The idea that power might be separable from glory in this way was mystifying to most Romans; disturbing too. In any election Cethegus’ unsavoury reputation would have proved lethal to his hopes. His prestige was that of a lobbyist, nothing more. No Roman who aimed for the consulship could afford to keep to the disreputable backrooms in which Cethegus lurked. The established aristocracy might sometimes find themselves reduced to employing him, but their reluctance to emulate his career pattern spoke loudly of their disdain. Yet there was one nobleman, of high birth and overweening, almost threatening prestige, who had already long surpassed Cethegus in the dark arts of political fixing, and who had never betrayed the slightest scruples about doing so; who glided with equal facility through the shadows and the brilliant glare of public life; who ‘would go to any effort, make himself amenable to anyone he came across, just so long as he obtained what he wanted’.31 And what Marcus Crassus wanted was clear: to be the leading citizen in the state.
In the years following Sulla’s death, although he was yet to win the praetorship, still less become consul, there were those who regarded Crassus as already closing in on that ambition. The row with Sulla had proved only a limited setback. Indeed, in some ways it had served to enhance Crassus’ prestige. Unlike Catulus, he stood at a remove from the dictator’s regime. This was how he preferred to operate, without ties or obligations to any cause except his own. Principles, to Crassus, were merely gambits in a vast and complex game, to be adopted then sacrificed as strategy required. Rather than risk leaving his fingermarks on anything, he employed proxies to test the limits on his behalf. Of such willing dependants he had an endless supply. Crassus was assiduous at cultivating men on the make. Whether he wished to help promote them to high office or merely have them serve him as patsies or ciphers, he would treat them all with the same menacing geniality, keeping open house, avoiding airs, remembering the name of anyone he ever met. In the law courts he would tirelessly plead for defendants who might later provide him with a return. A debt taken out with Crassus always came with heavy interest.
Not for nothing did he operate as the Senate’s banker. Crassus had deeper funds than anyone else in Rome. Slaves, mines and real estate remained his principal investments, but he regarded no scam as too low if it would add to his coffers. Whenever a house went up in flames, Crassus would have his private fire-brigade rush to the scene, then refuse to extinguish the fire until the owner had sold him the property cheap. Prosecuted for sleeping with a Vestal Virgin – a particularly sacrilegious crime – he could protest that he had only seduced the woman in order to snap up her property, and be believed. Despite his reputation for avarice, however, Crassus lived simply, and when his interests were not at stake he could prove notoriously mean. A philosopher, Alexander, to whom Crassus had provided grudging hospitality, would be lent a cloak for journeys then required to give it back. Alexander, as a Greek, did not have the vote. Had he been a citizen, then he would have been encouraged to borrow far more than a cloak. The more eminent his status, the more spectacularly he would have been encouraged to fall into debt. Money was easily Crassus’ favourite instrument of power. The threads of gold he spun entangled the whole Republic. Little could happen in Rome of which Crassus was not immediately aware, sensitive as he was to every tremor, every fluttering of every fly caught in his web.
No wonder that he inspired in his fellow citizens a rare dread. Campaigners against Sulla’s laws would violently abuse other public figures, but never Crassus. Asked why, a tribune compared him not to a spider but to a bull with hay on its horns – ‘it being a custom among the Romans’, as Plutarch explains, ‘to tie hay round the horns of dangerous bulls, so that people who met them might be on their guard’.32 Such respect was what Crassus most craved. More clearly than anyone else in Rome, he had penetrated to the heart of the lesson of the civil wars: that the outward trappings of glory were nothing compared to pre-eminence among the people in the know. In a society such as the Republic, where envy and malice always followed fast on greatness, supremacy was a perilous status. Only if it inspired fear without undue resentment could it hope to endure. In the art of preserving such a balance Crassus ruled supreme.
Yet, to his chagrin, he found himself overshadowed by one rival to whom the laws of political gravity appeared simply not to apply. The show-stealer, as ever, was Pompey. Where Crassus manoeuvred to enjoy the substance of power, Pompey never ceased to enjoy the glitter and clamour of its show. But by play-acting the general he rapidly became the genuine thing, and not merely a general, but the darling of Rome. The ‘teenage butcher’ had an innocent’s charm. ‘Nothing was more delicate than Pompey’s cheeks,’ we are told: ‘whenever he felt people’s eyes on him, he would go bright red.’33 To the public, such blushes were an endearing reminder of their hero’s youth, of the boyish modesty that appeared all the more estimable when set against the unparalleled arc of his rise. What citizen had not dared to imagine himself doing as Pompey had done, seizing the chance for glory with both hands and soaring towards the stars? The Romans’ tolerance of his career betrayed the depth of their crush. Far from provoking their jealousy, Pompey enabled them to live out – however vicariously – their deepest fantasies and dreams.
Pompey’s superstardom was something that even Sulla had been forced to respect. No one else had tested the limits of the dictator’s patience quite like Pompey, the spoiled and favoured son. After routing the Marian armies in Africa he had crossed back to Italy and refused a direct order to disband his legions – not with any intention of toppling Sulla’s regime, but because, like a small child with his eye on a new and glittering treat, he had wanted a triumph. Sulla, either in mockery or admiration, had agreed to confirm his protégé in the title awarded him by his troops: ‘Magnus’ – ‘The Great’. The granting of the supreme honour of a triumph, however, to a man who was not even a senator, had given him pause. Pompey, typically, had met condescension with impudence. ‘More people worship the rising than the setting sun,’34 he had told the ageing dictator to his face. Sulla, wearily, had at last given way. Pompey, no doubt blushing becomingly, had duly ridden in triumph through the streets, the spoils of his victories preceding him, cheered to the hilt by his adoring fans. And not even twenty-five.
After an excitement like that, the grind of a conventional political career was unappealing. No slogging after quaestorships for Pompey the Great. Having helped Catulus to put down the armed revolt that had followed Sulla’s death, he had then pulled his favourite stunt of refusing to disband his troops. Again, this had not been with any intention of carrying out a coup himself, but because he had been enjoying himself too much as a general to be prepared to give up his legions. Instead, he had demanded to be sent to Spain. The province was still infested with Marian rebels, and the Senate, in confirming Pompey’s command, had not been merely surrendering to blackmail. The war against the rebels promised to be deeply unglamorous, with plenty of hazards and few rewards. Catulus and his colleagues had been glad to see Pompey go.
Crassus, too, must have hoped that his young rival was riding for a fall. Once again, however, Pompey was to prove himself insufferably successful. Gruelling though the war did indeed prove to be, the rebel armies were gradually subdued. Crassus, who never ceased to regard Pompey’s title of Magnus as a joke, began to hear it used ever less ironically by everyone around him. In 73 BC, the year in which Crassus became praetor, Pompey was busy extinguishing the final embers of rebellion, and settling Spain to his own immense advantage. In the province that had provided Crassus with his first army, Pompey was now securing a client base as well. Soon he would be returning to Rome, trailing clouds of glory, his army of seasoned veterans at his back. No doubt he would demand a second triumph. After that, who could tell?