The Grass Crown by Colleen McCullough Page B

affinity of mind and heart. Old Caesar Grandfather felt much the same about him as I do—one couldn’t have a better man at one’s side in a tight spot, or when there’s work to be done. It’s easy to maintain pleasant relations with such a man. But I doubt that Lucius Cornelius will ever enjoy the kind of friendship that I enjoy with Publius Rutilius, for example. You know, when one loves the faults and quirks with the same affection as one does the splendid attributes. Lucius Cornelius hasn’t got it in him to sit in silence on a bench with a friend, just relishing being together. That type of behavior is foreign to his nature.”
    “What is his nature, Gaius Marius? I’ve never known.”
    But Marius shook his head, laughed. “No one knows. Even after all our years together, I couldn’t begin to guess at it.”
    “Oh, I think you could,” said Julia shrewdly, “but I don’t think you want to. At least to me.” She moved to sit beside him. “If he has a friend at all, it’s Aurelia.”
    “So I’ve noticed,” said Marius dryly.
    “Now don’t go assuming there’s anything between them, because there isn’t! It’s just that I think if Lucius Cornelius opens his innermost self to anyone, it’s to her.”
    “Huh,” said Marius, ending the conversation.
    They were in Halicarnassus for the winter, having arrived in Asia Minor too late in the season to attempt the journey overland from the Aegean coast to Pessinus. In Athens they had lingered too long because they loved it so, and from there they went to Delphi to visit Apollo’s precinct, though Marius had refused to consult the Pythoness.
    Surprised, Julia had asked him why.
    “No man can badger the gods,” he said. “I’ve had my share of prophecies. If I ask for more revelations of the future, the gods will turn away from me.”
    “Couldn’t you ask on behalf of Young Marius?”
    “No,” said Gaius Marius.
    They had also visited Epidauros in the near Peloponnese, and there, after dutifully admiring the buildings and the exquisite sculptures of Thrasymedes of Paros, Marius took the sleep diagnosis administered by the priests of Asklepios. He had drunk his potion obediently, then gone to the dormitories lying near the great temple, and slept the night away. Unfortunately he could remember no dreams, so the best the priests could do was to instruct him to reduce his weight, take more exercise, and do no stressful mental work.
    “Quacks, if you ask me,” said Marius scornfully, having given the god a costly bejeweled golden goblet as thanks.
    “Sensible men, if you ask me,” said Julia, eyes fixed upon his expanding waistline.
    It was therefore October before they sailed from the Piraeus in a large ship which plied a regular route between Greece and Ephesus. But hilly Ephesus hadn’t pleased Gaius Marius, who huffed and puffed across its cobbles, and very quickly procured his family room on a ship sailing south to Halicarnassus.
    Here, in perhaps the most beautiful of all the Aegean port cities of the Roman Asia Province, Marius settled down for the winter in a hired villa, well staffed, and equipped with a heated bath of seawater; for though the sun shone for much of the time, it was too cold to bathe. The mighty walls, the towers and the fortresses, the imposing public buildings all made it seem both safe and rather Roman, though Rome did not own a structure as wonderful as the Mausoleum, the tomb his sister-wife Artemisia had erected, inconsolable in her grief, after King Mausolus died.
    Late the following spring, the pilgrimage to Pessinus got under way, not without protest from Julia and Young Marius, who wanted to stay on the sea for the summer; that they lost the battle was a foregone conclusion. From invaders to pilgrims, everyone followed the route along the valley of the Maeander River between coastal Asia Minor and central Anatolia. As did Marius and his family, marveling at the prosperity and the sophistication of the various