Free The First Man in Rome by Colleen McCullough Page B

Quintus Caecilius Metellus, for it happened to be his birthday; he turned eighteen. And the Terrible Trio thought it a great joke to throw the birthday boy into a pigsty.
    He came out of the muck sober, spitting mad—and spitting spite. "You—you pathetic upstarts! Who do you think you are? Well, let me tell you! You're nothing but a greasy foreigner, Jugurtha! Not fit to lick a Roman's boots! And you're a jumped-up favor currier, Rutilius! As for you, Gaius Marius, you're nothing more than an Italian hayseed with no Greek! How dare you! How dare you! Don't you appreciate who I am? Don't you understand who my family is? I am a Caecilius Metellus, and we were kings in Etruria before Rome was ever thought of! For months I've suffered your insults, but no more! Treating me like an underling, as if I were the inferior! How dare you! How dare you!"
    Jugurtha and Rutilius Rufus and Gaius Marius hung rocking gently on the pigsty fence, blinking like owls, faces slack. Then Publius Rutilius Rufus, who was that rare individual capable of scholarship as profound as his soldiering was practical, put a leg over the top of the fence and managed to balance himself astride it, a huge smile growing.
    "Don't mistake me, I really do appreciate everything you're saying, Quintus Caecilius," he said, "but the trouble is that you've got a big fat pig turd on your head instead of a crown, O King of Etruria!" Out came a giggle. "Go and have a bath, then tell us again. We'll probably manage not to laugh."
    Metellus reached up and brushed his head furiously, too enraged to take sensible advice, especially when it was tendered with such a smile. "Rutilius!" he spat. "What sort of name is that, to adorn the Senate rolls? Oscan nobodies, that's who you are! Peasants!"
    "Oh, come now!" said Rutilius Rufus gently. "My Etruscan is quite good enough to translate the meaning of 'Metellus' into Latin, you know." He twisted where he sat on the fence and looked at Jugurtha and Marius. "It means, freed from service as a mercenary," he said to them gravely.
    That was too much. Young Metellus launched himself at Rutilius Rufus and brought him crashing down into the aromatic mire, where the two of them rolled and wrestled and thumped without enough traction to harm each other until Jugurtha and Marius decided it looked good in there, and dived in after them. Howling with laughter, they sat in the mud amid the more impudent pigs, which in the manner of impudent pigs couldn't resist investigating them thoroughly. When the Terrible Trio stopped sitting on Metellus and rubbing muck all over him, he floundered to his feet and escaped.
    "You'll pay for this!" he said through his teeth.
    "Oh, pull your head in!" said Jugurtha, and broke into fresh paroxysms of mirth.

    But the wheel, thought Gaius Marius as he climbed out of his bath and picked up a towel to dry himself, turns full circle no matter what we do. Spite from the mouth of a half-grown sprig of a most noble house was no less true for being spiteful. Who were they in actual fact, the Terrible Trio of Numantia? Why, they were a greasy foreigner, a jumped-up favor currier, and an Italian hayseed with no Greek. That's who they were. Rome had taught them the truth of it, all right.
    Jugurtha should have been acknowledged King of Numidia years ago, brought firmly yet kindly into the Roman fold of client-kings, kept there with sound advice and fair dealing. Instead, he had suffered the implacable enmity of the entire Caecilius Metellus faction, and was currently in Rome with his back against the wall, fighting a last-ditch stand against a group of Numidian would-be kings, forced to buy what his worth and his ability ought to have earned him free and aboveboard.
    And dear little sandy-headed Publius Rutilius Rufus, the favorite pupil of Panaetius the philosopher, admired by the whole of the Scipionic Circle—writer, soldier, wit, politician of extraordinary excellence—had been cheated of his consulship in the same