Would they tear him limb from limb? So be it.
He became more fanatically roused. He had little sleep, for men were continually bursting in to talk to him; and he found that he could not sleep even when Orestilla demanded a respite for him. He did not want or need to sleep. He ate little, and yet his energy grew. His course was set. He would tear everything down. If he was a fraud, the people would tear him to pieces afterwards. That was justice. He was seeking nothing for himself, he would evade no risk. Almost he longed for the day when he would stand before the crowd, when they would pelt him and curse him, and when he would be trampled under. He was doing his work. That was why he had such energy. It was easy going when the whole tide of life went with you.
2
More and more, Cæsar anxiously felt the purpose of Catalina enveloping him; these years of intrigue between Pompeius, Crassus, the radicals and the liberals seemed pointless and shameful; he had been no better than the feeble doctrinaires or blinkered careerists that he had affected to despise. In Catalina he sensed something as deep as the sensation that he had of Rome. As a young man in the presence of Sulla he had felt something as unconquerable; perhaps that was the real reason why he had defied the injunction to divorce Cornelia. That defiance had been a blind effort to assert himself in the face of a power greater than his own, a power that was not external show but a deeply-rooted emanation, a dark glow of will.
But he was no longer an unreasoning boy who kicked against what he could not understand. Catalina lacked that steely straightness of Sulla; but he had something subtler and it abashed Cæsar. He felt that he must fathom it or stand aside from the course of events, a beaten man; but he would not stand aside.
He wanted to test the grip that Catalina had on him, and decided to visit Atticus and Crassus, the two men with the coolest minds that he knew. If contact with them could shake the grip, he would know it to be too irrationally removed from the social fact. If the grip remained, he would be content to subordinate himself to Catalina. As prætor he could be of the greatest use to Catalina as consul. Metellus Nepos would be tribune, able to dominate the corporation in the name of Pompeius. Bestia, a fiery radical orator, was also standing for tribune and would provide all the strength that Nepos, new to politics, might require. Catalina and Cæsar, with the backing of Nepos and Bestia, could create a dictatorship. Pompeius would be compromised in the person of his emissary and his hand forced. Then Catalina could lead where he pleased.
First, however, Cæsar must test himself.
3
Crassus lived on the Palatine in a large house before which stood two lotus-trees prized by gardening enthusiasts at a fantastic price. But he did not live with undue expense; he was a thorough family-man despite his ambitious twist and had no personal vices. It was the itch of envy in him that made him wish to cut an imposing figure and beat Pompeius, the man who had stolen unfairly from him the renown for crushing the revolt of the slaves under Spartacus. He was found ready to act as patron for almost any citizen who would cringe, but he could not win popularity. At a point he always became the financier and spoiled all his other efforts, yet he could not remain financier alone.
He welcomed Cæsar cordially, but with slight embarrassment. He knew that Cæsar was becoming more involved with the extremists than his usual eclectic policy allowed, and he wanted to keep out of things. He chatted lightly about the gossip of the Courts and the scandals of the Senate House.
Cæsar ended these non-committal remarks by asking him direct his opinion of the radical programme, and Crassus answered that general ruin could be the only result.
“Look at Italy,” said Crassus without animosity, “not at a mere mob of discontented proletarians in Rome. You’ve had some experience of business, but not perhaps so much as I have. You know something of the way that trade’s extended during the last century. I’ll give you one item. You hear about ruined farmers, but do you realise that for the first time there has actually been oil exported these last few years? Think what a change that means. I tell you that we’re on the edge of a great wave of prosperity, if only things can be managed rightly. People can’t see it because it’s something new. I have the best opportunities and I can see only a segment of it, but I can feel the life there.”
Behind the rotund but actively thewed figure of Crassus, pleasantly assured and hospitable, Cæsar saw the figures of thousands of other Italians, men who had toiled to bring into existence this new world of which Crassus spoke. They were building a network of communication and distribution, and raising factories whereby the greatest luxuries of the past would become common property in the future. There was greatness in that; but entangled with it all was this rapacity of competition, the greed that turned a decent family-man into little better than a beast.
He felt that Crassus was frightened of him. In Crassus was the same short-sighted greed that made these men resist all efforts of reform for fear that they would lose that for which they had fought. Crassus could hide the fear more urbanely, with greater culture; that was all. Then, suddenly, he saw behind the mask of affability and greed into the man’s farthest recess, his real energy. Crassus was a great organiser; in that he found his happiness and yet could not recognise it. His greed spoiled it for him; his greed and fear were the same thing.
“Perhaps you’re right,” said Cæsar. “But it has just struck me that your household holds the genuine clue to the solution of the world’s troubles.”
Crassus betrayed his uneasiness for the first time; he looked around him and then stared at Cæsar. “I wish that what you say was true …”
The two men sat looking at one another, feeling that the conversation had been peculiarly inconclusive.
Crassus had built up his vast estate-business by grabbing land from Sulla and buying cheap properties, which he patched up with his mason-corps. He worked through a myriad small contractors. Also, since fires were common in the narrow crushed streets of Rome, he had organised agents to report on outbreaks. Then his brigade turned up, the agent bought the blazing property and those adjacent for next to nothing, and the firemen thereon set to work. That gave the man away. He would see Rome burn if he had a chance to buy it cheap. He organised blindly as the bees built their hives, but without the communal purpose of the bees. There was no virtue in him, decent family-man as he was. The fire-brand Catalina was the man. If he burned Rome, it would be that a new Rome might arise from the ashes, the Rome of Justice. Better the first few shepherd-huts than a metropolis where the markets existed to cheapen every human worth.
