Lustrum c-2

by Robert Harris

  For a few weeks after the uproar on the Field of Mars it seemed that Cicero had won. Caesar in particular went very quiet, and made no attempt to renew the case against Rabirius. On the contrary: the old man retired to his house in Rome, where he lived on, in a world of his own, entirely unmolested, until a year or so later, when he died. It was the same story with the populists' bill. Cicero's coup in buying off Hybrida had the effect of encouraging other defections, including one of the tribunes, who was bribed by the patricians to switch sides. Blocked in the senate by Cicero's coalition, and threatened with a veto in the popular assembly, Rullus's immense bill, the product of so much labour, was never heard of again.

  Quintus was in a great good humour. 'If this were a wrestling match between you and Caesar,' he declared, 'it would all be over. Two falls decide the winner, and you have now laid him out flat twice.'

  'Unfortunately,' replied Cicero, 'politics is neither as clean as a wrestling match, nor played according to fixed rules.'

  He was absolutely certain that Caesar was up to something, otherwise his inactivity made no sense. But what was it? That was the mystery.

  At the end of January, Cicero's first month as president of the senate was completed. Hybrida took over the curule chair and Cicero busied himself with his legal work. His lictors gone, he went down to the forum escorted by a couple of stout fellows from the Order of Knights. Atticus was as good as his word: they stayed close, but not so conspicuously that anyone suspected they were other than the consul's friends. Catilina made no move. Whenever he and Cicero encountered one another, which was inevitable in the cramped conditions of the senate house, he would ostentatiously turn his back. Once I thought I saw him draw his finger across his throat as Cicero passed by, but nobody else seemed to notice. Caesar, needless to say, was all affability, and indeed congratulated Cicero on the power of his speeches and the skill of his tactics. That was a lesson to me. The really successful politician detaches his private self from the insults and reverses of public life, so that it is almost as if they happen to someone else; Caesar had that quality more than any man I ever met.

  Then one day came the news that Metellus Pius, the pontifex maximus, had died. It was not entirely a surprise. The old soldier was nearer seventy than sixty and had been ailing for several years. He never regained consciousness after the stroke he suffered on the Field of Mars. His body lay in state in his official residence, the old palace of the kings, and Cicero, as a senior magistrate, took his turn as one of the guard of honour standing watch over the corpse. The funeral was the most elaborate I had ever seen. Propped on his side, as though at a dinner, and dressed in his priestly robes, Pius was carried on a flower-decked litter by eight fellow members of the College of Priests, among them Caesar, Silanus, Catulus and Isauricus. His hair had been combed and pomaded, his leathery skin massaged with oil, his eyes were wide open; he seemed much more alive now that he was dead. His adopted son, Scipio, and his widow, Licinia Minor, walked behind the bier, followed by the Vestal Virgins and the chief priests of the official deities. Then came the chariots bearing the leaders of the Metelli, Celer at the front, and to see the family all together – and to see as well the actors parading behind them in the death masks of Pius's ancestors – was to be reminded that this was still the most powerful political clan in Rome.

  The immense cortege passed along the Via Sacra, through the Fabian Arch (which was draped in black for the occasion) and across the forum to the rostra, where the litter was raised upright, so that the mourners could gaze on the body for a final time. The centre of Rome was packed. The entire senate wore togas dyed black. Spectators clustered on the temple steps, on balconies and roofs and the bases of the statues, and they stayed all the way through the eulogies, even though these lasted for hours. It was as if we all knew that in bidding farewell to Pius – stern, stubborn, haughty, brave, and perhaps a little stupid – we were bidding farewell to the old republic, and that something else was struggling to be born.

  Once the bronze coin had been placed in Pius's mouth and he had been borne off to lie with his ancestors, the question naturally arose: who should be his successor? By universal consent the choice lay between the two most senior members of the senate: Catulus, who had rebuilt the Temple of Jupiter, and Isauricus, who had triumphed twice and was even older than Pius. Both coveted the office; neither would yield to the other. Their rivalry was comradely but intense. Cicero, who had no preference, at first took little interest in the contest. The electorate was in any case confined to the fourteen surviving members of the College of Priests. But then, about a week after Pius's funeral, while he was waiting outside the senate house with the others for the session to begin, he chanced upon Catulus and casually asked if any decision on filling the post had yet been reached.

  'No,' said Catulus. 'And it won't be soon, either.'

  'Really? Why is that?

  'We met yesterday and agreed that in view of the fact that there are two candidates of equal merit, we should go back to the old method, and let the people choose.'

  'Is that wise?'

  'I certainly think so,' said Catulus, tapping the side of his beaky nose and giving one of his thin smiles, 'because I believe that in a tribal assembly I shall win.'

  'And Isauricus?'

  'He also believes that he will win.'

  'Well, good luck to you both. Rome will be the winner whoever is the victor.' Cicero began to move away but then checked himself, and a slight frown crossed his face. He returned to Catulus. 'One more thing, if I may? Who proposed this widening of the franchise?'

  'Caesar.'

  Although Latin is a language rich in subtlety and metaphor, I cannot command the words, either in that tongue or even in Greek, to describe Cicero's expression at that moment. 'Dear gods,' he said in a tone of utter shock. 'Is it possible he means to stand himself?'

  'Of course not. That would be ridiculous. He's far too young. He's thirty-six. He's not yet even been elected praetor.'

  'Yes, but even so, in my opinion, you would be well advised to reconvene your college as quickly as possible and go back to the existing method of selection.'

  'That is impossible.'

  'Why?'

  'The bill to change the franchise was laid before the people this morning.'

  'By whom?'

  'Labienus.'

  'Ah!' Cicero clapped his hand to his forehead.

  'You're alarming yourself unnecessarily, Consul. I don't believe for an instant that Caesar would be so foolish as to stand, and if he did he would be crushed. The Roman people are not entirely mad. This is a contest to be head of the state religion. It demands the utmost moral rectitude. Can you imagine Caesar responsible for the Vestal Virgins? He has to live among them. It would be like entrusting your hen-coop to a fox!'

  Catulus swept on, but I could see that the tiniest flicker of doubt had entered his eyes, and soon the gossip started that Caesar was indeed intending to stand. All the sensible citizens were appalled at the notion, or made ribald jokes and laughed out loud. Still, there was something about it – something breathtaking about the sheer cheek of it, I suppose – that even his enemies could not help but admire. 'That fellow is the most phenomenal gambler I have ever encountered,' remarked Cicero. 'Each time he loses, he simply doubles his stake and rolls the dice again. Now I understand why he gave up on Rullus's bill and the prosecution of Rabirius. He saw that the chief priest was unlikely to recover, calculated the odds, and decided that the pontificate was a much better bet than either.' He shook his head in wonder and set about doing what he could to make sure this third gamble also failed. And it would have done, but for two things.

  The first was the incredible stupidity of Catulus and Isauricus. For several weeks Cicero went back and forth between them, trying vainly to make them see that they could not both stand, that if they did they would split the anti-Caesar vote. But they were proud and irritable old men. They would not yield, or draw lots, or agree on a compromise candidate, and i
n the end both their names went forward.

  The other decisive factor was money. It was said at the time that Caesar bribed the tribes with so much cash the coin had to be transported in wheelbarrows. Where had he found it all? Everyone said the source must be Crassus. But even Crassus would surely have baulked at the twenty million – twenty million! – Caesar was rumoured to have laid out to the bribery agents. Whatever the truth, by the time the vote was held on the Ides of March, Caesar must have known that defeat would mean his ruin. He could never have repaid such a sum if his career had been checked. All that would have been left to him were humiliation, disgrace, exile, possibly even suicide. That is why I am inclined to believe the famous story that on the morning of the poll, as he left his little house in Subura to walk to the Field of Mars, he kissed his mother goodbye and announced that he would either return as pontifex maximus or he would not return at all.

  The voting lasted most of the day, and by one of those ironies that abound in politics, it fell to Cicero, who was once again in March the senior presiding magistrate, to announce the result. The early spring sun had fallen behind the Janiculum, and the sky was streaked in horizontal lines of purple, red and crimson, like blood seeping through a sodden bandage. Cicero read out the returns in a monotone. Of the seventeen tribes polled, Isauricus had won four, Catulus six, and Caesar had been backed by seven. It could scarcely have been closer. As Cicero climbed down from the platform, obviously sick to his stomach, the victor flung back his head and raised his arms to the heavens. He looked almost demented with delight – as well he might, for he knew that, come what may, he would now be pontifex maximus for life, with a huge state house on the Via Sacra and a voice in the innermost councils of the state. In my opinion, everything that happened subsequently to Caesar really stemmed from this amazing victory. That crazy outlay of twenty million was actually the greatest bargain in history: it would buy him the world.

  V

  From this time on men began to look upon Caesar differently. Although Isauricus accepted his defeat with the stoicism of an old soldier, Catulus – who had set his heart on the chief pontificate as the crown of his career – never entirely recovered from the blow. The following day he denounced his rival in the senate. 'You are no longer working underground, Caesar!' he shouted in such a rage his lips were flecked with spittle. 'Your artillery is planted in the open and it is there for the capture of the state!' Caesar's only response was a smile. As for Cicero, he was in two minds. He agreed with Catulus that Caesar's ambition was so reckless and gargantuan it might one day become a menace to the republic. 'And yet,' he mused to me, 'when I notice how carefully arranged his hair is, and when I watch him adjusting his parting with one finger, I can't imagine that he could conceive of such a wicked thing as to destroy the Roman constitution.'

  Reasoning that Caesar now had most of what he wanted, and that everything else – a praetorship, the consulship, command of an army – would come in due course, Cicero decided the time had come to try to absorb him into the leadership of the senate. For example, he felt it was unseemly to have the head of the state religion bobbing up and down during debates, alongside senators of the second rank, trying to catch the consul's eye. Therefore he resolved to call upon Caesar early, straight after the praetorians. But this conciliatory approach immediately landed him with a fresh political embarrassment – and one that showed the extent of Caesar's cunning. It happened in the following way.

  Very soon after Caesar was elected – it must have been within three or four days at most – the senate was in session, with Cicero in the chair, when suddenly there was a shout at the far end of the chamber. Pushing his way through the crowd of spectators gathered at the door was a bizarre apparition. His hair was wild and disordered and powdery with dust. He had hastily thrown on a purple-edged toga, but it did not entirely conceal the military uniform he was wearing underneath. In place of red shoes his feet were clad in a soldier's boots. He advanced down the central aisle, and whoever was speaking halted in mid-sentence as all eyes turned on the intruder. The lictors, standing near me just behind Cicero's chair, stepped forward in alarm to protect the consul, but then Metellus Celer shouted out from the praetorian benches: 'Stop! Don't you see? It's my brother!' and sprang up to embrace him.

  Observing this, a great murmur of wonder and then alarm went round the chamber, for everyone knew that Celer's younger brother, Quintus Caecilius Metellus Nepos, was one of Pompey's legates in the war against King Mithradates, and his dramatic and dishevelled appearance, obviously fresh from the scene of war, might well mean that some terrible calamity had befallen the legions.

  'Nepos!' cried Cicero. 'What is the meaning of this? Speak!'

  Nepos disentangled himself from his brother. He was a haughty man, very proud of his handsome features and fine physique. (They say he preferred to lie with men rather than women, and certainly he never married or left issue; but that is just gossip, and I should not repeat it.) He threw back his magnificent shoulders and turned to face the chamber. 'I come directly from the camp of Pompey the Great in Arabia!' he declared. 'I have travelled by the swiftest boats and the fastest horses to bring you great and joyful tidings. The tyrant and foremost enemy of the Roman people, Mithradates Eupator, in the sixty-eighth year of his life, is dead. The war in the East is won!'

  There followed that peculiar instant of startled silence that always succeeds dramatic news, and then the whole of the chamber rose in thunderous acclamation. For a quarter of a century Rome had been fighting Mithradates. Some say he massacred eighty thousand Roman citizens in Asia; others allege one hundred and fifty thousand. Whichever is true, he was a figure of terror. For as long as most could remember, the name of Mithradates had been used by Roman mothers to frighten their children into good behaviour. And now he was gone! And the glory was Pompey's! It did not matter that Mithradates had actually committed suicide rather than been killed by Roman arms. (The old tyrant had taken poison, but because of all the precautionary antidotes he had swallowed over the years it had had no effect, and he had been obliged to call in a soldier to finish him off.) It did not matter either that most knowledgeable observers credited Lucius Lucullus, still waiting outside the gates for his triumph, as the strategist who had really brought Mithradates to his knees. What mattered was that Pompey was the hero of the hour, and Cicero knew what he had to do. The moment the clamour died down, he rose and proposed that in honour of Pompey's genius, there should be five days of national thanksgiving. This was warmly applauded. Then he called on Hybrida to utter a few inarticulate words of praise, and next he allowed Celer to laud his brother for travelling a thousand miles to bring the glad tidings. That was when Caesar got up; Cicero gave him the floor in honour of his status as chief priest, assuming he was going to offer ritual thanks to the gods.

  'With all due respect to our consul, surely we are being niggardly with our gratitude?' said Caesar silkily. 'I move an amendment to Cicero's motion. I propose the period of thanks-giving be doubled to ten full days, and that for the rest of his life Gnaeus Pompey be permitted to wear his triumphal robes at the Games, so that the Roman people even in their leisure will ever be reminded of the debt they owe him.'

  I could almost hear Cicero's teeth grinding behind his fixed smile as he accepted the amendment and put it to the vote. He knew that Pompey would mark well that Caesar had been twice as generous as he. The motion passed with only one dissenting voice: that of young Marcus Cato, who declared in a furious voice that the senate was treating Pompey as if he were a king, crawling to him and flattering him in a way that would have sickened the founders of the republic. He was jeered, and a couple of senators sitting near to him tried to pull him down. But looking at the faces of Catulus and the other patricians, I could tell how uncomfortable his words had made them.

  Of all these great figures from the past who roost like bats in my memory and flutter from their caves at night to disturb my dreams, Cato is the strangest. What a bizarre creature he was! He was
not much more than thirty at this time, but his face was already that of an old man. He was very angular. His hair was unkempt. He never smiled, and rarely bathed: he gave off a ripe smell, I can tell you. Contrariness was his religion. Even though he was immensely rich, he never rode in a litter or a carriage but went everywhere on foot, and frequently refused to wear shoes, or sometimes even a tunic – he desired, he said, to train himself to care nothing for the opinion of the world on any matter, trivial or great. The clerks at the treasury were terrified of him. He had served there as a junior magistrate for a year and they often told me how he had made them justify every item of expenditure, down to the tiniest sum. Even after he had left the department he always came into the senate chamber carrying a full set of treasury accounts, and there he would sit, in his regular place on the furthest back bench, hunched forward over the figures, gently rocking back and forth, oblivious to the laughter and talk of the men around him.

  The day after the news about the defeat of Mithradates, Cato came to see Cicero. The consul groaned when I told him Cato was waiting. He knew him of old, having acted briefly as his advocate when Cato – in another of his other-worldly impulses – had resolved to sue his cousin, Lepida, in order to force her to marry him. Nevertheless, he ordered me to show him in.