Free The Grass Crown by Colleen McCullough

whole world was there to serve his ends, that he understand the world contained many destructive people.
    Yet—how ridiculous, such heart searchings on behalf of a baby! Just because the mental processes were huge did not mean the experience matched it. For the moment, Young Caesar was simply a sponge soaking up whatever he found fluid enough to sink in, and what was not fluid enough, he proceeded to squeeze and pound to make it so. There were weaknesses and flaws, but his mother did not know whether they were permanent, or merely the passing phases of an enormous learning process. He was—for instance—utterly charming, and knew it, and played upon it, and bent people to his will. As he did with his Aunt Julia, peculiarly prone to fall for his ploys.
    She didn’t want to raise a boy who relied upon such dark techniques as charm. Aurelia herself had no charm at all and despised those who had it, for she had seen how easily they got what they wanted, and how little they valued it once they had it. Charm was the mark of a lightweight, not a leader of men. Young Caesar would have to abandon it, for it would do him no good with those men and in those areas where seriousness and all the proper Roman virtues mattered most. He was also very pretty—another undesirable quality. Only how could one iron beauty out of a face, especially when both his parents had plenty of it?
    As a result of all this worry nothing but time would answer, she had got into the habit of being hard on the little boy, of finding far less excuse for his mistakes than for the transgressions of his sisters, of rubbing salt into his wounds instead of balm, of being very quick to criticize or scold him. As everyone else he knew tended to make much of him, and his sisters and cousins downright spoiled him, his mother felt someone had to play the role of Nasty Stepsister. If it had to be her, his mother, so be it. Cornelia the Mother of the Gracchi would not have hesitated.
     
    The finding of a pedagogue suitable to take charge of a child who ought by rights to have been in the hands of women for years to come was not a task to daunt Aurelia, but rather, just the sort of thing she enjoyed. Sulla’s wife Aelia had advised strongly against buying a slave pedagogue, which did make Aurelia’s task harder. Not caring much for Sextus Caesar’s wife, Claudia, she did not think of going there for advice. Had Julia’s son been in the care of a pedagogue she would certainly have gone to Julia, but Young Marius, an only child, went to school so that he could enjoy the companionship of boys his own age. As, indeed, had been Aurelia’s intention with Young Caesar when the time came; she now realized the school alternative was out of the question. Her son would have oscillated between being everyone’s butt and everyone’s idol, and neither state would be good for him.
    So Aurelia went to her mother, Rutilia, and her mother’s only brother, Publius Rutilius Rufus. Many times had Uncle Publius been of help to her, even including the subject of her marriage; for it had been he, when the list of her suitors became dauntingly long and august, who had advocated that she be allowed to marry whomsoever she liked. In that way, he had explained, only Aurelia could be blamed for choosing the wrong husband, and perhaps future enmity for her younger brothers could be avoided.
    She packed all three of her children off upstairs to the Jewish floor, their favorite asylum in that crowded, noisy home of theirs, and betook herself to her stepfather’s house in a litter, accompanied by her Arvernian Gallic maid, Cardixa. Naturally Lucius Decumius and some of his followers would be waiting for her when she emerged from Cotta’s house on the Palatine; it would then be coming on for darkness, and the Suburan predators would be prowling.
    So successfully had Aurelia’s secretiveness hidden her son’s extraordinary talents that she found it difficult to convince Cotta, Rutilia and