Lustrum

XIII

Around this time, exactly as Clodius had predicted, Pompey the Great returned to Italy, making land at Brundisium. The senate's messengers raced in relays nearly three hundred miles to Rome to bring the news. According to their dispatches, twenty thousand of Pompey's legionaries had disembarked with him, and the following day he addressed them in the town's forum. 'Men,' he was reported to have said, 'I thank you for your service. We have put an end to Mithradates, the republic's greatest enemy since Hannibal, and performed heroic deeds together that the world will remember for a thousand years. It is a bitter day that sees us part. But ours is a nation of laws, and I have no authority from the senate and people to maintain an army in Italy. Disperse to your native cities. Go back to your homes. I promise you your services will not go unrewarded. There will be money and land for all of you. You have my word. And in the meantime, stand ready for my summons to join me in Rome, where you will receive your bounty and we shall celebrate the greatest triumph the mother-city of our newly enlarged empire has ever seen!'

With that, he set off on the road to Rome, accompanied by only his official escort of lictors and a few close friends. As news of his humble entourage spread, it had the most amazing effect. People had feared he would move north with his army, leaving a swathe of countryside behind them stripped bare as if by locusts. Instead, the Warden of Land and Sea merely ambled along in a leisurely fashion, stopping to rest in country inns, as if he were nothing more grand than a sightseer returning from a foreign holiday. In every town along the route – in Tarentum and in Venusia, across the mountains and down on to the plains of Campania, in Capua and in Minturnae – the crowds turned out to cheer him. Hundreds decided to leave their homes and follow him, and soon the senate was receiving reports that as many as five thousand citizens were on the march with him to Rome.

Cicero read of all this with increasing alarm. His long letter to Pompey was still unacknowledged, and even he was beginning to perceive that his boasting about his consulship might have done him harm. Worse, he now learned from several sources that Pompey had formed a bad impression of Hybrida, having travelled through Macedonia on his journey back to Italy, witnessing at first hand his corruption and incompetence, and that when he reached Rome he would press for the governor's immediate recall. Such a move would threaten Cicero with financial ruin, not least because he had yet to receive a single sesterce from Hybrida. He called me to his library and dictated a long letter to his former colleague: I shall try to protect your back with all my might, provided I do not seem to be throwing my trouble away. But if I find that it gets me no thanks, I shall not let myself be taken for an idiot – even by you. A few days after Saturnalia there was a farewell dinner for Atticus, at the end of which Cicero gave him the letter and asked him to deliver it to Hybrida personally. Atticus swore to discharge this duty the moment he reached Macedonia, and then, amid many tears and embraces, the two best friends said their farewells. It was a source of deep sadness to both men that Quintus had not bothered to come and see him off.

With Atticus gone from the city, worries seemed to press in on Cicero from every side. He was deeply concerned, and I even more so, by the worsening health of his junior secretary, Sositheus. I had trained this lad myself, in Latin grammar, Greek and shorthand, and he had become a much-loved member of the household. He had a melodious voice, which was why Cicero came to rely on him as a reader. He was twenty-six or thereabouts, and slept in a small room next to mine in the cellar. What started as a hacking cough developed into a fever, and Cicero sent his own doctor down to examine him. A course of bleeding did no good; nor did leeches. Cicero was very much affected, and most days he would sit for a while beside the young man's cot, holding a cold wet towel to his burning forehead. I stayed up with Sositheus every night for a week, listening to his rambling nonsense talk and trying to calm him down and persuade him to drink some water.

It is often the case with these dreadful fevers that the final crisis is preceded by a lull. So it was with Sositheus. I remember it very well. It was long past midnight. I was stretched out on a straw mattress beside his cot, huddled against the cold under a blanket and a sheepskin. He had gone very quiet, and in the silence and the dim yellow light cast by the lamp, I nodded off myself. But something woke me, and when I turned, I saw that he was sitting up and staring at me with a look of great terror.

'The letters,' he said.

It was so typical of him to be worried about his work, I nearly wept. 'The letters are taken care of,' I replied. 'Everything is up to date. Go back to sleep now.'

'I copied out the letters.'

'Yes, yes, you copied out the letters. Now go to sleep.' I tried gently to press him back down, but he wriggled beneath my hands. He was nothing but sweat and bone by this time, as feeble as a sparrow. Yet he would not lie still. He was desperate to tell me something.

'Crassus knows it.'

'Of course Crassus knows it.' I spoke soothingly. But then I felt a sudden sense of dread. 'Crassus knows what?'

'The letters.'

'What letters?' Sositheus made no reply. 'You mean the anonymous letters? The ones warning of violence in Rome? You copied those out?' He nodded. 'How does Crassus know?' I whispered.

'I told him.' His fragile claw of a hand scrabbled at my arm. 'Don't be angry.'

'I'm not angry,' I said, wiping the sweat from his forehead. 'He must have frightened you.'

'He said he knew already.'

'You mean he tricked you?'

'I'm so sorry…' He stopped, and gave an immense groan – a terrible noise, for one so frail – and his whole body trembled. His eyelids drooped, then opened wide for one last time, and he gave me such a look as I have never forgotten – there was a whole abyss in those staring eyes – and then he fell back in my arms unconscious. I was horrified by what I saw, I suppose because it was like gazing into the blackest mirror – nothing to see but oblivion – and I realised at that instant that I too would die like Sositheus, childless and leaving behind no trace of my existence. From then on I redoubled my resolve to write down all the history I was witnessing, so that my life might at least have this small purpose.

Sositheus lingered on all through that night, and into the next day, and on the last evening of the year he died. I went at once to tell Cicero.

'The poor boy,' he sighed. 'His death grieves me more than perhaps the loss of a slave should. See to it that his funeral shows the world how much I valued him.' He turned back to his book, then noticed that I was still in the room. 'Well?'

I was in a dilemma. I felt instinctively that Sositheus had imparted a great secret to me, but I could not be absolutely sure if it was true, or merely the ravings of a fevered man. I was also torn between my responsibility to the dead and my duty to the living – to respect my friend's confession, or to warn Cicero? In the end, I chose the latter. 'There's something you should know,' I said. I took out my tablet and read to him Sositheus's dying words, which I had taken the precaution of writing down.

Cicero studied me as I spoke, his chin in his hand, and when I finished, he said, 'I knew I should have asked you to do that copying.'

I had not quite been able to bring myself to believe it until that moment. I struggled to hide my shock. 'And why didn't you?'

He gave me another appraising look. 'Your feelings are bruised?'

'A little.'

'Well, they shouldn't be. It's a compliment to your honesty. You sometimes have too many scruples for the dirty business of politics, Tiro, and I would have found it hard to carry off such a deception under your disapproving gaze. So I had you fooled, then, did I?' He sounded quite proud of himself.

'Yes,' I replied, 'completely,' and he had: when I remembered his apparent surprise on the night Crassus brought the letters round with Scipio and Marcellus, I was forced to marvel at his skills as an actor, if nothing else.

'Well, I regret I had to trick you. However, it seems I didn't trick Old Baldhead – or at least he isn't tricked any longer.' He sighed again. 'Poor Sositheus. Actually, I'm fairly sure I know when Crassus extracted the truth from him. It must have been on the day I sent him over to collect the title deeds to this place.'

'You should have sent me!'

'I would have done but you were out and there was no one else I trusted. How terrified he must have been when that old fox trapped him into confessing! If only he had told me what he'd done – I could have set his mind at rest.'

'But aren't you worried what Crassus might do?'

'Why should I be worried? He got what he wanted, all except the command of an army to destroy Catilina – that he should even have thought of asking for that amazed me! But as for the rest – those letters Sositheus wrote at my dictation and left on his doorstep were a gift from the gods as far as he was concerned. He cut himself free of the conspiracy and left me to clear up the mess and stop Pompey from intervening. In fact I should say Crassus derived far more benefit from the whole affair than I did. The only ones who suffered were the guilty.'

'But what if he makes it public?'

'If he does, I'll deny it – he has no proof. But he won't. The last thing he wants is to open up that whole stinking pit of bones.' He picked up his book again. 'Go and put a coin in the mouth of our dear dead friend, and let us hope he finds more honesty on that side of the eternal river than exists on this.'

I did as he commanded, and the following day Sositheus's body was burnt on the Esquiline Field. Most of the household turned out to pay their respects, and I spent Cicero's money very freely on flowers and flautists and incense. All in all it was as well done as these occasions ever can be: you would have thought we were bidding farewell to a freedman, or even a citizen. Thinking over what I had learned, I did not presume to judge Cicero for the morality of his action, nor did I feel much wounded pride that he had been unwilling to trust me. But I did fear that Crassus would try to seek revenge, and as the thick black smoke rose from the pyre to merge with the low clouds rolling in from the east, I felt full of apprehension.

Pompey approached the city on the Ides of January. The day before he was due, Cicero received an invitation to attend upon the imperator at the Villa Publica, which was then the government's official guest house. It was respectfully phrased. He could think of no reason not to accept. To have refused would have been seen as a snub. 'Nevertheless,' he confided to me as his valet dressed him the next morning, 'I cannot help feeling like a subject being summoned out to greet a conqueror, rather than a partner in the affairs of state arranging to meet another on equal terms.'

By the time we reached the Field of Mars, thousands of citizens were already straining for a glimpse of their hero, who was now rumoured to be only a mile or two away. I could see that Cicero was slightly put out by the fact that for once the crowds all had their backs to him and paid him no attention, and when we went into the Villa Publica his dignity received another blow. He had assumed he was going to meet Pompey privately, but instead he discovered several other senators with their attendants already waiting, including the new consuls, Pupius Piso and Valerius Messalla. The room was gloomy and cold, in that way of official buildings that are little used, and yet although it smelled strongly of damp, no one had troubled to light a fire. Here Cicero was obliged to settle down to wait on a hard gilt chair, making stiff conversation with Pupius, a taciturn lieutenant of Pompey's whom he had known for many years and did not like.

After about an hour, the noise of the crowd began to grow and I realised that Pompey must have come into view. Soon the racket was so intimidating the senators gave up trying to talk and sat mute, like strangers thrown together by chance while seeking shelter from a thunderstorm. People ran to and fro outside, and cried and cheered. A trumpet sounded. Eventually we heard the clump of boots filling the antechamber next door, and a man said, 'Well, you can't say the people of Rome don't love you, Imperator!' And then Pompey's booming voice could be heard clearly in reply: 'Yes, that went well enough. That certainly went well enough.'

Cicero rose along with the other senators, and a moment later into the room strode the great general, in full uniform of scarlet cloak and glittering bronze breastplate on which was carved a sun spreading its rays. He handed his plumed helmet to an aide as his officers and lictors poured in behind him. His hair was as improbably thick as ever and he ran his meaty fingers through it, pushing it back in the familiar cresting wave that peaked above his broad, sunburnt face. He had changed little in six years except to have become – if such a thing were possible – even more physically imposing. His torso was immense. He shook hands with the consuls and the other senators, and exchanged a few words with each, while Cicero looked on awkwardly. Finally he moved on to my master. 'Marcus Tullius!' he exclaimed. Taking a step backwards, he appraised Cicero carefully, gesturing in mock-wonder first at his polished red shoes and then up the crisp lines of his purple-bordered toga to his neatly trimmed hair. 'You look very well. Come then,' he said, beckoning him closer, 'let me embrace the man but for whom I would have no country left to return to!' He flung his arms around Cicero, crushing him to his breastplate in a hug, and winked at us over his shoulder. 'I know that must be true, because it's what he keeps on telling me!' Everyone laughed, and Cicero tried to join in. But Pompey's clasp had squeezed all the air out of him, and he could only manage a mirthless wheeze. 'Well, gentlemen,' continued Pompey, beaming around the room, 'shall we sit?'

A large chair was carried in for the imperator and he settled himself into it. An ivory pointer was placed in his hand. A carpet was unrolled at his feet into which was woven a map of the East, and as the senators gazed down, he began gesturing at it to illustrate his achievements. I made some notes as he talked, and afterwards Cicero spent a long while studying them with an expression of disbelief. In the course of his campaign, Pompey claimed to have captured one thousand fortifications, nine hundred cities, and fourteen entire countries, including Syria, Palestine, Arabia, Mesopotamia and Judaea. The pointer flourished again. He had established no fewer than thirty-nine new cities, only three of which he had allowed to name themselves Pompeiopolis. He had levied a property tax on the East that would increase the annual revenues of Rome by two thirds. From his personal funds he proposed to make an immediate donation to the treasury of two hundred million sesterces. 'I have doubled the size of our empire, gentlemen. Rome's frontier now stands on the Red Sea.'

Even as I was writing this down, I was struck by the singular tone in which Pompey gave his account. He spoke throughout of 'my' this and 'my' that. But were all these states and cities, and these vast amounts of money, really his, or were they Rome's?

'I shall require a retrospective bill to legalise all this, of course,' he concluded.

There was a pause. Cicero, who had just about recovered his breath, raised an eyebrow. 'Really? Just one bill?'

'One bill,' affirmed Pompey, handing his ivory stick to an attendant, 'which need be of just one sentence: “The senate and people of Rome hereby approve all decisions made by Pompey the Great in his settlement of the East.” Naturally, you can add some lines of congratulation if you wish, but that will be the essence of it.'

Cicero glanced at the other senators. None met his gaze. They were happy to let him do the talking. 'And is there anything else you desire?'

'The consulship.'

'When?'

'Next year. A decade after my first. Perfectly legal.'

'But to stand for election you will need to enter the city, which will mean surrendering your imperium. And surely you intend to triumph?'

'Of course. I shall triumph on my birthday, in September.'

'But then how can this be done?'

'Simple. Another bill. One sentence again: “The senate and people of Rome hereby permit Pompey the Great to seek election to the office of consul in absentia.” I hardly need to canvass for the post, I think. People know who I am!' He smiled and looked around him.

'And your army?'

'Disbanded and dispersed. They will need rewarding, of course. I've given them my word.'

The consul Messalla spoke up. 'We received reports that you promised them land.'

'That's right.' Even Pompey could detect the hostility in the silence that followed. 'Listen, gentlemen,' he said, leaning forward in his throne-like chair, 'let's talk frankly. You know I could have marched with my legionaries to the gates of Rome and demanded whatever I wanted. But it's my intention to serve the senate, not to dictate to it, and I've just travelled up through Italy in the most humble manner to demonstrate exactly that. And I want to go on demonstrating it. You have all heard that I've divorced?' The senators nodded. 'Then how would it be if I made a marriage that tied me to the senatorial party for ever?'

'I think I speak for us all,' said Cicero cautiously, checking with the others, 'when I say that the senate desires nothing more than to work with you, and that a marriage alliance would be of the greatest help. Do you have a candidate in mind?'

'I do, as a matter of fact. I'm told Cato is a force in the senate these days, and Cato has nieces and daughters of marriageable age. My plan is that I should take one of these girls as my wife and my eldest son should take another. There.' He sat back contentedly. 'How does that strike you?'

'It strikes us very well,' responded Cicero, again after a quick glance around his colleagues. 'An alliance between the houses of Cato and Pompey will secure peace for a generation. The populists will all be prostrated with shock and the good men will all rejoice.' He smiled. 'I congratulate you on a brilliant stroke, Imperator. What does Cato say?'

'Oh, he doesn't know of it yet.'

Cicero's smile became fixed. 'You have divorced Mucia and severed your connections with the Metelli in order to marry a connection of Cato – but you have not yet enquired what Cato's reaction might be?'

'I suppose you could put it that way. Why? Do you think there'll be a problem?'

'With most men I would say no, but with Cato – well, one can never be sure where the undeviating arrow flight of his logic may lead him. Have you told many other people of your intentions?'

'A few.'

'In that case, might I suggest, Imperator, that we suspend our discussions for the time being, while you send an emissary to Cato as quickly as possible?'

A dark cloud had passed over Pompey's hitherto sunny expression – it had obviously never entered his mind that Cato might refuse him: if he did, it would mean a terrible loss of face – and in a distracted tone he agreed to Cicero's suggestion. By the time we left, he was already holding an urgent consultation with Lucius Afranius, his closest confidant. Outside, the crowds were as dense as ever, and even though Pompey's guards opened the gates only just wide enough to let us depart, they very nearly found themselves overwhelmed by the numbers pressing to get in. People shouted out to Cicero and the consuls as they struggled back towards the city: 'Have you spoken to him?' 'What does he say?' 'Is it true he has become a god?'

'He was not a god the last time I looked,' replied Cicero cheerfully, 'although he is not far off it! He is looking forward to rejoining us in the senate. What a farce,' he added to me, out of the corner of his mouth. 'Plautus could not have come up with a more absurd scenario.'

It did indeed turn out exactly as Cicero had feared. Pompey sent that very day for Cato's friend Munatius, who conveyed the great man's offer of a double marriage to Cato's house, where as it happened his family were all gathered for a feast. The womenfolk were overjoyed at the prospect, such was the status of Pompey as Rome's greatest war hero, and the renown of his magnificent physique. But Cato flew into an immediate rage, and without pausing for thought or consulting anyone made the following reply: 'Go, Munatius: go and tell Pompey that Cato is not to be captured by way of women's apartments. He greatly prizes Pompey's goodwill, and if Pompey behaves properly will grant him a friendship more to be relied upon than any marriage connection. But he will not give hostages for the glory of Pompey to the detriment of his country!'

Pompey, by all accounts, was stunned by the rudeness of the reply ('if Pompey behaves properly'!) and quit the Villa Publica at once in a very ill humour to go to his house in the Alban Hills. But even here he was pursued by tormenting demons determined to puncture his dignity. His daughter, then aged nine, whom he had not seen since she could barely speak, had been coached by her tutor, the famous grammarian Aristodemus of Nyssa, to greet her father with some passages from Homer. Unfortunately, the first line she spoke as he came through the door was that of Helen to Paris: 'You came back from the war; I wish you had died there.' Too many people witnessed the episode for it not to become public, and I am afraid that Cicero found it so funny he too played his part in spreading the story across Rome.

In the midst of all this tumult it was possible to believe that the affair of the Good Goddess might be forgotten. More than a month had now passed since the outrage, and Clodius had been careful to keep out of public view. People had started to talk of other things. But a day or two after the return of Pompey, the College of Priests finally handed its judgement on the incident to the senate. Pupius, who was the leading consul, was a friend of Clodius, and keen to hush up the scandal. Nevertheless, he was obliged to read out the priests' report, and their verdict was unambiguous. Clodius's action was a clear case of nefas – an impious deed, a sin, a crime against the goddess, an abomination.

The first senator on his feet was Lucullus, and what a sweet moment this must have been for him as, with great solemnity, he declared that his former brother-in-law had besmirched the traditions of the republic and had risked bringing the wrath of the gods down upon the city. 'Their anger can only be appeased,' he said, 'by the sternest punishment of the offender,' and he formally proposed that Clodius be charged with violating the sanctity of the Vestal Virgins – an offence for which the penalty was to be beaten to death. Cato seconded the motion. The two patrician leaders, Hortensius and Catulus, both rose in support, and it was clear that the mood of the house was strongly with them. They demanded that the most powerful magistrate in Rome after the consuls, the urban praetor, should convene a special court, appoint a hand-picked jury drawn from the senate, and try the case as speedily as possible. With such men in control, the result would be pre-ordained. Pupius agreed reluctantly to draw up a bill to this effect and by the time the session was over, Clodius looked to be a dead man.

Late that night, when I heard someone knock on the front door, I was sure in my bones that it must be Clodius. Despite Cicero's snub on the day after the Good Goddess fiasco, the young man had continued to make regular return visits to the house in the hope of a meeting. But I was under strict instructions to refuse him admittance: much to his irritation, he had never got further than the atrium. Now, as I crossed the hall, I braced myself for another unpleasant scene. But to my astonishment, when I unlocked the door, the person I found standing on the step was Clodia. Normally she voyaged around the city amid a flotilla of maids, but on this night she was unescorted. She asked in a very cool voice if my master was in, and I replied that I would check. I showed her into the hall and invited her to wait and then almost ran into the library, where Cicero was working. When I announced who had come to see him, he laid down his pen and thought for a moment or two.

'Has Terentia gone up to her room?'

'I believe so.'

'Then show her in.' I was amazed that he should take such a risk, and he must have realised the dangers himself, for just as I was leaving, he said, 'Make sure you don't leave us alone together.'

I went and fetched her. The moment she entered the library she crossed to where Cicero was standing and quickly knelt at his feet. 'I have come to plead for your support,' she said, bowing her head. 'My poor boy is beside himself with fear and remorse, yet he is too proud to try to ask you for help again, so I am here alone.' She took the hem of his toga in her hands and kissed it. 'My dear friend, it takes a great deal for a Claudian to kneel, but I am begging for your help.'

'Get up off the floor, Clodia,' replied Cicero, glancing anxiously at the door. 'Someone may see you, and the story will be all over Rome.' When she did not respond, he added, more gently, 'I won't even talk to you unless you get on your feet!' Clodia rose, her head still bowed. 'Now listen to me,' said Cicero. 'I'll say this once and then you must leave. You want me to help your brother, yes?' Clodia nodded. 'Then tell him he must do precisely what I say. He must write letters to every one of those women whose honour he has outraged. He must tell them he is sorry, it was a fit of madness, he is no longer worthy to breathe the same air as them and their daughters, and so on and so forth – believe me, he cannot be too obsequious. Then he must renounce his quaestorship. Leave Rome. Go into exile. Stay away from the city for a few years. When things calm down, he can come back and start again. It's the best advice I can offer. Goodbye.'

He began to turn away from her, but she grabbed his arm.

'Leaving Rome will kill him!'

'No, madam, staying in Rome will kill him. There is bound to be a trial and he is bound to be found guilty. Lucullus will see to that. But Lucullus is old and lazy, and your brother is young and energetic. Time is his greatest ally. Tell him I said that, and that I wish him well, and tell him to go tomorrow.'

'If he stays in Rome, will you join in the attacks on him?'

'I will do my best to keep out of it.'

'And if it comes to a trial,' she said, still holding his arm, 'will you defend him?'

'No, that is completely impossible.'

'Why?'

'Why?' Cicero gave an incredulous laugh. 'Any one of a thousand reasons.'

'Is it because you believe he is guilty?'

'My dear Clodia, the whole world knows he is guilty!'

'But you defended Cornelius Sulla, and the whole world knew he was guilty, too.'

'But this is different.'

'Why?'

'My wife, for one thing,' said Cicero softly, with another glance at the door. 'My wife was present. She witnessed the entire episode.'

'You are saying your wife would divorce you if you defended my brother?'

'Yes, I believe she would.'

'Then take another wife,' said Clodia, and stepping back but still staring at him she quickly untied her cloak and let it fall from her shoulders. Beneath it she was naked. The dark smoothness of her oiled skin glistened in the candlelight. I was standing almost directly behind her. She knew I was watching, yet she no more minded my presence than if I had been a table or a footstool. The air seemed to thicken. Cicero stood perfectly still. Thinking back on it, I am reminded of that moment in the senate, in the chaos after the debate on the conspirators, when a single word or gesture of assent from him would have led to Caesar's death, and the world – our world – would have been entirely different. So it was now. After a long pause he gave the very slightest shake of his head, and, stooping, he retrieved her cloak and held it out to her.

'Put it back on,' he said quietly.

She ignored it. Instead she put her hands on her hips. 'You really prefer that pious old broomstick to me?'

'Yes.' He sounded surprised by his own answer. 'When it comes to it, I believe I do.'

'Then what a fool you are,' she said, and turned around so that Cicero could drape the cloak across her shoulders. The gesture was as casual as if she were going home after a dinner party. She caught me looking at her and her eyes flashed me such a look that I quickly dropped my gaze. 'You will think back on this moment,' she said, briskly fastening her cloak, 'and regret it for the rest of your life.'

'No I won't, because I shall put it out of my mind, and I suggest you do the same.'

'Why should I want to forget it?' She smiled and shook her head. 'How my brother will laugh when he hears about it.'

'You'll tell him?'

'Of course. It was his idea.'

'Not a word,' said Cicero after Clodia had gone. He held up a warning hand. He did not want to discuss it, and we never did. Rumours that something had occurred between them circulated for many years, but I always refused to comment on the gossip. I have kept this secret for half a century.

Ambition and lust are often intertwined. In some men, such as Caesar and Clodius, they are as tightly plaited as a rope. With Cicero it was the opposite case. I believe he had a passionate nature, but it frightened him. Like his stutter or his youthful illnesses or his unsteady nerves, he viewed passion as a handicap, to be overcome by discipline. He therefore learned to separate this strand in his nature, and to avoid it. But the gods are implacable, and despite his resolution not to have anything to do with Clodia and her brother, he soon found himself being sucked into the quickening whirlpool of the scandal.

It is hard to comprehend at this great distance how completely the Good Goddess affair gripped public life in Rome, so that eventually all government business came to a halt. On the surface, Clodius's cause seemed hopeless. Plainly he had committed this ludicrous offence, and almost the whole of the senate was set on his punishment. But sometimes in politics a great weakness can be turned into a strength, and from the moment that Lucullus's motion was passed, the Roman people began to mutter against it. What was the young man guilty of, after all, except an excess of high spirits? Was a fellow to be beaten to death merely because of a lark? When Clodius ventured into the forum, he found that citizens, rather than wanting to pelt him with ordure, actually wished to shake his hand.

There were still thousands of plebeians in Rome who were disaffected with the renewed authority of the senate and who looked back with nostalgia to the days when Catilina ruled the streets. Clodius attracted these people by the score. They would gather around him in crowds. He took to jumping up on to a nearby cart or trader's stall and inveighing against the senate. He had learned well from Cicero the tricks of political campaigning: keep your speeches short, remember names, tell jokes, put on a show; above all, render an issue, however complex, into a story anyone can grasp. Clodius's tale was the simplest possible: he was the lone citizen unjustly persecuted by the oligarchs. 'Take care, my friends!' he would cry. 'If it can happen to me, a patrician, it could happen to any one of you!' Soon he was holding daily public meetings at which order was kept by his friends from the taverns and the gambling dens, many of whom had been supporters of Catilina.

Clodius attacked Lucullus, Hortensius and Catulus repeatedly by name, but when it came to Cicero he confined himself merely to repeating the old joke that the former consul had kept himself 'fully informed'. Cicero was often tempted to respond, and Terentia urged him to do so, yet he was mindful of his promise to Clodia and managed to keep his temper in check. However, the controversy kept on swelling regardless of his silence. I was with him on the day the senate's bill to set up the special court was laid before the people in a popular assembly. Clodius's gangs of toughs took control of the meeting, occupying the gangways and seizing the ballot boxes. Their clamour so unnerved the consul, Pupius, that he actually spoke against his own bill – in particular the clause that allowed the urban praetor to select the jury. Many senators turned to Cicero, expecting him to take control of the situation, but he remained on his bench, glowering with anger and embarrassment, and it was left to Cato to deliver a lashing attack on the consul. The meeting was abandoned. The senators promptly trooped back to their chamber and voted by 400 votes to 15 to press on with the bill despite the dangers of civil unrest. Fufius, a tribune who was sympathetic to Clodius, promptly announced that he would veto the legislation. The affair was now seriously out of hand, and Cicero hurried out of the chamber and up to his house, crimson in the face.

The turning point came when Fufius decided to convene a public assembly outside the city walls so that Pompey could be summoned and asked his views on the affair. Grumbling mightily at this intrusion on his time and dignity, the Warden of Land and Sea had no choice but to lumber over from the Alban Hills to the Flaminian Circus and submit himself to a series of insolent questions from the tribune, watched by a huge market-day crowd that temporarily set aside their bargaining and clustered round to gawp at him.

'Are you aware of the so-called outrage committed against the Good Goddess?' asked Fufius.

'I am.'

'Do you support the senate's proposal that Clodius be prosecuted?'

'I do.'

'Do you believe he should be tried by a jury of senators selected by the urban praetor?'

'I do.'

'Even though the urban praetor will also be his judge?'

'I suppose so, if that is the procedure the senate has settled on.'

'And where is the justice in that?'

Pompey glared at Fufius as if he were some buzzing insect that would not leave him alone. 'I hold the senate's authority in the highest respect,' he declared, and proceeded to deliver a lecture on the Roman constitution that might have been written for him by a fourteen-year-old. I was standing with Cicero at the front of the huge throng and could sense the audience behind us losing interest as he droned on. Soon they started shuffling about and talking. The vendors of hot sausages and pastries on the edge of the crowd began doing a busy trade. Pompey was a boring speaker at the best of times, but standing on that platform he must have felt as if he were in a bad dream. All those visions of a triumphant homecoming he had entertained as he lay at night in his tent beneath the burning stars of Arabia – and in the end what had he returned to? A senate and people obsessed not with his achievements but with a young man dressed in women's clothes!

When the public assembly was mercifully over, Cicero conducted Pompey across the Flaminian Circus to the Temple of Bellona, where the senate had convened specially to greet him. The ovation he received was respectful, and he sat down next to Cicero on the front bench and waited for the praise to begin. Instead, he found himself once again cross-examined from the chair about his views on the sacrilege issue. He repeated what he had just said outside, and when he resumed his place I saw him turn and mutter something irritably to Cicero. (His actual words, Cicero told me afterwards, were, 'I hope we can now talk about something else.') I had been keeping an eye throughout all this on Crassus, who was sitting on the edge of his bench, ready to jump up the moment he got a chance. There was something about his determination to speak, and a kind of happy craftiness in his expression, for which I did not much care.

'How wonderful it is, gentlemen,' he said, when at last he was called, 'to have with us beneath this sacred roof the man who has expanded our empire, and sitting next to him the man who has saved our republic. May the gods be blessed who have brought this to pass. Pompey I know stood ready with his army to come to the aid of the fatherland if it was necessary – but praise the heavens he was spared the task by the wisdom and foresight of our consul at that time. I hope I take nothing away from Pompey when I say that it is to Cicero that I feel I owe my status as a senator and a citizen; to him I owe my freedom and my life. Whenever I look upon my wife and my house, or upon the city of my birth, what I see is a gift that was granted me by Cicero…'

There was a time when Cicero would have spotted such an obvious trap a mile off. But I fear there is in all men who achieve their life's ambition only a narrow line between dignity and vanity, confidence and delusion, glory and self-destruction. Instead of staying in his seat and modestly disavowing such praise, Cicero rose and made a long speech agreeing with Crassus's every word, whilst beside him Pompey gently cooked in a stew of jealousy and resentment. Watching from the door, I wanted to run forward and cry out to Cicero to stop, especially when Crassus stood and asked him if, as the Father of the Nation, he recognised in Clodius a second Catilina.

'How can I not,' responded Cicero, unable to resist this opportunity to rekindle the glory days of his leadership of the senate in front of Pompey, 'when the same debauched men who followed the one now flock to the other, and when the same tactics are daily employed? Unity, gentlemen, is our only hope of salvation, now as it was then – unity between this senate and the Order of Knights; unity between all classes; unity across Italy. As long as we remember that glorious concord that existed under my consulship, we need have no fear, for the spirit that saw off Sergius Catilina will most assuredly see off his bastard son!'

The senate cheered and Crassus sat back on his bench, beaming at a job well done, because of course the news of what Cicero had said spread across Rome immediately and quickly reached the ears of Clodius. At the end of the session, when Cicero walked back home with his entourage, Clodius was waiting in the forum surrounded by a gang of his own supporters. They blocked our path and I was sure some heads were going to be broken, but Cicero remained calm. He halted his procession. 'Offer them no provocation!' he called out. 'Give them no excuse to start a riot.' And turning to Clodius he said, 'You would have done well to have heeded my advice and gone into exile. The road you have started down can only end in one place.'

'And where is that?' sneered Clodius.

'Up there,' said Cicero, pointing at the Carcer, 'at the end of a rope.'

'Not so,' responded Clodius, and he gestured in the other direction, to the rostra, with its ranks of life-sized statues. 'One day I shall be up there, among the heroes of the Roman people.'

'Really? And tell me, will you be sculpted wearing women's clothing and carrying a lyre?' We all started to laugh. 'P. Clodius Pulcher: the first hero of the Order of Transvestites? I rather doubt it. Get out of my way.'

'Willingly,' said Clodius, with a smile. But as he stood aside to let Cicero pass, I was struck by how much he had changed. It was not merely that he seemed physically bigger and stronger: there was a glint of resolution in his eyes that had not been there before. He was feeding on his notoriety, I realised: drawing energy from the mob. 'Caesar's wife was one of the best I ever had,' he said softly, as Cicero went by. 'Almost as good as Clodia.' He seized his elbow and added loudly, 'I was willing to be your friend. You should have been mine.'

'Claudians make unreliable friends,' replied Cicero, pulling himself free.

'Yes, but we make very reliable enemies.'

He proved to be as good as his word. From that day on, whenever he spoke in the forum he would always gesture to Cicero's new house, sitting on the Palatine high above the heads of the crowd, as a perfect symbol of dictatorship. 'Look how mightily the tyrant who butchered citizens without a proper trial has prospered by his handiwork – no wonder he is thirsty for fresh blood!' Cicero responded in kind. The mutual insults grew more and more deadly. Sometimes Cicero and I used to stand on the terrace and watch the tyro demagogue at work, and although we were too far away to hear exactly what he said, the applause of the crowd was audible and I recognised what we were seeing: the monster Cicero had thought he had slain had begun to twitch back into life.