something while we wait. I’m famished.” In a different tone, one I had heard often from countless men since my abduction, he barked, “Bring it outside.”
Several more people approached, there was the scraping of furniture and the gentle clank and clatter of trays being carefully laid down. The man next to me took no notice; he sat cross-legged, his head tilted back against the column. Jaw slack. Eyes closed. My foot was at the ready should he start to snore.
After a few moments of quiet, the man who I assumed was older than Crassus laughed out loud. “You should have seen their faces,” he said. “As white as their togas, I swear by Jupiter.” He was talking with his mouth full. The implication made me salivate. “The Curia was no fit place to address what was left of the senate. I would not speak to them standing on the still fresh blood of my friends. So this morning we shepherded them all up the Capitoline to the Temple of Bellona. An unhappy coincidence, since close by my legates had assembled the remaining, captured Samnites on the Campus Martius. There they would pay in full for their insurrection.” The man bit into some kind of fruit. I could hear the juice fly. “Only open field with enough room to herd ‘em all,” he said, his mouth once again overfull. I swallowed back unbidden saliva, almost losing track of the conversation.
“How many were taken prisoner?”
“Oh, maybe five, six thousand.” Crassus made a sound of acknowledgment. “The cries of the ones in the rear who could see their fate approaching worked our venerable legislators into a frenzy. And my intention was to calm them and reassure them. It really was quite funny. They thought they themselves would be next to fall under the sword. I had to leave the rostrum to compose myself while my men shepherded the terrified conscript fathers back to their places. When I stopped laughing and regained my dignity I returned and told them I had come to save them, not slay them. I could see it in their eyes: everything I said fell on ears plugged with wax manufactured from the screams of the dying Samnites.
“Marius and his gang were their true enemies. If he had had his way the assemblies and the plebs would have stripped the senate of all real power. Jupiter! His thugs killed off more than half the original three hundred. We need to do something about that, Marcus.” He paused a moment. “We need to protect the old ways. I shall tear down the Curia and build a new, larger one, this time with enough room to hold twice as many togas.”
“But the law only allows three hundred senators.”
The older man’s tone grew dark. “The law shall be rewritten.” Then he brightened. “And we must see that the seats are filled with our friends, with men who are loyal to Rome, eh, and to me? You shall have a seat,” he said, suddenly inspired.
“General, I am honored, but I have yet to embark upon the cursus honorum.”
I could envision the wave of a dismissive hand. “It is a done thing. What a pity it would have been had my dreams died at the very gates of the city. Your role was not insignificant, Marcus. We will speak no more of it.”
I smiled outright. The tribune who had marched us here had been so proud of his Curia; now it would be razed. But a breath later my smile fled, my lips pressed to flatness by widened eyes. I tried to rationalize my stupidity: I was exhausted, starving, a blood-spattered wreck. Still, logic should have prevailed and shaken me before now. Above my head stood Lucius Cornelia Sulla, conqueror of Asia Minor, plunderer of Athens and thief of the life of Alexandros, son of Theodotos. My heart used my stomach for a drum and I gripped the column for support. Here was the man at whose feet could be laid every injury, insult and degradation I had endured these past four years. In that time, all that I once might have been had been ground away until what was left was more stone than man: cold, weathered, inert. Knowledge wrenched me back to myself; I was suddenly, sharply awake.
Much more was said, and of that heartbreaking tale I shall speak again. But the nearness of General Sulla was causing me to become increasingly agitated, like a fly unable to reach a pile of offal.