Dictator

IV

Early the following morning, Cicero and I walked up the hill to inspect the ruins of his house. The palatial building in which he had invested so much of his wealth and prestige had been entirely pulled down; nine tenths of the huge plot was weeds and rubble; it was barely possible to discern the original layout of the walls through the tangled overgrowth. Cicero stooped to pick up one of the scorched bricks poking from the ground. ‘Until this place is restored to me, we shall be entirely at their mercy – no money, no dignity, no independence … Every time I step outdoors I shall have to look up here and be reminded of my humiliation.’ The edges of the brick crumbled in his hands and the red dust trickled through his fingers like dried blood.

At the far end of the plot a statue of a young woman had been set up on top of a high plinth. Fresh offerings of flowers were piled around the base. By consecrating the site as a shrine to Liberty, Clodius believed he had made it inviolable and thus impossible for Cicero to reclaim. The marble figure was shapely in the morning light, with long tresses and a diaphanous dress slipping down to expose a naked breast. Cicero regarded her with his hands on his hips. Eventually he said, ‘Surely Liberty is always depicted as a matron with a cap?’ I agreed. ‘So who, pray, is this hussy? Why, she is no more the embodiment of a goddess than I am!’

Until that moment he had been sombre, but now he started to laugh, and when we returned to Quintus’s house he set me the task of discovering where Clodius had acquired the statue. That same day he petitioned the College of Pontiffs to return his property to him on the grounds that the site had been improperly consecrated. A hearing was fixed for the end of the month, and Clodius was summoned to defend his actions.

When the day arrived, Cicero admitted he felt ill-prepared and out of practice. Because his library was still in storage, he had been unable to consult all the legal sources he needed. He was also, I am sure, nervous at the prospect of confronting Clodius face to face. To be beaten by his enemy in a street brawl was one thing; to lose to him in a legal dispute would be a calamity.

The headquarters of the pontifical college were then in the old Regia, said to be the most ancient building in the city. It stood like its modern successor at the point where the Via Sacra divides and enters the Forum, although the noise of that busy spot was entirely deadened by the thickness of its high and windowless walls. The candlelit gloom of the interior made one forget that outside it was bright and sunny. Even the chilly, tomblike air smelt sacred, as if it had been undisturbed for more than six hundred years.

Fourteen of the fifteen pontiffs were seated at the far end of the crowded chamber, waiting for us. The only absentee was their chief, Caesar: his chair, grander than the others, stood empty. Among the priests were several I knew well – Spinther, the consul; Marcus Lucullus, brother of the great general, Lucius, who was said to have lately lost his reason and to be confined to his palace outside Rome; and the two rising young aristocrats, Q. Scipio Nasica and M. Aemilius Lepidus. And here at last I saw the third triumvir, Crassus. The curious conical hat of animal fur the pontiffs were required to wear robbed him of his most distinctive feature, his baldness. His crafty face was quite impassive.

Cicero took a seat facing them while I sat on a stool at his back, ready to pass any documents he required. Behind us was an audience of eminent citizens, including Pompey. Of Clodius there was no sign. Whispered conversations gradually ceased. The silence grew oppressive. Where was he? Perhaps he might not come. With Clodius one never knew. But then at last he swaggered in, and I felt myself turn cold at the sight of the man who had caused us so much anguish. ‘Little Miss Beauty’, Cicero used to call him, but in middle age he had outgrown the insult. His luxuriant blond curls were nowadays cut as tight to his skull as a golden helmet; his thick red lips had lost their pout. He appeared hard, lean, disdainful – a fallen Apollo. As is often the case with the bitterest of enemies, he had started out as a friend. But then he had outraged law and morality once too often, by disguising himself as a woman and defiling the sacred rite of the Good Goddess. Cicero had been obliged to give evidence against him, and from that day on Clodius had sworn vengeance. He sat on a chair barely three paces from Cicero, but Cicero continued to stare straight ahead, and the two men never once looked at one another.

The senior pontiff by age was Publius Albinovanus, who must have been eighty. In a quavering voice he read out the point at issue – ‘Was the shrine to Liberty, lately erected on the property claimed by M. Tullius Cicero, consecrated in accordance with the rites of the official religion or not?’ – and invited Clodius to speak first.

Clodius left it just long enough to indicate his contempt for the whole proceeding, and then slowly got to his feet. ‘I am appalled, holy fathers,’ he began in his slangy patrician drawl, ‘and dismayed, but not surprised, that the exiled murderer Cicero, having brazenly slaughtered Liberty during the time of his consulship, should now seek to compound the offence by tearing down her image …’

He brought up every slander that had ever been made against Cicero – his illegal killing of the Catiline conspirators (‘the sanction of the Senate is no excuse for executing five citizens without a trial’), his vanity (‘if he objects to this shrine, it is mostly out of jealousy since he regards himself as the only god worth worshipping’) and his political inconsistency (‘this is the man whose return was supposed to mean the restoration of senatorial authority, and yet whose first act was to betray it by winning dictatorial powers for Pompey’). It was not without impact. It would have played well in the Forum. But it failed entirely to address the legal point at issue: was the shrine properly consecrated or not?

He argued for an hour, and then it was Cicero’s turn, and it was a measure of how effective Clodius had been that he was obliged to speak extempore to begin with, defending his support for Pompey’s grain commission. Only after he had answered that could he turn to making his main case: that the shrine could not be held to be consecrated because Clodius was not legally a tribune when he dedicated it. ‘Your transfer from patrician to pleb was sanctioned by no decree of this college, was entered upon in defiance of all pontifical regulations, and must be held to be null and void; and if that is invalid your entire tribunate falls to the ground.’ This was dangerous territory: everyone knew it was Caesar who had organised Clodius’s adoption as a pleb. I saw Crassus lean forwards listening intently. Sensing the danger, and perhaps remembering his undertaking to Caesar, Cicero swerved away: ‘Does this mean I am saying that all Caesar’s laws were illegal? By no means; for none of them any longer affects my interests, apart from those aimed with hostile intent against my own person.’

He pressed on, switching to an attack on Clodius’s methods, and now his oratory took flight – his arm outstretched, his finger pointing at his enemy, the words almost tumbling from his mouth in his passion: ‘Oh, you abominable plague spot of the state, you public prostitute! What harm had you suffered at the hands of my unhappy wife that you harassed, plundered and tortured her so brutally? Or from my daughter, who lost her beloved husband? Or from my little son, who still lies awake weeping at night? But it was not just my family you attacked – you waged a bitter war against my very walls and doorposts!’

However his real coup was to reveal the origins of the statue Clodius had set up. I had tracked down the workmen who had erected it and learnt that the piece had been donated by Clodius’s brother Appius, who had carried it off from Tanagra, in Boeotia, where it had graced the tomb of a well-known local courtesan.

The whole room roared with laughter when Cicero revealed this fact. ‘So this is his idea of Liberty – a courtesan’s likeness, erected over a foreign tomb, stolen by a thief and set up again by a sacrilegious hand! And she is the one who drives me from my house? Holy fathers, this property cannot be lost to me without inflicting disgrace upon the state. If you believe that my return to Rome has been a source of pleasure to the immortal gods, to the Senate, to the Roman people and to all of Italy, then let it be your hands that reinstall me in my home.’

Cicero sat to loud murmurs of approval from the distinguished audience. I stole a look at Clodius. He was scowling at the floor. The pontiffs leaned in to confer. Crassus seemed to be doing most of the talking. We had expected a decision at once. But Albinovanus straightened and announced that the college would need more time to consider their verdict: it would be relayed to the Senate the following day. This was a blow. Clodius stood, bent down to Cicero as he passed and hissed, through a false smile, just loud enough for me to hear, ‘You will die before that place is rebuilt.’ He left the chamber without another word. Cicero pretended nothing had happened. He lingered to chat with many old friends, with the result that we were among the last to leave the building.

Outside the chamber was a courtyard containing the famous white board on which the chief priest by tradition in those days published the state’s official news. This was where Caesar’s agents posted his Commentaries, and here was where we found Crassus standing – ostensibly reading the latest dispatch but in truth waiting to intercept Cicero. He had taken off his cap; here and there little wisps of brown fur still adhered to his high-domed skull.

‘So, Cicero,’ he said in his unsettlingly jovial manner, ‘you were pleased with the effect of your speech?’

‘Reasonably, thank you. But my opinion has no value. It’s for you and your colleagues to decide.’

‘Oh, I thought it effective enough. My only regret is that Caesar wasn’t present to hear it.’

‘I shall send him a copy.’

‘Yes, be sure that you do. Mind you, reading is all very well. But how would he vote on the issue? That’s what I have to decide.’

‘And why do you have to decide that?’

‘Because he wishes me to act as his proxy and cast his vote as I think fit. Many colleagues will follow my lead. It is important I get it right.’

He grinned, showing yellow teeth.

‘I have no doubt you will. Good day to you, Crassus.’

‘Good day, Cicero.’

We passed out of the gate, Cicero cursing under his breath, and had gone only a few paces when Crassus suddenly called out after him, and hurried to catch us up. ‘One last thing,’ he said. ‘In view of these tremendous victories that Caesar has won in Gaul, I wondered if you would be good enough to support a proposal in the Senate for a period of public celebration in his honour.’

‘Why does it matter if I support it?’

‘Obviously it would add weight, given the history of your relations with Caesar. People would notice. And it would be a noble gesture on your part. I’m sure Caesar would appreciate it.’

‘How long would this period of celebration last?’

‘Oh … fifteen days should just about do it.’

‘Fifteen days? That’s nearly twice as long as Pompey was voted for conquering Spain.’

‘Yes, well one could argue that Caesar’s victories in Gaul are twice as important as Pompey’s in Spain.’

‘I’m not sure Pompey would agree.’

‘Pompey,’ retorted Crassus with emphasis, ‘must learn that a triumvirate consists of three men, not one.’

Cicero gritted his teeth and bowed. ‘It would be an honour.’

Crassus bowed in return. ‘I knew you would do the patriotic thing.’

The following day, Spinther read out the pontiffs’ judgement to the Senate: unless Clodius could provide written proof that he had consecrated the shrine on instructions from the Roman people, ‘the site can be restored to Cicero without sacrilege’.

A normal man now would have given up. But Clodius wasn’t normal. Though he might pretend to be a pleb, he was still a Claudian – a family who took pride in hounding their enemies to the grave. First he lied and told a meeting of the people that the judgement had actually gone in his favour and called on them to defend ‘their’ shrine. Then, when the consul-designate Marcellinus proposed a motion in the Senate to return to Cicero his three properties – in Rome, Tusculum and Formiae, ‘with compensation to restore them to their former state’ – Clodius tried to talk out the session, and would have succeeded had he not, after three hours on his feet, been howled down by an exasperated Senate. Nor were his tactics entirely without effect. Frightened of antagonising the plebs, and to Cicero’s dismay, the Senate agreed to pay compensation of only two million sesterces to rebuild the house on the Palatine, and just half a million and a quarter of a million respectively for the repairs at Tusculum and Formiae – far below the actual costs.

For the past two years most of Rome’s builders and craftsmen had been employed on Pompey’s immense development of public buildings on the Field of Mars. Grudgingly – because anyone who has ever employed builders learns quickly never to let them out of one’s sight – Pompey agreed to transfer a hundred of his men to Cicero. Work on restoring the Palatine house began at once, and on the first morning of construction Cicero had the great pleasure of swinging an axe at the head of Liberty and smashing it clean off, then crating up the remains and having them delivered to Clodius with his compliments.

I knew Clodius would retaliate, and one morning soon afterwards, when Cicero and I were working on some legal papers in Quintus’s tablinum, we heard what sounded like heavy footsteps clumping across the roof. I went out into the street and was lucky not to be struck on the head by bricks dropping from the sky. Panicking workmen came running round the corner and shouted that a gang of Clodius’s toughs had overrun the site and were demolishing the new walls and hurling the debris down on to Quintus’s house. Just then Cicero and Quintus came out to see what the trouble was, and yet again they had to send a messenger to Milo to request the assistance of his gladiators. It was just as well, for no sooner had the runner gone than there was a series of flashes overhead, and burning brands and lumps of flaming pitch started landing all around us. Fires broke out on the roof. The terrified household had to be evacuated, and everyone, including Cicero and even Terentia, was pressed into service to pass buckets of water, drawn from the street fountains, from hand to hand to try to prevent the house from burning down.

Crassus had a monopoly of the city’s fire services, and fortunately for us, he was at his home on the Palatine. He heard the commotion, came out into the street, saw what was going on, and turned up himself in a shabby tunic and slippers, with one of his teams of fire slaves dragging a water tender equipped with pumps and hoses. But for them the building would have been lost; as it was, the damage caused by the water and smoke rendered the place uninhabitable, and we had to move out while it was repaired. We loaded our luggage into carts and, with night coming on, made our way across the valley to the Quirinal hill, to seek temporary refuge in the house of Atticus, who was still away in Epirus. His narrow, ancient house was fine for an elderly bachelor of fixed and moderate habits; it was less ideal for two families with extensive households and warring spouses. Cicero and Terentia slept in separate parts of the building.

Eight days later, as we were walking along the Via Sacra, we heard an outburst of shouts and the sound of running feet behind us, and turned to see Clodius and a dozen of his henchmen flourishing cudgels and even swords, sprinting to attack us. We had the usual bodyguard of Milo’s men and they hustled us into the doorway of the nearest house. In their panic, Cicero was pushed to the ground and gashed his head and twisted his ankle but otherwise was unharmed. The startled owner of the house in which we sought refuge, Tettius Damio, took us in and gave us a cup of wine, and Cicero talked calmly to him of poetry and philosophy until we were told that our attackers had been driven off and the coast was clear; then he said his thanks and we continued on our way home.

Cicero was in that state of elation that sometimes follows a close brush with death. His appearance, however, was a different matter – limping, with a bloodied forehead and torn and dirty clothes – and the instant Terentia saw him she cried out in shock. Useless for him to protest that it was nothing, that Clodius had been put to flight, and that his descent to such tactics showed how desperate he was becoming: Terentia would not listen. The siege, the fire and now this: she insisted that they all should leave Rome at once.

Cicero replied mildly, ‘You forget, Terentia: I’ve tried that once, and see where it left us. Our only hope is to stay here and win back our position.’

‘And how are you to do that when you can’t even walk in safety down a busy street in broad daylight?’

‘I shall find a way.’

‘And in the meantime, what lives do the rest of us have?’

‘Normal lives!’ Cicero suddenly shouted back at her. ‘We defeat them by leading normal lives! We sleep together as man and wife for a start.’

I glanced away in embarrassment.

Terentia said, ‘You wish to know why I keep you from my room? Then look!’

And to Cicero’s astonishment and certainly to mine, this most pious of Roman matrons began to unfasten the belt of her dress. She called to her maid to come and help. Turning her back to her husband, she opened her gown and her maid pulled it down all the way from the nape of her neck to the base of her spine, exposing the pale flesh between her thin shoulders, which was savagely criss-crossed by at least a dozen livid red welts.

Cicero stared at the scars, transfixed. ‘Who did this to you?’

Terentia pulled the dress back up and her maid knelt to fasten her belt.

‘Who did this?’ repeated Cicero quietly. ‘Clodius?’

She turned to face him. Her eyes were not wet but dry and full of fire. ‘Six months ago I went to see his sister, as one woman to another, to plead on your behalf. But Clodia is not a woman: she is a Fury. She told me I was no better than a traitor myself – that my presence defiled her house. She summoned her steward and had him whip me off the premises. She had her louche friends with her. They laughed at my shame.’

‘Your shame?’ cried Cicero. ‘The only shame is theirs! You should have told me!’

‘Told you? You, who greeted the whole of Rome before he greeted his own wife?’ She spat out the words. ‘You may stay and die in the city if you wish. I shall take Tullia and Marcus to Tusculum and see what lives we can have there.’

The following morning, she and Pomponia left with the children, and a few days later, amid much mutual shedding of tears, Quintus also departed to buy grain for Pompey in Sardinia. Prowling round the empty house, Cicero was keenly aware of their absence. He told me he felt every blow that Terentia had endured as if it were a lash upon his own back, and he tortured his brain to find some means of avenging her, but he could see no way through, until one day, quite unexpectedly, the glimmer of an opportunity presented itself.

It happened that around this time, the distinguished philosopher Dio of Alexandria was murdered in Rome while under the roof of his friend and host, Titus Coponius. The assassination caused a great scandal. Dio had come to Italy supposedly with diplomatic protection, as the head of a delegation of one hundred prominent Egyptians to petition the Senate against the restoration of their exiled pharaoh, Ptolemy XII, nicknamed ‘the Flute Player’.

Suspicion naturally fell on Ptolemy himself, who was staying with Pompey at his country estate in the Alban hills. The Pharaoh, detested by his people for the taxes he levied, was offering the stupendous reward of six thousand gold talents if Rome would secure his restoration, and the effect of this bribe upon the Senate was as dignified as if a rich man had thrown a few coins into a crowd of starving beggars. In the scramble for the honour of overseeing Ptolemy’s return, three main candidates had emerged: Lentulus Spinther, the outgoing consul, who was due to become governor of Cilicia and therefore would legally command an army on the borders of Egypt; Marcus Crassus, who yearned to possess the same wealth and glory as Pompey and Caesar; and Pompey himself, who feigned disinterest in the commission but behind the scenes was the most active of the three in trying to secure it.

Cicero had no desire to become embroiled in the affair. There was nothing in it for him. He was obliged to support Spinther, in return for Spinther’s efforts to end his exile, and lobbied discreetly behind the scenes on his behalf. But when Pompey asked him to come out and meet the Pharaoh to discuss the death of Dio, he felt unable to turn the summons down.

The last time we had visited the house was almost two years earlier, when Cicero had gone to plead for help in resisting Clodius’s attacks. On that occasion Pompey had pretended to be out to avoid seeing him. The memory of his cowardice still rankled with me, but Cicero refused to dwell on it: ‘If I do, I shall become bitter, and a man who is bitter hurts no one but himself. We must look to the future.’ Now, as we rattled up the long drive to the villa, we passed several groups of olive-skinned men wearing exotic robes and exercising those sinister yellowish prick-eared greyhounds so beloved of the Egyptians.

Ptolemy awaited Cicero with Pompey in the atrium. He was a short, plump, smooth figure, dark-complexioned like his courtiers, and so quietly spoken that one found oneself bending forward to catch what he was saying. He was dressed Roman-style in a toga. Cicero bowed and kissed his hand, and I was invited to do the same. His perfumed fingers were fat and soft like a baby’s, but the nails I noticed with disgust were broken and dirty. Coyly peering around him with her arms clasped across his stomach was his young daughter. She had huge charcoal-black eyes and a painted ruby mouth – an ageless slattern’s mask even at the age of eleven, or so it seems to me now, but perhaps I am being unfair and allowing my memory to be distorted by what was to come, for this was the future Queen Cleopatra, later to cause such mischief.

Once the niceties were out of the way and Cleopatra had departed with her maids, Pompey came to the point: ‘This killing of Dio is starting to become embarrassing, both to me and to His Majesty. And now to cap it all, a murder charge has been brought by Titus Coponius, Dio’s host when he was killed, and by his brother Gaius. The whole thing is ridiculous, of course, but apparently they are not to be persuaded out of it.’

‘Who is the accused?’ enquired Cicero.

‘Publius Asicius.’

Cicero paused to remember the name. ‘Isn’t he one of your estate managers?’

‘He is. That’s what makes it embarrassing.’

Cicero had the tact not to ask whether Asicius was guilty or not. He considered the matter purely as a lawyer. He said to Ptolemy, ‘Until this matter blows over, I would strongly advise Your Majesty to remove yourself as far away from Rome as possible.’

‘Why?’

‘Because if I were the Coponius brothers, the first thing I should do is issue a subpoena summoning you to give evidence.’

‘Can they do that?’ asked Pompey.

‘They can try. To save His Majesty the embarrassment, I would advise him to be miles away when the writ is served – out of Italy, if possible.’

‘But what about Asicius?’ said Pompey. ‘If he’s found guilty, that could look very bad for me.’

‘I agree.’

‘Then he must be acquitted. You’ll take the case, I hope? I’d regard it as a favour.’

This was not what Cicero wanted. But Pompey was insistent, and in the end, as usual, he had no option but to accede. Before we left, Ptolemy, as a token of his thanks, presented Cicero with a small and ancient jade statue of a baboon, which he explained was Hedj-Wer, the god of writing. I expect it was quite valuable, but Cicero couldn’t abide it – ‘What do I want with their primitive mud gods?’ he complained to me afterwards, and he must have thrown it away; I never saw it again.

Asicius, the accused man, came to see us. He was a former legionary commander who had served with Pompey in Spain and the East. He looked eminently capable of murder. He showed Cicero his summons. The charge was that he had visited Coponius’s house early in the morning with a forged letter of introduction. Dio was in the act of opening it when Asicius whipped out a small knife he had concealed in his sleeve and stabbed the elderly philosopher in the neck. The blow had not been immediately fatal. Dio’s cries had brought the household running. According to the writ, Asicius had been recognised before he managed to slash his way out of the house.

Cicero did not enquire about the truth of the matter. He merely advised Asicius that his best chance of acquittal lay in a good alibi. Someone would need to vouch that he was with them at the time of the murder – and the more witnesses he could produce and the less connection they had with Pompey, or indeed Cicero, the better.

Asicius said, ‘That’s easy enough. I have just the fellow lined up: a man known to be on bad terms both with Pompey and yourself.’

‘Who?’

‘Your old protege Caelius Rufus.’

‘Rufus? What’s he doing mixed up in this business?’

‘Does it matter? He’ll swear I was with him at the hour the old man was killed. And he’s a senator nowadays, don’t forget – his word carries weight.’

I half expected Cicero to tell Asicius to find another advocate, such was his distaste for Rufus. But to my surprise he said, ‘Very well, tell him to come and see me and we’ll depose him.’

After Asicius had gone, Cicero said, ‘Surely Rufus is a close friend of Clodius? Doesn’t he live in one of his apartments? In fact, isn’t Clodia his mistress?’

‘She certainly used to be.’

‘That was what I thought.’ The mention of Clodia made him thoughtful. ‘So what is Rufus doing offering an alibi to an agent of Pompey?’

Later that same day, Rufus came to the house. At twenty-five, he was the youngest member of the Senate, and very active in the law courts. It was odd to see him swaggering through the door wearing the purple-striped toga of a senator. Only nine years before, he had been Cicero’s pupil. But then he had turned on his former mentor, and eventually beaten him in court by prosecuting Cicero’s consular colleague, Hybrida. Cicero could have forgiven him that – he always liked to see a young man on the rise as an advocate – but his friendship with Clodius was a betrayal too far. So he greeted him very icily and pretended to read various documents while Rufus dictated his statement to me. Cicero must have been listening keenly, however, for when Rufus described how he was entertaining Asicius in his house at the time of the killing, and gave as his home address a property on the Esquiline, Cicero suddenly looked up and said, ‘But don’t you rent a property from Clodius on the Palatine?’

‘I’ve moved,’ replied Rufus casually, but there was something too offhand in his tone, and Cicero detected it at once.

He pointed his finger at him and said, ‘You’ve quarrelled.’

‘Not at all.’

‘You’ve quarrelled with that devil and his sister from hell. That’s why you’re doing this favour for Pompey. You always were the most hopeless liar, Rufus. I see through you as clearly as if you were made of water.’

Rufus laughed. He had great charm: he was said to be the most handsome young man in Rome. ‘You seem to forget, I don’t live in your house any more, Marcus Tullius. I don’t have to give an account of my friendships to you.’ He swung himself easily on to his feet. He was also very tall. ‘Now I’ve given your client his alibi, as was requested, and our business here is done.’

‘Our business will be done when I say it is,’ Cicero called after him cheerfully. He did not bother to rise. I showed Rufus out, and when I returned, he was still smiling. ‘This is what I’ve been waiting for, Tiro. I can feel it. He’s fallen out with those two monsters, and if that’s the case, they won’t rest until they’ve destroyed him. We need to ask around town. Discreetly. Spread some money around if we have to. But we must find out why he’s left that house!’

The trial of Asicius ended the day it began. The case boiled down to the word of a few household slaves against that of a senator, and on hearing Rufus’s affidavit, the praetor directed the jury to acquit. This was the first of many legal victories for Cicero following his return, and he was soon in high demand, appearing in the Forum most days, just as in his prime.

Throughout this time the violence in Rome worsened. On some days the courts could not sit because of the risks to public safety. A few days after setting upon Cicero in the Via Sacra, Clodius and his followers attacked the house of Milo and attempted to burn it down. Milo’s gladiators drove them off and retaliated by occupying the voting pens on the Field of Mars in a vain attempt to prevent Clodius’s election as aedile.

Cicero sensed opportunity in the chaos. One of the new tribunes, Cannius Gallus, laid a bill before the people demanding that Pompey alone should be entrusted with restoring Ptolemy to the throne of Egypt. The bill so incensed Crassus that he actually paid Clodius to organise a popular campaign against Pompey. And when Clodius eventually won the aedileship, he used his powers as a magistrate to summon Pompey to give evidence in an action he brought against Milo.

The hearing took place in the Forum in front of many thousands. I watched it with Cicero. Pompey mounted the rostra, but had hardly uttered more than a few sentences when Clodius’s supporters started to drown him out with catcalls and slow handclaps. There was a kind of heroism in the way that Pompey simply put his shoulders down and went on reading out his text, even though no one could hear him. This must have gone on for an hour or more, and then Clodius, who was standing a few feet along the rostra, started really working up the crowd against him.

‘Who’s starving the people to death?’ he shouted.

‘Pompey!’ roared his followers.

‘Who wants to go to Alexandria?’

‘Pompey!’

‘Whom do you want to go?’

‘Crassus!’

Pompey looked as if he had been struck by lightning. Never had he been insulted in such a way. The crowd started heaving like a stormy sea, one side pushing against the other, with little eddies of scuffles breaking out here and there, and suddenly from the back, ladders appeared and were passed rapidly over our heads to the front, where they were thrown up against the rostra and a group of ruffians began scaling it – Milo’s ruffians, it transpired, for the moment they reached the platform they charged at Clodius and hurled him off it, a good twelve feet down on to the spectators. There were cheers and screams. I didn’t see what happened after that, as Cicero’s attendants hustled us out of the Forum and away from danger, but we learned later that Clodius had escaped unharmed.

The following evening, Cicero went off to dine with Pompey and came home rubbing his hands with pleasure. ‘Well, if I’m not mistaken, that’s the beginning of the end of our so-called triumvirate, at least as far as Pompey’s concerned. He swears Crassus is behind a plot to murder him, says he’ll never trust him again, threatens that if necessary Caesar will have to return to Rome to answer for his mischief in creating Clodius in the first place and destroying the constitution. I’ve never seen him in such a rage. As for me, he couldn’t have been friendlier, and assures me that whatever I do, I can rely on his support.

‘But better even than that – when he was deep in his cups, he finally told me why Rufus has switched allegiance. I was right: there’s been the most tremendous falling-out between him and Clodia – so much so that she’s claiming he tried to poison her! Naturally, Clodius has taken his sister’s side, thrown Rufus out of his house and called in his debts. So Rufus has had to turn to Pompey in the hope of some Egyptian gold to pay off what he owes. Isn’t it all marvellous?’

I agreed it was all marvellous, though I couldn’t see why it warranted quite such ecstasies of joy.

Cicero said, ‘Bring me the praetors’ lists, quick!’

I went and fetched the schedule of court cases that were due to be heard over the next seven days. Cicero told me to look up when Rufus was next due to appear. I ran my finger down the various courts and cases until I found his name. He was scheduled to begin a prosecution in the constitutional court for bribery in five days’ time.

Cicero said, ‘Who is he prosecuting?’

‘Bestia.’

‘Bestia! That villain!’

Cicero lay back on the couch in his familiar posture when cooking up a scheme, with his hands clasped behind his head, staring at the ceiling. L. Calpurnius Bestia was an old enemy of his, one of Catilina’s tame tribunes, lucky not to have been executed for treason with his five fellow conspirators. Yet here he was, apparently still active in public life, being prosecuted for buying votes during the recent praetorian elections. I wondered what possible interest Bestia could hold for Cicero, and after a long period during which he said nothing, I ventured to ask him.

His voice seemed to come from a long way away, as if I had interrupted him in a dream. ‘I was just thinking,’ he said slowly, ‘that I might offer to defend him.’