Fortune's Favorites by Colleen McCullough Page A

needed Sulla. But in order to woo Sulla (since he lacked the charm and the erudition possessed so plentifully by Titus Pomponius Atticus) he would have to bring Sulla a gift. And the only gift he could possibly offer was an army. This he raised among his father's old clients; a mere five cohorts, but five well-trained and well-equipped cohorts.
    His first port of call after he left Spain was Utica, in Africa Province, where he had heard Quintus Caecilius Metellus Pius, he whom Gaius Marius had called the Piglet, was still trying to hold on to his position as governor. He arrived early in the summer of the previous year, only to find that the Piglet-a pillar of Roman rectitude-was not amused by his commercial activities. Leaving the Piglet to make his own dispositions when his government fell, Crassus went on to Greece, and Sulla, who had accepted his gift of five Spanish cohorts, then proceeded to treat him coldly. :
    Now he sat with his small grey eyes fixed painfully upon Sulla, waiting for the slightest sign of approval, and obviously most put out to see Sulla interested only in Pompey. The cognomen of Crassus had been in the Famous Family of Licinius for many generations, but they still managed to breed true to it, Varro noted; it meant thickset (or perhaps, in the case of the first Licinius to be called Crassus, it might have meant intellectually dense?). Taller by far than he looked, Crassus was built on the massive lines of an ox, and had some of that animal's impassive placidity in his rather expressionless face.
    Varro gave the assembled men a final glance, and sighed. Yes, he had been right to spend most of his thoughts upon Crassus. They were all ambitious, most of them were probably capable, some of them were as ruthless as they were amoral, but-leaving Pompey and Sulla out of it, of course-Marcus Crassus was the man to watch in the future.
    Walking back to their own house alongside a completely sober Pompey, Varro found himself very glad that he had yielded to Pompey's exhortations and attached himself at first hand to this coming campaign.
    “What did you and Sulla talk about?” he asked.
    “Nothing earthshaking,” said Pompey.
    “You kept your voices low enough.”
    “Yes, didn't we?” Varro felt rather than saw Pompey's grin. “He's no fool, Sulla, even if he isn't the man he used to be. If the rest of that sulky assemblage couldn't hear what we said, how do they know we didn't talk about them?”
    “Did Sulla agree to be your partner in this enterprise?”
    “I got to keep command of my own legions, which is all I wanted. He knows I haven't given them to him, even on loan.”
    “Was it discussed openly?”
    “I told you, the man is no fool,” said Pompey laconically. “Nothing much was said. That way, there is no agreement between us, and he is not bound.”
    “You're content with that?”
    “Of course! He also knows he needs me,” said Pompey.
    Sulla was up by dawn the next morning, and an hour later had his army on the march in the direction of Capua. By now he had accustomed himself to spurts of activity that coincided with the state of his face, for the itching was not perpetually there; rather, it tended to be cyclic. Having just emerged from a bout and its concomitant intake of wine, he knew that for some days he would have a little peace-provided he did absolutely nothing to trigger another cycle. This required a rigid policing of his hands, which could not be permitted to touch his face for any reason. Not until a man found himself in this predicament did he understand how many times his hands would go to his face without volition, without any awareness. And here he was with the weeping vesicles growing harder as they struggled to heal, and all the tickles, tingles, tiny movements of the skin that healing process involved. It was easiest on the first day, which was today, but as the days went on he would tend to forget, would reach up to scratch a perfectly natural itch of nose or