Free The First Man in Rome by Colleen McCullough Page A

on, he nonetheless managed to serve continuously in the ranks of the most junior officers of the consul's legions until, aged twenty-three, he was posted to the personal staff of Scipio Aemilianus before Numantia, in Spain.
    It hadn't taken him long to befriend Publius Rutilius Rufus and Prince Jugurtha of Numidia, for they were all the same age, and all stood very high in the esteem of Scipio Aemilianus, who called them the Terrible Trio. None of the three was from the highest circles of Rome. Jugurtha was a complete outsider, Publius Rutilius Rufus's family hadn't been in the Senate more than a hundred years and had not so far managed to reach the consulship, and Gaius Marius was from a family of country squires. At this time, of course, none of the three was a bit interested in Roman politics; all they cared about was soldiering.
    But Gaius Marius was a very special case. He was born to be a soldier, but more than that; he was born to lead soldiers.
    "He just knows what to do and how to do it," said Scipio Aemilianus, with a sigh that might perhaps have been envy. Not that Scipio Aemilianus didn't know what to do and how to do it, but he had been listening to generals talk in the dining room since his early boyhood, and only he really knew the degree of innate spontaneity his own soldiering contained. Very little, was the truth. Scipio Aemilianus's great talent lay in his organization, not in his soldiering. He believed that if a campaign was thoroughly thrashed out in the planning room even before the first legionary was enlisted, soldiering had not much to do with the outcome.
    Where Gaius Marius was a natural. At seventeen he had still been rather small and thin; a picky eater and a crochety child always, he had been pampered by his mother and secretly despised by his father. Then he lashed on his first pair of military boots and buckled the plates of a good plain bronze cuirass over his stout leather underdress. And grew in mind and body until he was bigger than everyone else physically, intellectually, in strength and courage and independence. At which point his mother began to reject him and his father swelled with pride in him.
    In Gaius Marius's opinion there was no life like it, to be an integral part of the greatest military machine the world had ever known—the Roman legion. No route march was too arduous, no lesson in swordplay too long or too vicious, no humiliating task humiliating enough to stem the rising tide of his huge enthusiasm. He didn't care what they gave him to do, as long as he was soldiering.
    It was at Numantia too that he met a seventeen-year-old cadet who had come from Rome to join Scipio Aemilianus's own select little band at Scipio Aemilianus's express request. This lad was Quintus Caecilius Metellus, the younger brother of that Caecilius Metellus who would, after a campaign against the tribesmen of the Dalmatian hills of Illyricum, adopt the last name of Dalmaticus and get himself appointed Pontifex Maximus, highest priest in the State religion.
    Young Metellus was a typical Caecilius Metellus: a plodder, with no spark or flair for the work on hand, yet determined to do it and unshakably convinced he could do it superbly well. Though loyalty to his class prevented Scipio Aemilianus's saying so, perhaps the seventeen-year-old expert at everything irritated him, for not long after young Metellus arrived at Spanish Numantia, Scipio Aemilianus handed him over to the tender mercies of the Terrible Trio—Jugurtha, Rutilius Rufus, and Marius. Not old enough themselves to feel pity, they were as resentful as they were displeased at being given this self-opinionated millstone. And they took it out on young Metellus, not cruelly, just toughly.
    While Numantia held out and Scipio Aemilianus was busy, the lad put up with his lot. Then Numantia fell. Was torn down, extirpated. And everyone from highest officer to merest ranker soldier was allowed to get drunk. The Terrible Trio got drunk. So did young