A Friend of Cæsar: A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. by - (great books of all time .TXT) 📕

with Vercingetorix; all this was the mere courage of the common soldier. But it is not of death I am afraid; be it death on the field of battle, or death at the hands of the executioner, should I fall into the power of my enemies, I fear myself.

"You ask me to explain?" went on the general, without pausing for a question. "Hearken! I am a man, you are a man, our enemies are men. I have slain a hundred thousand men in Gaul. Cruel? No, for had they lived the great designs which the deity wills to accomplish in that country could not be executed! But then my mind was at rest. I said, 'Let these men die,' and no Nemesis has required their blood at my hands. What profit these considerations? The Republic is nothing but a name, without substance or reality. It is doomed to fall. Sulla was a fool to abdicate the dictatorship. Why did he not establish a despotism, and save us all this turmoil of politics? But Lentulus Crus, Pompeius, Cato, Scipio—they are men with as much ambition, as much love of life, as myself. The Republic will fall into their hands. Why will it be worse off than in mine? Why shed rivers of blood? After death one knows no regrets. If I were dead, what would it matter to me if obloquy was imputed to my name, if my enemies triumphed, if the world went to chaos over my grave. It would not mean so much as a single evil dream in my perpetual slumber."

Cæsar was no longer resting on the bank. He was pacing to and fro, with rapid, nervous steps, crushing the dry twigs under his shoes, pressing his hands together behind his back, knitting and unknitting his fingers.

Drusus knew enough to be aware that he was present as a spectator of that most terrible of all conflicts—a strong man's wrestle with his own misgivings. To say something, to say anything, that would ease the shock of the contest—that was the young man's compelling desire; but he felt as helpless as though he, single handed, confronted ten legions.

"But your friends, Imperator," he faltered, "think of them! They have made sacrifices for you. They trust in you. Do not abandon them to their enemies!"

Cæsar stopped in his impetuous pacings.

"Look here," he exclaimed, almost fiercely, "you wish to be happy. You are still very young; life is sweet. You have just forsaken wealth, friends, love, because you have a fantastic attachment for my cause. You will live to repent of your boyish decision. You will wish to win back all you have lost. Well, I will give you the chance; do what I tell you, and you shall ride into Rome the hero of Senate and people! The consuls will be to you all smiles. Pompeius will canvass for you if you desire to become a candidate for curule office before you reach the legal age limit. Cicero will extol your name in an immortal oration, in which he will laud your deed above the slaying of the dangerous demagogue Mælius by Servilius Ahala. Will you do as I shall bid you?"

Drusus's eyes had been riveted on those of the general. He saw that at Cæsar's side was girded a long slender dagger in an embossed silver sheath. He saw the Imperator draw out the blade halfway, then point off into the river where the water ran sluggishly through a single deep mist-shaded pool.

"Do you understand?" went on Cæsar, as calmly as though he had been expounding a problem of metaphysics. "You can take this ring of mine, and by its aid go through the whole legion, and obtain the best horses for flight, before anything is discovered. Your conscience need not trouble you. You will only have done as I earnestly requested."

The cold sweat started to Drusus's forehead, his head swam; he knew that it was more than the mist of the river-fog that drifted before his eyes. Then, filled with a sudden impulse, he sprang on the general and wrenched the dagger from its sheath.

"Here!" cried Cæsar, tearing back the mantle from his breast.

"There!" cried Drusus, and the bright blade glinted once in the air, and splashed down into the dark ripple. He caught the Imperator about the arms, and flung his head on the other's neck.

"Oh! Imperator," he cried, "do not desert us. Do not desert the Commonwealth! Do not hand us back to new ruin, new tyrants, new wars! Strike, strike, and so be merciful! Surely the gods have not led you thus far, and no farther! But yesterday you said they were leading us. To-day they still must guide! To you it has been given to pull down and to build up. Fail not! If there be gods, trust in them! If there be none slay me first, then do whatever you will!"

Cæsar shook himself. His voice was harsh with command.

"Unhand me! I must accomplish my own fate!" and then, in a totally different tone, "Quintus Drusus, I have been a coward for the first time in my life. Are you ashamed of your general?"

"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 Cæsar; "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. Cæsar 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." Cæsar 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 Cæsar the Proconsul, but of Cæsar 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 Prænestians. 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 Cæsarian like Drusus; besides, he was utterly without any political influence that would stand him in good stead. But around the Atrium Vestæ 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 Vestæ.

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