What followed was as close to bliss as Aulus had ever experienced. At first in awe of him, his young wife melded within weeks into a companion of the kind he had only ever heard of but never experienced, even though he could claim his previous marriage to be a good one. Besides her beauty, Claudia had wit and charm and at no time did the difference in age seem to intrude in their relationship, especially in the bedchamber. She was passionate, willing as well as obliging as a wife, and a surprise delight when it came to dealing with the majority of his friends, who were naturally of his age. Aulus had never been so happy, and swore to anyone who would listen that he would trade his Macedonian victories rather than lose her.
The nuptials were less than six months past when news arrived of serious trouble in Spain. The Celtic tribes of the Iberian interior, hitherto kept at bay by the Roman ability, mixing bribery and flattery to keep them divided, had come together under a new and enterprising chieftain called Brennos. That was a name to strike fear into Roman hearts; they had faced a Celtic Brennos nearly three hundred years before, a barbarian leader who had sacked most of Greece and all of northern Italy before appearing before the very gates of Rome. One legend had it that a stoic Roman defence had forced him to withdraw; a less heroic tale maintained that he had been bribed with sacks of gold to depart after he had burnt most of the city. Now his namesake was terrorising Roman Spain and this time the fractious mountain tribes were not merely raiding the rich coastal plains in search of booty. Reports suggested that they were being organised into an army that threatened to conquer the whole country, which could not be allowed to pass. Too many senators, Aulus included, had possessions in Spain; farms, mining concessions and profitable monopolies, as well as the valuable slave labour that worked them.
No Roman nobleman worth his salt shirks his responsibilities, regardless of how rich and respected past campaigns have made him, nor was his recent marriage allowed to interfere. With the full backing of his new wife, who was inordinately proud of his military achievements, Aulus Cornelius Macedonicus immediately made it known that, as Rome’s foremost soldier, he was available if required. It was an offer that pleased a number of his contemporaries, yet troubled many others in a society that was far from stable — when the norms that had governed Roman life for centuries seemed under threat from some of the very people entrusted with upholding the state.
Factionalism was rife, so even some of those senators who stood to lose from the depredations of this new Brennos demurred when offered the services of such a man, frightened to entrust a campaign to one who had already garnered such glory. Would another success make Aulus too powerful, a man to be feared rather than admired? Certainly he was known for his personal probity, but men not themselves free from temptation found it hard to believe that there existed anyone untainted from the vice of ambition.
In the past, when the state faced a threat too difficult for the normal consular system to control, one man had been given supreme, temporary power, a crisis measure that lasted only as long as the emergency it was created to face. Such a thing had been brought about by the need to confront an external enemy but now it seemed to many that the enemy was within. A temporary Dictator would divide the factions even more, if that were possible. Senators like Tiberius Livonius were agitating for change; apart from tribal voting rights they wanted to extend Roman citizenship to the supplicant states of Italy, once Rome’s enemies, now her allies, a source of manpower in war and tax revenue in peace. To others the notion that such people should be given equal status with those who had defeated them was anathema. Roman citizenship was a prize worthy only of those born to it; to dilute such a privilege was nothing but a prelude to state disintegration.
If that had been all, it was enough, but Livonius and his supporters had other plans that struck at the very heart of the city-state. Rome had grown fat on the spoils of empire and in the process it had become the magnet for everyone seeking a fortune and in many cases those in search of no more than the food necessary to survive. The city was crowded, with huge wealth living cheek by jowl with acute poverty. In fear of riot it had been agreed that a dole of corn, enough to sustain life, should be issued to the poorest members of the population, but that was not enough for the reformers; they now wanted to give farms to the landless peasants who filled the slums as a way of clearing them out of the city, land that would have to come from those who owned it, the wealthy elite that governed the city and had made vast fortunes from Rome’s conquests. Egging on the mob, who had most to gain from his proposed reforms, Tiberius Livonius threatened to make Rome ungovernable.
Such ideas must be fought and defeated, but politically, not by some successful soldier at the head of fighting legions, who were barred from entry to the city. It was over four hundred years since the leading families had founded the Republic, expelling the Tarquin kings, yet the memory of their despotism still lived on, making men suspicious of success, lest too much fortune tempt anyone to seek supreme power; to overthrow the Senate, suborn the Republic and reinstate a royal tyranny. Aulus Cornelius Macedonicus, attached as he was to the patrician cause, with one great campaign to his name, given another, might see personal rule as the best method of restoring order, and having done so, the best method of keeping it so by a continuation of that rule. Lucius Falerius, who knew the man in question better than anyone, had used his considerable oratory to ridicule such fears.
‘I fear I must remind you, my fellow senators, of how much this august body and the people of Rome owe to Aulus Cornelius Macedonicus. Is this some upstart seeking advantage? No. He is a man who has no need of further military success. Is he so poor that he needs to go on campaign to load the state with his living expenses? Hardly, given the treasure and slaves he brought back from Greece, he is one of the wealthiest men in Rome and I suspect many present have had occasions when they have needed to borrow from him. I fear that some of our members have transferred their own level of base thinking to a fellow senator whose principles are so elevated over theirs as to be incomprehensible.’
Aulus was cheered inwardly at the memory of the protest that accusation had set off, with the very people both he and Lucius knew to be the most venal, the loudest in their denials. He recalled the magisterial look on his friend’s face then, one that made him proud of their close association. Lucius appeared his best at moments like these, his eyes alight, face mobile enough to match his rich and varied voice, driving home his point, his tone just the right side of mocking. Privately, he might have become a touch tiresome of late, irritable and impatient even with his close friends and adherents, hardly surprising given the workload he undertook, but when it came to the collective pulse of the Senate, Lucius was the man who could feel and respond to it. Aulus gave special attention to examining the faces of those men he and Lucius rated as allies, those senators who shared their political views, yet had expressed themselves troubled at his friend’s recent imperious behaviour. He wanted to say to those who carped, ‘Observe this, and ask yourself, given this body, the Roman Senate, disparate, fractious with more scoundrels on its benches than upright individuals, could you command it with half the ability of this man?’
‘The task outlined by the Senate,’ Lucius continued, ‘demands no conquest, only that the Celtic-Iberian tribes should be defeated, dispersed and sent back into the mountains from which they came. There is therefore little glory to be garnered on this campaign, only hard fighting and the risk of death. Given that, I demand to know who else would volunteer?’