Imperium

Roll II

THE DAY WHICH WAS to prove the turning point began like any other, an hour before dawn, with Cicero, as always, the first in the household to rise. I lay for a little while in the darkness and listened to the thump of the floorboards above my head as he went through the exercises he had learned on Rhodes-a visit now six years in the past-then I rolled off my straw mattress and rinsed my face. It was the first of November; cold.

Cicero had a modest, two-story dwelling on the ridge of the Esquiline Hill, hemmed in by a temple on one side and a block of apartments on the other, although if you could be bothered to scramble up onto the roof you would be rewarded with a decent view across the smoky valley to the great temples on Capitol Hill about half a mile to the west. It was actually his father’s place, but the old gentleman was in poor health and nowadays seldom left the country, so Cicero had it to himself, along with Terentia and their five-year-old daughter, Tullia, and a dozen slaves: me; the two secretaries working under me, Sositheus and Laurea; the steward, Eros; Terentia’s business manager, Philotimus; two maids; a nurse; a cook; a valet; and a doorkeeper. There was also an old, blind philosopher somewhere, Diodotus the Stoic, who occasionally groped his way out of his room to join Cicero for dinner when his master needed an intellectual workout. So: fifteen of us in the household in all. Terentia complained endlessly about the cramped conditions, but Cicero would not move, for at this time he was still very much in his man-of-the-people phase, and the house sat well with the image.

The first thing I did that morning, as I did every morning, was to slip over my left wrist a loop of cord, to which was attached a notebook of my own design. This consisted not of the usual one or two but four double-sided sheets of wax, each in a beechwood frame, very thin and hinged so that I could fold them all up and snap them shut. In this way I could take many more notes in a single session of dictation than the average secretary; but even so, such was Cicero ’s daily torrent of words, I always made sure to put spares in my pockets. Then I pulled back the curtain of my tiny room and walked across the courtyard into the tablinum, lighting the lamps and checking all was ready. The only piece of furniture was a sideboard, on which stood a bowl of chickpeas. (Cicero ’s name derived from cicer, meaning chickpea, and believing that an unusual name was an advantage in politics, he took pains to draw attention to it.) Once I was satisfied, I passed through the atrium into the entrance hall, where the doorman was already waiting with his hand on the big metal lock. I checked the light through the narrow window, and when I judged it pale enough, gave a nod to the doorman, who slid back the bolts.

Outside in the chilly street, the usual crowd of the miserable and the desperate was already waiting, and I made a note of each man as he crossed the threshold. Most I recognized; those I did not, I asked for their names; the familiar no-hopers, I turned away. But the standing instruction was, “If he has a vote, let him in,” so the tablinum was soon well filled with anxious clients, each seeking a piece of the senator’s time. I had reckoned the queue had all filed in and I was just stepping back when a figure with the dusty clothes, straggly hair, and uncut beard of a man in mourning loomed in the doorway. He gave me a fright, I do not mind admitting.

“Tiro!” he said. “Thank the gods!” And he sank against the doorjamb, exhausted, peering out at me with pale, dead eyes. I guess he must have been about fifty. At first I could not place him, but it is one of the jobs of a political secretary to put names to faces, and gradually, despite his condition, a picture began to assemble in my mind: a large house overlooking the sea, an ornamental garden, a collection of bronze statues, a town somewhere in Sicily, in the north-Thermae, that was it.

“Sthenius of Thermae,” I said and held out my hand. “Welcome.”

It was not my place to comment on his appearance, nor to ask what he was doing hundreds of miles from home, and in such obvious distress. I left him in the tablinum and went through to Cicero ’s study. The senator, who was due in court that morning to defend a youth charged with parricide, and who would also be expected to attend the afternoon session of the Senate, was squeezing a small leather ball to strengthen his fingers, while being robed in his toga by his valet. He was listening to one letter being read out by young Sositheus, and at the same time dictating a message to Laurea, to whom I had taught the rudiments of my shorthand system. As I entered, he threw the ball at me-I caught it without thinking-and gestured for the list of callers. He read it greedily, as he always did. What had he caught overnight? Some prominent citizen from a useful tribe? A Sabatini, perhaps? A Pomptini? Or a businessman rich enough to vote among the first centuries in the consular elections? But today it was only the usual small fry, and his face gradually fell until he reached the final name.

“Sthenius?” He interrupted his dictation. “He is that Sicilian, is he not? The rich one with the bronzes? We had better find out what he wants.”

“Sicilians don’t have a vote,” I pointed out.

“Pro bono,” he said, with a straight face. “Besides, he does have bronzes. I shall see him first.”

So I fetched in Sthenius, who was given the usual treatment-the trademark smile, the manly double-grip handshake, the long and sincere stare into the eyes-then shown to a seat and asked what had brought him to Rome. I had started remembering more about Sthenius. We had stayed with him twice in Thermae, when Cicero heard cases in the town. Back then he had been one of the leading citizens of the province, but now all his vigor and confidence had gone. He needed help, he announced. He was facing ruin. His life was in terrible danger. He had been robbed.

“Really?” said Cicero. He was half-glancing at a document on his desk, not paying too much attention, for a busy advocate hears many hard-luck stories. “You have my sympathy. Robbed by whom?”

“By the governor of Sicily, Gaius Verres.”

The senator looked up sharply.

There was no stopping Sthenius after that. As his story poured out, Cicero caught my eye and performed a little mime of note taking-he wanted a record of this-and when Sthenius eventually paused to draw breath he gently interrupted and asked him to go back a little, to the day, almost three months earlier, when he had first received the letter from Verres. “What was your reaction?”

“I worried a little. He already had a…reputation. People call him-his name meaning boar-people call him the Boar with Blood on His Snout. But I could hardly refuse.”

“You still have this letter?”

“Yes.”

“And in it did Verres specifically mention your art collection?”

“Oh yes. He said he had often heard about it and wanted to see it.”

“And how soon after that did he come to stay?”

“Very soon. A week at most.”

“Was he alone?”

“No, he had his lictors with him. I had to find room for them as well. Bodyguards are always rough types, but these were the worst set of thugs I ever saw. The chief of them, Sextius, is the official executioner for the whole of Sicily. He demands bribes from his victims by threatening to botch the job-you know, mangle them-if they do not pay up beforehand.” Sthenius swallowed and started breathing hard. We waited.

“Take your time,” said Cicero.

“I thought Verres might like to bathe after his journey, and then we could dine-but no, he said he wanted to see my collection straightaway.”

“You had some very fine pieces, I remember.”

“It was my life, senator, I cannot put it plainer. Thirty years spent traveling and haggling. Corinthian and Delian bronzes, pictures, silver-nothing I did not handle and choose myself. I had Myron’s The Discus Thrower, and The Spear Bearer by Polycleitus. Some silver cups by Mentor. Verres was complimentary. He said it deserved a wider audience. He said it was good enough for public display. I paid no attention till we were having dinner on the terrace and I heard a noise from the inner courtyard. My steward told me a wagon drawn by oxen had arrived and Verres’s lictors were loading it with everything.”

Sthenius was silent again, and I could readily imagine the shame of it for such a proud man: his wife wailing, the household traumatized, the dusty outlines where the statues once stood. The only sound in the study was the tap of my stylus on wax.

Cicero said: “You did not complain?”

“Who to? The governor?” Sthenius laughed. “No, senator. I was alive, wasn’t I? If he had just left it at that, I would have swallowed my losses, and you would never have heard a squeak from me. But collecting can be a sickness, and I tell you what: your Governor Verres has it badly. You remember those statues in the town square?”

“Indeed I do. Three very fine bronzes. But you are surely not telling me he stole those as well?”

“He tried. This was on his third day under my roof. He asked me whose they were. I told him they were the property of the town and had been for centuries. You know they are four hundred years old? He said he would like permission to remove them to his residence in Syracuse, also as a loan, and asked me to approach the council. By then I knew what kind of a man he was, so I said I could not, in all honor, oblige him. He left that night. A few days after that, I received a summons for trial on the fifth day of October, on a charge of forgery.”

“Who brought the charge?”

“An enemy of mine named Agathinus. He is a client of Verres himself. My first thought was to face him down. I have nothing to fear as far as my honesty goes. I have never forged a document in my life. But then I heard the judge was to be Verres, and that he had already fixed on the punishment. I was to be whipped in front of the whole town for my insolence.”

“And so you fled?”

“That same night, I took a boat along the coast to Messana.”

Cicero rested his chin in his hand and contemplated Sthenius. I recognized that gesture. He was weighing up the witness. “You say the hearing was on the fifth of last month. Have you heard what happened?”

“That is why I am here. I was convicted in my absence, sentenced to be flogged-and fined five thousand. But there is worse than that. At the hearing, Verres claimed fresh evidence had been produced against me, this time of spying for the rebels in Spain. There is to be a new trial in Syracuse on the first day of December.”

“But spying is a capital offense.”

“Senator-believe me-he plans to have me crucified. He boasts of it openly. I would not be the first, either. I need help. Please. Will you help me?”

I thought he might be about to sink to his knees and start kissing the senator’s feet, and so, I suspect, did Cicero, for he quickly got up from his chair and started pacing about the room. “It seems to me there are two aspects to this case, Sthenius. One, the theft of your property-and there, frankly, I cannot see what is to be done. Why do you think men such as Verres desire to be governors in the first place? Because they know they can take what they want, within reason. The second aspect, the manipulation of the legal process-that is more promising.

“I know several men with great legal expertise who live in Sicily -one, indeed, in Syracuse. I shall write to him today and urge him, as a particular favor to me, to accept your case. I shall even give him my opinion as to what he should do. He should apply to the court to have the forthcoming prosecution declared invalid, on the grounds that you are not present to answer. If that fails, and Verres goes ahead, your advocate should come to Rome and argue that the conviction is unsound.”

But the Sicilian was shaking his head. “If it was just a lawyer in Syracuse I needed, senator, I would not have come all the way to Rome.”

I could see Cicero did not like where this was leading. Such a case could tie up his practice for days, and Sicilians, as I had reminded him, did not have votes. Pro bono indeed!

“Listen,” he said reassuringly, “your case is strong. Verres is obviously corrupt. He abuses hospitality. He steals. He brings false charges. He plots judicial murder. His position is indefensible. It can easily be handled by an advocate in Syracuse -really, I promise you. Now, if you will excuse me, I have many clients to see, and I am due in court in less than an hour.”

He nodded to me, and I stepped forward, putting a hand on Sthenius’s arm to guide him out. The Sicilian shook it off. “But I need you,” he persisted.

“Why?”

“Because my only hope of justice lies here, not in Sicily, where Verres controls the courts. And everyone here tells me Marcus Cicero is the second-best lawyer in Rome.”

“Do they indeed?” Cicero ’s tone took on an edge of sarcasm: he hated that epithet. “Well then, why settle for second best? Why not go straight to Hortensius?”

“I thought of that,” said his visitor, artlessly, “but he turned me down. He is representing Verres.”

I SHOWED THE SICILIAN out and returned to find Cicero alone in his study, tilted back in his chair, tossing the leather ball from one hand to the other. Legal textbooks cluttered his desk. Precedents in Pleading by Hostilius was one which he had open; Manilius’s Conditions of Sale was another.

“Do you remember that red-haired drunk on the quayside at Puteoli, the day we came back from Sicily? ‘Ooooh! My good fellow! He’s returning from his province…’”

I nodded.

“That was Verres.” The ball went back and forth, back and forth. “The fellow gives corruption a bad name.”

“I am surprised at Hortensius for getting involved with him.”

“Are you? I am not.” He stopped tossing the ball and contemplated it on his outstretched palm. “The Dancing Master and the Boar…” He brooded for a while. “A man in my position would have to be mad to tangle with Hortensius and Verres combined, and all for the sake of some Sicilian who is not even a Roman citizen.”

“True.”

“True,” he repeated, although there was an odd hesitancy in the way he said it which sometimes makes me wonder if he had not just then glimpsed the whole thing-the whole extraordinary set of possibilities and consequences, laid out like a mosaic in his mind. But if he had, I never knew, for at that moment his daughter, Tullia, ran in, still wearing her nightdress, with some childish drawing to show him, and suddenly his attention switched entirely onto her-scooping her up and settling her on his knee. “Did you do this? Did you really do this all by yourself…?”

I left him to it and slipped away, back into the tablinum, to announce that we were running late and that the senator was about to leave for court. Sthenius was still moping around and asked me when he could expect an answer, to which I could only reply that he would have to fall in with the rest. Soon after that, Cicero himself appeared, hand in hand with Tullia, nodding good morning to everyone, greeting each by name (“the first rule in politics, Tiro: never forget a face”). He was beautifully turned out, as always, his hair pomaded and slicked back, his skin scented, his toga freshly laundered, his red leather shoes spotless and shiny, his face bronzed by years of pleading in the open air; groomed, lean, fit: he glowed. They followed him into the vestibule, where he hoisted the beaming little girl into the air, showed her off to the assembled company, then turned her face to his and gave her a resounding kiss on the lips. There was a drawn-out “Ahh!” and some isolated applause. It was not wholly put on for show-he would have done it even if no one had been present, for he loved his darling Tulliola more than he ever loved anyone in his entire life-but he knew the Roman electorate were a sentimental lot, and that if word of his paternal devotion got around, it would do him no harm.

And so we stepped out into the bright promise of that November morning, into the gathering noise of the city-Cicero striding ahead, with me beside him, notebook at the ready; Sositheus and Laurea tucked in behind, carrying the document cases with the evidence he needed for his appearance in court; and, on either side of us, trying to catch the senator’s attention, yet proud merely to be in his aura, two dozen assorted petitioners and hangers-on, including Sthenius-down the hill from the leafy, respectable heights of the Esquiline and into the stink and smoke and racket of Subura. Here the height of the tenements shut out the sunlight and the packed crowds squeezed our phalanx of supporters into a broken thread that still somehow determinedly trailed along after us. Cicero was a well-known figure here, a hero to the shopkeepers and merchants whose interests he had represented, and who had watched him walking past for years. Without once breaking his rapid step, his sharp blue eyes registered every bowed head, every wave of greeting, and it was rare for me to need to whisper a name in his ear, for he knew his voters far better than I.

I do not know how it is these days, but at that time there were six or seven law courts in almost permanent session, each set up in a different part of the Forum, so that at the hour when they all opened one could barely move for advocates and legal officers hurrying about. To make it worse, the praetor of each court would always arrive from his house preceded by half a dozen lictors to clear his path, and, as luck would have it, our little entourage debouched into the Forum at exactly the moment when Hortensius-at this time a praetor himself-went parading by toward the Senate House. We were all held back by his guards to let the great man pass, and to this day I do not think it was his intention to cut Cicero dead, for he was a man of refined, almost effeminate, manners: he simply did not see him. But the consequence was that the so-called second-best advocate in Rome, his cordial greeting dead on his lips, was left staring at the retreating back of the so-called best with such an intensity of loathing I was surprised Hortensius did not start rubbing at the skin between his shoulder blades.

Our business that morning was in the central criminal court, convened outside the Basilica Aemilia, where the fifteen-year-old Caius Popillius Laenas was on trial accused of stabbing his father to death through the eye with a metal stylus. I could already see a big crowd waiting around the tribunal. Cicero was due to make the closing speech for the defense. That was attraction enough. But if he failed to convince the jury, Popillius, as a convicted parricide, would be stripped naked, flayed till he bled, then sewn up in a sack together with a dog, a cock, and a viper, and thrown into the River Tiber. There was a whiff of bloodlust in the air, and as the onlookers parted to let us through, I caught a glimpse of Popillius himself, a notoriously violent youth, whose eyebrows merged to form a continuous thick black line. He was seated next to his uncle on the bench reserved for the defense, scowling defiantly, spitting at anyone who came too close. “We really must secure an acquittal,” observed Cicero, “if only to spare the dog, the cock, and the viper the ordeal of being sewn up in a sack with Popillius.” He always maintained that it was no business of the advocate to worry whether his client was guilty or not: that was for the court. He undertook only to do his best, and in return the Popillii Laeni, who could boast four consuls in their family tree, would be obliged to support him whenever he ran for office.

Sositheus and Laurea set down the boxes of evidence, and I was just bending to unfasten the nearest when Cicero told me to leave it. “Save yourself the trouble,” he said, tapping the side of his head. “I have the speech up here well enough.” He bowed politely to his client-“Good day, Popillius: we shall soon have this settled, I trust”-then continued to me, in a quieter voice: “I have a more important task for you. Give me your notebook. I want you to go to the Senate House, find the chief clerk, and see if there is a chance of having this put on the order paper this afternoon.” He was writing rapidly. “Say nothing to our Sicilian friend just yet. There is great danger. We must take this carefully, one step at a time.”

It was not until I had left the tribunal and was halfway across the Forum to the Senate House that I risked taking a look at what he had written: “That in the opinion of this House the prosecution of persons in their absence on capital charges should be prohibited in the provinces.” I felt a tightening in my chest, for I saw at once what it meant. Cleverly, tentatively, obliquely, Cicero was preparing at last to challenge his great rival. I was carrying a declaration of war.

GELLIUS PUBLICOLA WAS THE PRESIDING consul for November. He was a blunt, delightfully stupid military commander of the old school. It was said, or at any rate it was said by Cicero, that when Gellius had passed through Athens with his army twenty years before, he had offered to mediate between the warring schools of philosophy: he would convene a conference at which they could thrash out the meaning of life once and for all, thus sparing themselves further pointless argument. I knew Gellius’s secretary fairly well, and as the afternoon’s agenda was unusually light, with nothing scheduled apart from a report on the military situation, he agreed to add Cicero ’s motion to the order paper. “But you might warn your master,” he said, “that the consul has heard his little joke about the philosophers, and he does not much like it.”

By the time I returned to the criminal court, Cicero was already well launched on his closing speech for the defense. It was not one of those which he afterwards chose to preserve, so unfortunately I do not have the text. All I can remember is that he won the case by the clever expedient of promising that young Popillius, if acquitted, would devote the rest of his life to military service-a pledge which took the prosecution, the jury, and indeed his client, entirely by surprise. But it did the trick, and the moment the verdict was in, without pausing to waste another moment on the ghastly Popillius, or even to snatch a mouthful of food, he set off immediately westward toward the Senate House, still trailed by his original honor guard of admirers, their number swelled by the spreading rumor that the great advocate had another speech planned.

Cicero used to say that it was not in the Senate chamber that the real business of the republic was done, but outside, in the open-air lobby known as the senaculum, where the senators were obliged to wait until they constituted a quorum. This daily massing of white-robed figures, which might last for an hour or more, was one of the great sights of the city, and while Cicero plunged in among them, Sthenius and I joined the crowd of gawkers on the other side of the Forum. (The Sicilian, poor fellow, still had no idea what was happening.)

It is in the nature of things that not all politicians can achieve greatness. Of the six hundred men who then constituted the Senate, only eight could be elected praetor-to preside over the courts-in any one year, and only two of these could go on to achieve the supreme imperium of the consulship. In other words, more than half of those milling around the senaculum were doomed never to hold elected office at all. They were what the aristocrats sneeringly called the pedarii, the men who voted with their feet, shuffling dutifully to one side of the chamber or the other whenever a division was called. And yet, in their way, these citizens were the backbone of the republic: bankers, businessmen, and landowners from all over Italy; wealthy, cautious, and patriotic; suspicious of the arrogance and show of the aristocrats. Like Cicero, they were often “new men,” the first in their families to win election to the Senate. These were his people, and observing him threading his way among them that afternoon was like watching a master craftsman in his studio, a sculptor with his stone-here a hand resting lightly on an elbow, there a heavy arm clapped across a pair of meaty shoulders; with this man a coarse joke, with that a solemn word of condolence, his own hands crossed and pressed to his breast in sympathy; detained by a bore, he would seem to have all the hours of the day to listen to his dreary story, but then you would see his hand flicker out and catch some passerby, and he would spin as gracefully as a dancer, with the tenderest backward glance of apology and regret, to work on someone else. Occasionally he would gesture in our direction, and a senator would stare at us, and perhaps shake his head in disbelief, or nod slowly to promise his support.

“What is he saying about me?” asked Sthenius. “What is he going to do?”

I made no answer, for I did not know myself.

By now, it was clear that Hortensius had realized something was going on but was unsure exactly what. The order of business had been posted in its usual place beside the door of the Senate House. I saw Hortensius stop to read it-the prosecution of persons in their absence on capital charges should be prohibited in the provinces-and turn away, mystified. Gellius Publicola was sitting in the doorway on his carved ivory chair, surrounded by his attendants, waiting until the entrails had been inspected and the auguries declared favorable before summoning the senators inside. Hortensius approached him, palms spread wide in inquiry. Gellius shrugged and pointed irritably at Cicero. Hortensius swung around to discover his ambitious rival surrounded by a conspiratorial circle of senators. He frowned and went over to join his own aristocratic friends: the three Metellus brothers-Quintus, Lucius, and Marcus-and the two elderly ex-consuls who really ran the empire, Quintus Catulus (whose sister was married to Hortensius) and the double triumphator, Publius Servilius Vatia Isauricus. Merely writing their names after all these years raises the hairs on my neck, for these were such men, stern and unyielding and steeped in the old republican values, as no longer exist. Hortensius must have told them about the motion, because slowly all five turned to look at Cicero. Immediately thereafter a trumpet sounded to signal the start of the session, and the senators began to file in.

The old Senate House was a cool, gloomy, cavernous temple of government, split by a wide central aisle of black and white tile. Facing across it on either side were long rows of wooden benches, six deep, on which the senators sat, with a dais at the far end for the chairs of the consuls. The light on that November afternoon was pale and bluish, dropping in shafts from the unglazed windows just beneath the raftered roof. Pigeons cooed on the sills and flapped across the chamber, sending small feathers and even occasionally hot squirts of excrement down onto the senators below. Some held that it was lucky to be shat on while speaking, others that it was an ill omen, a few that it depended on the color of the deposit. The superstitions were as numerous as their interpretations. Cicero took no notice of them, just as he took no notice of the arrangement of sheep’s guts, or whether a peal of thunder was on the left or the right, or the particular flight path of a flock of birds-idiocy all of it, as far as he was concerned, even though he later campaigned enthusiastically for election to the College of Augurs.

By ancient tradition, then still observed, the doors of the Senate House remained open so that the people could hear the debates. The crowd, Sthenius and I among them, surged across the Forum to the threshold of the chamber, where we were held back by a simple rope. Gellius was already speaking, relating the dispatches of the army commanders in the field. On all three fronts, the news was good. In southern Italy, the vastly rich Marcus Crassus-he who once boasted that no man could call himself wealthy unless he could keep a legion of five thousand solely out of his income-was putting down Spartacus’s slave revolt with great severity. In Spain, Pompey the Great, after six years’ fighting, was mopping up the last of the rebel armies. In Asia Minor, Lucius Lucullus was enjoying a glorious run of victories over King Mithradates. Once their reports had been read, supporters of each man rose in turn to praise his patron’s achievements and subtly denigrate those of his rivals. I knew the politics of this from Cicero and passed them on to Sthenius in a superior whisper: “Crassus hates Pompey and is determined to defeat Spartacus before Pompey can return with his legions from Spain to take all the credit. Pompey hates Crassus and wants the glory of finishing off Spartacus so that he can rob him of a triumph. Crassus and Pompey both hate Lucullus because he has the most glamorous command.”

“And whom does Lucullus hate?”

“Pompey and Crassus, of course, for intriguing against him.”

I felt as pleased as a child who has just successfully recited his lesson, for it was all just a game then, and I had no idea that we would ever get drawn in. The debate came to a desultory halt, without the need for a vote, and the senators began talking among themselves. Gellius, who must have been well into his sixties, held the order paper up close to his face and squinted at it, then peered around the chamber, trying to locate Cicero, who, as a junior senator, was confined to a distant back bench, near to the door. Eventually, Cicero stood to show himself, Gellius sat, the buzz of voices died away, and I picked up my stylus. There was a silence, which Cicero allowed to grow, an old trick to increase tension. And then, when he had waited so long it seemed that something must be wrong, he began to speak-very quietly and hesitantly at first, forcing his listeners to strain their ears, the rhythm of his words hooking them without their even knowing it.

“Honorable members, compared to the stirring accounts of our men in arms to which we have lately listened, I fear what I say will sound small indeed.” And now his voice rose: “But if the moment has come when this noble House no longer has ears for the pleas of an innocent man, then all those courageous deeds are worthless, and our soldiers bleed in vain.” There was a murmur of agreement from the benches beside him. “This morning there came into my home just such an innocent man, whose treatment by one of our number has been so shameful, so monstrous, and so cruel that the gods themselves must weep to hear of it. I refer to the honorable Sthenius of Thermae, recently resident in the miserable, misgoverned, misappropriated province of Sicily.”

At the word “ Sicily,” Hortensius, who had been sprawling on the front bench nearest the consul, twitched slightly. Without taking his eyes from Cicero he whispered to Quintus, the eldest of the Metellus brothers, who promptly leaned behind him and beckoned to Marcus, the junior of the fraternal trio. After receiving his instructions, Marcus bowed to the presiding consul and hurried down the aisle toward me. For a moment I thought I was about to be struck-they were tough, swaggering fellows, those Metelli-but he did not even look at me. He lifted the rope, ducked under it, pushed through the crowd, and disappeared.

Cicero, meanwhile, was hitting his stride. After our return from Molon, with the precept Delivery, delivery, delivery carved into his mind, he had spent many hours at the theater, studying the methods of the actors, and had developed a considerable talent for mime and mimicry. Using only the smallest touch of voice or gesture, he could, as it were, populate his speeches with the characters to whom he referred. He treated the Senate that afternoon to a command performance: the swaggering arrogance of Verres was contrasted with the quiet dignity of Sthenius; the long-suffering Sicilians shrank before the vileness of the public executioner, Sextius. Sthenius himself could hardly believe what he was witnessing. He had been in the city but a day, and here he was, the subject of a debate in the Roman Senate itself. Hortensius, meanwhile, kept glancing toward the door, and as Cicero began to work toward his peroration-“Sthenius seeks our protection, not merely from a thief, but from the very man who is supposed to punish thieves!”-he finally sprang to his feet. Under the rules of the Senate, a serving praetor always took precedence over a humble member of the pedarii, and Cicero had no choice but to give way.

“Senators,” boomed Hortensius, “we have sat through this long enough! This is surely one of the most flagrant pieces of opportunism ever seen in this noble House! A vague motion is placed before us, which now turns out to relate to one man only. No notice is given to us about what is to be discussed. We have no means of verifying whether what we are hearing is true. Gaius Verres, a senior member of this Order, is being defamed with no opportunity to defend himself. I move that this sitting be suspended immediately!”

Hortensius sat to a patter of applause from the aristocrats. Cicero stood. His face was perfectly straight.

“The senator seems not to have read the motion,” he said in mock puzzlement. “Where is there any mention here of Gaius Verres? Gentlemen, I am not asking this House to vote on Gaius Verres. It would not be fair to judge Gaius Verres in his absence. Gaius Verres is not here to defend himself. And now that we have established that principle, will Hortensius please extend it to my client, and agree that he should not be tried in his absence either? Or is there to be one law for the aristocrats and another for the rest of us?”

That raised the temperature well enough and set the pedarii around Cicero and the crowd at the door roaring with delight. I felt someone pushing roughly behind me, and Marcus Metellus shouldered his way back into the chamber and walked quickly up the aisle toward Hortensius. Cicero watched his progress, at first with an expression of puzzlement, and then with one of realization. He quickly held up his hand for silence. “Very well. Since Hortensius objects to the vagueness of the original motion, let us reframe it so that there can be no doubt. I propose an amendment: That whereas Sthenius has been prosecuted in his absence, it is agreed that no trial of him in his absence shall take place, and that if any such trial has already taken place, it shall be invalid. And I say: let us vote on it now, and in the highest traditions of the Roman Senate, let us save an innocent man from the dreadful punishment of crucifixion!”

To mingled cheers and catcalls, Cicero sat and Gellius rose. “The motion has been put,” declared the consul. “Does any other member wish to speak?”

Hortensius, the Metellus brothers, and a few others of their party, such as Scribonius Curio, Sergius Catilina, and Aemilius Alba, were in a huddle around the front bench, and it briefly seemed that the House would move straight to a division, which would have suited Cicero perfectly. But when the aristocrats finally settled back in their places, the bony figure of Catulus was revealed to be still on his feet. “I believe I shall speak,” he said. “Yes, I believe I shall have something to say.” Catulus was as hard and heartless as flint-the great-great-great-great-great-grandson (I believe that is the correct number of “greats”) of that Catulus who had triumphed over Hamilcar in the First Punic War-and a full two centuries of history were distilled into his vinegary old voice. “I shall speak,” he repeated, “and what I shall say first is that that young man”-pointing at Cicero -“knows nothing whatsoever about ‘the highest traditions of the Roman Senate,’ for if he did he would realize that no senator ever attacks another, except to his face. It shows a lack of breeding. I look at him there, all clever and eager in his place, and do you know what I think, gentlemen? I think of the wisdom of the old saying: ‘An ounce of heredity is worth a pound of merit!’”

Now it was the aristocrats who were rocking with laughter. Catilina, of whom I shall have much more to say later, pointed at Cicero, and then drew his finger across his throat. Cicero flushed pink but kept his self-control. He even managed a thin smile. Catulus turned with delight to the benches behind him and I caught a glimpse of his grinning profile, sharp and beak-nosed, like a head on a coin. He swiveled back to face the chamber. “When I first entered this House, in the consulship of Claudius Pulcher and Marcus Perperna…” His voice settled into a confident drone.

Cicero caught my eye. He mouthed something, glanced up at the windows, then gestured with his head toward the door. I understood at once what he meant, and as I pushed my way back through the spectators and into the Forum I realized that Marcus Metellus must have been dispatched on exactly the same errand. In those days, when timekeeping was cruder than it is now, the last hour of the day’s business was deemed to begin when the sun dropped west of the Maenian Column. I guessed that must be about to happen and, sure enough, the clerk responsible for making the observation was already on his way to tell the consul. It was against the law for the Senate to sit after sunset. Clearly, Hortensius and his friends were planning to talk out the remainder of the session, preventing Cicero ’s motion from being put to the vote. By the time I had quickly confirmed the sun’s position for myself, run back across the Forum, and wriggled my way through the crowd to the threshold of the chamber, Gellius was making the announcement: “The last hour!”

Cicero was instantly on his feet, wanting to make a point of order, but Gellius would not take it, and the floor was still with Catulus. On and on Catulus went, giving an interminable history of provincial government, virtually from the time since the she-wolf suckled Romulus. (Catulus’s father, also a consul, had famously died by shutting himself up in a sealed room, kindling a charcoal fire, and suffocating himself with the fumes: Cicero used to say he must have done it to avoid listening to another speech by his son.) When he did eventually reach some sort of conclusion, he promptly yielded the floor to Quintus Metellus. Again Cicero rose, but again he was defeated by the seniority rule. Metellus had praetorian rank and unless he chose to give way, which naturally he did not, Cicero had no right of speech. For a time, Cicero stood his ground against a swelling roar of protest, but the men on either side of him-one of whom was Servius, his lawyer friend, who had his interests at heart, and could see he was in danger of making a fool of himself-pulled at his toga and finally he surrendered and sat down.

It was forbidden to light a lamp or a brazier inside the chamber. As the gloom deepened, the cold sharpened, and the white shapes of the senators, motionless in the November dusk, became like a parliament of ghosts. After Metellus had droned on for an eternity and then sat down in favor of Hortensius-a man who could talk on anything for hours-everyone knew the debate was over, and very soon afterwards Gellius dissolved the House. He limped down the aisle, an old man in search of his dinner, preceded by four lictors carrying his curule chair. Once he had passed through the doors the senators streamed out after him and Sthenius and I retreated a short distance into the Forum to wait for Cicero. Gradually the crowd around us dwindled. The Sicilian kept asking me what was happening, but I felt it wiser to say nothing, and we stood in silence. I pictured Cicero sitting alone on the back benches, waiting for the chamber to empty, so that he could leave without having to speak to anyone, for I feared he had badly lost face. But to my surprise he strolled out chatting with Hortensius and another, older senator, whom I did not recognize. They talked for a while on the steps of the Senate House, shook hands, and parted.

“Do you know who that was?” asked Cicero, coming over to us. Far from being cast down, he appeared highly amused. “That was Verres’s father. He has promised to write to his son, urging him to drop the prosecution, if we agree not to bring the matter back to the Senate.”

Poor Sthenius was so relieved, I thought he might die from gratitude. He dropped to his knees and began kissing the senator’s hands. Cicero made a sour face and gently raised him to his feet. “Really, my dear Sthenius, save your thanks until I have actually achieved something. He has only promised to write, that is all. It is not a guarantee.”

Sthenius said, “But you will accept the offer?”

Cicero shrugged. “What choice do we have? Even if I retable the motion, they will only talk it out again.”

I could not resist asking why, in that case, Hortensius was bothering to offer a deal at all.

Cicero nodded slowly. “Now that is a good question.” There was a mist rising from the Tiber, and the lamps in the shops along the Argiletum shone yellow and gauzy. He sniffed the damp air. “I suppose it can only be because he is embarrassed. Which in his case, of course, takes quite a lot. Yet it seems that even he would prefer not to be associated too publicly with such a flagrant criminal as Verres. So he is trying to settle the matter quietly. I wonder how much his retainer is from Verres: it must be an enormous sum.”

“Hortensius was not the only one who came to Verres’s defense,” I reminded him.

“No.” Cicero glanced back at the Senate House, and I could see that something had just occurred to him. “They are all in it together, aren’t they? The Metellus brothers are true aristocrats-they would never lift a finger to help anyone apart from themselves, unless it was for money. As for Catulus, the man is frantic for gold. He has undertaken so much building on the Capitol over the past ten years, it is almost more of a shrine to him than it is to Jupiter. I estimate we must have been looking at half a million in bribes this afternoon, Tiro. A few Delian bronzes-however fine, Sthenius, forgive me-would not be sufficient to buy that kind of protection. What is Verres up to down there in Sicily?” He suddenly began working his signet ring over his knuckle. “Take this to the National Archive, Tiro, and show it to one of the clerks. Demand in my name to see all the official accounts submitted to the Senate by Gaius Verres.”

My face no doubt registered my dismay. “But the National Archive is run by Catulus’s people. He is sure to hear word of what you are doing.”

“That cannot be helped.”

“But what am I looking for?”

“Anything interesting. You will know it when you see it. Go quickly, while there is still some light.” He put his arm around the shoulders of the Sicilian. “As for you, Sthenius-you will come to dinner with me tonight, I hope? It is only family, but I am sure my wife will be delighted to meet you.”

I rather doubted that, but naturally it was not my place to say so.

THE NATIONAL ARCHIVE, which was then barely six years old, loomed over the Forum even more massively than it does today, for back then it had less competition. I climbed that great flight of steps up to the first gallery and by the time I found an attendant my heart was racing. I showed him the seal and demanded, on behalf of Senator Cicero, to see Verres’s accounts. At first he claimed never to have heard of Cicero and, besides, that the building was closing. But then I pointed in the direction of the Carcer and told him firmly that if he did not desire to spend a month in chains in the state prison for impeding official business, he had better fetch those records now. (One lesson I had learned from Cicero was how to hide my nerves.) He scowled a bit and thought about it, then told me to follow him.

The Archive was Catulus’s domain, a temple to him and his clan. Above the vaults was his inscription-Q. Lutatius Catulus, son of Quintus, grandson of Quintus, consul, by a decree of the Senate, commissioned the erection of this National Archive, and approved it satisfactory-and beside the entrance stood his life-size statue, looking somewhat more youthful and heroic than he had appeared in the Senate that afternoon. Most of the attendants were either his slaves or his freedmen and wore his emblem, a little dog, sewn onto their tunics. I shall tell you the kind of man Catulus was. He blamed the suicide of his father on the populist praetor Gratidianus-a distant relative of Cicero -and after the victory of the aristocrats in the civil war between Marius and Sulla, he took the opportunity for revenge. His young protégé, Sergius Catilina, at his behest, seized Gratidianus and whipped him through the streets to the Catulus family tomb. There his arms and legs were broken, his ears and nose cut off, his tongue pulled out of his mouth and severed, and his eyes gouged out. In this ghastly condition his head was then lopped off, and Catilina bore it in triumph to Catulus, who was waiting in the Forum. Do you wonder now why I was nervous as I waited for the vaults to be opened?

The senatorial records were kept in fireproof strongrooms, built to withstand a lightning strike, tunneled into the rock of the Capitol, and when the slaves swung back the big bronze door I had a glimpse of thousands upon thousands of rolled papyri, receding into the shadows of the sacred hill. Five hundred years of history were encompassed in that one small space: half a millennium of magistracies and governorships, proconsular decrees and judicial rulings, from Lusitania to Macedonia, from Africa to Gaul, and most of them made in the names of the same few families: the Aemilii, the Claudii, the Cornelii, the Lutatii, the Metelii, the Servilii. This was what gave Catulus and his kind the confidence to look down upon such provincial equestrians as Cicero.

They kept me waiting in an antechamber while they searched for Verres’s records, and eventually they brought out to me a single document case containing perhaps a dozen rolls. From the labels on the ends I saw that these were all, with one exception, accounts from his time as urban praetor. The exception was a flimsy piece of papyrus, barely worth the trouble of unrolling, covering his work as a junior magistrate twelve years previously, at the time of the war between Marius and Sulla, and on which was written just three sentences: “I received 2,235,417 sesterces. I expended on wages, grain, payments to legates, the proquaestor, the praetorian cohort 1,635,417 sesterces. I left 600,000 at Ariminum.” Remembering the scores of rolls of meticulous accounts which Cicero ’s term as a junior magistrate in Sicily had generated, all of which I had written out for him, I could barely refrain from laughing.

“Is this all there is?”

The attendant assured me it was.

“But where are the accounts from his time in Sicily?”

“They have not yet been submitted to the Treasury.”

“Not yet submitted? He has been governor for almost two years!”

The fellow looked at me blankly, and I could see that there was no point in wasting any more time with him. I copied out the three lines relating to Verres’s junior magistracy and went out into the evening.

While I had been in the National Archive, darkness had fallen over Rome. In Cicero ’s house the family had already gone in to dinner. But the master had left instructions with the steward, Eros, that I was to be shown straight into the dining room the moment I returned. I found him lying on a couch beside Terentia. His brother, Quintus, was also there, with his wife, Pomponia. The third couch was occupied by Cicero ’s cousin Lucius and the hapless Sthenius, still clad in his dirty mourning clothes and squirming with unease. I could sense the strained atmosphere as soon as I entered, although Cicero was in good spirits. He always liked a dinner party. It was not the quality of the food and drink which mattered to him, but the company and the conversation. Quintus and Lucius, along with Atticus, were the three men he loved most.

“Well?” he said to me. I told him what had happened and showed him my copy of Verres’s quaestorian accounts. He scanned it, grunted, and tossed the wax tablet across the table. “Look at that, Quintus. The villain is too lazy even to lie adequately. Six hundred thousand-what a nice round sum, not a penny either side of it-and where does he leave it? Why, in a town which is then conveniently occupied by the opposition’s army, so the loss can be blamed on them! And no accounts submitted from Sicily for two years? I am obliged to you, Sthenius, for bringing this rogue to my attention.”

“Oh, yes, so obliged,” said Terentia, with savage sweetness. “So obliged-for setting us at war with half the decent families in Rome. But presumably we can socialize with Sicilians from now on, so that will be all right. Where did you say you came from again?”

“Thermae, your ladyship.”

“Thermae. I have never heard of it, but I am sure it is delightful. You can make speeches to the town council, Cicero. Perhaps you will even get elected there, now that Rome is forever closed to you. You can be the consul of Thermae and I can be the first lady.”

“A role I am sure you will perform with your customary charm, my darling,” said Cicero, patting her arm.

They could needle away at one another like this for hours. Sometimes I believe they rather enjoyed it.

“I still fail to see what you can do about it,” said Quintus. He was fresh from military service: four years younger than his brother, and possessed of about half the brains. “If you raise Verres’s conduct in the Senate, they will talk it out. If you try to take him to court, they will make sure he is acquitted. Just keep your nose out of it, is my advice.”

“And what do you say, cousin?”

“I say no man of honor in the Roman Senate can stand by and see this sort of corruption going on unchecked,” replied Lucius. “Now that you know the facts, you have a duty to make them public.”

“Bravo!” said Terentia. “Spoken like a true philosopher, who has never stood for office in his life.”

Pomponia yawned noisily. “Can we talk about something else? Politics is so dull.”

She was a tiresome woman whose only obvious attraction, apart from her prominent bust, was that she was Atticus’s sister. I saw the eyes of the two Cicero brothers meet, and my master give a barely perceptible shake of his head: ignore her, his expression said, it is not worth arguing over. “All right,” he conceded, “enough of politics. But I propose a toast.” He raised his cup and the others did the same. “To our old friend Sthenius. If nothing else, may this day have seen the beginning of the restoration of his fortunes. Sthenius!”

The Sicilian’s eyes were wet with tears of gratitude.

“Sthenius!”

“And Thermae, Cicero,” added Terentia, her small dark eyes, her shrew’s eyes, bright with malice over the rim of her drink. “Do not let us forget Thermae.”

I TOOK MY MEAL ALONE in the kitchen and went exhausted to bed with my lamp and a book of philosophy which I was too tired to read. (I was free to borrow whatever I liked from the household’s small library.) Later I heard the guests all leave and the bolts slam shut on the front door. I heard Cicero and Terentia mount the stairs in silence and go their separate ways, for she had long since taken to sleeping in another part of the house to avoid being woken by him before dawn. I heard Cicero ’s footsteps on the boards above my head, and then I blew out my lamp, and that was the last sound I heard as I surrendered myself to sleep-his footsteps pacing, up and down, up and down.

It was six weeks later that we heard the news from Sicily. Verres had ignored the entreaties of his father. On the first day of December, in Syracuse, exactly as he had threatened, he had judged Sthenius in his absence, found him guilty of espionage, sentenced him to be crucified, and dispatched his officials to Rome to arrest him and return him for execution.