Imperium:

by Robert Harris

  ‘And then there is the little matter of its being completely unconstitutional. You have to be forty-two at the time of the consular election, and Pompey is how old?’

  ‘Just thirty-four.’

  ‘Indeed. Almost a year younger than me. And a consul is also required to have been elected to the senate and to have served as praetor, neither of which Pompey has achieved. He has never made a political speech in his life. To put the matter simply, Palicanus, seldom has a man been less qualified for the post.’

  Palicanus made a dismissive gesture. ‘All that may be true, but let us face facts – Pompey has run whole countries for years, and done it with proconsular authority to boot. He is a consul, in all but name. Be realistic, Cicero. You cannot expect a man such as Pompey to come back to Rome and start at the bottom, running for quaestor like some political hack. What would that do to his dignity?’

  ‘I appreciate his feelings, but you asked my opinion, and I am giving it to you, and I tell you the aristocrats will not stand for it. All right, perhaps if he has ten thousand men outside the city they will have no choice but to let him become consul, but sooner or later his army will go home and then how will he—Ha!’ Cicero suddenly threw back his head and started laughing. ‘That is very clever.’

  ‘You have seen it?’ said Palicanus, with a grin.

  ‘I have seen it.’ Cicero nodded appreciatively. ‘Very good.’

  ‘Well, I am offering you the chance to be a part of it. And Pompey the Great does not forget his friends.’

  At the time I had not the least idea of what they were talking about. Only when we were walking home afterwards did Cicero explain everything to me. Pompey was planning to seek the consulship on the platform of a full restoration of tribunician power. Hence Palicanus’s surprising move in becoming a tribune. The strategy was not born of some altruistic desire on Pompey’s part to give the Roman people greater liberty – although I suppose it is just possible he was occasionally pleased to lie in his bath in Spain and fancy himself a champion of citizens’ rights – no: it was purely a matter of self-interest. Pompey, as a good general, saw that by advocating such a programme, he would trap the aristocrats in a pincer movement, between his soldiers encamped beyond the walls of Rome and the common people on the city’s streets. Hortensius, Catulus, Metellus and the rest would have no choice but to concede both Pompey’s consulship and the tribunes’ restoration, or risk annihilation. And once they did, Pompey could send his army home, and if necessary rule by circumventing the senate and appealing directly to the people. He would be unassailable. It was, as Cicero described it to me, a brilliant stroke, and he had seen it in that flash of insight as he sat on Palicanus’s couch.

  ‘What exactly would be in it for me?’ asked Cicero.

  ‘A reprieve for your client.’

  ‘And nothing else?’

  ‘That would depend on how good you were. I cannot make specific promises. That will have to wait until Pompey himself gets back.’

  ‘It is rather a weak offer, if I may say so, my dear Palicanus.’

  ‘Well, you are in rather a weak position, if I may say so, my dear Cicero.’

  Cicero stood. I could see he was put out. ‘I can always walk away,’ he said.

  ‘And leave your client to die in agony on one of Verres’s crosses?’ Palicanus also stood. ‘I doubt it, Cicero. I doubt you are that hard.’ He took us out then, past Pompey as Jupiter, past Pompey as Alexander. ‘I shall see you and your client at the basilica tomorrow morning,’ he said, shaking hands with Cicero on the doorstep. ‘After that you will be in our debt, and we shall be watching.’ The door closed with a confident slam.

  Cicero turned on his heel and stepped into the street. ‘If that is the kind of art he puts on public display,’ he said, ‘what do you suppose he keeps in the latrine? And do not warn me to guard my tongue, Tiro, because I do not care who hears it.’

  He walked on ahead of me through the city gate, his hands clasped behind his back, his head hunched forward, brooding. Of course, Palicanus was right. Cicero had no choice. He could not abandon his client. But I am sure he must have been weighing the political risks of moving beyond a simple appeal to the tribunes to a full-blooded campaign for their restoration. It would cost him the support of the moderates, such as Servius.

  ‘Well,’ he said with a wry smile, when we reached his house, ‘I wanted to get into a fight, and it seems I have succeeded.’

  He asked Eros, the steward, where Terentia was, and looked relieved when he learned she was still in her room. At least that saved him from having to tell her the news for a few more hours. We went into his study, and he had just started dictating to me his speech to the tribunes – ‘Gentlemen, it is an honour to stand before you for the first time’ – when we heard shouts and a thump from the entrance. Cicero, who always liked to think on his feet and was prowling around, ran out to find out what was happening. I hurried after him. Six rough-looking fellows were crowded in the vestibule, all wielding sticks. Eros was rolling on the ground, clutching his stomach, with blood pouring from a split lip. Another stranger, armed not with a stick but with an official-looking document, stepped up to Cicero and announced that he had the authority to search the house.

  ‘The authority of whom?’ Cicero was calm – calmer than I would have been in his shoes.

  ‘Gaius Verres, pro-praetor of Sicily, issued this warrant in Syracuse on the first day of December.’ He held it up before Cicero’s face for an insultingly short time. ‘I am searching for the traitor Sthenius.’

  ‘You will not find him here.’

  ‘I shall be the judge of that.’

  ‘And who are you?’

  ‘Timarchides, freedman of Verres, and I shall not be kept talking while he escapes. You,’ he said, turning to the nearest of his men, ‘secure the front. You two take the back. The rest of you come with me. We shall start with your study, Senator, if you have no objection.’

  Very soon the house was filled with the sounds of the search – boots on marble tile and wooden board, the screams of the female slaves, harsh male voices, the occasional crash as something was knocked and broken. Timarchides worked his way through the study upending document cases, watched by Cicero from the door.

  ‘He is hardly likely to be in one of those,’ said Cicero. ‘He is not a dwarf.’

  Finding nothing in the study, they moved on up the stairs to the senator’s spartan bedroom and dressing room. ‘Be assured, Timarchides,’ said Cicero, still keeping his cool, but obviously with greater difficulty as he watched his bed being overturned, ‘that you and your master will be repaid for this, one hundredfold.’

  ‘Your wife,’ said Timarchides. ‘Where does she sleep?’

  ‘Ah,’ said Cicero quietly. ‘Now I really would not do that, if I were you.’

  But Timarchides had his blood up. He had come a long way, was finding nothing, and Cicero’s manner was chafing on his nerves. He ran along the passage, followed by three of his men, shouted, ‘Sthenius! We know you’re in there!’ and threw open the door of Terentia’s bedroom. The screech that followed and the sharp crack of her hand across the invader’s face rang through the house. Then came such a volley of colourful abuse, delivered in such an imperious voice, and at such a volume, that Terentia’s distant ancestor who had commanded the Roman line against Hannibal at Cannae a century and a half before must surely have sat bolt upright in his tomb. ‘She fell on that wretched freedman,’ Cicero used to say afterwards, ‘like a tigress out of a tree. I almost felt sorry for the fellow.’

  Timarchides must have realised his mission had failed and decided to cut his losses, for in short order he and his ruffians were retreating down the stairs, followed by Terentia, with little Tullia hiding behind her skirts and occasionally brandishing her tiny fists in imitation of her mother. We heard Timarchides calling to his men, heard a running of feet and the slam of the door, and after that the old house was silent except for the distant wailing of one of the maids.


  ‘And this,’ said Terentia, taking a deep breath and rounding on Cicero, her cheeks flushed, her narrow bosom rising and falling rapidly, ‘this is all because you spoke in the senate on behalf of that dreary Sicilian?’

  ‘I am afraid it is, my darling,’ he said sadly. ‘They are determined to scare me off.’

  ‘Well, you must not let them, Cicero.’ She put her hands on either side of his head, gripped it tight – a gesture not at all of tenderness but of passion – and glared furiously into his eyes. ‘You must crush them.’

  The upshot was that the following morning, when we set out for the Basilica Porcia, Quintus was on one side of Cicero, Lucius was on the other, and behind him, magnificently turned out in the formal dress of a Roman matron and carried in a litter hired specially for the occasion, came Terentia. It was the first time she had ever troubled to see him speak, and I swear he was more nervous of appearing before her than he was of appearing before the tribunes. He had a big retinue of clients to back him up as he left the house, and we picked up more along the way, especially after we stopped off halfway down the Argiletum to retrieve Sthenius from his bolt-hole. A hundred or more of us must have surged across the forum and into the tribunes’ hall. Timarchides followed at a distance with his gang, but there were far too many of us for him to risk an attack, and he knew that if he tried anything in the basilica itself he would be torn to bits.

  The ten tribunes were on the bench. The hall was full. Palicanus rose and read the motion – That in the opinion of this body the proclamation of banishment from Rome does not apply to Sthenius – and Cicero stepped up to the tribunal, his face clenched white with nerves. Quite often he was sick before a major speech, as he had been on this occasion, pausing at the door to vomit into the gutter. The first part of his oration was more or less the same as the one he had given in the senate, except that now he could call his client to the front and gesture to him as need arose to stir the pity of the judges. And certainly a more perfect illustration of a dejected victim was never paraded before a Roman court than Sthenius on that day. But Cicero’s peroration was entirely new, not at all like his normal forensic oratory, and marked a decisive shift in his political position. By the time he reached it, his nerves were gone and his delivery was on fire.

  ‘There is an old saying, gentlemen, among the merchants in the Macellum, that a fish rots from the head down, and if there is something rotten in Rome today – and who can doubt that there is? – I tell you plainly that it has started in the head. It has started at the top. It has started in the senate.’ Loud cheers and stamping of feet. ‘And there is only one thing to do with a stinking, rotten fish-head, those merchants will tell you, and that is to cut it off – cut it off and throw it out!’ Renewed cheers. ‘But it will need quite a knife to sever this head, for it is an aristocratic head, and we all know what they are like!’ Laughter. ‘It is a head swollen with the poison of corruption and bloated with pride and arrogance. And it will need a strong hand to wield that knife, and it will need a steady nerve besides, because they have necks of brass, these aristocrats, I tell you: brass necks, all of them!’ Laughter. ‘But that man will come. He is not far away. Your powers will be restored, I promise you, however hard the struggle.’ A few brighter sparks started shouting out Pompey’s name. Cicero held up his hand, three fingers outstretched. ‘To you now falls the great test of being worthy of this fight. Show courage, gentlemen. Make a start today. Strike a blow against tyranny. Free my client. And then free Rome!’

  Later, Cicero was so embarrassed by the rabble-rousing nature of this speech that he asked me to destroy the only copy, so I must confess I am writing here from memory. But I recollect it very clearly – the force of his words, the passion of his delivery, the excitement of the crowd as he whipped them up, the wink he exchanged with Palicanus as he left the tribunal, and Terentia not moving a muscle, simply staring straight ahead as the common people around her erupted in applause. Timarchides, who had been standing at the back, slipped out before the ovation ended, no doubt to ride at full gallop to Sicily and report to his master what had happened – for the motion, I need hardly add, was passed by ten votes to nil, and Sthenius, as long as he stayed in Rome, was safe.

  IV

  ANOTHER OF CICERO’S maxims was that if you must do something unpopular, you might as well do it wholeheartedly, for in politics there is no credit to be won by timidity. Thus, although he had never previously expressed an opinion about Pompey or the tribunes, neither cause now had a more devoted adherent. And the Pompeians were naturally delighted to welcome such a brilliant recruit to their ranks.

  That winter was long and cold in the city, and for no one, I suspect, more than Terentia. Her personal code of honour required her to support her husband against the enemies who had invaded her home. But having sat among the smelly poor, and listened to Cicero haranguing her own class, she now found her drawing room and dining room invaded at all hours by his new political cronies: men from the uncouth north who spoke with ugly accents and who liked to put their feet up on her furniture and plot late into the night. Palicanus was the chief of these, and on his second visit to the house in January he brought with him one of the new praetors, Lucius Afranius, a fellow senator from Pompey’s homeland of Picenum. Cicero went out of his way to be charming, and in earlier years, Terentia, too, would have felt it an honour to have a praetor in her house. But Afranius had no decent family or breeding of any sort. He actually had the nerve to ask her if she liked dancing, and, when she drew back in horror, declared that personally he loved nothing more. He pulled up his toga, showed her his legs and demanded to know if she had ever seen a finer pair of calves.

  These men were Pompey’s representatives in Rome and they brought with them something of the whiff and manners of the army camp. They were blunt to the point of brutality; but then, perhaps, they had to be, given what they were planning. Palicanus’s daughter, Lollia – a blowsy young piece, very much not to Terentia’s taste – occasionally joined the menfolk, for she was married to Aulus Gabinius, another of Pompey’s Picenean lieutenants, currently serving with the general in Spain. This Gabinius was a link with the legionary commanders, who in turn provided intelligence on the loyalty of the centuries – an important consideration, for, as Afranius put it, there was no point in bringing the army all the way to Rome to restore the powers of the tribunes, only to find that the legions would happily go over to the aristocrats if they were offered a big enough bribe.

  At the end of January, Gabinius sent word that the final rebel strongholds of Uxama and Calagurris had been taken, and that Pompey was ready to march his legions home. Cicero had been active among the pedarii for weeks, drawing senators aside as they waited for debates, convincing them that the rebel slaves in the Italian north posed a gathering threat to their businesses and trade. He lobbied well. When the issue came up for discussion in the senate, despite the intense opposition of the aristocrats and the supporters of Crassus, the house voted narrowly to let Pompey keep his Spanish army intact and bring it back to the mother country to crush Spartacus’s northern recruits. From that point on, the consulship was as good as his, and on the day the motion passed, Cicero came home smiling. True, he had been snubbed by the aristocrats, who now loathed him more than any other man in Rome, and the presiding consul, the super-snobbish Publius Cornelius Lentulus Sura, had even refused to recognise him when he tried to speak. But what did that matter? He was in the inner circle of Pompey the Great, and, as every fool knows, the quickest way to get ahead in politics is to get yourself close to the man at the top.

  Throughout these busy months, I am ashamed to say, we neglected Sthenius of Thermae. He would often turn up in the mornings, and hang around the senator for the entire day in the hope of securing an interview. He was still living in Terentia’s squalid tenement block. He had little money. He was unable to venture beyond the walls of the city, as his immunity ended at the boundaries of Rome. He had not shaved his beard nor cut his hair, n
or, by the smell of him, changed his clothes since October. He reeked – not of madness exactly, but of obsession, forever producing small pieces of paper, which he would fumble and drop in the street.

  Cicero kept making excuses not to see him. Doubtless he felt he had discharged his obligations already. But that was not the sole explanation. The truth is that politics is a country idiot, capable of concentrating only on one thing at a time, and poor Sthenius had become yesterday’s topic. All anyone could talk about now was the coming confrontation between Crassus and Pompey; the plight of the Sicilian was a bore.

  In the late spring, Crassus – having finally defeated the main force of Spartacus’s rebels in the heel of Italy, killing Spartacus and taking six thousand prisoners – had started marching towards Rome. Very soon afterwards, Pompey crossed the Alps and wiped out the slave rebellion in the north. He sent a letter to the consuls which was read out in the senate, giving only the faintest credit to Crassus for his achievement and instead proclaiming that it was really he who had finished off the slave war ‘utterly and entirely’. The signal to his supporters could not have been clearer: only one general would be triumphing that year, and it would not be Marcus Crassus. Finally, lest there be any remaining doubt, at the end of his dispatch Pompey announced that he too was moving on Rome. Little wonder that amid these stirring historical events, Sthenius was forgotten.

  Sometime in May, it must have been, or possibly early June – I cannot find the exact date – a messenger arrived at Cicero’s house bearing a letter. With some reluctance the man let me take it, but refused to leave the premises until he had received a reply: those, he said, were his orders. Although he was wearing civilian clothes, I could tell he was in the army. I carried the message into the study and watched Cicero’s expression darken as he read it. He handed it to me, and when I saw the opening – From Marcus Licinius Crassus, Imperator, to Marcus Tullius Cicero: Greetings – I understood the reason for his frown. Not that there was anything threatening in the letter. It was simply an invitation to meet the victorious general the next morning on the road to Rome, close to the town of Lanuvium, at the eighteenth milestone.