Roma.The novel of ancient Rome - Saylor Steven (книги онлайн полные версии бесплатно .TXT) 📗

“It will never come to that, I pray to Jupiter. But if I should perceive an immediate threat, and require a ring of brave men around me, I may not be able to cry out to you. My voice is hoarse, and the din may be too great. So, this will be my signal.” Tiberius raised both arms skyward, then bent his elbows so that he pointed at his head with both hands. The sign was unmistakable: rally to the head.

The crowd began to clap and chant his name. Tiberius gripped Blossius’s arm with one hand and waved with the other. He walked forward, trying not to wince at the pain. “Perhaps it’s a good thing, that I stumbled,” he whispered to Blossius. “The auspices indicated a bad start. Now the bad start is behind me!”

Limping slightly despite Blossius’s support, Tiberius set out for the Capitoline, where the voting would take place. As he descended the Palatine, more supporters joined his retinue. Many more were waiting in the Forum. They opened a path for him, cheering and reaching out to touch him as he passed by, then joined the throng that followed behind him.

On the steps leading up to the Capitoline, Tiberius paused before the Arch of Scipio Africanus. The monument was decorated with images of his grandfather’s triumphs in both Africa and Asia. Scipio had survived the battle of Cannae and shamed his fellow officers by his fortitude, had lost the father whose life he had saved in battle, and had matched wits with Hannibal and beaten him. Tiberius laughed aloud at the absurdity that a stubbed toe should give him a moment’s pause. He made a silent vow to ascend to the voting place without limping or leaning on Blossius, and to show no sign of pain.

He had passed under the arch and proceeded a short distance when he heard a noise from above. Screeching and beating their wings, two ravens were fighting on the roof of a building next to the pathway, to his left. Their altercation dislodged a roof tile. The tile fell directly in front of Tiberius and shattered with a loud noise. Tiberius flinched.

“The augury, the stumble…and now this!” he whispered. “One bad omen after another-”

“Nonsense!” said Blossius in his ear. “Chickens behave like chickens. People stub their toes every day. Ravens squabble. Tiberius, if you start to see omens in every accident and happenstance, you will indeed be putting on the airs of a king; only a tyrant imagines the universe revolves around himself. A raven dislodged a loose bit of tile-nothing more!”

Tiberius nodded, straightened his toga, and continued the ascent.

The large open space before the Temple of Jupiter was already crowded when Tiberius arrived with his retinue. Only plebeians could vote for the tribunes, and they did so by first gathering into voting blocks called tribes. Even on the most peaceful of election days, the polling officials were hard-pressed to maintain order; for their own protection and to hold back the unruly crowd they were allowed to carry spear-shafts without metal points. News of Tiberius’s arrival was met with a tremendous uproar of mingled acclamation and jeering. Jostled this way and that, some in the crowd retaliated by shoving back. Fistfights broke out. The election officials scrambled to maintain order by brandishing their shafts.

Over the centuries, the assembly area had become so congested with shrines and statues, and the number of voters had so increased, that the simple procedure of assembling into tribes had become a logistical challenge. Elections could be won or lost depending on whether a candidate’s supporters were able to assemble when called on. Tiberius’s supporters had arrived early and in great numbers to claim the best spots for addressing the crowd and to maintain open pathways. If the supporters of opposition candidates could be kept at the periphery of the voting area or excluded altogether, Tiberius’s chances would be increased.

With Blossius at his side and surrounded by a cadre of his most ardent supporters, Tiberius was ushered through the crowd and escorted onto the steps of the Temple of Jupiter. At the sight of him, more cheering erupted from the center of the crowd and catcalls from the edges.

He had hoped to address the crowd, but the unceasing din made doing so impossible. He had never seen such a raucous election assembly. The participants seemed to be in continuous motion, shouting and gesturing. Scattered here and there, especially around the periphery or in the tight spots where a statue or shrine made movement difficult, skirmishes appeared to be taking place. It was not unlike watching a battlefield.

Some of the election officials, growing exasperated, were banging their shafts against the ground, calling for order and demanding that the gathering of the tribes begin. The voters were either unwilling to cooperate, or unable to hear them. The scene was chaotic.

A pathway opened in the crowd and one of Tiberius’s supporters in the Senate, Fulvius Flaccus, rushed toward him, breathless with alarm.

“Tiberius, I’ve just come from an emergency meeting of the Senate. All morning your enemies have been demanding that the consul Scaevola declare today’s election an illegal assembly-”

“Illegal? The people have the right to elect tribunes-”

“They claim the disorder is too great, a menace to public safety-or worse.”

“Worse?”

“Your cousin Scipio Nasica says you’re mustering a mob to bring down the state. After you massacre your opponents in the Senate, you’ll declare yourself king-”

“Nasica!” Tiberius spat the word. The two cousins, both heirs to the bloodline of Africanus, despised each other. There was no greater reactionary in the Senate than Nasica. While Tiberius had made himself the champion of the common people, Nasica made no secret of despising them. Even when he campaigned for their votes, he could not resist insulting them. “I know better than you lot what is good for the state,” he had once shouted at an unruly crowd; opponents joked that this was his idea of a campaign slogan. And once, shaking the horny palm of a farm laborer, Nasica had snidely commented, “How does one get such calluses? Do you walk on your hands?”

Blossius spoke up. “The consul Scaevola is a good man.”

“Indeed he is,” said Flaccus. “He’s refused to sanction any attempt to cancel the election. But that hasn’t stopped Nasica. ‘If the consul won’t act to save the state, then private citizens must do so’-that’s what Nasica said. He and a number of other senators gathered outside, and then they were joined by a gang of cutthroats-the roughest sort of men you can imagine, armed with clubs.”

“They planned this ahead of time,” said Blossius.

“Obviously!” said Flaccus. “And now they’re coming this way, with Nasica leading them. They mean to kill you, Tiberius! They think they’re on a sacred mission-the senators have wrapped the red hem of their togas across their foreheads, like priests about to carry out a sacrifice!”

Tiberius’s blood ran cold. He stared at the unsuspecting crowd.

“The signal!” cried Blossius. “Give the signal!”

Tiberius raised his arms in the air. The movement drew the attention of the crowd. With all eyes on him, Tiberius pointed to his head.

His supporters understood at once. They seized the shafts carried by the election officials, broke them in pieces, and passed the fragments among themselves; the longer sections could serve as cudgels and the splintered ends as daggers. There were a number of benches throughout the assembly area. They began to smash these as well, to use the fragments as weapons.

Tiberius’s opponents in the crowd took the signal to mean something else. “He points at his head-he’s demanding a crown!” men cried. “Look at his followers, gathering weapons-they mean to take the Capitoline by force. They’ll declare Tiberius king!”

Amid the mounting chaos, there was an even greater commotion at the entry to the assembly area. Nasica and his fellow senators, with their gang of cutthroats, had arrived.