“Look, Senator, would you happen to need a new slave?”
I was astounded. “You mean Freda? I doubt that I could afford her, and Vinius would surely never sell her to me!”
“Not her, me! Would you consider buying me?”
“Whatever for? Hermes gives me worry enough as it is.”
He nodded and assumed a crafty look. “Just so. I can keep an eye on him for you, beat him when he steals, things like that. You have the look of a master too softhearted to flog a slave.”
“I can see why that would make me attractive to you. Why should I want you?”
“I know this country, Senator. I know the land and all the tribes, I can speak the languages. The local people think the world of me, sir.”
“I could see in what high esteem those German envoys held you. If you are so valuable, how could Vinius bring himself to part with you?”
“Well, Senator, my master has plans that don’t include me, and I think he’d sell me cheap. You could use an intermediary if you don’t want to haggle with him.”
“Listen here, my man. You don’t fool me. I’ve seen every Latin and Greek comedy ever written, and I know that slaves as ugly as you are always conniving rogues. Go try to sell yourself elsewhere.”
He grinned slyly, but then all his expressions were sly. “Just think it over, Senator. I think you’ll realize what a bargain I am.” He turned and walked, or rather lurched, off.
“You’re not going to buy him, are you?” Hermes said, aghast.
“I might,” I warned him, “if you don’t make yourself more valuable.”
That night, after finishing my day’s work on Caesar’s reports, I sat in my folding chair and gave the matter some thought while I digested a frugal dinner, helped along by some heavily watered native wine. I found it surprisingly good. It was getting so that anything that didn’t taste like vinegar was agreeable.
Did Molon really expect me to buy him? If so, why? It was easy enough to imagine that he would not want to be the slave of a man like Titus Vinius. If the man treated his soldiers in such a fashion, what must the lives of his slaves be like? But did he expect Vinius to entertain an offer from me?
There was an obvious interpretation, of course: Vinius had put him up to it, wanting to plant a spy on me. I have always resisted such trains of thought. I have known too many men to dwell upon subversive enemy plans of this sort until they saw plots, spies, and conspiracies no matter what direction they looked.
On the other hand, in typical Roman political life of the day there were plots, spies, and conspiracies everywhere. One just didn’t expect to find anything so sophisticated and sinister in a legionary camp.
And what did he mean about Vinius’s “plans” which did not include him? I would have thought that a man like Vinius, having no further use for the probably unsellable Molon, would just knock him on the head and leave him in a ditch somewhere. Probably, I thought, it was just more meaninless verbiage intended to obscure his real purpose. This practice is not restricted to speeches before the Popular Assemblies.
Mostly I was wondering how I could get my hands on Freda, and this clouded all my other thoughts. I was around thirty-two years old that year, and should have been past such schoolboy passions, but some things you never truly outgrow. That an entire, battle-hardened legion seemed to share my condition alleviated somewhat the embarrassment of my situation. But not much.
6
The next few days followed the same pattern: up at an absurd hour, attend officer’s calls, attend arms drill in the morning, work on Caesar’s papers in the afternoons, drop into exhausted sleep at night, endure the jabs of my fellow officers and the smirks of the legionaries in the meantime.
It was a life that was not entirely without its compensations. Being the laughingstock of an entire army prevents the sort of overweening pride that draws the wrath of the gods. Whenever I chanced to pass men of Vinius’s century, they saluted respectfully and alone among the legionaries they did not find me a source of merriment.
My Gauls visited frequently and showed a surprising sympathy with my plight. For a pack of unlettered savages they were pretty decent men. I only rode with them once during this time, when Caesar called for a review of the mounted auxilia, of which he was collecting a prodigious force, having scoured all of Rome’s nearby holdings and allies.
Handling Caesar’s papers had another advantage: I was learning everything about his army and its management. Actual fighting takes up only a small part of an army’s time, unless there is a siege. The rest of it is taken up in training and waiting, and the army’s officers have to keep it fed and equipped and paid the whole time. The army’s morale depends upon how well these activities are carried out.
The process of keeping the army supplied and fed was an eye-opener. It meant, primarily, dealing with civilian suppliers. What went on between them and the supply officers was even better than the dealings of the Censors and the publicani. The kickbacks were both amazing and blatant, and it came as something of a shock to see how many officers of the army, both legionary and auxilia, owned productive farms or workshops in the Province.
“Do you conceive that this has somehow escaped my notice?” Caesar said one evening when I pointed this out to him.
“It has occurred to me to wonder whether you understood the sheer comprehensiveness of the corruption,” I said. “For instance, here we have one Nazarius, commander of the auxilia archers and skirmishers. He is also the owner of the largest tanneries in the province. Upon arrival here, Caius Paterculus, Prefect of the Camp, deemed all of the tents owned by the Tenth to be unfit for service and replaced them with new ones. The contract for the necessary hides was granted to Nazarius. A legion uses something in excess of eight hundred tents. At approximately twelve hides per tent that calls for”-arithmetic was never my greatest talent-“well, a lot of hides, anyway. Between the allowance for tentage and what actually passed between Nazarius and Paterculus, I believe that a substantial sum now rests in the purse of the Prefect of the Camp.” This officer had authority over everything having to do with camp management and had actual command of the camp when the legion marched out.
Caesar, who had been dictating notes to a slave, sighed and folded his hands over his slightly protruding belly. “Decius, this is ancient military practice, begun, I suspect, by Romulus. After all, we must buy hides from somebody, and who if not the largest supplier in the district? Now, if somebody were selling us inferior hides and passing them off as serviceable, that would be genuine corruption and I would punish it accordingly. But I have inspected all of our tentage and it is first-rate. There was no question that tents meant for the Italian climate were not fit for service in Gaul. As long as the Republic is not being cheated, what is the harm?”
“That is only one instance, and not the most egregious of them. There is. .”
“Decius,” Caesar interrupted, “I am certain that I know every instance you are about to cite in the most sordid detail. You can do nothing about these practices. You are a Roman statesman who will never spend more than a year or two at a time with the Eagles, as a part of your political career. The men who actually run the legions spend every day of their lives with the standards.”
“And a piece of every transaction stays with the Prefect of the Camp and the First Spear,” I said with perhaps more bitterness than was truly justified.
Caesar smiled slightly. “Now you know why Prefect of the Camp is an office held for only a single year, by a centurion on his last year of service before retiring. It is his final chance to line his purse and the theory is that he can’t do any lasting damage in a year. Whatever he can get away with is his reward for twenty-five years of the most brutal, demanding service imaginable. It isn’t a perfect system, but it works.”