Fortune's Favorites by Colleen McCullough

one man to conciliate: Sulla. Titus Pomponius had seen this immediately, and gone to Athens with his huge fortune intact. Educated, urbane, something of a literary dilettante, personally charming, and just a trifle too fond of little boys, Titus Pomponius had soon come to an understanding with Sulla; but finding that he adored the atmosphere and style of life in Athens, he had chosen to remain there, given himself the cognomen of Atticus–Man of Athens.
    Crassus was not so sure of himself, and had not seen that Sulla was his only alternative until much later than Atticus.
    Circumstances had conspired to leave Marcus Licinius Crassus head of his family-and impoverished. The only money left belonged to Axia, the widow not only of his eldest brother, but also the widow of his middle brother. The size of her dowry had not been her sole attraction; she was pretty, vivacious, kindhearted and loving. Like Crassus's mother, Vinuleia, she was a Sabine from Reate, and fairly closely related to Vinuleia at that. Her wealth came from the rosea rura, best pasture in all of Italy and breeding ground of fabulous stud donkeys which sold for enormous sums-sixty thousand sesterces was not an uncommon price for one such beast, potential sire of many sturdy army mules.
    When Axia's husband, the eldest Crassus son, Publius, was killed outside Grumentum during the Italian War, she was left a widow-and pregnant. In that tightly knit and frugal family, there seemed only one answer; after her ten months of mourning were over, Axia married Lucius, the second Crassus son. By whom she had no children. When he was murdered by Fimbria in the street outside his door, she was widowed again. As was Vinuleia, for Crassus the father, seeing his son cut down and knowing what his fate would be, killed himself on the spot.
    At the time Marcus, the youngest Crassus son, was twenty-nine years old, the one whom his father (consul and censor in his day) had elected to keep at home in order to safeguard his name and bloodline. All the Crassus property was confiscated, including Vinuleia's. But Axia's family stood on excellent terms with Cinna, so her dowry wasn't touched. And when her second ten-month period of mourning was over, Marcus Licinius Crassus married her and took her little son, his nephew Publius, as his own. Three times married to each of three brothers, Axia was known ever after as Tertulla- Little Three. The change in her name was her own suggestion; Axia had a harsh un-Latin ring to it, whereas Tertulla tripped off the tongue.
    The glorious scheme Crassus and Atticus had concocted-which would have been a resounding success had Sulla not done the unexpected regarding the finances of Asia Province-shattered just as Crassus was beginning to see the family wealth increase again. And caused him to flee with a pittance in his purse, all his hopes destroyed. Behind him he left two women without a male protector, his mother and his wife. Tertulla bore his own son, Marcus, two months after he had gone.
    But where to go? Spain, decided Crassus. In Spain lay a relic of past Crassus wealth. Years before, Crassus's father had sailed to the Tin Isles, the Cassiterides, and negotiated an exclusive contract for himself to convey tin from the Cassiterides across northern Spain to the shores of the Middle Sea. Civil war in Italy had destroyed that, but Crassus had nothing left to lose; he fled to Nearer Spain, where a client of his father's, one Vibius Paecianus, hid him in a cave until Crassus was sure that the consequences of his fiscal philandering were not going to follow him as far as Spain. He then emerged and began to knit his tin monopoly together again, after which he acquired some interests in the silver-lead mines of southern Spain.
    All very well, but these activities could only prosper if the financial institutions and trading companies of Rome were made available to him again. Which meant he needed an ally more powerful than anyone he knew personally: he