Antony and Cleopatra (26 page)

“I am aware of all this,” Octavian said tiredly; the asthma had sapped him. His fist came down on the map. “Useless, useless!”

“There is an alternative, Caesar. I have been thinking about it ever since I started visiting shipyards.” Agrippa’s big, well-shaped hand hovered over the map, its index finger on two little lakes near Puteoli. “Here is our answer, Caesar. The Lucrine lake and the Avernian lake. The first is very shallow and its water is warmed by the Fields of Fire. The second is bottomless, with water so cold it must lead straight to the Underworld.”

“Well, it’s very dark and gloomy, at any rate,” said Octavian, something of a religious skeptic. “No farmer will fell the forest around it for fear of angering the
lemures
.”

“The forest must go,” Agrippa said briskly. “I intend to join the Lucrine lake to the Avernian by digging several big canals. Then I’ll break down the dyke that keeps the sea from overflowing into the Lucrine lake, and flood it. The seawater will pass down the canals and gradually turn Lake Avernus salty.”

Octavian’s face was a study in awe and disbelief. “But—but the dyke was built atop the spit that separates Lake Lucrinus from the sea to make sure that the lake waters are exactly the right temperature and salinity to grow oysters,” he said, his mind fixed on the fiscus. “To let in the sea would utterly destroy the oyster beds—Agrippa, you’d have hundreds of oyster farmers howling for your citizenship, your blood, and your head!”

“They can have their oysters back after we beat Sextus once and for all,” said Agrippa curtly, not a scrap concerned about ruining an industry that had been in existence for generations. “What I pull down they can put up again later. If this is done as I envision it, Caesar, we’ll have a huge expanse of calm, sheltered water in which to anchor all our fleets. Not only that, we’ll be able to train their crews and marines in the art of sea battles without ever needing to worry about Sextus on a raid. The entry will be too narrow to get his ships in more than two at a time. And to make sure he can’t lurk offshore waiting for us to come out two at a time, I’m going to build two big tunnels between Avernus and the beach at Cumae. Our ships can row through those tunnels with impunity and emerge to take Sextus on the flank.”

The realization broke on Octavian with the shock of immersion in icy water. “You are Caesar’s equal,” he said slowly, so dazed that he forgot to call his adoptive father Divus Julius. “That is a Caesarean plan, a masterpiece of engineering.”

“I, Divus Julius’s equal?” Agrippa looked astonished. “No, Caesar, the idea is common sense and the execution a matter of hard work, not engineering genius. Going from one shipyard to the next, I’ve had a lot of time to think. And one thing I overlooked is the fact that ships can’t propel themselves. Certainly we’ll have some established, fully crewed fleets, but perhaps two-thirds will be new vessels without crews. Most of the galleys I’ve commissioned are fives, though I’ve taken threes from yards not equipped to build something close to two hundred feet long and twenty-five feet in the beam.”

“Quinqueremes are very clumsy,” Octavian said, revealing that he was not a complete ignoramus when it came to war galleys.

“Yes, but fives have a size advantage and can carry
two
nasty beaks of solid bronze. I’ve gone for the modified five—no more than two men to an oar in three banks—two, two, and one. Ample deck space for a hundred marines as well as catapults and ballistas. At an average of thirty banks to a side, that’s three hundred oarsmen per vessel. Plus thirty sailors.”

“I begin to see your problem. But of course you have solved it. Three hundred times three hundred oarsmen—a total of ninety thousand. Also forty-five thousand marines and twenty thousand sailors.” Octavian stretched like a contented cat. “I am no general of troops or admiral of fleets, but I am a master of the fine Roman science of logistics.”

“So you’d rather have a hundred and fifty marines per ship than a hundred?”

“Oh, I think so. Swarm over the enemy like ants.”

“Twenty thousand men will do me to start,” said Agrippa. “I mean to start by building the harbor, and for that, someone can press ex-slaves wandering around Italia in search of
latifundia
your land commissioners have not broken up for veterans. I’ll pay them out of my slave sale profits, feed and house them too. If they’re any good, they can train as oarsmen later on.”

“Incentive employment,” Octavian said with a smile. “That’s clever. The poor wretches haven’t the wherewithal to go home, so why not offer them shelter and full bellies? Sooner or later they drift to Lucania and become bandits. This way is better.” He clicked his tongue. “It’s going to be slow, much slower than I had hoped. How long, Agrippa?”

“Four years, Caesar, including the one coming but not the one just going.”

“Sextus will never adhere to the pact for a third of that.” The thick gold lashes fell, hiding the eyes. “Especially now I’ve divorced Scribonia.”

“
Cacat!
Why?”

“She’s such a shrew I can’t bear living with her. Whatever I want, she doesn’t. So she nags. Nag, nag, nag.”

Agrippa’s shrewd gaze never swerved from Octavian’s face. So the wind’s changed direction, has it? Blowing now from a quarter I can’t recognize. Caesar’s plotting, the signs are unmistakable. Only what’s he plotting that requires the divorce of Scribonia? Shrewish? A nagger? Not in a fit, Caesar. You can’t fool me.

“I’ll need several men to supervise work on the lakes,” he said. “Do you mind if I choose them? Probably army engineers from my own legions. But they’ll need protecting by someone with clout. A propraetor, if you have one spare.”

“No, I have a proconsul spare.”

“A proconsul? Not Calvinus, alas. A pity you sent him to Spain. He’d be ideal.”

“He’s needed in Spain. Mutinous troops.”

“I know. The trouble there started with Sertorius.”

“Sertorius was more than thirty years ago! How is he toblame?”

“He enlisted the local peoples and taught them to fight like Romans. So now the Spanish legions are mostly that—Spanish. A fierce lot, but they don’t drink in Roman discipline with their mother’s milk. One reason I’ll not try the same experiment in the Gauls, Caesar. But getting back to the subject, who?”

“Sabinus. Even if there was a province begging for a new governor—which there isn’t—Sabinus doesn’t want it. He wants to stay in Italia and participate in fleet maneuvers when they happen.” He grinned briefly. “It won’t be uplifting listening to him when he discovers that’s four years off. I wouldn’t trust him with legions, but I think he’ll make an excellent supervisor of engineers for Portus Julius.

That’s what we’ll call your harbor.”

Agrippa laughed. “Poor Sabinus! He’ll never live it down, that one bungled battle while Caesar was conquering Further Gaul.”

“He was self-important then, and he’s self-important now. I’ll send him to you for a thorough grounding in what has to be done. Will you be here in Narbo?”

“Not unless he’s quick, Caesar. I’m going to Germania.”

“Agrippa! Seriously?”

“Very. The Suebi are boiling and they’ve grown used to the sight of what’s left of Caesar’s bridge across the Rhenus. Not that I’m going to use it. I’m going to build my own bridge, and farther upstream. The Ubii are eating out of my hand, so I don’t want them or the Cherusci to take alarm. Therefore I’ll dive into pure Suebi country.”

“And into the forest?”

“No. I could, but the troops are afraid of the Bacenis—too dark and gloomy. They think there’s a German behind every tree, not to mention bears, wolves, and aurochs.”

“And is there? Are there?”

“Behind some, at any rate. Fear not, Caesar, I’ll be careful.”

Since it was politic that Caesar’s heir show himself to the Gallic legions, Octavian stayed long enough to visit every one of the six legions camped around Narbo, walking among the soldiers and giving them Caesar’s old smile; many of them were veterans of the Gallic wars, enlisted yet again from sheer boredom at civilian life.

That has to stop, Octavian thought as he made his rounds, his right hand feeling like pulp from so many hearty handshakes. Some of these men have become considerable landowners from a dozen enlistments; they are discharged, they collect their ten
iugera
each, and a year later they’re back for another campaign. In, out, in, out, each time accumulating more land. Rome has to have a standing army, its men enlisted to serve for twenty years without discharge. Then at the end, they will receive a monetary pension rather than land. Italia is only so big, and settling them in the Gauls or Spains or Bithynia or wherever doesn’t please them; they are Romans, and long for an old age at home. My divine father settled the Tenth around Narbo because they mutinied, but where are those men now? Why, in Agrippa’s legions.

An army should be where the dangers are, ready to fight in a
nundinum
. No more of this sending praetors to recruit, equipping and training troops in a tremendous hurry around Capua, then sending them on a thousand-mile march to face the enemy at once. Capua will continue to be the training ground, yes, but the moment a soldier is satisfactory, he ought to go immediately to some frontier to join a legion already there. Gaius Marius threw the legions open to enlistment of pauper Head Count—oh, how the
boni
hated him for that! To the
boni
—the good men—Head Count paupers had nothing to defend, not land nor property. But Head Count soldiers turned out to be even braver than the old propertied men, and now Rome’s legions are exclusively composed of the Head Count. Once the
proletarii
had had nothing to give Rome save children; now they gave Rome their valor and their lives. A brilliant move, Gaius Marius!

Divus Julius was an odd one. His legionaries worshipped him long before he was deified, but he never bothered to initiate the changes the army was crying for. He didn’t even think of it as an army, he thought of it as legions. And he was a constitutional man, one who disliked changing the constitution, the
mos maiorum
, for all that the
boni
said to the contrary. But Divus Julius had been wrong about the
mos maiorum
.

A new
mos maiorum
is long overdue. The phrase may mean the way things have always been done, but people’s memories are short, and a new
mos maiorum
will soon turn into a hallowed relic. It’s time for a different political structure, one more suited to rule a far-flung empire. Can I, Caesar Divi Filius, let myself be held to ransom by a handful of men determined to strip me of my political power? Divus Julius let that happen to him, had to cross the Rubicon into rebellion to save himself. But a good
mos maiorum
would never have let Cato Uticensis, the Marcelli, and Pompeius Magnus push my divine father into outlawry. A good
mos maiorum
would have protected him, for he did nothing that that puffed-up toad Pompeius Magnus hadn’t done a dozen times. It was a classic case of one law for this man, Magnus, but another law for that man, Caesar. Caesar’s heart had broken at the stain on his honor, just as it broke when the Ninth and Tenth mutinied. Neither would have happened if he had kept a closer eye on and more control of everything from his insane political opponents to his shiftless relatives. Well, that is not going to happen to me! I am going to change the
mos maiorum
and the way Rome is governed to suit me and my needs. I will not be outlawed. I will not wage civil war. What I have to do will be done legally.

He spoke of all that to Agrippa over dinner on his last day in Narbo, but he didn’t discuss his divorce, or Livia Drusilla, or the dilemma of choice facing him. For he could see as in the full flush of a summer sun that Agrippa must be kept apart from his emotional tribulations. They were a burden unsuited to Agrippa, who was not his twin or his divine father, but the military and civil executive of his own creating. His invincible right arm.

So he kissed Agrippa on both cheeks and climbed into his gig for the long journey home, made even longer by his resolution to visit every other legion in Further Gaul. They must all see and meet Caesar’s heir, they must all be bound to him personally. For who knew where or when he would need their allegiance?

Even with that punishing schedule, he was home again well before the end of the year, his priorities mentally assembled in definite order, some of them extremely urgent. But first on his list was Livia Drusilla. Only with that matter settled would he be able to bend his mind to more important things. For in and of itself it was not an important thing; it owed its power only to a weakness in him, a deficiency he couldn’t fathom, and had given up trying to. Therefore, get it over and done with.

Maecenas was back in Rome, happily married to his Terentia, whose great-aunt, the formidably ugly widow of the august Cicero, thoroughly approved of such a charming man from such a good family. Having been some years older than Cicero, she was past seventy now, but still controlled her enormous fortune with an iron hand and an encyclopaedic knowledge of religious laws permitting her to wriggle out of paying taxes. Caesar’s civil war against Pompey the Great had seen her family scattered and ruined; the only one left alive was her son, an irascible drunkard whom she despised. So there was room for a man in her tough old bosom, and Maecenas fitted himself there very comfortably indeed. Who knew? Perhaps one day he’d fall heir to her money. Though privately he informed Octavian that he was convinced she’d outlive all of them, and find a way to take her money with her when she finally went.

So Maecenas was available to do the negotiating with Nero; the only problem with that lay in the fact that Octavian still had not breathed a word of his passion for Livia Drusilla to a single soul, even Maecenas. Who would listen gravely, then proceed to try to talk him out of this bizarre union. Nor, given Nero’s stupidity and intractability, would Maecenas enjoy his usual advantages. In his mind Octavian had equated his nonaffair with the privacy of bodily functions; no one must see or hear. Gods did not excrete, and he was the son of a god who one day would be a god himself. There was much about the state religion that he dismissed as sheer claptrap, but his skepticism did not extend to Divus Julius or his own status, which he didn’t think of in the Greek fashion. There was no Divus Julius sitting atop a mountain or dwelling in the temple Octavian was building for Divus Julius in the Forum; no, Divus Julius was a disembodied force whose addition to the pantheon of forces had augmented Roman power, Roman might, Roman military excellence. Some of it pervaded Agrippa, he was sure of it. And much of it pervaded him; he could feel it surging through his veins, and had learned the trick of steepling his fingers, to build the force ever higher.