The Grass Crown by Colleen McCullough Page B

a port on the Ionian side, all the prerequisites of a thriving emporium. And what did they do to me? They invalidated my land bill.”
    “Because Saturninus had passed it,” said Young Marius.
    “Exactly. And because those fools in the Senate failed to see how important it is to give Head Count soldiers a bit of land when they retire. Never forget, young Marius, that the Head Count have absolutely no money or property! I opened our armies to the Head Count, I gave Rome fresh blood in the form of a class of citizens who never before had been of real use. And the soldiers of the Head Count went on to prove their worth—in Numidia, at Aquae Sextiae, at Vercellae. They fought as well as or better than the old style of soldier, man of substance though he was. But they can’t be discharged and let go back to the stews of Rome! They have to be settled on land. I knew the First Class and the Second Class would never countenance my settling them on Roman public lands within Italy, so I enacted laws to settle them in places like this, hungry for new citizens. Here they would have brought Rome to our provinces, and made us friends in the fullness of time. Unfortunately, the leaders of the House and the leaders of the knights consider Rome to be exclusive, her customs and her way of life not to be disseminated throughout the world.”
    “Quintus Caecilius Metellus Numidicus,” said Young Marius in tones of loathing; he had grown up in a house where that name had never been spoken of with love or liking, and usually with the tag Piggle-wiggle attached to it. However, Young Marius knew better than to add the tag in the presence of his mother, who would have been horrified to hear him using such language—Piggle-wiggle was nursery slang for a little girl’s genitalia.
    “Who else?” asked Marius.
    “Marcus Aemilius Scaurus Princeps Senatus, and Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus Pontifex Maximus, and Quintus Lutatius Catulus Caesar, and Publius Cornelius Scipio Nasica…”
    “Very good, enough. They marshaled their clients and they organized a faction too powerful even for me. And then, last year, they took most of Saturninus’s laws off the tablets.”
    “His grain law and his land bills,” said Young Marius, who was getting on very well with his father now they were emancipated from Rome, and liked to be praised.
    “Except the first land bill, the one to settle my soldiers of the Head Count on the African islands,” said Marius.
    “Which reminds me, husband, of something I wanted to say to you,” Julia interrupted.
    Marius cast a significant glance down at Young Marius’s head, but Julia sailed on serenely.
    “How long do you intend to keep Gaius Julius Caesar on that island? Could he not come home?” she asked. “For the sake of Aurelia and the children, he ought to come home.”
    “I need him on Cercina,” said Marius tersely. “A leader of men he is not, but no commissioner ever worked harder or better on any agrarian project than Gaius Julius. As long as he’s there on Cercina, the work goes forward, the complaints are minimal, and the results are splendid.”
    “But it’s been so long!” Julia protested. “Three years!”
    “And likely to be three more years.” Marius was not about to give in. “You know how slow land commissions are—there’s so much to do, between surveying, interviewing, compensating, sorting out endless confusions—and overcoming local resistance. Gaius Julius does the work with consummate skill. No, Julia! Not one word more! Gaius Julius stays right where he is until the job is finished.”
    “I pity his wife and children, then.”

The Grass Crown
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    But Julia’s sympathy was wasted; Aurelia was well satisfied with her lot, and scarcely missed her husband at all. This was not from any lack of love or dereliction of wifely duty; it lay in the fact that while he was away she could do her own work without fearing his disapproval, criticism, or—may it never happen!—his