The Catiline Conspiracy

Chapter IV

A Greek slave woman conducted me into the atrium, where other slaves were hanging flower chains and fussing with plants in huge Persian vases. As was common with women who were mistresses of their own households, Fulvia owned a staff made up largely of women. Hers were quiet, efficient and well educated, almost all of them Greek. The lady of the house was more than fluent in that language.

It was an oddity of the times that the women of the better classes were often better educated than the men, who were usually so busy with business, politics and war that they had little time for the gentler arts of civilization. Beyond the necessities of war, politics and estate management, a man was expected to be proficient in public speaking and rhetoric, subjects of limited interest outside the political arena.

Women like Fulvia and Sempronia knew more about poetry, history, drama, painting and sculpture and so forth than almost any man in Rome. For men, proficiency in these subjects was suspect, a sign of Greek decadence and probable effeminacy. Many men did not like their women carrying on in such a fashion. After all, if one wanted to have educated persons in one's home, one simply bought them.

Truth to tell, there was little for a highborn woman to do in the home anymore. There was no point in sitting and spinning and weaving like Penelope. The slave staff took care of the house and nurses raised the children. No woman could practice law or enter politics or, join a legion. The alternatives were to become scholars or behave scandalously; there were some who did both.

Fulvia came to greet me dressed in a gown that did little to stop the passage of lamplight. Her hair, like that of many Roman ladies, was a mass of elaborate blonde curls. Unlike most, hers had not been shorn from the scalp of a Gallic girl. We exchanged the usual greetings and compliments.

"I am so happy you could come, Decius. It was thoughtless of me to expect you to accept an invitation on such short notice."

"Nothing could have prevented me," I assured her. "I would have canceled an appointment with a Consul to attend one of your famous gatherings." This was only moderately insincere. Fulvia was famed for having varied and interesting guests at her entertainments. Poets and playwrights, philosophers, noted wits and women of questionable antecedents. Neither wealth nor high birth were necessary, but one had to be amusing. Fulvia was one of the first highborn Romans to allow actors into her house as guests rather than as performers. There were those, of course, who considered this the very nadir of degeneracy, but invitations to her evenings were much sought-after.

Her taste in men was more questionable. Her long liaison with Quintus Curius was a matter of much city gossip. He had been a Senator, but was expelled by the Censors for scandalous behavior. When one considers what a Senator could get away with and remain in the Senate in those days, some idea of the enormity of his transgressions may be formed. By all accounts, his courtship of Fulvia had been stormy, including threats against her life. Politically, he was of no consequence, a mere hanger-on of greater men, whose favor he cultivated in hopes that they would help defray his crushing debts.

I could never understand how a woman like Fulvia could dote on a loathsome, worthless parasite like Curius, but then there is much about women I have never understood. Philosophers tell me that women and men do not properly belong to the same species, and therefore can never understand each other. This may well be true. I have noticed that the finest women are often drawn to the very worst men, while my own fortune in that area has not been of the best.

The man in question had already arrived, and Curius greeted me as if we were long-separated friends. I expected a touch for a loan before the night was over.

"Decius! How good to see you! I hear great things of your work." How he could have heard any such thing was beyond me. "And in less than three months you will take your place in the Senate. Richly deserved, my friend." I am not averse to flattery, but I prefer it from a more savory source.

"You must miss that august body of men," I said.

He shrugged. "What is done by one Censor may be undone by another." That sounded ominous. He took me to a pair of men who had also arrived early. "Decius, I believe you know Marcus Laeca and Caius Cethegus?" I did, slightly. They were Senators by virtue of having held, like me, the quaestorship, and were unlikely to rise any higher in office. We exchanged small talk for a few minutes. It seemed that this gathering was going to be entirely political. Dull as the company was, it looked promising as far as my investigation was concerned. Low-level functionaries with no prospects for higher office form the classic breeding ground for rebellion. Neither Curius nor Laeca, though, seemed to me to be either desperate or courageous enough for any truly violent enterprise, however great the rewards. Caius Cornelius Cethegus Sura, on the other hand, was a notorious firebrand and a well-known scatterbrain, just the sort to be involved in something sublimely violent and stupid.

Sempronia arrived, accompanied by a matched pair of Nubian slaves dressed in feathers and zebra skins. She was explaining to Fulvia that the two were gifts from Lisas, the Egyptian ambassador. They were twins and therefore a great rarity, because the Nubians usually smothered twins at birth for some barbaric reason of their own. I wondered what favor Sempronia had done for Lisas to earn such a gift.

Soon after, the last guests arrived. They were a man and a woman. I instantly recognized the red hair and ruddy face of Lucius Sergius Catilina. The way the others fell silent and turned toward him, I knew that he was the reason for this night's gathering. I shuddered to think that Catilina might be behind the matter I was investigating. He was a dangerous man. He went around the room greeting and clasping hands. When he reached me he brought the young woman forward.

"Decius, have you met my stepdaughter, Aurelia?"

"No," I said, "but I am happy to say that she greatly favors her mother." Orestilla, Catilina's second or perhaps third wife, was a famous beauty. Her daughter was about nineteen or twenty, but she had as much poise as Sempronia or Fulvia. She was not as brazenly clad as the older women, but she was so lavishly endowed by nature that she needed nothing artful to call attention to her figure. Her chestnut hair was short, set in tight ringlets. She had huge gray eyes, startlingly direct.

"Your mother and mine were close friends," she said. "She still speaks often of Servilla." The young face was beautiful but solemn, as if she did not smile frequently. I did not remember my mother mentioning Orestilla, but she had died when I was very young.

"Young Decius is marked out for a remarkable career," Catilina said heartily. He looked at me searchingly. "I suppose you have a good position lined up when you leave office?"

"I'd expected a decent offer from one of the Consuls or Praetores ," I said, playing the role, "but nothing so far."

"Incredible!" Catilina said. "Why, a staff appointment should come almost automatically to a young man of your birth and experience."

"So you would think," I said. Aurelia was giving me disturbingly close attention. She did not wear the rings, bracelets, necklaces, tiaras and other jewelry that adorned the other women. To make up for it, she wore the longest rope of pearls I had ever seen. It looped behind her neck, crossed between her breasts and circled her waist three times. I did not know whether it was intended to emphasize the shapeliness of her neck, the size of her breasts or the slenderness of her waist, but it did all three and damaged my concentration. It must have been worth a small city.

"Disgraceful that our officials do so little to advance the careers of deserving young statesmen." I must admit that this was much better than being flattered by Quintus Curius. Catilina could at least sound as if he meant it.

"There is little I can do about it," I said. "Junior officials have little enough power, and soon I'll be an ex-junior official."

"Perhaps there is something you can do," Catilina said. "We must speak more of this."

At that moment the female majordomo announced dinner and we filed into the dining room. To my great delight, I found myself reclining next to Aurelia. This should have been an irrelevance, since I was supposed to be uncovering a seditious plot, but I saw no reason why I should be deprived of pleasant feminine company while I pursued my duties. I was still very young.

I will not bore you with a recitation of the wines and dishes served, although my memory for this sort of detail improves as the years advance. More important was the company. Each of the men present, saving myself, had been prosecuted at some time or other for corruption, although it was a rare politician in those days who escaped that charge. The traditional way for a newly arrived Senator to make his name was to prosecute somebody for corruption, the usual charges being graft, bribe taking and extortion. These men, however, had been proven guilty on every count with overwhelming evidence. And all of them were deeply in debt.

Catilina was the same sort, only to a far higher degree, and the crimes imputed to him were not all political. His bloodthirstiness in carrying out Sulla's proscriptions was legendary, but that had typed him as merely one of the more opportunistic young men of a rough time. I have already made mention of his alleged illicit liaison with the Vestal Fabia, a charge brought against him by Clodius. Even in the usually gentle realm of courtship, Catilina's behavior had been more than ordinarily violent. When he had wished to marry Orestilla, his grown son by a former marriage had objected. Rumor had it that Catilina had then murdered his son. True or not, he was the sort of man around whom this sort of story grew. More recently, each time he had announced himself a candidate for Consul, charges of extortion had been brought against him, barring him from candidacy. At the time of the last election, charges of more direct criminal activity had been brought against him. Cicero had charged him with plotting against his life and had surrounded himself with bodyguards, contributing to Catilina's already bad reputation. I cannot say how many of these charges may have been true. Catilina always complained bitterly that he had many enemies in high places. But then, few men have deserved enemies more.

I was more interested in who his friends were. Boisterous as he was, I could not believe that Catilina, unaided, represented a credible threat to the state. He was too profligate, too headstrong, too heedless of future consequences. And he was notoriously poor. He was not as intelligent as Caesar, who could turn indebtedness to his own advantage. Even less threatening were his lackeys. But just being in their company made me suspect, and I was glad that I had gone to Celer for semi-official status. If Catilina was truly behind a conspiracy against the state, then someone was behind Catilina.

"Do you know my stepfather well?" Aurelia asked. All the diners were conversing among themselves in low voices.

"Lucius Sergius and I have met from time to time, mostly under informal circumstances, such as this. We haven't had much call to meet officially. He was a praetor long before I was even eligible to stand for quaestor."

"I was wondering." Her voice was languorous, her eyes hooded and inward-looking. "He is always surrounded by younger men these days." That was a statement open to various interpretations. I said nothing. "You don't look like them, though."

"Oh. They run to a type, then?" I asked. I was truly interested to learn what type of men I had thrown in with.

"Wellborn and worthless," she said succinctly. "Greek tutors, good clothes, no money, old enough for the legions but never served." She looked at my scar. "You've been with the legions. And you've taken the trouble to actually stand for office. And you don't wear a beard."

The back of my neck prickled and I took a sip of lightly watered wine to cover my excitement. "They wear beards?"

"Yes." She looked puzzled. "Most of them. It's their way of being unconventional, I think. It may be the only gesture within their capabilities. Surely you've noticed them?"

"My work keeps me underground most days," I said. "But I've seen them here and there around the city. I thought it was some horrid outbreak of philosophy."

"Far from it. Some are from old Marian families. At least, that's their excuse for being kept out of power. I think it more likely to be good taste on the part of the assemblies."

"Am I to take it that you do not admire your stepfather's friends?" I asked.

"It's sufficient that they admire him." She shrugged, a difficult gesture when reclining, and one which she performed to perfection, causing those superb breasts to roll enticingly. "There are always only a few to lead, and a great many cattle."

"I trust I am not one of the cattle," I said.

She looked me over coolly. "That may be," she said after she had surveyed me, presumably for bovine qualities.

"Why are these impecunious young men so drawn to Lucius?" I asked ingenuously.

"Who would not be? He's like Sulla. He can raise men from obscurity to the highest rank. That is a great attraction to men who could never accomplish such a thing on their own."

"If you will forgive my observation," I said, "he has thus far been in no position to raise anyone from obscurity."

"For the moment," she said, holding out her cup for refilling. "But that was the way it was with Sulla, once. He fought the battles and he captured Jugurtha, but old Marius took the credit. But the men who supported Sulla did well out of it in the end."

That was shrewdly put. My own family had done well out of Sulla's reign as dictator. They had thought a man of intelligent, calculated violence preferable to a crazed old loon like Gaius Marius. At least, I had always accepted the accounts of men like my father that that had been their reasoning. Perhaps they just wanted to be on the winning side.

"So does Lucius plan to stand for Consul yet again?" I asked.

"I think it's something like that," she said, her expression unreadable as she raised her winecup and the rim obscured her face.

"Decius," Catilina said. He lay on the couch opposite me so we were separated by several feet and he had to speak loudly. "What is your opinion on the consulship of Cicero? We have just been discussing him."

"He is the best orator in Rome," I said. "Perhaps the best who ever lived. He writes wonderfully and his grasp of the niceties of law and legal practice is legendary."

Catilina snorted. "In other words, he governs like a lawyer. Is this what Rome needs? Where are the soldiers who made us great? When did Cicero ever win glory in the field?"

"Antonius is no lawyer," I reminded him. Catilina looked sour. He had sought a coitio with Antonius for the election of the previous year, but something had gone wrong and Antonius had thrown in with Cicero instead.

"Yes, well, he's no soldier either, and I predict the Macedonians will have a rough time of it when he gets there next year." Catilina lacked military distinction himself but, like most such men, he conceived of himself as a glorious general. His mediocre record he attributed to lack of opportunity. "I confess I was surprised that Cicero turned down the proconsular governorship of Macedonia," I said, giving him an opening.

He pounced. "It's because Cicero is a coward! He knows that it will mean fighting and he has no stomach for it. He would rather stay here in Rome and be a nuisance, troubling better men with his piddling legal tricks."

"If his last accusations against you are true," I said, "he hasn't been very safe here in Rome either."

Catilina laughed uproariously and, I think, honestly, "He sees plots against his life everywhere. That is simply the way it is with cowards. Believe me, Decius"-now he looked at me very seriously and directly-"if I were to commit myself to desperate action, I would not confine myself to murdering the likes of Marcus Tullius Cicero." He pronounced the name as if it were some rare disease.

"I doubt our Decius has the nerve for truly desperate action," said Cethegus, with precisely the same look and intonation as a ten-year-old bully. He was a dark man, with a saturnine face and a mouth that turned down at the corners. He was an easy man to hate.

"I do suffer from an excess of intelligence," I told him. "Only the truly stupid hazard their lives and fortunes without a chance of victory."

"Men like you can afford to be patient," Cethegus said, contemptuously. "Not all of us have illustrious families to support us and push our careers." Catilina was watching us both carefully. For some reason he was letting his flunky have his head.

"Isn't the curule Aedile Lentulus Spinther a close kinsman of yours?" I asked.

"And what does that amount to?" he said hastily, as if it were a disgrace to be related to a high official.

"I think I know what Decius means," Laeca said. I had the distinct impression that some sort of signal had passed between him and Catilina, telling him to take my part. "There are so many Caecilii Metelli that one of many young men, just beginning public life, does not sit high in family councils, am I right, Decius?"

I forced a good malcontent's scowl. "I won't deny it."

"And," Laeca continued, "I daresay that the expenses of your office have been painful. When I was quaestor, it seemed as if the quaestores of the past decade had neglected the highways. I had to go deeply into debt to see to their paving." He was a fat man, who spoke smoothly and agreeably.

"How about it, Decius?" Catilina asked. "Have the expenses of the office sent you to the moneylenders?"

I saw an opportunity. "Expenses! Do you think it is just a matter of paving the roads? No longer!" I tried to act slightly drunk, which, I swear, I was not. "Next I must stand for aedile. Since Caesar's games two years ago, the people expect such entertainment from the aediles. That means I must borrow now to support that office. A few years ago, people thought that twenty pairs of gladiators was a fine show. Caesar has taught them to expect five hundred pairs at a single set of games! Not to mention the lions and bears and aurochs and so forth."

"Very true," Laeca said. "Not just gladiators, but Campanian gladiators, from the best schools. Not just a public banquet after the games, but fresh meat and fish and foreign fruits for every last bricklayer in Rome. Who can compete with that sort of profligacy?" His fat face creased in a rueful, mock-sympathetic smile. "But surely your family will defray some of your expenses?"

"They would for some of us," I said, frowning. "My father has been helpful, but we're not among the really rich Metelli, and none of the Metelli have wealth like Crassus or Lucullus. We are spread too thin for wealth to concentrate." This last made a very neat wordplay in the Latin still in use at the time, and was applauded. The ladies applauded with special warmth, and it occurred to me that Fulvia and Sempronia had said nothing, a very suspicious circumstance. It was clear that Catilina was directing this conversation, and had forbidden them to speak until he was satisfied about something.

"And have you been so fortunate as to find financial backers?" Laeca asked solicitously.

"One is never sufficient," I said a little stiffly. "Unless you have Crassus behind you."

"Crassus has recently forged ties with your family," Catilina pointed out.'

"As I have said, there are a great many Metelli, and we are not held in equal esteem by Crassus, who considers me a personal enemy." In this age of the First Citizen, people may have forgotten how great a man Crassus was in those days. Suffice it to say that for a mere quaestor to think that Crassus took enough notice of him to consider the wretch a personal enemy was the height of presumption. It was exactly the sort of thing men like these would find endearing.

"And you can't very well go to Pompey," Laeca said, "if the rumors of a few years ago are true. He had you exiled."

"I found it expedient to leave the city for a year or two," I said cryptically. What was true of Crassus was doubly true of Pompey. In truth, I was never more than a nuisance to Pompey. At this time, he might have had difficulty remembering me. He had more important things on his mind.

"Your family," Laeca said, "while famed for moderation, generally oppose the ambitions of Pompey. Yet your cousin, Metellus Nepos, is Pompey's faithful legate. He has been elected Tribune of the plebs for next year and will be pushing legislation to further Pompey's ambitions."

"A wise family always keeps a few members in every camp," I said. "That way, you don't lose everything if you've backed the wrong side. And Nepos, will accomplish nothing as Tribune, because Cato will be his colleague and Cato will block every piece of pro-Pompey legislation he introduces. Cato stood for the tribunate just to oppose Nepos."

"There is always Lucullus," Cethegus said, making it sound sarcastic. Everything he said sounded sarcastic.

"Lucullus and I have never been at odds," I said, "but I would not approach him. He is married to one of the sisters of Clodius, and Clodius hates me more than Pompey and Crassus combined."

"You have a rare knack for making enemies," Catilina said, laughing. Taking their cue, the others laughed as well. Aurelia didn't. "Well, any man Clodius hates is a friend of mine. So you've had to go to the professional moneylenders, then?"

"Why all this curiosity about my financial affairs?" I asked.

"Every man with ambition who was not born rich is in debt by definition," Catilina said, "but any man indebted to one of the three we mentioned is in that man's purse and cannot be trusted."

"Trusted?" I said. "Trusted in what fashion?"

"We are all ambitious men," Catilina said quietly, "and we know who stands between us and the power we are qualified to wield, the honors we deserve. They sequester to themselves every high office and command while keeping better men crushed beneath a burden of debt. Surely you don't think that it is some form of accident that for the last twenty years the expenses of holding office have risen so tremendously?" His face was growing redder. "Is it any coincidence that we are pushed into the grasp of the moneylenders? How did it come about that highborn men, whose families have produced Rome's Consuls and generals for centuries, are beholden to baseborn cash-breeders our ancestors would not have considered worthy to be spat upon?"

"Freedmen, most of them," Cethegus said, "men who should have stayed slaves, even if they pretend to be citizens and equites."

"It is convenient for our higher officeholders," I allowed.

"It's more than convenient," Catilina insisted. "It is the result of plotting by a tiny clique of powerful men who will never willingly relinquish power. Who among us can live with such infamy and still call himself a man?" He was getting warmed up now, and the others were hanging on every word. I glanced at Aurelia and she was looking at him with adoration, but I detected something else in her expression. Was it mockery?

"And now," Catilina went on, "what sort of man assumes the leadership of Rome? Marcus Tullius Cicero! A lawyer! A man who has no qualification for office save a facility for bending words to his will. And there are more just like him. Such men could never bring themselves to make the sort of hard, quick, ruthless decisions a real Consul must make. They believe only in words, not deeds."

"So what sort of man does Rome need?" I asked him.

"A man like Sulla," Catilina said, surprising me. "Sulla took power when all had fallen into chaos. He sought neither the fawning favor of the mob nor the patronage of the aristocrats. He purged the Senate, proscribed enemies of the state, reformed the courts, gave us a new constitution and then, when he was done, he dismissed his lictors and walked from the Forum a private citizen, to retire to his country house and write his memoirs. That is the sort of man Rome needs."

There was much in what he said, but Catilina had left out a few details for rhetorical effect. For instance, that Sulla had been the cause as well as the queller of political chaos. Also, he could well afford to retire after his dictatorship, since he had killed or exiled all his enemies and left behind him his own partisans, firmly in power. There was no doubt of the identity of this putative new Sulla. I stared frowningly into my winecup, as if pondering, finally coming to a momentous decision.

"I think," I said solemnly, "that I could follow such a man. Twenty years ago, the Metelli were among the foremost supporters of Sulla. Why should I be less bold than they?"

"Why, indeed," Catilina said. He seemed to be satisfied, for now the women began to join the conversation. There was no more said of power or of cabals preventing worthy men from gaining office. I paid much attention to Aurelia, who seemed to be warming to me.

As the wine flowed, the dice and knucklebones came out and we began to gamble. I joined in, although I ordinarily confine my betting to races or fights, where I flatter myself that I have some skill in predicting the outcome. I have little taste for wagering on pure chance.

Although I did not lose heavily, I was a bit alarmed to see the sums the others were betting. For self-proclaimed poor men they seemed inordinately well furnished with cash. Although they all shouted loud, traditional curses when they lost, none of them seemed overly upset.

"Are you a lucky man?" Aurelia asked as the dice cup made its way back around to me.

"I wouldn't be alive if I weren't," I said. "But when it comes to dice and knucklebones, I have never been lucky."

"Let me lend you some luck," she whispered as I took the cup. She leaned toward me, as if watching the play over my shoulder, and I felt one prodigious breast pressing into my back. Through the cloth of my tunic and her gown, I could feel the hardness of her nipple. Almost as intimate was the softness of her breath on my ear. A surge of lust flooded me and I knew that it would be some time before I would be able to stand up without making a raucous spectacle of myself. To cover my discomfiture, I shook the leather cup with great vigor and smacked it down loudly upon the table, then jerked it back.

"Venus!" Aurelia breathed, making it sound almost like a prayer. Indeed, it was venus, the highest score. Each of the knucklebones showed a different surface.

"It will take some luck to match that," Catilina said, taking the cup. "But I have always been a lucky gambler." He shook the cup and slammed it down. He jerked the cup back and cursed, loudly and sincerely. I did not think it was because of the money he had lost. The knucklebones each showed the same surface, and it was the surface given the value of one. It was the lowest score, canicula, the little dog.