Lustrum c-2

by Robert Harris

  All Catilina's henchmen were there, he said: some eleven senators in total, including himself. There were also half a dozen members of the Order of Knights – he named Nobilior, Statilius, Capito and Cornelius – as well as the ex-centurion Manlius and scores of malcontents from Rome and all across Italy. The scene was dramatic. The house was stripped entirely bare of possessions – Catilina was bankrupt and the place mortgaged – apart from a silver eagle that had once been the consul Marius's personal standard when he fought against the patricians. As for what Catilina had actually said, according to Curius it went something like this (I took it down as he dictated it):

  'Friends, ever since Rome rid itself of kings it has been ruled by a powerful oligarchy that has had control of everything – all the offices of state, the land, the army, the money raked in by taxes, our provinces overseas. The rest of us, however hard we try, are just a crowd of nobodies. Even those of us who are high-born have to bow and scrape to men who in a properly run state would stand in awe of us. You know who I mean. All influence, power, office and wealth are in their hands; all they leave for us is danger, defeat, prosecutions and poverty.

  'How long, brave comrades, will we endure it? Is it not better to die courageously and have done with it, than to drag out lives of misery and dishonour as the playthings of other men's insolence? But it need not be like this. We have the strength of youth and stout hearts, while our enemies are enfeebled by age and soft living. They have two, three or four houses joined together, when we have not a home to call our own. They have pictures and statues and fish ponds, while we have destitution and debts. Misery is all we have to look forward to.

  'Awake, then! Before you glimmers the chance for liberty – for honour and glory and the prizes of victory! Use me in whatever way you like, as a commander or as a soldier in your ranks, and remember the rich spoils that can be won in war! This is what I shall do for you if I am consul. Refuse to be slaves! Be masters! And let us show the world at last that we are men!'

  That, or something very like it, was the burden of Catilina's speech, and after he had delivered it he withdrew to an inner room for a more private discussion with his closest comrades, including Curius. Here, with the door firmly closed, he reminded them of their solemn blood oath, declared that the hour had come to strike, and proposed that they should kill Cicero on the Field of Mars during the confusion of the elections the following day. Curius claimed to have stayed only for part of this discussion before slipping away to pass on the warning to Cicero. He refused to swear an affidavit confirming this story. He absolutely insisted he would not be a witness. His name had to be kept out of it at all costs. 'You must tell the consul that if he calls on me, I shall deny everything.'

  By the time I got back to Cicero's house, the door was barred and only those visitors who were known and trusted were being admitted. A crowd had gathered in the street. When I went into his study, Quintus and Atticus were already there. I relayed Curius's message, and showed Cicero his description of what Catilina had said. 'Now I have him!' he said. 'He's gone too far this time!' And he sent for the leaders of the senate. At least a dozen came during the course of that afternoon and evening, among them Hortensius and Catulus. Cicero showed them what Catilina was supposed to have said, along with the unsigned death threat. But when he refused to divulge his source ('I have given my word'), I could see that several – particularly Catulus, who had at one time been a great friend of Catilina – became sceptical. Indeed, knowing Cicero's cleverness, they obviously wondered if he might be making the whole thing up in order to discredit his enemy. Unnerved by their reaction, Cicero began to lose confidence.

  There are times in politics, as in life generally, when whatever one does is wrong; this was just such an occasion. To have gone ahead with the elections and said nothing would have been a mad gamble. On the other hand, postponing them without adequate evidence now looked jittery. Cicero passed a sleepless night worrying about what he should say in the senate, and for once in the morning it showed. He looked like a man under appalling strain.

  That day when the senate reassembled there was not an inch of space on the benches. Senators lined the walls and crammed the gangways. The auspices had been read and the doors opened soon after daybreak. It was the earliest session that anyone could remember. Yet already the summer heat was building. The question was: would the consular election go ahead or not? Outside, the forum was packed with citizens, mostly Catilina's supporters, and their angry chants, demanding to be allowed to vote, could be heard in the chamber. Beyond the city walls on the Field of Mars the sheep pens and ballot urns were set up and waiting. Inside the senate house it felt as if two gladiators were about to fight. As Cicero stood, I could see Catilina in his place on the front bench, his cronies around him, as coolly insolent as ever, with Caesar close by, his arms folded.

  'Gentlemen,' Cicero began, 'no consul lightly intervenes in the sacred business of an election – especially not a consul such as I, who owes everything he has to election by the Roman people. But yesterday I was given warning of a plot to desecrate this most holy ritual – a plot, an intrigue, a conspiracy of desperate men, to take advantage of the tumult of polling day to murder your consul, foment chaos in the city, and so enable them to take control of the state. This despicable scheme was hatched not in some foreign land, or low criminal's hovel, but in the heart of the city, in the house of Sergius Catilina.'

  The senators listened in absolute stillness as Cicero read out the anonymous note from Curius (' You will be murdered tomorrow during the elections '), followed by Catilina's words (' How long, brave comrades, will we endure it?… ') and when he had finished there was not a pair of eyes directed anywhere other than at Catilina. 'At the end of this seditious rant,' concluded Cicero, 'Catilina retired with others to consider, not for the first time, how best I might be killed. Such is the extent of my know ledge, gentlemen, which I felt it my duty to lay before you, so that you might decide how best to proceed.'

  He sat down, and after a pause someone called out, 'Answer!' and then others took up the cry, angrily hurling the word like a javelin at Catilina: 'Answer! Answer!' Catilina gave a shrug, and a kind of half-smile, and heaved himself to his feet. He was a huge man. His physical presence alone was sufficient to intimidate the chamber into silence.

  'Back in the days when Cicero's ancestors were still fucking goats, or however it is they amuse themselves in the mountains he comes from-' He was interrupted by laughter; some of it, I have to say, from the patrician benches around Catulus and Hortensius. 'Back in those days,' he continued, once the racket had died down, 'when my ancestors were consuls and this republic was younger and more virile, we were led by fighters, not lawyers. Our learned consul here accuses me of sedition. If that is what he chooses to call it, sedition it is. For my part, I call it the truth. When I look at this republic, gentlemen, I see two bodies. One,' he said, gesturing to the patricians and from them up to Cicero, sitting dead still in his chair, 'is frail, with a weak head. The other' – he pointed to the door and the forum beyond it – 'is strong, but has no head at all. I know which body I prefer, and it won't go short of a head as long as I'm alive!'

  Looking at those words written down now, it seems amazing to me that Catilina wasn't seized and accused of treason on the spot. But he had powerful backers, and no sooner had he resumed his seat than Crassus was on his feet. Ah, yes, Marcus Licinius Crassus – I have not devoted nearly enough space to him so far in this portion of my narrative! But let me rectify that. This hunter of old ladies' legacies; this lender of money at usurious rates; this slum landlord; this speculator and hoarder; this former consul, as bald as an egg and as hard as a piece of flint – this Crassus was a most formidable speaker when he put his cunning mind to it, which he did on that July morning.

  'Forgive my obtuseness, colleagues,' he said. 'Perhaps it's just me, but I've been listening intently and I've yet to hear a solitary piece of evidence that justifies postponing the elections by a single
instant. What does this so-called conspiracy actually amount to? An anonymous note? Well, the consul himself could have written it, and there are plenty who wouldn't put it past him! The report of a speech? It didn't sound particularly remarkable to me. Indeed, it reminded me of nothing so much as the sort of speech that that radical new man Marcus Tullius Cicero used to make before he threw in his lot with my patrician friends on the benches opposite!'

  It was an effective point. Crassus grasped the front of his toga between his thumbs and forefingers, and spread his elbows, in the manner of a country gentleman delivering his opinion of sheep at market.

  'The gods know, and you all know – and I thank Providence for it – I am not a poor man. I have nothing to gain from the cancellation of all debts; very much the reverse. But I do not think that Catilina can be barred from being a candidate, or these elections delayed an hour longer, purely on the basis of the feeble evidence we've just heard. I therefore propose a motion: That the elections begin immediately, and that this house do adjourn and repair to the Field of Mars.'

  'I second the motion!' said Caesar, springing to his feet. 'And I ask that it be put to the vote at once, so that no more of the day may be wasted by these delaying tactics, and the election of the new consuls and praetors may be concluded by sunset, in accordance with our ancient laws.'

  Just as a pair of scales that are finely balanced may suddenly be plunged one way or another by the addition of a few grains of wheat, so the whole atmosphere of the senate that morning abruptly tilted. Those who had been howling down Catilina only a short while earlier now began clamouring for the elections to start, and Cicero wisely decided not even to put the matter to a vote. 'The mood of the house is clear,' he said, in a stony voice. 'Polling will begin at once.' And he added, quietly: 'May the gods protect our republic.' I don't think many people heard him, certainly not Catilina and his gang, who didn't even observe the normal courtesy of letting the consul leave the chamber first. Fists in the air, roaring in triumph, they pushed their way down the crowded aisle and out into the forum.

  Cicero was now in a fix. He could hardly go home, like a coward. He had to follow Catilina, for nothing could happen until he, as the presiding magistrate, arrived on the Field of Mars to take control of proceedings. Quintus, whose concern for his brother's safety was always paramount, and who had foreseen exactly this outcome, had brought along his old army breastplate, and he insisted that Cicero wear it beneath his toga. I could tell that Cicero was reluctant, but in the drama of the moment he allowed himself to be persuaded, and while a group of senators stood around to shield him, I helped him out of his toga, assisted Quintus in strapping on the bronze armour, and then readjusted the toga. Naturally, the rigid shape of the metal was clearly visible beneath the white wool, but Quintus reassured him that far from being a problem this was all to the good: it would act as a deterrent to any assassin. Thus protected, and with a tight escort of lictors and senators surrounding him, Cicero walked, head erect, from the senate house and into the glare and noise of election day.

  The population was streaming westwards towards the Field of Mars, and we were carried with the flow. More and more supporters emerged and adhered around Cicero, until I should say that a protective layer of at least four or five men stood between him and the general throng. A huge crowd can be a terrifying sight – a monster, unconscious of its own strength, with subterranean impulses to stampede this way or that, to panic and to crush. The crowd on the election field that day was immense, and we drove into it like a wedge into a block of wood. I was next to Cicero, and we were jostled and pushed along by our escort until at last we reached the area set aside for the consul. This consisted of a long platform with a ladder up to it, and a tent behind it where he could rest. To one side, behind sheep fencing, was the enclosure for the candidates, of whom there were perhaps twenty (both the consulships and the eight praetorships all had to be decided that day). Catilina was talking to Caesar, and when they saw Cicero arrive, red-faced from the heat and wearing armour, they both laughed heartily and began gesturing to the others to look. 'I should never have worn this damn thing,' Cicero muttered. 'I'm sweating like a pig, and it doesn't even protect my head and neck.'

  Nevertheless, as the elections were already running late, he had no time to take it off, but immediately had to go into a conclave with the augurs. They declared that the auspices were good, so Cicero gave the order for proceedings to begin. He mounted the platform, followed by the candidates, and recited all the prayers in a firm voice and without a hitch. The trumpets sounded, the red flag was hoisted up its staff above the Janiculum, and the first century trooped over the bridge to cast its ballots. Thereafter it was a matter of keeping the lines of voters moving, hour after hour, as the sun burned its fiery arc across the sky and Cicero boiled like a lobster in his breastplate.

  For what it is worth, I believe that he would have been assassinated that day if he had not taken the course he did. Conspiracies thrive in darkness, and by shining such a strong light on the plotters he had temporarily frightened them off. Too many people were watching: if Cicero had been struck down, it would have been obvious who was responsible. And in any case, because he had raised the alarm, he was now surrounded by such a number of friends and allies, it would have taken scores of determined men to get to him.

  So the business of the day went on as usual, with no hand raised against him. He had one small satisfaction at least, which was to declare his brother elected praetor. But Quintus's vote was smaller than expected, whereas Caesar topped the poll by a mile. The results for the consulship were as expected: Junius Silanus came in first and Murena second, with Servius and Catilina tied in last place. Catilina gave a mocking bow to Cicero and left the field with his supporters: he had not expected a different outcome. Servius, on the other hand, took his defeat badly, and came to see Cicero in his tent after the declaration to pour out a tirade against him for permitting the most corrupt campaign in history. 'I shall challenge it in the courts. My case is overwhelming. This battle is not over yet, by any means!' He stamped off, followed by his attendants carrying their document cases full of evidence. Cicero, slumped with exhaustion on his curule chair, swore as he watched him leave. I tried to make some consoling remarks, but he told me roughly to be quiet and to do something useful for a change by helping him take off that damned breastplate. His skin had been chafed raw by the metal edges, and the moment he was free of it he seized it in both hands and hurled it in a fury to the other side of the tent, where it landed with a clatter.

  VIII

  A terrible melancholy now overcame Cicero, of a depth I had never seen before. Terentia went off with the children to spend the rest of the summer in the higher altitudes and cooler glades of Tusculum, but the consul stayed in Rome, working. The heat was more than usually oppressive, the stink of the great drain beneath the forum rose to envelop the hills, and many hundreds of citizens were carried off by the sweating fever, the stench of their corpses adding to the noisome atmosphere. I have often wondered what history would have found to say about Cicero if he had also succumbed to a fatal illness at that time – and the answer is 'very little'. At the age of forty-three he had won no military victories. He had written no great books. True, he had achieved the consulship, but then so had many nonentities, Hybrida being the most obvious example. The only significant law he had carried on to the statute book was Servius's campaign finance reform act, which he heartily disliked. In the meantime Catilina was still at liberty and Cicero had lost a great deal of prestige by what was seen as his panicky behaviour on the eve of the poll. As the summer turned to autumn, his consulship was almost three quarters done and dribbling away to nothing – a fact he realised more keenly than anybody.

  One day in September I left him alone with a pile of legal papers to read. It was almost two months after the elections. Servius had made good his threat to prosecute Murena and was seeking to have his victory declared null and void. Cicero felt he had little choice exce
pt to defend the man whom he had done so much to make consul. Once again he would appear alongside Hortensius, and the amount of evidence to be mastered was immense. But when I returned some hours later the documents were still untouched. He had not moved from his couch, and was clutching a cushion to his stomach. I asked if he was ill. 'I have a dryness of the heart,' he said. 'What's the point of going on with all this work and striving? No one will ever remember my name – not even in a year's time, let alone in a thousand. I'm finished – a complete failure.' He sighed and stared at the ceiling, the back of his hand resting on his forehead. 'Such dreams I had, Tiro – such hopes of glory and renown. I meant to be as famous as Alexander. But it's all gone awry somehow. And do you know what most torments me as I lie awake at night? It's that I cannot see what I could have done differently.'

  He continued to keep in touch with Curius, whose grief at the death of his mistress had not abated; in fact he had become ever more obsessed. From him Cicero learned that Catilina was continuing to plot against the state, and now much more seriously. There were disturbing reports of covered wagons full of weapons being moved under cover of darkness along the roads outside Rome. Fresh lists of possibly sympathetic senators had been drawn up, and according to Curius these now included two young patrician senators, M. Claudius Marcellus and Q. Scipio Nasica. Another ominous sign was that G. Manlius, Catilina's wild-eyed military lieutenant, had disappeared from his usual haunts in the back streets of Rome and was rumoured to be touring Etruria, recruiting armed bands of supporters. Curius could produce no written evidence for any of this – Catilina was much too cunning for that – and eventually, after asking a few too many questions, he came under suspicion from his fellow conspirators and began to be excluded from their inner circle. Thus Cicero's only first-hand source of information gradually ran dry.