Note: Set about nine years prior to the assassination; Marcus Crassus, together with Julius Caesar and Pompey the Great, was a member of the First Triumvirate. And yes, togas can really be this difficult to put on.
The campaign has been a mess, as Cassius had said it would be. Crassus had insisted on going, though, and insisted on going his way (or, rather, the way of that damned double-crosser, Ariamnes), and that had been a disaster of prodigious proportions: near the city of Carrhae, Crassus' army was defeated, most of their eagle standards lost, Crassus himself killed, and the whole fiasco mitigated only slightly by the fact that Cassius and the soldiers that had marched away with him shortly before the final battle - a bare quarter of their original force - were still alive.
Mitigated rather significantly, actually, in Cassius' mind, although he was thinking on a larger scale, now that the governance of Syria lay directly upon him. It was a great opportunity, really, for gaining quite a number of things: military prestige, to be achieved by some form of revenge upon Parthians; ties of friendship and obligation among the Syrians, useful, surely, in some future chance; civic esteem back in Rome, for de-facto governorship was a nice step up for a quaestor; and personal enrichment, which required careful toeing of the fine line between customary depredations - frowned upon, perhaps, but winked at - and excessive liberties such as warranted a trip through the extortion courts.
There was a downside to statesmanship, however, and after months in the field, Cassius found the greatest drawback to be the donning and wearing of a toga. It was absurd - really, it was - that he should have such difficulty with a garment he had worn, occasionally, at least, for some thirty years now. And yet, here he was, with two slaves helping to dress him, and precious little dressing to show for all their efforts. The slaves could not get the drapes of fabric even once around Cassius' body before he felt some corner of the garment threatening to slip back off, and instinctively Cassius would make a wild dive for it, flailing desperately after the renegade fabric, inevitably spinning himself back out of the toga in the process, and coming up with only a futile handful of wool for all his pains, and nothing left covering himself save his tunic - which at least had the decency to stay just where it was put.
They had been through the whole routine half a dozen times, and Cassius, with the last pretense of dignity spun away two or three turns ago and irritation long since having passed into despair, was ready to collapse upon the floor and give it all up as a lost cause, the toga his own private Carrhae. Just then, however, another slave entered to report that the petitioners who had already begun to congregate outside were now being shown into the atrium. Cassius considered carefully what he stood to loose (his toga) and what to gain (local ties, civic esteem and the rest of it), and resolved to see his duties through - public and sartorial.
It was another two attempts before Cassius at last stood fully and properly wrapped in the pernicious attire. The placement of the drapes still felt very unstable, but for today, at least, perhaps Cassius could seat himself in his tablinum and do all his business from there, not once moving from his chair until the evening, when the last petitioner would finally be seen out. And maybe Cassius would try to get an augur to declare the next day or six as unfavourable for conducting business so he could address himself to the grim necessity of becoming reacquainted with the toga
