Imperium

Roll XI

LEAVING THE OTHERS BEHIND and traveling hard in a two-wheeled carriage (Cicero never went on horseback if he could avoid it), we retraced our route, reaching the villa at Tusculum by nightfall the following day. Pompey’s estate lay on the other side of the Alban Hills, only five miles to the south. The lazy household slaves were stunned to find their master back so quickly and had to scramble to put the place in order. Cicero bathed and went directly to bed, although I do not believe he slept well, for I fancied I heard him in the middle of the night, moving around his library, and in the morning I found a copy of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics half unrolled on his desk. But politicians are resilient creatures. When I went into his chamber he was already dressed and keen to discover what Pompey had in mind. As soon as it was light we set off. Our road took us around the great expanse of the Alban Lake, and when the sun broke pink over the snowy mountain ridge we could see the silhouettes of the fishermen pulling in their nets from the glittering waters. “Is there any country in the world more beautiful than Italy?” he murmured, inhaling deeply, and although he did not express it, I knew what he was thinking, because I was thinking it, too: that it was a relief to have escaped the enfolding gloom of Aprinum, and that there is nothing quite like death to make one feel alive.

At length we turned off the road and passed through a pair of imposing gates onto a long driveway of white gravel lined with cypresses. The formal gardens to either side were filled with marble statues, no doubt acquired by the general during his various campaigns. Gardeners were raking the winter leaves and trimming the box hedges. The impression was one of vast, quiet, confident wealth. As Cicero strode through the entrance into the great house he whispered to me to stay close by, and I slipped in unobtrusively behind him, carrying a document case. (My advice to anyone, incidentally, who wishes to be inconspicuous, is always to carry documents: they cast a cloak of invisibility around their bearer that is the equal of anything in the Greek legends.) Pompey was greeting his guests in the atrium, playing the grand country seigneur, with his third wife, Mucia, beside him, and his son, Gnaeus-who must have been eleven by this time-and his infant daughter, Pompeia, who had just learned to walk. Mucia was an attractive, statuesque matron of the Metellus clan, in her late twenties and obviously pregnant again. One of Pompey’s peculiarities, I later discovered, was that he always tended to love his wife, whoever she happened to be at the time. She was laughing at some remark which had just been made to her, and when the originator of this witticism turned I saw that it was Julius Caesar. This surprised me, and certainly startled Cicero, because up to this point we had seen only the familiar trio of Piceneans: Palicanus, Afranius, and Gabinius. Besides, Caesar had been in Spain for more than a year, serving as quaestor. But here he was, lithe and well built, with his lean, intelligent face, his amused brown eyes, and those thin strands of dark hair which he combed so carefully across his sunburnt pate. (But why am I bothering to describe him? The whole world knows what he looked like!)

In all, eight senators gathered that morning: Pompey, Cicero, and Caesar; the three Piceneans mentioned above; Varro, Pompey’s house intellectual, then aged fifty; and Caius Cornelius, who had served under Pompey as his quaestor in Spain, and who was now, along with Gabinius, a tribune-elect. I was not as conspicuous as I had feared, as many of the principals had also brought along a secretary or bag carrier of some sort; we all stood respectfully to one side. After refreshments had been served, and the children had been taken away by their nurses, and the Lady Mucia had graciously said good-bye to each of her husband’s guests in turn-lingering somewhat over Caesar, I noticed-slaves fetched chairs so that everyone could sit. I was on the point of leaving with the other attendants when Cicero suggested to Pompey that, as I was famous throughout Rome as the inventor of a marvelous new shorthand system-these were his words-I might stay and keep a minute of what was said. I blushed with embarrassment. Pompey looked at me suspiciously, and I thought he was going to forbid it, but then he shrugged and said, “Very well. That might be useful. But there will only be one copy made, and I shall keep it. Is that acceptable to everyone?” There was a noise of assent, whereupon a stool was fetched for me and I found myself sitting in the corner with my notebook open and my stylus gripped in a sweaty hand.

The chairs were arranged in a semicircle, and when all his guests were seated, Pompey stood. He was, as I have said, no orator on a public platform. But on his own ground, among those whom he thought of as his lieutenants, he radiated power and authority. Although my verbatim transcript was taken from me, I can still remember much of what he said, because I had to write it up from my notes, and that always causes a thing to stick in my mind. He began by giving the latest details of the pirate attack on Ostia: nineteen consular war triremes destroyed, a couple of hundred men killed, grain warehouses torched, two praetors-one of whom had been inspecting the granaries and the other the fleet-seized in their official robes, along with their retinues and their symbolic rods and axes. A ransom demand for their release had arrived in Rome yesterday. “But for my part,” said Pompey, “I do not believe we should negotiate with such people, as it will only encourage them in their criminal acts.” (Everyone nodded in agreement.) The raid on Ostia, he continued, was a turning point in the history of Rome. This was not an isolated incident, but merely the most daring in a long line of such outrages, which included the kidnapping of the noble Lady Antonia from her villa in Misenum (she whose own father had led an expedition against the pirates!), the robbery of temple treasures from Croton, and the surprise attacks on Brundisium and Caieta. Where would be struck next? What Rome was facing was a threat very different from that posed by a conventional enemy. These pirates were a new type of ruthless foe, with no government to represent them and no treaties to bind them. Their bases were not confined to a single state. They had no unified system of command. They were a worldwide pestilence, a parasite which needed to be stamped out, otherwise Rome-despite her overwhelming military superiority-would never again know security or peace. The existing national security system, of giving men of consular rank a single command of limited duration in an individual theater, was clearly inadequate to the challenge.

“Long before Ostia, I had been devoting much careful study to this problem,” declared Pompey, “and I believe this unique enemy demands a unique response. Now is our opportunity.” He clapped his hands and a pair of slaves carried in a large map of the Mediterranean, which they set up on a stand beside him. His audience leaned forward to get a better look, for they could see mysterious lines had been drawn vertically across both sea and land. “The basis of our strategy from now on must be to combine the military and the political spheres,” said Pompey. “We hit them with everything.” He took up a pointer and rapped it on the painted board. “I propose we divide the Mediterranean into fifteen zones, from the Pillars of Hercules here in the west to the waters of Egypt and Syria here in the east, each zone to have its own legate, whose task will be to scour his area clean of pirates and then to make treaties with the local rulers to ensure the brigands’ vessels never return to their waters. All captured pirates are to be handed over to Roman jurisdiction. Any ruler who refuses to cooperate will be regarded as Rome’s enemy. Those who are not with us are against us. These fifteen legates will all report to one supreme commander who will have absolute authority over all the mainland for a distance of fifty miles from the sea. I shall be that commander.”

There was a long silence. It was Cicero who spoke first. “Your plan is certainly a bold one, Pompey, although some might consider it a disproportionate response to the loss of nineteen triremes. You do realize that such a concentration of power in a single pair of hands has never been proposed in the entire history of the republic?”

“As a matter of fact, I do realize that,” replied Pompey. He tried to keep a straight face, but in the end he could not stop it breaking into a broad grin, and quickly everyone was laughing, apart from Cicero, who looked as if his world had just fallen apart-which in a sense it had, because this was, as he put it afterwards, a plan for the domination of the world by one man, nothing less, and he had few doubts where it would lead. “Perhaps I should have walked out there and then,” he mused to me later on the journey home. “That is what poor, honest Lucius would have urged me to do. Yet Pompey would still have gone ahead, either with me or without me, and all I would have done is earned his enmity, and that would have put paid to my chances of a praetorship. Everything I do now must be viewed through the prism of that election.”

And so, of course, he stayed, as the discussion meandered on over the next few hours, from grand military strategy to grubby political tactics. The plan was for Gabinius to place a bill before the Roman people soon after he took office, which would be in about a week, setting up the special command and ordering that it be given to Pompey; then he and Cornelius would dare any of the other tribunes to veto it. (One must remember that in the days of the republic only an assembly of the people had the power to make laws; the Senate’s voice was influential, but not decisive; their task was to implement the people’s will.)

“What do you say, Cicero?” asked Pompey. “You have been very quiet.”

“I say that Rome is indeed fortunate,” replied Cicero carefully, “to have a man with such experience and global vision as yourself to call on in her hour of peril. But we must be realistic. There will be huge resistance to this proposal in the Senate. The aristocrats, in particular, will say that it is nothing more than a naked grab for power dressed up as patriotic necessity.”

“I resent that,” said Pompey.

“Well, you may resent it all you like, but you will still need to demonstrate that it is not the case,” retorted Cicero, who knew that the surest way to a great man’s confidence, curiously enough, is often to speak harshly back to him, thus conveying an appearance of disinterested candor. “They will also say that this commission to deal with the pirates is simply a stepping-stone to your true objective, which is to replace Lucullus as commander of the Eastern legions.” To that, the great man made no response other than a grunt-he could not, because that really was his true objective. “And finally, they will set about finding a tribune or two of their own, to veto Gabinius’s bill.”

“It sounds to me as though you should not be here, Cicero,” sneered Gabinius. He was something of a dandy, with thick and wavy hair slicked back in a quiff, in imitation of his chief. “To achieve our objective will require bold hearts, and possibly stout fists, not the quibbles of clever lawyers.”

“You will need hearts and fists and lawyers before you are done, Gabinius, believe me,” responded Cicero. “The moment you lose the legal immunity conferred by your tribuneship, the aristocrats will have you in court and fighting for your life. You will need a clever lawyer, well enough, and so will you, Cornelius.”

“Let us move on,” said Pompey. “Those are the problems. Do you have any solutions to offer?”

“Well,” replied Cicero, “for a start, I strongly urge that your name should not appear anywhere in the bill setting up the supreme command.”

“But it was my idea!” protested Pompey, sounding exactly like a child whose game was being taken over by his playmates.

“True, but I still say it would be prudent not to specify the actual name of the commander at the very outset. You will be the focus of the most terrible envy and rage in the Senate. Even the sensible men, whose support we can normally rely on, will balk at this. You must make the central issue the defeat of the pirates, not the future of Pompey the Great. Everyone will know the post is designed for you; there is no need to spell it out.”

“But what am I to say when I lay the bill before the people?” asked Gabinius. “That any fool off the street can hold the office?”

“Obviously not,” said Cicero, with a great effort at patience. “I would strike out the name ‘Pompey’ and insert the phrase ‘senator of consular rank.’ That limits it to the fifteen or twenty living ex-consuls.”

“So who might be the rival candidates?” asked Afranius.

“Crassus,” said Pompey at once; his old enemy was never far from his thoughts. “Perhaps Catulus. Then there is Metellus Pius-doddery, but still a force. Hortensius has a following. Isauricus. Gellius. Cotta. Curio. Even the Lucullus brothers.”

“Well, I suppose if you are really worried,” said Cicero, “we could always specify that the supreme commander should be any ex-consul whose name begins with a P.” For a moment no one reacted, and I was certain he had gone too far. But then Caesar threw back his head and laughed, and the rest-seeing that Pompey was smiling weakly-joined in. “Believe me, Pompey,” continued Cicero in a reassuring tone, “most of these are far too old and idle to be a threat. Crassus will be your most dangerous rival, simply because he is so rich and jealous of you. But if it comes to a vote you will defeat him overwhelmingly, I promise you.”

“I agree with Cicero,” said Caesar. “Let us clear our hurdles one at a time. First, the principle of the supreme command; then, the name of the commander.” I was struck by the authority with which he spoke, despite being the most junior man present.

“Very well,” said Pompey, nodding judiciously. “It is settled. The central issue must be the defeat of the pirates, not the future of Pompey the Great.” And on that note, the conference adjourned for lunch.

THERE NOW FOLLOWED a squalid incident which it embarrasses me to recall, but which I feel I must, in the interest of history, set down. For several hours, while the senators lunched, and afterwards strolled in the garden, I worked as rapidly as I could to translate my shorthand notes into a fair manuscript record of proceedings, which I could then present to Pompey. When I had finished, it occurred to me that perhaps I should check what I had written with Cicero, in case there might be something in it to which he objected. The chamber where the conference had been held was empty, and so was the atrium, but I could hear the senator’s distinctive voice and set off, clutching my roll of paper, in the direction from which I judged it was coming. I crossed a colonnaded courtyard, where a fountain played, then followed the portico around to another, inner garden. But now his voice had faded altogether. I stopped to listen. There was only birdsong, and the trickling of water. Then, suddenly, from somewhere very close, and loud enough to make me jump, I heard a woman groan, as if in agony. Like a fool, I turned and took a few more steps, and through an open door I was confronted by the sight of Caesar with Pompey’s wife. The Lady Mucia did not see me. She had her head down between her forearms, her dress was bunched up around her waist, and she was bent over a table, gripping the edge so tightly her knuckles were white. But Caesar saw me well enough, for he was facing the door, thrusting into her from behind, his right hand cupped around her swollen belly, his left resting casually on his hip, like a dandy standing on a street corner. For exactly how long our eyes met I cannot say, but he stares back at me even now-those fathomless dark eyes of his gazing through the smoke and chaos of all the years that were to follow-amused, unabashed, challenging. I fled.

By this time, most of the senators had wandered back into the conference chamber. Cicero was discussing philosophy with Varro, the most distinguished scholar in Rome, of whose works on philology and antiquities I was deeply in awe. On any other occasion I would have been honored to be introduced, but my head was still reeling from the scene I had just witnessed and I cannot remember a thing of what he said. I handed the minutes to Cicero, who skimmed them quickly, took my pen from me, and made a small amendment, all the while still talking to Varro. Pompey must have noticed what he was doing, for he came across with a big smile on his wide face and pretended to be angry, taking the minutes away from Cicero and accusing him of inserting promises he had never made-“though I think you can count on my vote for the praetorship,” he said, and slapped him on the back. Until a short while earlier, I had considered Pompey a kind of god among men-a booming, confident war hero-but now, knowing what I did, I thought him also sad. “This is quite remarkable,” he said to me, as he ran his huge thumb down the columns of words. “You have captured my voice exactly. How much do you want for him, Cicero?”

“I have already turned down an enormous sum from Crassus,” replied Cicero.

“Well, if ever there is a bidding war, be sure that I am included,” said Caesar in his rasping voice, coming up behind us. “I would dearly love to get my hands on Tiro.” But he said it in such a friendly way, accompanying it with a wink, that none of the others heard the menace in his words, while I felt almost faint with terror.

“The day that I am parted from Tiro,” said Cicero, prophetically as it turned out, “is the day that I quit public life.”

“Now I am doubly determined to buy him,” said Caesar, and Cicero joined in the general laughter.

After agreeing to keep secret everything that had been discussed, and to meet in Rome in a few days’ time, the group broke up. The moment we turned out of the gates and onto the road to Tusculum, Cicero let out a long, pent-up cry of frustration and struck the side of the carriage with the palm of his hand. “A criminal conspiracy!” he said, shaking his head in despair. “Worse-a stupid criminal conspiracy. This is the trouble, Tiro, when soldiers decide to play at politics. They imagine that all they need to do is issue an order, and everyone will obey. They never see that the very thing which makes them attractive in the first place-that they are supposedly these great patriots, above the squalor of politics-must ultimately defeat them, because either they do stay above politics, in which case they go nowhere, or they get down in the muck along with the rest of us and show themselves to be just as venal as everyone else.” He stared out at the lake, darkening now in the winter light. “What do you make of Caesar?” he said suddenly, to which I returned a noncommittal answer about his seeming very ambitious. “He certainly is that. So much so, there were times today when it occurred to me that this whole fantastic scheme is actually not Pompey’s at all, but Caesar’s. That, at least, would explain his presence.”

I pointed out that Pompey had described it as his own idea.

“And no doubt Pompey thinks it is. But that is the nature of the man. You make a remark to him, and then you find it being repeated back to you as if it were his own. ‘The central issue must be the defeat of the pirates, not the future of Pompey the Great.’ That is a typical example. Sometimes, just to amuse myself, I have argued against my own original assertion, and waited to see how long it was before I heard my rebuttal coming back at me, too.” He frowned and nodded. “I am sure I am right. Caesar is quite clever enough to have planted the seed and left it to flower on its own. I wonder how much time he has spent with Pompey. He seems very well bedded-in.”

It was on the tip of my tongue then to tell him what I had witnessed, but a combination of fear of Caesar, my own shyness, and a feeling that Cicero would not think the better of me for spying-that I would in some sense be contaminated myself by describing the whole sordid business-caused me to swallow my words. It was not until many years later-after Caesar’s death, in fact, when he could no longer harm me and I was altogether more confident-that I revealed my story. Cicero, then an old man, was silent for a long time. “I understand your discretion,” he said at last, “and in many ways I applaud it. But I have to say, my dear friend, that I wish you had informed me. Perhaps then things might have turned out differently. At least I would have realized earlier the kind of breathtakingly reckless man we were dealing with. But by the time I did understand, it was too late.”

THE ROME TO WHICH WE RETURNED a few days later was jittery and full of rumors. The burning of Ostia had been clearly visible to the whole city as a red glow in the western night sky. Such an attack on the capital was unprecedented, and when Gabinius and Cornelius took office as tribunes on the tenth day of December, they moved quickly to fan the sparks of public anxiety into the flames of panic. They caused extra sentries to be posted at the city’s gates. Wagons and pedestrians entering Rome were stopped and searched at random for weapons. The wharves and warehouses along the river were patrolled both day and night, and severe penalties were promulgated for citizens convicted of hoarding grain, with the inevitable result that the three great food markets of Rome in those days-the Emporium, the Macellum, and the Forum Boarium-immediately ran out of supplies. The vigorous new tribunes also dragged the outgoing consul, the hapless Marcius Rex, before a meeting of the people, and subjected him to a merciless cross-examination about the security lapses which had led to the fiasco at Ostia. Other witnesses were found to testify about the menace of the pirates, and that menace grew with every retelling. They had a thousand ships! They were not lone raiders at all, but an organized conspiracy! They had squadrons and admirals and fearsome weapons of poison-tipped arrows and Greek fire! Nobody in the Senate dared object to any of this, for fear of seeming complacent-not even when a chain of beacons was built all along the road to the sea, to be lit if pirate vessels were seen heading for the mouth of the Tiber. “This is absurd,” Cicero said to me on the morning we went out to inspect these most visible symbols of the national peril. “As if any sane pirate would dream of sailing twenty miles up an open river to attack a defended city!” He shook his head in dismay at the ease with which a timorous population can be molded by unscrupulous politicians. But what could he do? His closeness to Pompey had trapped him into silence.

On the seventeenth day of December the Festival of Saturn began, and lasted for a week. It was not the most enjoyable of holidays, for obvious reasons, and although the Cicero family went through the normal rituals of exchanging gifts, even allowing us slaves to have the day off and sharing a meal with us, nobody’s heart was in it. Lucius used to be the life and soul of these events, and he was gone. Terentia, I believe, had hoped she was pregnant, but had discovered she was not, and was becoming seriously worried that she would never bear a son. Pomponia nagged away at Quintus about his inadequacies as a husband. Even little Tullia could not cheer the mood.

As for Cicero, he spent much of Saturnalia in his study, brooding on Pompey’s insatiable ambition, and the implications it had for the country and for his own political prospects. The elections for the praetorship were barely eight months away, and he and Quintus had already compiled a list of likely candidates. From whichever of these men was eventually elected, he could probably expect to find his rivals for the consulship. The two brothers spent many hours discussing the permutations, and it seemed to me, although I kept it to myself, that they missed the wisdom of their cousin. For although Cicero used to joke that if he wanted to know what was politically shrewd, he would ask Lucius his opinion and then do precisely the opposite, nevertheless Lucius had offered a fixed star to steer by. Without him, the Ciceros had only each other, and despite their mutual devotion, it was not always the wisest of relationships.

It was in this atmosphere, around the eighth or ninth day of January, when the Latin Festival was over and serious politics resumed, that Gabinius finally mounted the rostra to demand a new supreme commander. I am talking here, I should explain, about the old republican rostra, which was very different from the wretched ornamental footstool we have today. This ancient structure, now destroyed, was the heart of Rome’s democracy: a long, curved platform, twelve feet high, covered with the statues of the heroes of antiquity, from which the tribunes and the consuls addressed the people. Its back was to the Senate House, and it faced out boldly across the widest expanse of the Forum, with six ships’ battering rams, or “beaks”-those rostra, which gave the platform its name-thrusting from its heavy masonry (the beaks had been captured from the Carthaginians in a sea battle nearly three centuries earlier). The whole of its rear was a flight of steps, if you can imagine what I am saying, so that a magistrate might leave the Senate House or the tribunes’ headquarters, walk fifty paces, ascend the steps, and find himself on top of the rostra, facing a crowd of thousands, with the tiered façades of the two great basilicas on either side of him and the Temple of Castor straight ahead. This was where Gabinius stood on that January morning and declared, in his smooth and confident way, that what Rome needed was a strong man to take control of the war against the pirates.

Cicero, despite his misgivings, had done his best, with the help of Quintus, to turn out a good-size crowd, and the Piceneans could always be relied upon to drum up a couple of hundred veterans. Add to these the regulars who hung about the Basilica Porcia, and those citizens going about their normal business in the Forum, and I should say that close on a thousand were present to hear Gabinius spell out what was needed if the pirates were to be beaten-a supreme commander of consular rank with imperium lasting for three years over all territory up to fifty miles from the sea, fifteen legates of praetorian rank to assist him, free access to the treasury of Rome, five hundred warships, and the right to levy up to one hundred and twenty thousand infantry and five thousand cavalry. These were staggering numbers and the demand caused a sensation. By the time Gabinius had finished the first reading of his bill and had handed it to a clerk to be pinned up outside the tribunes’ basilica, both Catulus and Hortensius had come hurrying into the Forum to find out what was going on. Pompey, needless to say, was nowhere to be seen, and the other members of the group of seven (as the senators around Pompey had taken to calling themselves) took care to stand apart from one another, to avoid any suggestion of collusion. But the aristocrats were not fooled. “If this is your doing,” Catulus snarled at Cicero, “you can tell your master he will have a fight on his hands.”

The violence of their reaction was to prove even worse than Cicero had predicted. Once a bill had been given its first reading, three weekly market days had to pass before it could be voted on by the people (this was to enable country dwellers to come into the city and study what was proposed). So the aristocrats had until the beginning of February to organize against it, and they did not waste a moment. Two days later, the Senate was summoned to debate the lex Gabinia, as it would be called, and despite Cicero’s advice that he should stay away, Pompey felt that he was honor-bound to attend and stake his claim to the job. He wanted a good-size escort down to the Senate House, and because there no longer seemed much point in secrecy, the seven senators formed an honor guard around him. Quintus also joined them, in his brand-new senatorial toga; this was only his third or fourth visit to the chamber. As usual, I stayed close to Cicero. “We should have known we were in trouble,” he lamented afterwards, “when no other senator turned up.”

The walk down the Esquiline Hill and into the Forum went well enough. The precinct bosses had played their part, delivering plenty of enthusiasm on the streets, with people calling out to Pompey to save them from the menace of the pirates. He waved to them like a landlord to his tenants. But the moment the group entered the Senate House they were met by jeers from all sides, and a piece of rotten fruit flew across the chamber and splattered onto Pompey’s shoulder, leaving a rich brown stain. Such a thing had never happened to the great general before, and he halted and looked around him in stupefaction. Afranius, Palicanus, and Gabinius quickly closed ranks to protect him, just as if they were back on the battlefield, and I saw Cicero stretch out his arms to hustle all four to their places, no doubt reasoning that the sooner they sat down, the sooner the demonstration would be over. I was standing at the entrance to the chamber, held back with the other spectators by the familiar cordon of rope slung between the two doorposts. Of course, we were all supporters of Pompey, so the more the senators inside jeered him, the more we outside roared our approval, and it was a while before the presiding consul could bring the house to order.

The new consuls in that year were Pompey’s old friend Glabrio and the aristocratic Calpurnius Piso (not to be confused with the other senator of that name, who will feature later in this story, if the gods give me the strength to finish it). A sign of how desperate the situation was for Pompey in the Senate was that Glabrio had chosen to absent himself, rather than be seen in open disagreement with the man who had given him back his son. That left Piso in the chair. I could see Hortensius, Catulus, Isauricus, Marcus Lucullus-the brother of the commander of the Eastern legions-and all the rest of the patrician faction, poised to attack. The only ones no longer present to offer opposition were the three Metellus brothers: Quintus was abroad, serving as the governor of Crete, while the younger two, as if to prove the indifference of fate to the petty ambitions of men, had both died of the fever not long after the Verres trial. But what was most disturbing was that the pedarii-the unassuming, patient, plodding mass of the Senate, whom Cicero had taken so much trouble to cultivate-even they were hostile, or at best sullenly unresponsive to Pompey’s megalomania. As for Crassus, he was sprawled on the consular front bench opposite, with his arms folded and his legs casually outstretched, regarding Pompey with an expression of ominous calm. The reason for his sangfroid was obvious. Sitting directly behind him, placed there like a pair of prize animals just bought at auction, were two of that year’s tribunes, Roscius and Trebellius. This was Crassus’s way of telling the world that he had used his wealth to purchase not just one but two vetoes, and that the lex Gabinia, whatever Pompey and Cicero chose to do, would never be allowed to pass.

Piso exercised his privilege of speaking first. “An orator of the stationary or quiet type,” was how Cicero condescendingly described him many years later, but there was nothing stationary or quiet about him that day. “We know what you are doing!” he shouted at Pompey as he came to the end of his harangue. “You are defying your colleagues in the Senate and setting yourself up as a second Romulus-slaying your brother so that you may rule alone! But you would do well to remember the fate of Romulus, who was murdered in his turn by his own senators, who cut up his body and carried the mangled pieces back to their homes!” That brought the aristocrats to their feet, and I could just make out Pompey’s massive profile, stock-still and staring straight ahead, obviously unable to believe what was happening.

Catulus spoke next, and then Isauricus. The most damaging was Hortensius. For almost a year, since the end of his consulship, he had hardly been seen in the Forum. His son-in-law, Caepio, the beloved elder brother of Cato, had recently died on army service in the East, leaving Hortensius’s daughter a widow, and the word was that the Dancing Master no longer had the strength in his legs for the struggle. But Pompey’s overreaching ambition seemed to have brought him back into the arena revitalized, and listening to him reminded one of just how formidable he could be on a big set-piece occasion such as this. He never ranted or stooped to vulgarity, but eloquently restated the old republican case: that power must always be divided, hedged around with limitations, and renewed by annual votes, and that while he had nothing personally against Pompey-indeed, he felt that Pompey was more worthy of supreme command than any other man in the state-the lex Gabinia set a dangerous, un-Roman precedent, for ancient liberties were not to be flung aside merely because of some passing scare about pirates. Cicero was shifting in his place, and I could not help but reflect that this was exactly the speech which he would have made if he had been free to speak his mind.

Hortensius had just about reached his peroration when the figure of Caesar rose from that obscure region at the back of the chamber, close to the door, which had once been occupied by Cicero, and asked Hortensius to give way. The respectful silence in which the great advocate had been heard fractured immediately, and one has to admit that it was brave of Caesar to take him on in such an atmosphere. He stood his ground until at last he could be heard, and then he started to speak, in his clear, compelling, remorseless way. There was nothing un-Roman, he said, about seeking to defeat pirates, who were the scum of the sea; what was un-Roman was to will the end of a thing but not the means. If the republic functioned as perfectly as Hortensius said it did, why had this menace been allowed to grow? And now that it had grown monstrous, how was it to be defeated? He had himself been captured by pirates a few years back when he was on his way to Rhodes, and held to ransom, and when at last he had been released, he had gone back and hunted down every last man of his kidnappers, and carried out the promise he had made to them when he was their prisoner-had seen to it that the scoundrels were crucified! “That, Hortensius, is the Roman way to deal with piracy-and that is what the lex Gabinia will enable us to do!”

He finished to a round of boos and catcalls, and as he resumed his seat, with the most magnificent display of disdain, some kind of fight broke out at the other end of the chamber. I believe a senator threw a punch at Gabinius, who turned around and punched him back, and very quickly he was in difficulties, with bodies piling in on top of him. There was a scream and a crash as one of the benches toppled over. I lost sight of Cicero. A voice in the crowd behind me cried that Gabinius was being murdered, and there was such a surge of pressure forward that the rope was pulled from its fixings and we tumbled into the chamber. I was lucky to scramble to one side as several hundred of Pompey’s plebeian supporters (who were a rough-looking lot, I must admit) poured down the aisle toward the consular dais and dragged Piso from his curule chair. One brute had him by the neck, and for a few moments it looked as though murder would be done. But then Gabinius managed to struggle free and pull himself up onto a bench to show that, although he had been somewhat knocked about, he was still alive. He appealed to the demonstrators to let go of Piso, and after a short argument the consul was reluctantly released. Rubbing his throat, Piso declared hoarsely that the session was adjourned without a vote-and so, by the very narrowest of margins, for the moment at least, the commonwealth was saved from anarchy.

SUCH VIOLENT SCENES had not been witnessed in the heart of Rome’s governing district for more than fourteen years, and they had a profound effect on Cicero, even though he had managed to escape the melee with barely a ruffle in his immaculate dress. Gabinius was streaming blood from his nose and lip, and Cicero had to help him from the chamber. They came out some distance after Pompey, who walked on, looking neither right nor left, with the measured tread of a man at a funeral. What I remember most is the silence as the mingled crowd of senators and plebeians parted to let him through. It was as if both sides, at the very last moment, had realized that they were fighting on a cliff edge, had come to their senses and drawn back. We went out into the Forum, with Pompey still not saying anything, and when he turned into the Argiletum, in the direction of his house, his supporters all followed him, partly for want of anything else to do. Afranius, who was next to Pompey, passed the word back that the general wanted a meeting. I asked Cicero if there was anything he required and he replied, with a bitter smile, “Yes, that quiet life in Arpinum!”

Quintus came up and said urgently, “Pompey must withdraw, or be humiliated!”

“He already has been humiliated,” retorted Cicero, “and we with him. Soldiers!” he said to me in disgust. “What did I tell you? I would not dream of giving them orders on the battlefield. Why should they believe they know better than I about politics?”

We climbed the hill to Pompey’s house and filed inside, leaving the muted crowd in the street. Ever since that first conference, I had been accepted as the minute-taker for the group, and when I settled into my usual place in the corner, no one gave me a second glance. The senators arranged themselves around a big table, Pompey at the head. The pride had entirely gone out of his massive frame. Slumped in his throne-like chair, he reminded me of some great beast that had been captured, shackled, baffled, and taunted in the arena by creatures smaller than himself. He was utterly defeatist and kept repeating that it was all over-the Senate would clearly never stand for his appointment, he had only the support of the dregs on the streets, Crassus’s tame tribunes would veto the bill in any case; there was nothing left for it but death or exile. Caesar took the opposite view-Pompey was still the most popular man in the republic, he should go out into Italy and begin recruiting the legions he needed, his old veterans would provide the backbone of his new army, the Senate would capitulate once he had sufficient force. “There is only one thing to do if you lose a throw of the dice: double your stake and throw again. Ignore the aristocrats, and if necessary rule through the people and the army.”

I could see that Cicero was preparing himself to speak, and I was sure he did not favor either of these extremes. But there is as much skill in knowing how to handle a meeting of ten as there is in manipulating a gathering of hundreds. He waited until everyone had had their say, and the discussion was exhausted, before coming fresh to the fray. “As you know, Pompey,” he began, “I have had some misgivings about this undertaking from the outset. But after witnessing today’s debacle in the Senate, I have to tell you, they have vanished entirely. Now we simply have to win this fight-for your sake, for Rome’s, and for the dignity and authority of all those of us who have supported you. There can be no question of surrender. You are famously a lion on the battlefield; you cannot become a mouse in Rome.”

“You watch your language, lawyer,” said Afranius, wagging his finger at him, but Cicero took no notice.

“Can you conceive of what will happen if you give up now? The bill has been published. The people are clamoring for action against the pirates. If you do not assume the post, someone else will, and I can tell you who it will be: Crassus. You say yourself he has two tame tribunes. He will make sure this law goes through, only with his name written into it instead of yours. And how will you, Gabinius, be able to stop him? By vetoing your own legislation? Impossible! Do you see? We cannot abandon the battle now!”

This was an inspired argument, for if there was one thing guaranteed to rouse Pompey to a fight, it was the prospect of Crassus stealing his glory. He drew himself up, thrust out his jaw, and glared around the table. I noticed both Afranius and Palicanus give him slight nods of encouragement. “We have scouts in the legions, Cicero,” said Pompey, “marvelous fellows, who can find a way through the most difficult terrain-marshes, mountain ranges, forests which no man has penetrated since time began. But politics beats any obstacle I have ever faced. If you can show me a route out of this mess, you will have no truer friend than I.”

“Will you place yourself in my hands entirely?”

“You are the scout.”

“Very well,” said Cicero. “Gabinius, tomorrow you must summon Pompey to the rostra, to ask him to serve as supreme commander.”

“Good,” said Pompey belligerently, clenching his massive fist. “And I shall accept.”

“No, no,” said Cicero, “you will refuse absolutely. You will say you have done enough for Rome, that you have no ambitions left in public life, and are retiring to your estate in the country.” Pompey’s mouth fell open. “Don’t worry. I shall write the speech for you. You will leave the city tomorrow afternoon, and you will not come back. The more reluctant you seem, the more frantic the people will be for your recall. You will be our Cincinnatus, fetched from his plow to save the country from disaster. It is one of the most potent myths in politics, believe me.”

Some of those present were opposed to such a dramatic tactic, considering it too risky. But the idea of appearing modest appealed to Pompey’s vanity. For is this not the dream of every proud and ambitious man? That rather than having to get down in the dust and fight for power, the people should come crawling to him, begging him to accept it as a gift? The more Pompey thought about it, the more he liked it. His dignity and authority would remain intact, he would have a comfortable few weeks, and if it all went wrong, it would be someone else’s fault.

“This sounds very clever,” said Gabinius, who was dabbing at his split lip. “But you seem to forget that it is not the people who are the problem; it is the Senate.”

“The Senate will come around once they wake up to the implications of Pompey’s retirement. They will be faced with a choice of either doing nothing about the pirates, or awarding the supreme command to Crassus. To the great majority, neither will be acceptable. Apply a little grease and they will slide our way.”

“That is clever,” said Pompey admiringly. “Is he not clever, gentlemen? Did I not tell you he was clever?”

“These fifteen legateships,” said Cicero. “I propose you should use at least half of them to win over support inside the Senate.” Palicanus and Afranius, seeing their lucrative commissions in jeopardy, immediately objected loudly, but Pompey waved them to be quiet. “You are a national hero,” continued Cicero, “a patriot above petty political squabbles and intrigue. Rather than using your patronage to reward your friends, you should use it to divide your enemies. Nothing will split the aristocratic faction more disastrously than if some can be persuaded to serve under you. They will tear one another’s eyes out.”

“I agree,” said Caesar, with a decisive nod. “Cicero’s plan is better than mine. Be patient, Afranius. This is only the first stage. We can wait for our rewards.”

“Besides,” said Pompey sanctimoniously, “the defeat of Rome’s enemies should be reward enough for all of us.” I could see that in his mind’s eye, he was already at his plow.

Afterwards, as we were walking home, Quintus said, “I hope you know what you are doing.”

“I hope I know what I am doing,” replied Cicero.

“The nub of the problem, surely, is Crassus and those two tribunes of his, and his ability to veto the bill. How are you going to get around that?”

“I have no idea. Let us hope that a solution presents itself. One usually does.”

I realized then just how much he was relying on his old dictum that sometimes you have to start a fight to discover how to win it. He said good night to Quintus and walked on, head down in thought. From being a reluctant participant in Pompey’s grand ambition, he had now emerged as its chief organizer, and he knew that this would put him in a hard place, not least with his own wife. In my experience, women are far less willing than men to forget past slights, and it was inexplicable to Terentia that her husband should still be dancing attendance on the “Prince of Picenum,” as she derisively called Pompey, especially after that day’s scenes in the Senate, about which the whole city was talking. She was waiting for Cicero in the tablinum when we arrived home, all drawn up in full battle order and ready to attack. She flew at him immediately. “I cannot believe things have reached such a pass! There is the Senate on one side and the rabble on the other-and where is my husband to be found? As usual, with the rabble! Surely even you will sever your connection with him now?”

“He is announcing his retirement tomorrow,” Cicero soothed her.

“What?”

“It is true. I am going to write his statement myself this evening. Which means I shall have to dine at my desk, I am afraid, if you will excuse me.” He eased past her, and once we were in his study he said, “Do you think she believed me?”

“No,” I replied.

“Nor do I,” he said, with a chuckle. “She has lived with me too long!”

He was rich enough by now to have divorced her if he wanted, and he could have made himself a better match, certainly a more beautiful one. He was disappointed she had not been able to give him a son. And yet, despite their endless arguments, he stayed with her. Love was not the word for it-not in the sense that the poets use it. Some stranger, stronger compound bound them. She kept him sharp, that was part of it: the whetstone to his blade. At any rate, she did not bother us for the rest of that night, as Cicero dictated the words he thought that Pompey should say. He had never written a speech for anyone else before, and it was a peculiar experience. Nowadays, of course, most senators employ a slave or two to turn out their speeches; I have even heard of some who have no idea of what they are going to say until the text is placed in front of them; how these fellows can call themselves statesmen defeats me. But Cicero found that he rather enjoyed composing parts for others. It amused him to think of lines that great men ought to utter, if only they had the brains, and later he would use the technique to considerable effect in his books. He even thought of a phrase for Gabinius to deliver, which afterwards became quite famous: “Pompey the Great was not born for himself alone, but for Rome!”

The statement was deliberately kept short and we finished it long before midnight, and early the following morning, after Cicero had performed his exercises and greeted only his most important callers, we went across to Pompey’s house and gave him the speech. Overnight, Pompey had contracted a bad dose of cold feet, and now he fretted aloud whether retirement was such a good idea after all. But Cicero saw that it was nervousness about going up onto the rostra as much as anything else, and once Pompey had his prepared text in his hands, he began to calm down. Cicero then gave some notes to Gabinius, who was also present, but the tribune resented being handed his lines like an actor and questioned whether he should really say that Pompey was “born for Rome.” “Why?” teased Cicero. “Do you not believe it?” Whereupon Pompey gruffly ordered Gabinius to stop complaining and say the words as written. Gabinius fell silent, but he glowered at Cicero and from that moment I believe became his secret enemy-a perfect example of the senator’s recklessness in causing offense by his repartee.

An enormous throng of spectators had gathered in the Forum, eager to see the sequel to the previous day’s performance. We could hear the noise as we came down the hill from Pompey’s house-that awesome, oblivious swelling sound of a great, excited multitude, which always reminds me of a huge sea rolling against a distant shore. I felt my blood begin to pulse faster in anticipation. Most of the Senate was there, and the aristocrats had brought along several hundred supporters of their own, partly for their protection, and also to howl down Pompey when, as they expected, he declared his desire for the supreme command. The great man briefly entered the Forum escorted, as before, by Cicero and his senatorial allies, but kept to the edge of it and immediately went to the back of the rostra, where he paced around, yawned, blew on his freezing hands, and generally gave every indication of nerves, as the roar of the crowd increased in volume. Cicero wished him luck, then went around to the front of the rostra to stand with the rest of the Senate, for he was keen to observe their reactions. The ten tribunes filed up onto the platform and sat on their bench, then Gabinius stepped forward and shouted dramatically, “I summon before the people Pompey the Great!”

How important appearance is in politics, and how superbly Pompey was fashioned by nature to carry the look of greatness! As that broad and familiar figure came plodding up the steps and into view, his followers gave him the most tremendous ovation. He stood there as solid as a full-grown bull, his massive head tilted back slightly on his muscular shoulders, looking down on the upturned faces, his nostrils flared as if inhaling the applause. Normally, the people resented having speeches read to them rather than delivered with apparent spontaneity, but on this occasion there was something in the way that Pompey unrolled his short text and held it up that reinforced the sense that these were words as weighty as the man delivering them-a man above the smooth oratorical tricks of the law and politics.

“People of Rome,” he bellowed into the silence, “when I was seventeen I fought in the army of my father, Gnaeus Pompeius Strabo, to bring unity to the state. When I was twenty-three I raised a force of fifteen thousand, defeated the combined rebel armies of Brutus, Caelius, and Carrinas, and was saluted imperator in the field. When I was twenty-four I conquered Sicily. When I was twenty-five I conquered Africa. On my twenty-sixth birthday, I triumphed. When I was thirty, and not even a senator, I took command of our forces in Spain with proconsular authority, fought the rebels for six years, and conquered. When I was thirty-six, I returned to Italy, hunted down the last remaining army of the fugitive slave Spartacus, and conquered. When I was thirty-seven, I was voted consul and triumphed for a second time. As consul, I restored to you the ancient rights of your tribunes, and staged games. Whenever danger has threatened this commonwealth, I have served it. My entire life has been nothing but one long special command. Now a new and unprecedented menace has arisen to threaten the republic. And to meet that danger, an office with new and unprecedented authority is rightly proposed. Whoever you choose to shoulder this burden must have the support of all ranks and all classes, for a great trust is involved in bestowing so much power on a single man. It is clear to me, after the meeting of the Senate yesterday, that I do not have their trust, and therefore I want to tell you that however much I am petitioned, I shall not consent to be nominated; and if nominated, I shall not serve. Pompey the Great has had his fill of special commands. On this day I renounce all ambition for public office and retire from the city to till the soil like my forefathers before me.”

After a moment of shock, a terrible groan of disappointment broke from the crowd, and Gabinius darted to the front of the rostra, where Pompey was standing impassively.

“This cannot be permitted! Pompey the Great was not born for himself alone, but for Rome!”

Of course, the line provoked the most tremendous demonstration of approval, and the chant of “Pompey! Pompey! Rome! Rome!” bounced off the walls of the basilicas and temples until one’s ears ached with the noise. It was some time before Pompey could make himself heard.

“Your kindness touches me, my fellow citizens, but my continued presence in the city can only impede your deliberations. Choose wisely, O people of Rome, from the many able former consuls in the Senate! And remember that although I now quit Rome altogether, my heart will remain among your hearths and temples forever. Farewell!”

He raised his roll of papyrus as if it were a marshal’s baton, saluted the wailing crowd, turned, and trudged implacably toward the back of the platform, ignoring all entreaties to remain. Down the steps he went, watched by the astonished tribunes, first the legs sinking from view, and then the torso, and finally the noble head with its crowning quiff. Some people standing close to me began weeping and tearing at their hair and clothes, and even though I knew the whole thing was a ruse, it was all I could do not to break into sobs myself. The assembled senators looked as if some immense missile had dropped among them-a few were defiant, many were shaken, the majority simply blank with wonder. For almost as long as anyone could remember, Pompey had been the foremost man in the state, and now he had-gone! Crassus’s face in particular was a picture of conflicting emotions, which no artist ever born could have hoped to capture. Part of him knew that he must now, at last, after a lifetime in Pompey’s shadow, be the favorite to seize the special command; the shrewder part knew that this had to be a trick, and that his whole position was threatened by some unforeseen jeopardy.

Cicero stayed just long enough to gauge the reactions to his handiwork, then hurried around to the back of the rostra to report. The Piceneans were there, and the usual crush of hangers-on. Pompey’s attendants had brought a closed litter of blue and gold brocade to ferry him to the Capena Gate, and the general was preparing to clamber into it. He was like many men I have seen immediately after they have delivered a big speech, in the same breath both arrogant with exhilaration and anxious for reassurance. “That went extremely well,” he said. “Did you think it was all right?”

“Superb,” said Cicero. “Crassus’s expression is beyond description.”

“Did you like the line about my heart remaining among the hearths and temples of Rome forever?”

“It was the consummate touch.”

Pompey grunted, highly pleased, and settled himself among the cushions of his litter. He let the curtain drop, then quickly pulled it aside again. “You are sure this is going to work?”

“Our opponents are in disarray. That is a start.”

The curtain fell, then parted once more.

“How long before the bill is voted on?”

“Fifteen days.”

“Keep me informed. Daily at the least.”

Cicero stepped aside as the canopied chair was hoisted onto the shoulders of its bearers. They must have been strong young fellows, for Pompey was a great weight, yet they set off at the double, past the Senate House and out of the Forum-the heavenly body of Pompey the Great trailing his comet’s tail of clients and admirers. “‘Did I like the line about hearths and temples?’” repeated Cicero under his breath as he watched him go. “Well, naturally I did, you great booby-I wrote it!” I guess it must have been hard for him to devote so much energy to a chief he did not admire and a cause he believed to be fundamentally specious. But the journey to the top in politics often confines a man with some uncongenial fellow passengers and shows him strange scenery, and he knew there was no turning back now.