Dictator

III

That Cicero did not recognise his only daughter was less peculiar than it may seem. She had changed greatly in the time we had been away. Her face and arms, once plump and girlish, were thin and pale; her fair hair was covered by the dark headdress of mourning. The day of our arrival was her twentieth birthday, although I am ashamed to say that I had forgotten it and so had failed to remind Cicero.

His first act on stepping down from the gangplank was to kneel and kiss the soil. Only after this patriotic act had been loudly cheered did he look up and notice his daughter watching him in her widow’s weeds. He stared at her and burst into tears, for he truly loved her, and he had loved her husband too, and now he saw by the colour and style of her dress that he was dead.

He enfolded her in his arms, to the crowd’s delight, and after a long embrace took a step back to examine her. ‘My dearest child, you cannot imagine how much I have yearned for this moment.’ Still holding her hands, he switched his gaze to the faces behind her and scanned them eagerly. ‘Is you mother here, and Marcus?’

‘No, Papa, they’re in Rome.’

This was hardly surprising – in those days it was an arduous journey, especially for a woman, of two or three weeks from Rome to Brundisium, with a serious risk of robbery in the remoter stretches; if anything, the surprise was that Tullia had come, and come alone at that. But Cicero’s disappointment was obvious although he tried to hide it.

‘Well, it’s no matter – no matter at all. I have you, and that’s the main thing.’

‘And I have you – and on my birthday.’

‘It’s your birthday?’ He gave me a reproachful look. ‘I almost forgot. Of course it is. We shall celebrate tonight!’ And he took her by the arm and led her away from the harbour.

Because we did not yet know for certain that his exile had been repealed, it was decided that we should not set off for Rome until we had official confirmation, and once again Laenius Flaccus volunteered to put us up at his estate outside Brundisium. Armed men were stationed around the perimeter for Cicero’s protection, and he spent much of the next few days with Tullia, strolling through the gardens and along the beach, learning at first hand how difficult her life had been during his exile – how, for example, her husband, Frugi, had been set upon by Clodius’s henchmen when he was trying to speak on Cicero’s behalf, stripped naked and pelted with filth and driven from the Forum, and how his heart had ceased to beat properly afterwards until, a few months later, he died in her arms; how, because she was childless, she had been left with nothing except a few pieces of jewellery and her returned dowry, which she had given to Terentia to help pay off the family’s debts; how Terentia had been obliged to sell a large part of her own property, and had even steeled herself to plead with Clodius’s sister to intercede with her brother to grant her and her children some mercy, and how Clodia had mocked her and boasted that Cicero had tried to have an affair with her; how families they had always thought of as friends had closed their doors on them in fear; and so on and so forth.

Cicero told me all this sadly one night after Tullia had gone to bed. ‘Little wonder Terentia isn’t here. It seems she avoids going out in public as much as she can and prefers to stay cooped up in my brother’s house. As for Tullia, we need to find her a new husband as soon as possible, while she’s still young enough to give a man some children safely.’ He rubbed his temples, as he always did at times of stress. ‘I’d thought that coming back to Italy would mark the end of my troubles. Now I see it is merely the beginning.’

It was on our sixth day as Flaccus’s guests that a messenger arrived from Quintus with the news that despite a last-minute demonstration by Clodius and his mob, the centuries had voted unanimously to restore to Cicero his full rights of citizenship, and that he was accordingly a free man once more. Oddly, the news did not seem to give him much joy, and when I remarked on his indifference he replied: ‘Why should I rejoice? I have merely had returned to me something that should never have been taken away in the first place. Otherwise, I am weaker than I was before.’

We began our journey to Rome the next day. By then the news of his rehabilitation had spread among the people of Brundisium, and a crowd of several hundred had gathered outside the gates of the villa to see him off. He got down from the carriage he was sharing with Tullia, greeted each well-wisher with a handshake, made a short speech, and then we resumed our journey. But we had not gone more than five miles when we encountered another large group at the next settlement, also clamouring for the opportunity to shake his hand. Once again he obliged. And so it went on throughout that day, and the days that followed, always the same, except that the crowds grew steadily larger as word preceded us that Cicero would be passing through. Soon people were coming from miles around, even walking down from the mountains to stand by the roadside. By the time we reached Beneventum, the numbers were in their thousands; in Capua, the streets were entirely blocked.

To begin with, Cicero was touched by these unfeigned demonstrations of affection, then delighted, then amazed, and finally thoughtful. Was there some means, he wondered, of turning this astonishing popularity among the ordinary citizens of Italy into political influence in Rome? But popularity and power, as he well knew, are separate entities. Often the most powerful men in a state can pass down a street unrecognised, while the most famous bask in feted impotence.

This was brought home to us soon after we left Campania, when Cicero decided we should call in at Formiae and inspect his villa on the seashore. He knew from Terentia and Atticus that it had been attacked, and was braced to find a ruin. In fact, when we turned off the Via Appia and entered the grounds, the shuttered property appeared perfectly intact, albeit the Greek statuary had gone. The garden was neatly tended. Peacocks still strutted between the trees and we could hear the distant motion of the sea. As the carriage halted and Cicero climbed out, members of the household began to materialise from various parts of the property, as if they had been in hiding. Seeing their master again, they flung themselves to the ground, crying with relief. But when he began to move towards the front door, several tried to block his path, pleading with him not to go inside. He gestured to them to move out of the way and ordered the door to be unlocked.

The first shock to confront us was the smell – of smoke and damp and human waste. And then there was the sound – empty and echoing, broken only by the crunch of plaster and pottery beneath our feet, and the cooing of the pigeons in rafters. As the shutters started to come down, the summer afternoon sunlight revealed a vista of room after room stripped bare. Tullia put her hand to her mouth in horror and Cicero gently told her to go and wait in the carriage. We moved on into the interior. All the furniture was gone, all the pictures, the fixtures. Here and there sections of the ceilings were hanging down; even the mosaic floors had been prised up and carted away; weeds grew out of bare earth amid the bird shit and human faeces. The walls were scorched where fires had been lit, and covered with the most obscene drawings and graffiti, all executed in dripping red paint.

In the dining room a rat scuttled along the side of the wall and squeezed itself down a hole. Cicero watched it disappear with a look of infinite disgust on his face. Then he marched out of the house, clambered back into his carriage, and ordered the driver to rejoin the Via Appia. He did not speak for at least an hour.

Two days later we reached Bovillae, on the outskirts of Rome.

We woke the next morning to find yet another crowd waiting to escort us into the city. As we stepped out into the heat of that summer morning, I was apprehensive: the state of the villa at Formiae had unnerved me. It was also the eve of the Roman Games, a public holiday. The streets would be packed, and reports had already reached of us of a shortage of bread that had led to rioting. I was sure Clodius would use the pretext of the disorder to attempt some kind of ambush. But Cicero was calm. He believed the people would protect him. He asked for the roof to be removed from the carriage, and with Tullia holding a parasol seated beside him, and me stationed up on the bench next to the driver, we set off.

I do not exaggerate when I say that every yard of the Via Appia was lined with citizens and that for nearly two hours we were borne northwards on a wave of continuous applause. Where the road passes over the River Almo, by the Temple of the Great Mother, the crowd was three or four deep. Further on, they occupied the steps of the Temple of Mars so densely it resembled a stand at the games. And just outside the city walls, along that stretch where the aqueduct runs beside the highway, young men were perched precariously on the tops of the arches, or clinging to the palm trees. They waved, and Cicero waved back. The din and the heat and the dust were terrific. Eventually we were forced to a halt just outside the Capena Gate, where the press of humanity was simply too great for us to go on.

I jumped down with the intention of opening the door, and tried to push my way round to the side of the carriage. But a surge of people, desperate to get closer to Cicero, pinned me against it so hard I could neither move nor breathe. The carriage shifted and threatened to topple, and I do believe that Cicero might have been killed by an excess of love just ten paces short of Rome, had not his brother Quintus appeared at that moment from the recesses of the gate along with a dozen attendants who pushed the crowd back and cleared a space for Cicero to descend.

It was four years since the two had last met, and Quintus no longer appeared the younger brother. His nose had been broken during the fighting in the Forum. He was obviously drinking too much. He looked like a beaten-down old boxer. He held out his arms to Cicero and they locked hold of one another, unable to speak for emotion, tears pouring down their cheeks, each silently pounding the back of the other.

When they separated, Quintus told him what he had arranged, and then we entered the city on foot, Cicero and Quintus walking hand in hand, with Tullia and me behind them, a file of attendants on either side. Quintus, who used to be Cicero’s campaign manager, had devised the route in order to show off his brother to as many supporters as possible. We passed the Circus Maximus, its flags already flying in anticipation of the games, and as we progressed slowly along the crowded valley between the Palatine and the Caelian hills, it seemed as if everyone Cicero had ever represented in the law courts, or helped out with a favour, or even just shaken hands with at election time had come out to bid him welcome. Even so, I noticed that not all were cheering, and that here and there small groups of sullen plebeians scowled at us or turned their backs, especially as we drew close to the Temple of Castor, where Clodius had his headquarters. Fresh slogans had been daubed across it, in the same angry red paint that had been used at Formiae: M. CICERO STEALS THE PEOPLE’S BREAD; WHEN THE PEOPLE ARE HUNGRY THEY KNOW WHO TO BLAME. One man spat at us. Another slyly drew back the folds of his tunic to show me his knife. Cicero affected not to notice.

A crowd of several thousand cheered us all the way across the Forum and up the Capitoline steps to the Temple of Jupiter, where a fine white bull was waiting to be sacrificed. At every moment I feared an assault, despite my reason telling me it would have been suicidal: any attacker would have been torn apart by Cicero’s supporters, even assuming he could have got close enough to strike a blow. Nevertheless, I would have preferred it if we could have got into a place with walls and a door. But that was impossible: on this day Cicero belonged to Rome. First we had to listen to the priests recite their prayers, then Cicero had to cover his head and step forward to deliver his ritual thanks to the gods, and stand and watch while the beast was killed and its entrails examined until the auspices were pronounced propitious. Then he entered the temple and laid offerings at the feet of a small statue of Minerva he had placed there before his exile. Finally, when he emerged, he was surrounded by many of those senators who had campaigned hardest for his restoration – Sestius, Cestilius, Curtius, the Cispius brothers and the rest, led by the senior consul, Lentulus Spinther – each of whom had to be thanked individually. Many were the tears shed and the kisses exchanged, and it must have been well after noon before he was able to start walking home, and even then Spinther and the others insisted on accompanying him; Tullia, unnoticed by any of us, had already gone on ahead.

‘Home’ of course was no longer his own fine mansion on the slopes of the Palatine: looking up, I could see that it had been entirely demolished to make room for Clodius’s shrine to Liberty. Instead we were to be lodged just below it, in the house of Quintus, where we would live until such time as Cicero could get the site restored to him and begin rebuilding. This street, too, was packed with well-wishers, and Cicero had to struggle to reach the threshold. Beyond it, in the shade of the courtyard, waited his wife and children.

I knew, because he had so often spoken of it, how much Cicero had looked forward to this moment. And yet there was an awkwardness to it that made me want to hide my face. Terentia, decked out in her finery, had plainly been waiting for him for several hours, and in the interim little Marcus had grown bored and fretful. ‘So, husband,’ she said, with a thin smile, tugging savagely at the boy to make him stand up properly, ‘you are home at last! Go and greet your father,’ she instructed Marcus, and pushed him forwards, but immediately he darted around her and hid behind her skirts. Cicero stopped some distance short, his arms outstretched to the boy, uncertain how to respond, and in the end the situation was only retrieved by Tullia, who ran to her father, kissed him, led him over to her mother and gently pressed her parents together, and in this way at last the family was reunited.

Quintus’s villa was large, but not sufficiently spacious to accommodate two full households in any comfort, and from that first day there was friction. Out of respect for his brother’s superior age and rank, Quintus, with typical generosity, had insisted that Cicero and Terentia should take over the master’s quarters, which he usually shared with his wife, Pomponia, the sister of Atticus. It was clear she had objected bitterly to this, and could barely bring herself to give Cicero a civil greeting.

It is not my intention to dwell on personal gossip: such matters fall beneath the dignity of my subject. Nevertheless, I cannot give a proper account of Cicero’s life without mentioning what happened, for this was when his domestic unhappiness really started, and it was to have an effect upon his political career.

He and Terentia had been married for more than twenty years. They had often argued. But underlying their disputes was a mutual respect. She was a woman of independent wealth: that was why he had married her; it was certainly not for her looks or the sweetness of her temper. It was Terentia’s fortune that had enabled him to enter the Senate. In return, his success had increased her social standing. Now the disaster of his fall had exposed the inherent weaknesses of this partnership. Not only had she been obliged to sell a good part of her property in order to protect the family in his absence, she had been reviled and insulted and reduced to lodging with her in-laws – a family she snobbishly considered far beneath her own. Yes, Cicero was alive and he was back in Rome and I am sure she was glad for that. But she made no secret of her view that his days of political power were over, even if he – still floating on the clouds of popular adulation – had failed to grasp the fact.

I was not asked to dine with the family that first evening, and given the tensions between them, I cannot say I minded especially. I was, however, dismayed to find that I had been given a bed in the slaves’ quarters in the cellar, sharing a cubicle with Terentia’s steward, Philotimus. He was an oily, avaricious creature of middle age: we had never liked one another, and I should guess he was no happier to see me than I him. Still, his love of money at least made him a diligent manager of Terentia’s business affairs, and it must have pained him to see her fortune depleted month after month. The bitterness with which he assailed Cicero for placing her in this situation infuriated me, and after a while I told him curtly to shut his mouth and show some respect, or I would make sure the master gave him a whipping. Later, as I lay awake listening to his snores, I wondered how many of the complaints I had just heard were his, and how many he was merely repeating from the lips of his mistress.

The next day, because of my restlessness, I overslept and woke in a panic. Cicero was due to attend the Senate that morning to express his formal thanks for their support. Normally he learnt his speeches by heart and delivered them without a note. But it was so long since he had spoken in public he feared he might stumble over his words, therefore this oration had had to be dictated and written out during the journey from Brundisium. I took it from my dispatch box, checked I had the full text, and hurried upstairs, at the same time as Quintus’s secretary, Statius, was showing two visitors into the tablinum. One was Milo, the tribune who had visited us in Thessalonica; the other was Lucius Afranius, Pompey’s principal lieutenant, who had been consul two years after Cicero.

Statius said to me, ‘These gentlemen wish to see your master.’

‘I’ll see if he’s available.’

At which Afranius remarked, in a tone I didn’t much care for, ‘He’d better be available!’

I went at once to the principal bedroom. The door was closed. Terentia’s maid put her finger to her lips and told me Cicero wasn’t there. Instead she directed me along the passage to the dressing room, where I found him being helped into his toga by his valet. As I was describing who had come to see him, I noticed over his shoulder a small makeshift bed. He caught my glance and muttered, ‘Something’s wrong but she won’t tell me what it is,’ and then, perhaps regretting his candour, brusquely ordered me to go and fetch Quintus so that he too could hear what his visitors had come to say.

At first the meeting was friendly. Afranius announced that he brought with him the warmest regards of Pompey the Great, who hoped soon to welcome Cicero back to Rome in person. Cicero thanked him for the message and thanked Milo for all that he had done to bring about his recall. He described the enthusiasm of his reception in the countryside and of the crowds that had turned out to see him in Rome the previous day: ‘I feel it is a whole new life that I am beginning. I hope Pompey will be in the Senate to hear me praise him with such poor eloquence as I can muster.’

‘Pompey won’t be attending the Senate,’ Afranius said bluntly.

‘I’m sorry to hear it.’

‘He doesn’t feel it appropriate, in view of the new law that is to be proposed.’ Whereupon he opened a small bag and handed over a draft bill, which Cicero read with evident surprise and then gave to Quintus, who eventually handed it to me.

Whereas the people of Rome are being denied access to a sufficient supply of grain; and to the extent that this constitutes a grave threat to the well-being and security of the state; and mindful of the principle that all Roman citizens are entitled to the equivalent of at least one free loaf of bread per day – it is hereby ordained that Pompey the Great shall be granted the power as Commissioner of Grain to purchase, seize or similarly obtain throughout the entire world enough grain to secure a plentiful supply for the city; that this power should be his for a term of five years; and that to assist him in this task he shall have the right to appoint fifteen lieutenant commissioners of grain to carry out such duties as he directs.

Afranius said, ‘Naturally, Pompey would like you to have the honour of proposing the legislation when you address the Senate today.’

Milo said, ‘It’s a cunning stroke, you must agree. Having retaken the streets from Clodius, we shall now remove his ability to buy votes with bread.’

‘Is the shortage really so serious it demands an emergency law?’ asked Cicero. He turned to Quintus.

Quintus said, ‘It’s true, there’s little bread to be had, and what there is has risen to an extortionate price.’

‘Even so, these are astonishing, unprecedented powers over the nation’s food supply to bestow upon one man. I’d really need to find out more about the situation before I offered an opinion, I’m afraid.’

He tried to hand the draft bill back to Afranius, who refused to take it. He folded his arms and glared at Cicero. ‘I must say, we expected a little more gratitude than that – after all we’ve done for you.’

‘It goes without saying,’ added Milo, ‘that you’d be one of the fifteen lieutenant commissioners.’ And he rubbed his finger and thumb together to indicate the lucrative nature of the appointment.

The ensuing silence became uncomfortable. Eventually Afranius said, ‘Well, we’ll leave the draft with you, and when you address the Senate we’ll listen to your words with interest.’

After they had gone, it was Quintus who spoke first. ‘At least now we know their price.’

‘No,’ said Cicero gloomily, ‘this isn’t their price. This is merely the first instalment of their price – a loan that in their eyes will never be repaid, however much I give them.’

‘So what will you do?’

‘Well, it’s a devil’s alternative, is it not? Propose the bill, and everyone will say I’m Pompey’s creature; say nothing, and he’ll turn against me. Whatever I do, I lose.’

As was often the case, he had not decided which course to take even when we set off to attend the Senate. He always liked to take the temperature of the chamber before he spoke – to listen to its heartbeat like a doctor with a patient. Birria, the scarred gladiator who had accompanied Milo when he visited us in Macedonia, acted as a bodyguard, along with three of his comrades. In addition, I suppose there must have been twenty or thirty of Cicero’s clients, who served as a human shield; we felt quite safe. As we walked, Birria boasted to me of their strength: he said that Milo and Pompey had a hundred pairs of gladiators on standby in a barracks on the Field of Mars, ready to deploy at a moment’s notice if Clodius tried any of his tricks.

When we reached the Senate building, I handed Cicero the text of his speech. On entering he touched the ancient doorpost and looked around him at what he called ‘the greatest room in the world’ in thankful amazement that he should have lived to see it again. As he approached his customary position on the front bench nearest to the consuls’ dais, the neighbouring senators rose to shake his hand. It was an ill-attended house – not just Pompey was absent, I noticed, but also Clodius, and Marcus Crassus, whose pact with Pompey and Caesar was still the most powerful force in the republic. I wondered why they had stayed away.

The presiding consul that day was Metellus Nepos, the long-standing enemy of Cicero who was nevertheless now publicly reconciled with him – albeit only grudgingly and under pressure from the majority of the Senate. He made no acknowledgement of Cicero’s presence but instead rose to announce that a new dispatch had just arrived from Caesar in Further Gaul. The chamber fell silent and the senators listened intently as he read out Caesar’s account of yet more brutal encounters with savage and exotically named tribes – the Viromandui, the Atrebates and the Nervii – fought out amid those gloomy echoing forests and swollen impassable rivers. It was clear that Caesar had pushed much further north than any Roman commander before him, almost to the cold north sea, and again his victory was little short of an annihilation: of the sixty thousand men who had made up the army of the Nervii, he claimed to have left alive only five hundred. When Nepos had finished, the house seemed to let out its breath; only then did the consul call on Cicero to speak.

It was a difficult moment to make a speech, and in the event Cicero mostly restricted himself to a list of thanks. He thanked the consuls. He thanked the Senate. He thanked the people. He thanked the gods. He thanked his brother. He thanked just about everybody except Caesar, whom he did not mention. He thanked especially Pompey (‘whose courage, fame and achievements are unapproached in the records of any nation or any age’) and Milo (‘his whole tribunate was nothing but a firm, unceasing, brave and undaunted championship of my well-being’). But he did not raise either the grain shortage or the proposal to give Pompey extra powers, and as soon as he sat down, Afranius and Milo promptly got up from their places and left the building.

Afterwards, as we walked back to Quintus’s house, I noticed that Birria and his gladiators were no longer with us, which I thought was odd, for the danger had hardly gone away. There were a great many beggars among the streams of spectators milling around, and perhaps I was mistaken, but it seemed to me that the number of hostile looks and gestures Cicero attracted was substantially greater than before.

Once we were safely indoors, Cicero said, ‘I couldn’t do it. How could I take the lead in a controversy I know nothing about? Besides, it wasn’t the proper occasion to make a proposal of that sort. All anyone could talk about was Caesar, Caesar, Caesar. Perhaps now they’ll leave me alone for a while.’

The day was long and sunny, and Cicero spent much of it in the garden reading or throwing a ball for the family dog, a terrier named Myia, whose antics greatly delighted young Marcus and his nine-year-old cousin, Quintus Junior, the only child of Quintus and Pomponia. Marcus was a sweet, straightforward lad whereas Quintus, spoilt by his mother, had a streak of something nasty in him. But they played together happily enough. Occasionally the roar of the crowd in the Circus Maximus carried up from the valley on the other side of the hill – a hundred thousand voices crying out or groaning in unison: a sound at once exhilarating and frightening, like the growl of a tiger; it made the hairs tingle on my neck and arms. In the middle of the afternoon Quintus suggested that perhaps Cicero should go down to the Circus and show himself to the audience and watch at least one of the races. But Cicero preferred to stay where he was: ‘I am tired of exhibiting myself to strangers.’

Because the boys were reluctant to go to bed and Cicero, having been away so long, wished to indulge them, dinner was not served until late. This time, to Pomponia’s obvious irritation, he invited me to join them. She did not approve of slaves eating with their masters, and doubtless felt it was her prerogative, not her brother-in-law’s, to decide who should be present at her own table. In the event we were six: Cicero and Terentia on one couch, Quintus and Pomponia on another, Tullia and I on the third. Normally Pomponia’s brother, Atticus, would have joined us. He was Cicero’s closest friend. But a week before Cicero’s return he had abruptly left Rome for his estates in Epirus. He pleaded urgent business but I suspect he foresaw the looming family arguments. He always preferred a quiet life.

It was dusk and the slaves were just bringing in tapers to light the lamps and candles when from somewhere in the distance arose a cacophony of whistles, drums, horn blasts and chanting. At first we dismissed it as a passing procession connected with the games. But the noise seemed to come from directly outside the house, where it remained.

Finally Terentia said, ‘What on earth is that, do you suppose?’

‘You know,’ replied Cicero, in a tone of scholarly interest, ‘I wonder if it might not be a flagitatio. Now there’s a quaint custom! Tiro, would you take a look?’

I don’t suppose such a thing exists any more, but back in the days of the republic, when people were free to express themselves, a flagitatio was the right of citizens who had a grievance, but were too poor to use the courts, to demonstrate outside the house of the person they held responsible. Tonight the target was Cicero. I could hear his name mingled among their chants, and when I opened the door I got the message clear enough:

Whoreson Cicero where’s our bread?

Whoreson Cicero stole our bread!

A hundred people packed the narrow street, repeating the same phrases over and over, with occasional and saltier variations on the word ‘whoreson’. When they noticed me looking at them, a terrific jeer went up. I closed the door, bolted it and went back to the dining room to report.

Pomponia sat up in alarm. ‘But what shall we do?’

‘Nothing,’ said Cicero calmly. ‘They’re entitled to make their noise. Let them get it off their chests, and when they tire of it they’ll go away.’

Terentia asked, ‘But why are they accusing you of stealing their bread?’

Quintus said, ‘Clodius blames the lack of bread on the size of the crowds coming into Rome to support your husband.’

‘But the crowds aren’t here to support my husband – they’ve come to watch the games.’

‘Brutally honest, as always,’ agreed Cicero, ‘and even if they were here for me, the city has never to my knowledge run short of food on a festival day.’

‘So why has it happened now?’

‘I imagine someone has sabotaged the supply.’

‘Who would do that?’

‘Clodius, to blacken my name; or perhaps even Pompey, to give himself a pretext to take over distribution. In any case, there’s nothing we can do about it. So I suggest we eat our meal and ignore them.’

But although we tried to carry on as if nothing was happening, and even made jokes and laughed about it, our conversation was strained, and every time there was a lull, it was filled by the angry voices outside:

Cocksucker Cicero stole our bread!

Cocksucker Cicero ate our bread!

Eventually Pomponia said, ‘Will they go on like that all night?’

Cicero said, ‘Possibly.’

‘But this has always been a quiet and respectable street. Surely you can do something to stop them?’

‘Not really. It’s their right.’

‘Their right!’

‘I believe in the people’s rights, if you remember.’

‘Good for you. But how am I to sleep?’

Cicero’s patience finally gave in. ‘Why not put some wax in your ears, madam?’ he suggested, then added under his breath, ‘I’m sure I’d put some in mine if I were married to you.’

Quintus, who had drunk plenty, tried to stifle his laughter. Pomponia turned on him at once. ‘You’ll allow him to speak to me in that way?’

‘It was only a joke, my dear.’

Pomponia put down her napkin, rose with dignity from her couch and announced that she would go and check on the boys. Terentia, after a sharp look at Cicero, said that she would join her. She beckoned to Tullia to follow.

When the women had gone, Cicero said to Quintus, ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have spoken in that way. I’ll go and find her and apologise. Besides, she’s right: I’ve brought trouble on your house. We’ll move out in the morning.’

‘No you won’t. I’m master here, and my roof will be your roof for as long as I’m alive. Insults from that rabble are of no concern to me.’

We listened again.

Bumfucker Cicero where’s our bread?

Bumfucker Cicero sold our bread!

Cicero said, ‘It’s a marvellously flexible metre, I’ll give them that. I wonder how many more versions they can come up with.’

‘You know we could always send word to Milo. Pompey’s gladiators would clear the street in no time.’

‘And put myself even further in their debt? I don’t think so.’

We went our separate ways to bed, although I doubt any of us slept much. The demonstration did not cease as Cicero had predicted; if anything, by the following morning it had increased in volume, and certainly in violence, for the mob had started digging up the cobblestones and were hurling them against the walls, or lobbing them over the parapet so that they landed with a crash in the atrium or the garden. It was clear our situation was becoming parlous, and while the women and children sheltered indoors, I climbed up on to the roof with Cicero and Quintus to estimate the danger. Peering cautiously over the ridge tiles, it was possible to see down into the Forum. Clodius’s mob was occupying it in force. The senators trying to get to the chamber for the day’s session had to run a gauntlet of abuse and chanting. The words drifted up to us, accompanied by the banging of cooking utensils:

Where’s our bread?

Where’s our bread?

Where’s our bread?

Suddenly there was a scream from the floor beneath us. We scrabbled down from the roof and descended to the atrium in time to see a slave fishing out a black-and-white object, like a pouch or a small bag, that had just dropped through the aperture in the roof and fallen into the impluvium. It was the mangled body of Myia, the family dog. The two boys crouched in the corner of the atrium, hands over their ears, crying. Heavy stones battered against the wooden door. And now Terentia turned on Cicero with a bitterness I had never before witnessed: ‘Stubborn man! Stubborn, foolish man! Will you do something at last to protect your family? Or must I crawl out yet again on my hands and knees and plead with this scum not to hurt us?’

Cicero swayed backwards in the face of her fury. Just then there was a fresh bout of childish sobbing and he looked across to where Tullia was comforting her brother and cousin. That seemed to settle the issue. He said to Quintus, ‘Do you think you can smuggle a slave out through a window at the back?’

‘I’m sure we can.’

‘In fact best send two, in case one doesn’t get through. They should go to Milo’s barracks on the Field of Mars and tell the gladiators we need help immediately.’

The messengers were dispatched, and in the meantime Cicero went over to the boys and distracted them by putting his hands around their shoulders and telling them stories of the bravery of the heroes of the republic. After what seemed a long interval, during which the assault on the door increased in fury, we heard a fresh wave of roars from the street, followed by screaming. The gladiators controlled by Milo and Pompey had arrived, and in this way Cicero saved himself and his family, for I do believe that Clodius’s men, finding they were unopposed, were fully intending to break into the house and massacre us all. As it was, after only a short battle in the street, the besiegers, who were not nearly so well armed or trained, fled for their lives.

Once we were sure the street was clear, Cicero, Quintus and I went up on to the roof again and watched as the fighting spilled down into the Forum. Columns of gladiators ran in from either side and started laying about them with the flats of their swords. The mob scattered but did not break entirely. A barricade built of trestle tables, benches and shutters from the nearby stores was thrown up between the Temple of Castor and the Grove of Vesta. This line held, and at one point I saw saw the blond-headed figure of Clodius himself directing the fighting, wearing a cuirass over his toga and brandishing a long iron spike. I know it was him because he had his wife, Fulvia, beside him – a woman as fierce and cruel and fond of violence as any man. Here and there fires were lit, and the smoke drifting in the summer heat added to the confusion of the melee. I counted seven bodies, although whether they were dead or merely injured I could not tell.

After a while, Cicero could not bear to watch any longer. Leaving the roof, he said quietly, ‘It is the end of the republic.’

We stayed in the house all day as the skirmishing continued in the Forum, and what is most striking to me now is that throughout all this time, less than a mile away, the Roman Games continued uninterrupted, as if nothing unusual were happening. Violence had become a normal part of politics. By nightfall it was peaceful again, although Cicero prudently decided not to venture out of doors until the following morning, when he walked together with Quintus and an escort of Milo’s gladiators to the Senate house. The Forum now was full of citizens who were supporters of Pompey. They called out to Cicero to make sure they had bread again by sending for Pompey to solve the crisis. Cicero, who carried with him the draft of the bill to make Pompey commissioner of grain, made no response.

It was another ill-attended house. Because of the unrest, more than half the senators had stayed away. The only former consuls on the front bench apart from Cicero were Afranius and M. Valerius Messalla. The presiding consul, Metellus Nepos, had been hit by a stone while crossing the Forum the previous day and was wearing a bandage. He brought up the grain riots as the first item on the order paper, and several of the magistrates actually suggested that Cicero himself should take control of the city’s supply, at which Cicero made a modest gesture and shook his head.

Nepos said reluctantly, ‘Marcus Cicero, do you wish to speak?’

Cicero nodded and rose. ‘We none of us needs to be reminded,’ he began, ‘least of all the gallant Nepos, of the frightful violence that gripped the city yesterday – violence which has at its core a shortage of that most basic of human needs, bread. Some of us believe it was an ill day when our citizens were granted a free dole of corn in the first place, for it is human nature that what starts as gratitude quickly becomes dependency and ends as entitlement. This is the pass we have reached. I do not say we should rescind Clodius’s law – it is too late for that: the public’s morals are already corrupted, as no doubt he intended. But we must at least ensure that the supply of bread is continuous if we are to have civil order. And there is only one man in our state with the authority and genius of organisation to ensure such a thing, and that is Pompey the Great. Therefore I wish to propose the following resolution …’

And here he read out the draft bill I have already quoted, and that part of the chamber which was packed with Pompey’s lieutenants rose in acclamation. The rest sat solemn-faced, or muttered angrily, for they had always feared Pompey’s lust for power. The cheering was heard outside and taken up by the crowds waiting in the Forum. When they learned that it was Cicero who had proposed the new law, they started clamouring for him to come and address them from the rostra, and all the tribunes – save for two supporters of Clodius – duly sent an invitation to him to speak. When the request was read out in the Senate, Cicero protested that he was not prepared for such an honour. (In fact I had with me a speech he had already written out, and which I was able to give him just before he mounted the steps to the platform.)

He was met by a tremendous ovation, and it was some time before he could make himself heard. When the applause died away, he started to speak, and had just reached the passage in which he thanked the people for their support – Had I experienced nothing but an unruffled tranquillity, I should have missed the incredible and well-nigh superhuman transports of delight which your kindness now permits me to enjoy – when who should appear at the edge of the crowd but Pompey. He stood ostentatiously alone – not that he had any need of bodyguards when the Forum was full of his gladiators – and pretended that he had come merely as an ordinary citizen to listen to what Cicero had to say. But of course the people would not permit that, so he allowed himself to be thrust forward to the rostra, which he mounted, and where he embraced Cicero. I had forgotten what a massive physical presence he was: that majestic torso and manly bearing, the famous thick quiff of still-dark hair rising like the beak of a warship above his broad and handsome face.

The occasion demanded flattery, and Cicero rose to it. ‘Here is a man,’ he said, lifting Pompey’s arm, ‘who has had, has, and will have, no rival in virtue, sagacity and renown. He gave to me all that he had given to the republic, what no other has ever given to a private friend – safety, security, dignity. To him, fellow citizens, I owe a debt such as it is scarce lawful for one human being to owe to another.’

The applause was prolonged, and Pompey’s beam of pleasure was as wide and warm as the sun.

Afterwards he consented to walk back with Cicero to Quintus’s house and take a cup of wine. He made no reference to Cicero’s exile, no enquiries after his health, no apology for his failure years before to help Cicero stand up to Clodius, which was what had opened the door to the whole disaster in the first place. He talked only of himself and of the future, childlike in his eager anticipation of his grain commissionership and the opportunities it would give him for travel and patronage. ‘And you, of course, my dear Cicero, must be one of my fifteen legates – whichever one you like, wherever you want to go. Sardinia? Sicily? Egypt? Africa?’

‘Thank you,’ said Cicero. ‘It is generous of you, but I must decline. My priority now has to be my family – restoring us to our property, comforting my wife and children, revenging us on our enemies and trying to recover our fortune.’

‘You’ll recover your fortune quicker in the grain business than any other, I assure you.’

‘Even so, I must remain in Rome.’

The broad face fell. ‘I’m disappointed, I can’t pretend otherwise. I want the name of Cicero attached to this commission. It will add weight. What about you?’ he said, turning to Quintus. ‘You could do it, I suppose.’

Poor Quintus! The last thing he wanted, having returned from two tours of duty in Asia, was to go abroad again and deal with farmers and grain merchants and shipping agents. He squirmed. He protested his unfitness for the office. He looked to Cicero for support. But Cicero could hardly deny Pompey a second request, and this time he said nothing.

‘All right: it’s done.’ Pompey clapped his hands on the armrests of his chair to signal that the matter was settled, and pushed himself up on to his feet. He grunted with the effort and I noticed he was getting rather stout. He was in his fiftieth year, the same age as Cicero. ‘Our republic is passing through the most strenuous times,’ he said, putting his arms around the brothers’ shoulders. ‘But we shall come through them, as we always have, and I know that you will both play your part.’ He clasped the two men tightly, squeezed them, and held them there, pinned on either side of his commodious chest.