Imperium

Roll XIII

IN THE ANNUAL ELECTIONS for praetor that summer, Cicero topped the poll. It was an ugly, scrappy campaign, fought in the aftermath of the struggle over the lex Gabinia, when trust between the political factions had broken down. I have before me the letter which Cicero wrote to Atticus that summer, expressing his disgust at all things in public life: “It is unbelievable in how short a time how much worse you will find them than when you left.” Twice the balloting had to be abandoned halfway through when fighting broke out on the Field of Mars. Cicero suspected Crassus of hiring thugs to disrupt the voting, but could not prove it. Whatever the truth, it was not until September that the eight praetors-elect were finally able to assemble in the Senate House to determine which court each would preside over in the coming year. The selection, as usual, was to be settled by drawing lots.

The most coveted office was that of urban praetor, who in those days ran the justice system and was ranked third in the state, behind the two consuls; he also had responsibility for staging the Games of Apollo. If that was the plum, then the post to be avoided at all costs was the embezzlement court, a job of stunning tedium. “Of course, I should like the urban praetorship,” Cicero confided to me as we walked down to the Senate that morning. “And frankly, I should rather hang myself than sort out embezzlement for a year. But I shall willingly settle for anything in between.” He was in a buoyant mood. The elections were concluded at last and he had won the most votes. Pompey was gone not only from Rome but also from Italy, so Cicero had no great man looming over him. And he was getting very close to the consulship now-so close he could almost feel that ivory chair beneath him.

There was always a full chamber for these lot-drawing ceremonies, combining as they did high politics with a game of chance, and by the time we arrived the majority of the senators had already gone in. Cicero entered to a noisy reception, with cheers from his old supporters among the pedarii and abusive shouts from the aristocrats. Crassus, stretched out in his usual position on the consular front bench, regarded him through half-closed eyes, like a big cat pretending to be asleep while a little bird hops by. The election had turned out much as Cicero had expected, and if I give you here the names of the other praetors-elect, I believe you will have a good sense of how politics stood at that time.

Apart from Cicero, there were only two other men of obvious ability waiting calmly to draw their lots. By far the most talented was Aquilius Gallus, who some say was a better lawyer even than Cicero, and who was already a respected judge; in fact, he was something of a paragon-brilliant, modest, just, kindly, a man of supreme taste, with a magnificent mansion on the Viminal Hill; Cicero had it in mind to approach the older man to be his running mate for consul. Next to Gallus, at least in gravitas, was Sulpicius Galba, of a distinguished aristocratic family, who had so many consular masks in his atrium, it was inconceivable he would not be one of Cicero’s rivals for the consulship; but although he was honest and able, he was also harsh and arrogant-that would count against him in a tight election. Fourth in talent, I suppose, although Cicero sometimes burst out laughing at his absurdities, was Quintus Cornificius, a rich religious fundamentalist, who talked endlessly about the need to revive Rome’s declining morals-“the candidate of the gods,” Cicero called him. After that, I am afraid, there was a great shelving-away in ability: remarkably, all the other four praetors-elect were men who had previously been expelled from the Senate, for deficiencies in either funds or morals. The oldest of these was Varinius Glaber, one of those clever, bitter men who expect to succeed in life and cannot believe it when they realize they have failed-already a praetor seven years earlier, he had been given an army by the Senate to put down the revolt of Spartacus; but his legions were weak and he had been beaten repeatedly by the rebel slaves, eventually retiring from public life in humiliation. Then there was Caius Orchivius-“all push and no talent,” as Cicero characterized him-who had the support of a big voting syndicate. In seventh place when it came to brains Cicero placed Cassius Longinus-“that barrel of lard”-who was sometimes called the fattest man in Rome. Which left, in eighth, none other than Antonius Hybrida, the drinker who kept a slave girl for a wife, whom Cicero had agreed to help in the elections on the grounds that here, at least, would be one praetor whose ambitions he would not have to worry about. “Do you know why they call him ‘Hybrida’?” Cicero asked me one day. “Because he’s half man, half imbecile. I wouldn’t award him the half, personally.”

But those gods to whom Cornificius was so devoted have a way of punishing such hubris, and they duly punished Cicero that day. The lots were placed in an ancient urn which had been used for this purpose for centuries, and the presiding consul, Glabrio, called up the candidates in alphabetical order, which meant that Antonius Hybrida went first. He dipped his trembling hand into the urn for a token and gave it to Glabrio, who raised an eyebrow and then read out, “Urban praetor.” There was a moment of silence, and then the chamber rang with such a shout of laughter that the pigeons roosting in the roof all took off in a great burst of shit and feathers. Hortensius and some of the other aristocrats, knowing that Cicero had helped Hybrida, pointed toward the orator and clapped their sides in mockery. Crassus almost fell off his bench with delight, while Hybrida himself-soon to be the third man in the state-stood beaming all around him, no doubt misinterpreting the derision as pleasure at his good fortune.

I could not see Cicero’s face, but I could guess what he was thinking: that his bad luck would surely now be completed by drawing embezzlement. Gallus went next and won the court which administered electoral law; Longinus the fat man received treason; and when candidate-of-the-gods Cornificius was awarded the criminal court, the odds were starting to look decidedly grim-so much so that I was sure the worst was about to happen. But thankfully it was the next man up, Orchivius, who drew embezzlement. When Galba was given responsibility for hearing cases of violence against the state, that meant there were only two possibilities left for Cicero-either his familiar stamping ground of the extortion court, or the position of foreign praetor, which would have left him effectively the deputy of Hybrida, a grim fate for the cleverest man in the city. As he stepped up to the dais to draw his lot, he gave a rueful shake of his head-you can scheme all you like in politics, the gesture seemed to say, but in the end it all comes down to luck. He thrust his hand into the urn and drew out-extortion. There was a certain pleasing symmetry in that it was Glabrio, the former president of this very court in which Cicero had made his name, who read out the announcement. So that left the foreign praetorship to Varinius, the victim of Spartacus. Thus the courts were settled for the following year, and the preliminary field lined up for the consulship.

AMID ALL THIS RUSH of political events, I have neglected to mention that Pomponia had become pregnant in the spring-proof, as Cicero wrote triumphantly to Atticus when he passed on the news, that the marriage with Quintus must be working after all. Not long after the praetorian elections, the child was born, a healthy boy. It was a matter of great pride to me, and a mark of my growing standing within the family, that I was invited to attend the lustrical, on the ninth day following the birth. The ceremony was held at the Temple of Tellus, next to the family house, and I doubt whether any nephew could have had a more doting uncle than Cicero, who insisted on commissioning a splendid amulet from a silversmith as a naming present. It was only after baby Quintus had been blessed by the priest with holy water, and Cicero took him in his arms, that I realized how much he missed having a boy of his own. A large part of any man’s motivation in pursuing the consulship would surely have been that his son, and grandson, and sons of his sons to infinity, could exercise the right of ius imaginum, and display his likeness after death in the family atrium. What was the point in founding a glorious family name if the line was extinct before it even started? And glancing across the temple to Terentia, carefully studying her husband as he stroked the baby’s cheek with the back of his little finger, I could see that the same thought was in her mind.

The arrival of a child often prompts a keen reappraisal of the future, and I am sure this was what led Cicero, shortly after the birth of his nephew, to arrange for Tullia to become betrothed. She was now ten years old, his cynosure as ever, and rare was the day, despite his legal and political work, when he did not clear a little space to read to her or play some game. And it was typical of his mingling of tenderness and cunning that he first raised his plan with her, rather than with Terentia. “How would you like,” he said to her one morning when the three of us were in his study, “to get married one day?” When she replied that she would like that very much, he asked her whom in all the world she would most like to have as a husband.

“Tiro!” she cried, flinging her arms around my waist.

“I am afraid he is much too busy helping me to have time to take a wife,” he replied solemnly. “Who else?”

Her circle of grown-up male acquaintances was limited, so it was not long before she raised the name of Frugi, who had spent so much time with Cicero since the Verres case, he was almost a part of the family.

“Frugi!” exclaimed Cicero, as if the idea had never before occurred to him. “What a wonderful thought! And you are sure this is what you want? You are? Then let us go and tell your mama immediately.”

In this way Terentia found herself outmaneuvered by her husband on her own territory as skillfully as if she had been some cretinous aristocrat in the Senate. Not that she could have found much to object to in Frugi, who was a good enough match even for her-a gentle, diligent young man, now age twenty-one, from an extremely distinguished family. But she was far too shrewd not to see that Cicero, by creating a substitute whom he could train and bring on to a public career, was doing the next-best thing to having a son of his own. This realization no doubt made her feel threatened, and Terentia always reacted violently to threats. The betrothal ceremony in November went smoothly enough, with Frugi-who was very fond of his fiancée, by the way-shyly placing a ring on her finger, under the approving gaze of both families and their households, with the wedding fixed for five years hence, when Tullia would be pubescent. But that night Cicero and Terentia had one of their most ferocious fights. It blew up in the tablinum before I had time to get out of the way. Cicero had made some innocuous remark about the Frugis being very welcoming to Tullia, to which Terentia, who had been ominously quiet for some time, responded that it was indeed very good of them, considering.

“Considering what?” asked Cicero wearily. He had obviously decided that arguing with her that night was as inevitable as vomiting after a bad oyster, and that he might as well get it out of the way at once.

“Considering the connection they are making,” she responded, and very quickly she was launched on her favorite line of attack-the shamefulness of Cicero’s lackeying toward Pompey and his coterie of provincials, the way that this had set the family in opposition to all who were most honorable in the state, and the rise of mob rule which had been made possible by the illegal passage of the lex Gabinia. I cannot remember all of it, and in any case what does it matter? Like most arguments between husband and wife, it was not about the thing itself but a different matter entirely-that is, her failure to produce a son, and Cicero’s consequent semipaternal attachment to Frugi. Nevertheless, I do remember Cicero snapping back that whatever Pompey’s faults, no one disputed that he was a brilliant soldier, and that once he had been awarded his special command and had raised his troops and put to sea, he had wiped out the pirate threat in only forty-nine days. And I also recall her crushing retort, that if the pirates really had been swept from the sea in seven weeks, perhaps they had not been quite the menace that Cicero and his friends had made them out to be in the first place! At that point, I managed to slip out of the room and retreat to my little cubicle, so the rest was lost to me. But the mood in the house during the following days was as fragile as Neopolitan glass.

“You see how hard-pressed I am?” Cicero complained to me the next morning, rubbing his forehead with his knuckles. “There is no respite for me anywhere, either in my business or my leisure.”

As for Terentia, she became increasingly preoccupied with her supposed barrenness and took to praying daily at the Temple of the Good Goddess on the Aventine Hill, where harmless snakes roamed freely in the precincts to encourage fertility and no man was allowed to set eyes upon the inner sanctum. I also heard from her maid that she had set up a small shrine to Juno in her bedroom.

Secretly, I believe Cicero shared Terentia’s opinion of Pompey. There was something suspicious as well as glorious about the speed of his victory (“organized at the end of winter,” as Cicero put it, “started at the beginning of spring, and finished by the middle of the summer”) which made one wonder whether the whole enterprise could not have been handled perfectly well by a commander appointed in the normal way. Still, there was no denying his success. The pirates had been rolled up like a carpet, driven from the waters of Sicily and Africa eastward, through the Illyrian Sea to Achaia, and then purged from the whole of Greece. Finally, they had been trapped by Pompey himself in their last great stronghold, Coracesium, in Cilicia, and in a huge battle on sea and land, ten thousand had been killed and four hundred vessels destroyed. Another twenty thousand had been captured. But rather than have them crucified as no doubt Crassus would have done, Pompey had ordered the pirates to be resettled inland with their wives and families, in the depopulated towns of Greece and Asia Minor-one of which he renamed, with characteristic modesty, Pompeiopolis. All this he did without reference to the Senate.

Cicero followed his patron’s fantastic progress with mixed feelings (“‘Pompeiopolis!’ Dear gods, the vulgarity of it!”), not least because he knew that the more swollen with success Pompey became, the longer the shadow he would cast over his own career. Meticulous planning and overwhelming numerical superiority: these were Pompey’s favorite tactics, both on the battlefield and in Rome, and as soon as phase one of his campaign-the destruction of the pirates-was completed, phase two began in the Forum, when Gabinius started agitating to have the command of the Eastern legions stripped from Lucullus and awarded to Pompey. He used the same trick as before, employing his powers as tribune to summon witnesses to the rostra, who gave the people a sorry picture of the war against Mithradates. Some of the legions, unpaid for years, had simply refused to leave their winter camp. The poverty of these ordinary fighting men Gabinius contrasted with the immense wealth of their aristocratic commander, who had shipped back so much booty from the campaign that he had bought an entire hill just outside the gates of Rome and was building a great palace there, with all the state rooms named after the gods. Gabinius subpoened Lucullus’s architects and had them brought to the rostra, where he forced them to show to the people all their plans and models. Lucullus’s name from that time on became a synonym for outrageous luxury, and the angry citizens burned his effigy in the Forum.

In December, Gabinius and Cornelius stood down as tribunes, and a new creature of Pompey’s, the tribune-elect, Caius Manilius, took over the safeguarding of his interests in the popular assemblies. He immediately proposed a law granting command of the war against Mithradates to Pompey, along with the government of the provinces of Asia, Cilicia, and Bithynia-the latter two held by Lucullus. Any thin hopes that Cicero might have entertained of lying low on the issue were destroyed when Gabinius came to see him bearing a message from Pompey. This briskly conveyed the general’s good wishes, along with his hopes that Cicero would support the lex Manilia “in all its provisions,” not only behind the scenes but also in public, from the rostra.

“In all its provisions,” repeated Gabinius, with a smirk. “You know what that means.”

“I presume it means the clause which appoints you to the command of the legions on the Euphrates, thus giving you legal immunity from prosecution now that your term as tribune has expired.”

“You have it.” Gabinius grinned and did a passable impersonation of Pompey, drawing himself up and puffing out his cheeks. ‘Is he not clever, gentlemen? Did I not tell you he was clever?’”

“Calm yourself, Gabinius,” said Cicero wearily. “I assure you there is no one I would rather see heading off to the Euphrates than you.”

It is dangerous in politics to find oneself a great man’s whipping boy. Yet this was the role in which Cicero was now becoming trapped. Men who would never have dared to directly insult or criticize Pompey could instead land blows on his lawyer-surrogate with impunity, knowing that everyone would guess their real target. But there was no escaping a direct order from the commander in chief, and so this became the occasion of Cicero’s first speech from the rostra. He took immense trouble over it, dictating it to me several days beforehand, and then showing it to Quintus and Frugi for their comments. From Terentia he prudently withheld it, for he knew he would have to send a copy to Pompey and it was therefore necessary for him to ladle on the flattery. (I see from the manuscript, for example, that Pompey’s “superhuman genius as a commander” was amended at Quintus’s suggestion to Pompey’s “superhuman and unbelievable genius as a commander.”) He hit upon a brilliant slogan to sum up Pompey’s success-“one law, one man, one year”-and fretted over the rest of the speech for hours, conscious that if he failed on the rostra, his career would be set back and his enemies would say he did not have the common touch to move the plebs of Rome. When the morning came to deliver it, he was physically sick with nerves, retching again and again into the latrine while I stood next to him with a towel. He was so white and drawn that I actually wondered if he would have the legs to get all the way down to the Forum. But it was his belief that a great performer, however experienced, must always be frightened before going onstage-“the nerves should be as taut as bowstrings if the arrows are to fly”-and by the time we reached the back of the rostra he was ready. Needless to say, he was carrying no notes. We heard Manilius announce his name and the applause begin. It was a beautiful morning, clear and bright; the crowd was huge. He adjusted his sleeves, drew himself erect, and slowly ascended into the noise and light.

Catulus and Hortensius once again were the leaders of the opposition to Pompey, but they had devised no new arguments since the lex Gabinia, and Cicero had some sport with them. “What is Hortensius saying?” he teased. “That if one man is to be put in supreme command, the right man is Pompey, but that supreme command ought not to be given to one man? That line of reasoning is now out of date, refuted not so much by words as by events. For it was you, Hortensius, who denounced that courageous man Gabinius for introducing a law to appoint a single commander against the pirates. Now I ask you in heaven’s name-if on that occasion the Roman people had thought more of your opinion than of their own welfare and their true interests, should we today be in possession of our present glory and our worldwide empire?” By the same token, if Pompey wanted Gabinius as one of his legionary commanders, he should have him, for no man had done more, apart from Pompey, to defeat the pirates. “Speaking for myself,” he concluded, “whatever devotion, wisdom, energy, or talent I possess, whatever I can achieve by virtue of the praetorship which you have conferred upon me, I dedicate to the support of this law. And I call on all the gods to witness-most especially the guardians of this hallowed spot who see clearly into the hearts of all who enter upon public life-that I am acting not as a favor to Pompey, nor in the hope of gaining favor from him, but solely in the cause of my country.” He left the rostra to respectful applause. The law was passed, Lucullus was stripped of his command, and Gabinius was given his legateship. As for Cicero, he had surmounted another obstacle in his progress to the consulship, but was more hated than ever by the aristocrats.

Later, he had a letter from Varro, describing Pompey’s reaction to the news that he now had complete control of Rome’s forces in the East. As his officers crowded around him at his headquarters in Ephesus to congratulate him, he frowned, struck himself on the thigh, and said (“in a weary voice,” according to Varro), “How sad it makes me, this constant succession of labors! Really I would rather be one of those people whom no one has heard about, if I am never to have any relief from military service, and never to be able to escape from being envied so that I can live quietly in the country with my wife.” Such play-acting was hard to stomach, especially when the whole world knew how much he had wanted the command.

THE PRAETORSHIP BROUGHT an elevation in Cicero’s station. Now he had six lictors to guard him whenever he left the house. He did not care for them at all. They were rough fellows, hired for their strength and easy cruelty: if a Roman citizen was sentenced to be punished, they were the ones who carried it out, and they were adept at floggings and beheadings. Because their posts were permanent, some had been used to power for years, and they rather looked down on the magistrates they guarded as mere transitory politicians. Cicero hated it when they cleared the crowds out of his way too roughly, or ordered passersby to remove their headgear or dismount in the presence of a praetor, for the people being so humiliated were his voters. He instructed the lictors to show more politeness, and for a time they would, but they soon snapped back into their old ways. The chief of them, the proximus lictor, who was supposed to stand at Cicero’s side at all times, was particularly obnoxious. I forget his name now, but he was always bringing Cicero tittle-tattle of what the other praetors were up to, gleaned from his fellow lictors, not realizing that this made him deeply suspect in Cicero’s eyes, who was well aware that gossip is a trade, and that reports of his own actions would be offered as currency in return. “These people,” Cicero complained to me one morning, “are a warning of what happens to any state which has a permanent staff of officials. They begin as our servants and end up imagining themselves our masters!”

My own status rose with his. I discovered that to be known as the confidential secretary of a praetor, even if one was a slave, was to enjoy an unaccustomed civility from those one met. Cicero told me beforehand that I could expect to be offered money to use my influence on behalf of petitioners, and when I insisted hotly that I would never accept a bribe, he cut me off. “No, Tiro, you should have some money of your own. Why not? I ask only that you tell me who has paid you, and that you make it clear to whoever approaches you that my judgments are not to be bought, and that I will decide things on their merits. Aside from that, I trust you to use your own discretion.” This conversation meant a great deal to me. I had always hoped that eventually Cicero would grant me my freedom; permitting me to have some savings of my own I saw as a preparation for that day. The amounts which came in were small-fifty or a hundred here and there-and in return I might be required to bring a document to the praetor’s attention, or draft a letter of introduction for him to sign. The money I kept in a small purse, hidden behind a loose brick in the wall of my cubicle.

As praetor, Cicero was expected to take in promising pupils from good families to study law with him, and in May, after the Senate recess, a new young intern of sixteen joined his chambers. This was Marcus Caelius Rufus from Interamnia, the son of a wealthy banker and prominent election official of the Velina tribe. Cicero agreed, largely as a political favor, to supervise the boy’s training for two years, at the end of which it was fixed that he would move on to complete his apprenticeship in another household-that of Crassus, as it happened, for Crassus was a business associate of Caelius’s father, and the banker was anxious that his heir should learn how to manage a fortune. The father was a ghastly money-lending type, short and furtive, who seemed to regard his son as an investment which was failing to show an adequate yield. “He needs to be beaten regularly,” he announced, just before he brought him in to meet Cicero. “He is clever enough, but wayward and dissolute. You have my permission to whip him as much as you like.” Cicero looked askance at this, having never whipped anyone in his life, but fortunately, as it turned out, he got on very well with young Caelius, who was as dissimilar to his father as it was possible to imagine. He was tall and handsome and quick-witted, with an indifference toward money and business which Cicero found amusing; I less so, for it generally fell to me to do all the humdrum tasks which were Caelius’s responsibility, and which he shirked. But still, I must concede, looking back, that he had charm.

I shall not dwell on the details of Cicero’s praetorship. This is not a textbook about the law, and I can sense your eagerness for me to get on to the climax of my story-the election for the consulship itself. Suffice it to say that Cicero was considered a fair and honest judge, and that the work was easily within his competence. If he encountered a particularly awkward point of jurisprudence and needed a second opinion, he would either consult his old friend and fellow pupil of Molon, Servius Sulpicius, or go over to see the distinguished praetor of the election court, Aquilius Gallus, in his mansion on the Viminal Hill. The biggest case over which he had to preside was that of Caius Licinius Macer, a kinsman and supporter of Crassus, who was impeached for his actions as governor of Macedonia. The hearing dragged on for weeks, and at the end of it Cicero summed up very fairly, except that he could not resist one joke. The nub of the prosecution case was that Macer had taken half a million in illegal payments. Macer at first denied it. The prosecution then produced proof that the exact same sum had been paid into a money-lending company which he controlled. Macer abruptly changed his story and claimed that, yes, he remembered the payments, but thought that they were legal. “Now, it may be,” said Cicero to the jury, as he was directing them on points of evidence, “that the defendant believed this.” He left a pause just long enough for some of them to start laughing, whereupon he put on a mock-stern face. “No, no, he may have believed it. In which case”-another pause-“you may reasonably conclude perhaps that he was too stupid to be a Roman governor.” I had sat in sufficient courts by then to know from the gale of laughter that Cicero had just convicted the man as surely as if he had been the prosecuting counsel. But Macer-who was not stupid at all; on the contrary, he was very clever, so clever that he thought everyone else a fool-did not see the danger, and actually left the tribunal while the jury was balloting in order to go home and change and have a haircut, in anticipation of his victory celebration that night. While he was absent, the jury convicted him, and as he was leaving his house to return to the court, Crassus intercepted him on his doorstep and told him what had happened. Some say he dropped dead on the spot from shock, others that he went back indoors and killed himself to spare his son the humiliation of his exile. Either way, he died, and Crassus-as if he needed one-had a whole new reason for hating Cicero.

THE GAMES OF APOLLO on the sixth day of July traditionally marked the start of the election season, although in truth it always seemed to be election season in those days. No sooner had one campaign come to an end than the candidates began anticipating the start of the next. Cicero joked that the business of governing the state was merely something to occupy the time between polling days. And perhaps this is one of the things that killed the republic: it gorged itself to death on votes. At any rate, the responsibility for honoring Apollo with a program of public entertainment always fell to the urban praetor, which in this particular year was Antonius Hybrida.

Nobody had been expecting much, or indeed anything at all, for Hybrida was known to have drunk and gambled away all his money. So it was a vast surprise when he staged not only a series of wonderful theatrical productions but also lavish spectacles in the Circus Maximus, with a full program of twelve chariot races, athletic competitions, and a wild-beast hunt involving panthers and all manner of exotic animals. I did not attend but Cicero gave me a full account when he came home that evening. Indeed, he could talk of nothing else. He flung himself down on one of the couches in the empty dining room-Terentia was in the country with Tullia-and described the parade into the Circus: the charioteers and the near-naked athletes (the boxers, the wrestlers, the runners, the javelin throwers and the discus men), the flute players and the lyre players, the dancers dressed as Bacchanalians and satyrs, the incense burners, the bulls and the goats and the heifers with their gilded horns plodding to sacrifice, and the cages of wild beasts, and the gladiators… He seemed dizzy with it. “How much must it have all cost? That is what I kept asking myself. Hybrida must be banking on making it all back when he goes out to his province. You should have heard the cheers they gave to him when he entered and when he left! Well, I see nothing for it, Tiro. Unbelievable as it seems, we shall have to amend the list. Come.”

We went together into the study, where I opened the strongbox and pulled out all the papers relating to Cicero’s consular campaign. There were many secret lists in there-lists of backers, of donors, of supporters he had yet to win over, of towns and regions where he was strong and where he was weak. The key list, however, was of the men he had identified as possible rivals, together with a summary of all the information known about them, pro and anti. Galba was at the top of it, with Gallus next to him, and then Cornificius, and finally Palicanus. Now Cicero took my pen and carefully, in his neat and tiny writing, added a fifth, whose name he had never expected to see there: Antonius Hybrida.

AND THEN, a few days later, something happened which was to change Cicero’s fortunes and the future of the state entirely, although he did not realize it at the time. I am reminded of one of those harmless-looking specks which one occasionally hears about, that a man discovers on his skin one morning and thinks little of, only to see it gradually swell over the following months into an enormous tumor. The speck in this instance was a message, received out of the blue, summoning Cicero to see the pontifex maximus, Metellus Pius. Cicero was mightily intrigued by this, since Pius, who was very old (sixty-four, at least) and grand, had never previously deigned even to speak to him, let alone demand his company. Accordingly, we set off at once, with the lictors clearing our way.

In those days, the official residence of the head of the state religion was on the Via Sacra, next to the House of the Vestal Virgins, and I remember that Cicero was pleased to be seen entering the premises, for this really was the sacred heart of Rome, and not many men ever got the chance to cross the threshold. We were shown to a staircase and conducted along a gallery which looked down into the garden of the vestals’ residence. I secretly hoped to catch a glimpse of one of those six mysterious white-clad maidens, but the garden was deserted, and it was not possible to linger, as the bowlegged figure of Pius was already waiting for us impatiently at the end of the gallery, tapping his foot, with a couple of priests on either side of him. He had been a soldier all his life and had the cracked and roughened look of leather that has been left outside for years and only lately brought indoors. There was no handshake for Cicero, no invitation to be seated, no preliminaries of any sort. Without preamble he merely said, in his hoarse voice, “Praetor, I need to talk to you about Sergius Catilina.”

At the mere mention of the name, Cicero stiffened, for Catilina was the man who had tortured to death his distant cousin, the populist politician Gratidianus, by breaking his limbs and gouging out his eyes and tongue. A jagged streak of violent madness ran through Catilina like lightning across his brain. At one moment he could be charming, cultured, friendly; then a man would make some seemingly innocuous remark, or Catilina would catch another looking at him in a way he thought disrespectful, and he would lose all self-restraint. During the proscriptions of Sulla, when death lists were posted in the Forum, Catilina had been one of the most proficient killers with the hammer and knife-percussores, as they were known-and had made a lot of money out of the estates of those he executed. Among the men he had murdered was his own brother-inlaw. Yet he had an undeniable charisma, and for each person he repulsed by his savagery, he attracted two or three more by his equally reckless displays of generosity. Catilina was also sexually licentious. Seven years previous, he had been prosecuted for having sexual relations with a vestal virgin-none other, in fact, than Terentia’s half sister, Fabia. This was a capital offense, not only for him but also for her, and if he had been found guilty she would have suffered the traditional punishment for a vestal virgin who broke her sacred vows of chastity-burial alive in the tiny chamber reserved for the purpose beside the Colline Gate. But the aristocrats, led by Catulus, had rallied around Catilina and secured his acquittal, and his political career had continued uninterrupted. He had been praetor the year before last, and had then gone out to govern Africa, thus missing the turmoil surrounding the lex Gabinia. He had only just returned.

“My family,” continued Pius, “have been the chief patrons of Africa since my father governed the province half a century ago. The people there look to me for protection, and I have to tell you, praetor, I have never seen them more incensed by any man than they have been by Sergius Catilina. He has plundered that province from end to end-taxed them and murdered them, stolen their temple treasures and raped their wives and daughters. The Sergii!” he exclaimed in disgust, retching up a great gob of yellow phlegm into his mouth and spitting it onto the floor. “Descended from the Trojans, or so they boast, and not a decent one among them for two hundred years! And now they tell me you are the praetor responsible for bringing his type to book.” He looked Cicero up and down. “Amazing! I cannot say that I know who the hell you are, but there it is. So what are you going to do about it?”

Cicero was always cool when someone tried to insult him. He merely said, “Do the Africans have a case prepared?”

“They do. They already have a delegation in Rome seeking a suitable prosecutor. Who should they go to?”

“That is hardly a matter for me. I must remain the impartial president of the court.”

“Blah-blah. Spare me the lawyer’s talk. Privately. Man to man.” Pius beckoned Cicero to come closer. He had left most of his teeth behind on various battlefields and his breath whistled when he tried to whisper. “You know the courts these days better than I. Who could do it?”

“Frankly, it will not be easy,” said Cicero. “Catilina’s reputation for violence precedes him. It will take a brave man to lay a charge against such a brazen killer. And presumably he will be standing for the consulship next year. There is a powerful enemy in the making.”

“Consul?” Pius suddenly struck himself very hard on the chest. “Sergius Catilina will not be consul-not next year or any year-not as long as this old body has any life left in it! There must be someone in this city who is man enough to bring him to justice. And if not-well, I am not quite such a senile fool that I have forgotten how to fight in Rome. You just make sure, praetor,” he concluded, “that you leave enough time in your calendar to hear the case,” and he shuffled off down the corridor, grumbling to himself.

As he watched him go, Cicero frowned and shook his head. Not comprehending politics nearly as well as I should have done, even after thirteen years in his service, I was at a loss to understand why he should have found this conversation so troubling. But he certainly was shaken, and as soon as we were back on the Via Sacra, he drew me out of the keen hearing of the proximus lictor and said, “This is a serious development, Tiro. I should have seen this coming.” When I asked why it mattered to him whether Catilina was prosecuted or not, he replied, in a withering tone, “Because, bird-brain, it is illegal to stand for election if you have charges pending against you. Which means that if the Africans do find a champion, and if a charge is laid against Catilina, and if it drags on into next summer, he will be barred from standing for the consulship until the case is resolved. Which means that if by any chance he is acquitted, I shall have to fight him in my year.”

I doubt whether there was another senator in Rome who would have tried to peer so far into the future-who would have piled up so many ifs and discerned a reason for alarm. Certainly, when he explained his anxiety to Quintus, his brother dismissed it with a laugh: “And if you were struck by lightning, Marcus, and if Metellus Pius were able to remember what day of the week it was…” But Cicero continued to fret, and he made discreet inquiries about the progress of the African delegation as they searched for a credible advocate. However, as he suspected, they were finding it hard going, despite the immense amount of evidence they had collected of Catilina’s wrong-doing, and the fact that Pius had carried a resolution in the Senate censuring the former governor. No one was anxious to take on such a dangerous opponent and risk being discovered floating facedown in the Tiber late one night. So, for the time being at least, the prosecution languished, and Cicero put the matter to the back of his mind. Unfortunately, it was not to remain there for long.