Filled with a fury born of fear, I seized the handle of the nearest torch, which still had a sizeable piece of burning pitch attached to it, darted to the edge of the roof, took careful aim and hurled it at the men below. It hit one fellow square on the head, setting his hair on fire. While he was screaming, I ran back for another. By now Sositheus and Laurea had come up on to the roof to help stamp out the fires, and they must have thought I was demented as I jumped up on to the parapet, screaming with rage, and threw another burning missile at our attackers. Out of the corner of my eye I saw that more shadowy figures with torches were pouring into the street. I thought we were certain to be overwhelmed. But suddenly from beneath me came the sound of angry cries, the ring of steel on steel, and the echo of running feet. 'Tiro!' shouted a voice, and by the flaring yellow light I recognised the upturned face of Atticus. The street was jammed with his men. 'Tiro! Is your master safe? Let us in!'
I ran downstairs and along the passageway, with the consul and Terentia at my heels, and together with Quintus and the Sextus brothers we dragged away the chest and the couch and unbarred the door. The moment it was open, Cicero and Atticus fell into one another's arms, to the cheers and applause from the street of some thirty members of the Order of Knights.
By the time it was fully light, the approaches to Cicero's house were blocked and guarded. Any visitor wishing to see him, even senior members of the senate, had to wait at one of the armed checkpoints until word had been sent to the consul. Then, if Cicero wanted to meet them, I would go out to confirm their identity and escort them into his presence. Catulus, Isauricus, Hortensius and both of the Lucullus brothers were all admitted in this way, along with the consuls-elect Silanus and Murena. They brought with them the news that throughout Rome Cicero was now regarded as a hero. Sacrifices had been made in his honour and prayers of thanks offered up for his safety, while rocks had been hurled at Catilina's empty house. All morning a steady procession of gifts and goodwill messages was carried up the Esquiline Hill – flowers, wine, cakes, olive oil – until the atrium looked like a market stall. Clodia sent him a basket of luxuriant fruit from her orchard on the Palatine. But this was intercepted by Terentia before it reached her husband, and I watched a look of suspicion darken her face as she read Clodia's note; she ordered the steward to throw the fruit away, 'for fear of poison', she said.
A warrant was issued by Cicero for the arrest of Vargunteius and Cornelius. The leaders of the senate also urged him to order the capture of Catilina, dead or alive. But Cicero hesitated. 'It's all very well for them,' he said to Quintus and Atticus after the deputation had gone, 'their names wouldn't be on the warrant. But if Catilina is killed illegally on my orders, I'll be fighting off prosecutors for the rest of my days. Besides, it would only be a short-term remedy. It would still leave his supporters in the senate.'
'You're not suggesting he should be allowed to carry on living in Rome?' protested Quintus.
'No, I just want him to leave – leave and take his treasonous friends with him, and let them all join the rebel army and be killed on the field of battle, preferably a hundred miles away from me. By heavens, I'd give them a pass of safe conduct and a guard of honour to escort them out of the city if they wanted it – anything they liked so long as they'd just clear out.'
But however much he paced around, he could not see a way of bringing this about, and in the end he decided his only course was to call a meeting of the senate. Quintus and Atticus immediately objected that this would be dangerous: how could they guarantee his safety? Cicero pondered further and then came up with a clever idea. Rather than convene the senate in its usual chamber, he gave orders that the benches should be carried across the forum to the Temple of Jupiter the Protector. This had two advantages. First, because the temple was on the lower slopes of the Palatine, it could more easily be defended against an attack by Catilina's supporters. Second, it would have great symbolic value. According to legend, the temple had been vowed to Jupiter by Romulus himself at a critical juncture in the war against the Sabine tribes. Here was the very spot on which Rome had stood and rallied in her earliest hour of danger: here she would stand and rally in her latest, led by her new Romulus.
By the time Cicero set off for the temple, tightly protected by lictors and bodyguards, an atmosphere of real dread hung over the city, as tangible as the grey November mist rising from the Tiber. The streets were deathly quiet. Nobody applauded or jeered; they simply hid indoors. In the shadows of their windows the citizenry gathered, white-faced and silent, to watch the consul pass.
When we reached the temple, we found it ringed by members of the Order of Knights, some quite elderly, all armed with lances and swords. Within this security perimeter several hundred senators stood around in muted groups. They parted to let us through and a few patted Cicero on the back and whispered their good wishes. Cicero nodded in acknowledgement, took the auspices very quickly, and then he and the lictors led the way into the large building. I had never set foot inside before, and it presented a most sombre scene. Centuries old, every wall and corner was crammed with relics of military glory from the earliest days of the republic – bloodied standards, dented armour, ships' beaks, legionary eagles, and a statue of Scipio Africanus painted up to look so lifelike it actually seemed he stood among us. I was some distance back in Cicero's retinue, the senators pouring in behind me, and because I was so busy craning my neck at all the memorabilia, I must have dawdled a little. At any rate, it wasn't until I had nearly reached the dais that I became aware, to my embarrassment, that the only sound in the building was the click click of my footsteps on the stone floor. The senate, I realised, had fallen entirely still.
Cicero was fiddling with a roll of papyrus. He turned to find out what was happening and I saw his face transfix with astonishment. I spun round in alarm myself – only to see Catilina calmly taking his place on one of the benches. Almost everyone else was still on their feet, watching him. Catilina sat, whereupon all the men nearest to him started edging away, as if he had leprosy. I never saw such a demonstration in my life. Even Caesar wouldn't go near him. Catilina took no notice, but folded his arms and thrust out his chin. The silence lengthened, until eventually I heard Cicero's voice, very calm, behind me.
'How much longer, Catilina, will you try our patience?'
All my life people have asked me about Cicero's speech that day. 'Did he write it out beforehand?' they want to know. 'Surely he must at least have planned what he was going to say?' The answer to both questions is 'no'. It was entirely spontaneous. Fragments of things he had long wanted to say, lines he had practised in his head, thoughts that had come to him in the sleepless nights of the last few months – all of it he wove together while he was on his feet.
'How much longer must we put up with your madness?'
He descended from his dais and started to advance very slowly along the aisle to where Catilina was sitting. As he walked, he extended both his arms and briefly gestured to the senators to take their places, which they did, and somehow that school-masterly gesture, and their instant compliance, established his authority. He was speaking for the republic.
'Is there no end to your arrogance? Don't you understand that we know what you're up to? Don't you appreciate that your conspiracy is uncovered? Do you think there's a man among us who doesn't know what you did last night – where you were, who came to your meeting, and what you agreed?' He stood at last in front of Catilina, his arms akimbo, looked him up and down, and shook his head. 'Oh, what times are these,' he said in a voice of utter disgust, 'and oh, what morals! The senate knows everything, the consul knows everything, and yet – this man is still alive!'
He wheeled around. 'Alive? Not just alive, gentlemen,' he cried, moving on down the aisle from Catilina and addressing the packed benches from the centre of the temple, 'he attends the senate! He takes part in our debates. He listens to us. He watches us – and all the time he's deciding who he's going to kill! Is this how we serve the republic – s
imply by sitting here, hoping it's not going to be us? How very brave we are! It's been twenty days since we voted ourselves the authority to act. We have the sword – but we keep it sheathed! You ought to have been executed immediately, Catilina. Yet still you live. And as long as you live, you don't give up your plotting – you increase it!'
I suppose by now even Catilina must have realised the size of his mistake in coming into the temple. In terms of physical strength and sheer effrontery he was much more powerful than Cicero. But the senate was not the arena for brute force. The weapons here were words, and no one ever knew how to deploy words as well as Cicero. For twenty years, whenever the courts were in session, scarcely a day had gone by that hadn't seen Cicero practising his craft. In a sense, his whole life had been but a preparation for this moment.
'Let's go over the events of last night. You went to the street of the scythe-makers – I'll be precise – to the house of Marcus Laeca. There you were joined by your criminal accomplices. Well, do you deny it? Why the silence? If you deny it, I'll prove it. In fact, I see some of those who were with you here in the senate. In heaven's name, where in the world are we? What country is this? What city are we living in? Here, gentlemen – here in our very midst, in this, the most sacred and important council in the world, there are men who want to destroy us, destroy our city, and extend that destruction to the entire world!
'You were at the house of Laeca, Catilina. You carved up the regions of Italy. You decided where you wanted each man to go. You said you would go yourself as soon I was dead. You chose parts of the city to be burnt. You sent two men to kill me. So I say to you, why don't you finish the journey you have begun? At long last really leave the city! The gates are open. Be on your way! The rebel army awaits its general. Take all your men with you. Cleanse the city. Put a wall between us. You cannot remain among us any longer – I cannot, I will not, I must not permit it!'
He thumped his right fist against his chest and cast his eyes to the roof of the temple as the senate came to its feet, bellowing its approval. 'Kill him!' someone shouted. 'Kill him! Kill him!' The cry was passed from man to man. Cicero waved them back down on to their benches.
'If I give an order for you to be killed, there will remain in the state the rest of the conspirators. But if, as I have long been urging, you leave the city, you will drain from it that flood of sewage that for you are your accomplices and for the rest of us our deadly enemies. Well, Catilina? What are you waiting for? What's left that can give you any pleasure in this city now? Beyond that conspiracy of ruined men, there isn't a single person who doesn't fear you, not one who doesn't hate you.'
There was much more in this vein, and then Cicero moved into his peroration. 'Let the traitors, then, depart!' he concluded. 'Go forth, Catilina, to your iniquitous and wicked war, and so bring sure salvation to the republic, disaster and ruin on yourself, and destruction to those who have joined you. Jupiter, you will protect us,' he thundered, reaching out his hand to the statue of the deity, 'and visit on these evil men, alive or dead, your punishment eternal!'
He turned away and stalked up the aisle to the dais. Now the chant was 'Go! Go! Go!' In an effort to retrieve the situation, Catilina leapt to his feet and began waving his arms about and shouting at Cicero's back. But it was far too late for him to undo the damage, and he didn't have the skill. He was flayed, humiliated, exposed, finished. I caught the words 'immigrant' and 'exile,' but the din was too great for him to be heard, and in any case his fury rendered him almost incomprehensible. As the cacophony of sound raged around him he fell silent, breathing deeply, and stood there for a short while longer, turning this way and that, like a once great ship lashed by a terrible storm, mastless and twisting at anchor, until something in him seemed to give way. He shuddered and stepped out into the aisle, at which point several senators, including Quintus, jumped across the benches to protect the consul. But even Catilina was not that demented: had he lunged at his enemy he would have been torn to pieces. Instead, with a final contemptuous glance around him – a glance that no doubt took in all those ancient glories in which his ancestors had played their part – he marched out of the senate. Later that same day, accompanied by twelve followers whom he called his lictors, and preceded by the silver eagle that had once belonged to Marius, he left the city and went to Arretium, where he formally proclaimed himself consul.
There are no lasting victories in politics, there is only the remorseless grinding forward of events. If my work has a moral, this is it. Cicero had scored an oratorical triumph over Catilina that would be talked about for years. With the whip of his tongue he had driven the monster from Rome. But the sewage, as he called it, did not, as he had hoped, drain away with him. On the contrary, after their leader had departed, Sura and the others remained calmly in their places, listening to the rest of the debate. They sat together, presumably on the principle of safety in numbers: Sura, Cethegus, Longinus, Annius, Paetus, the tribune-elect Bestia, the Sulla brothers, even Marcus Laeca, from whose house the assassins had been dispatched. I could see Cicero staring at them and I wondered what was going through his mind. Sura actually rose at one point and suggested in his sonorous voice that Catilina's wife and children be placed under the protection of the senate! The discussion meandered on. Then the tribune-elect Metellus Nepos demanded the floor. Now that Catilina had left the city, he said, presumably to lead the insurrection, surely the most prudent course would be to invite Pompey the Great back to Italy to take charge of the senatorial forces? Caesar quickly stood and seconded the proposal. Nimble-witted as ever, Cicero saw a chance to drive a wedge between his opponents, and with an innocent air of genuine interest he asked Crassus, who had been consul alongside Pompey, for his opinion. Crassus got up reluctantly.
'Nobody has a higher opinion of Pompey the Great than I,' he began, and then had to stop for a while, tapping his foot irritably as the temple shook with mocking laughter. 'Nobody has a higher opinion than I,' he repeated, 'but I have to say to the tribune-elect, in case he hasn't noticed, that it's nearly winter, the very worst time to transport troops by sea. How can Pompey possibly be here before the spring?'
'Then let us have Pompey the Great without his army,' countered Nepos. 'Travelling with a light escort he can be with us in a month. His name alone is worth a dozen legions.'
This was too much for Cato. He was on his feet in an instant. 'The enemies we face will not be defeated by names,' he mocked, 'even names that end in “Great”. What we need are armies: armies in the field – armies like the one being raised at this very moment by the tribune-elect's own brother. Besides, if you ask me, Pompey has too much power as it is.'
That drew a loud and shocked 'Oh!' from the assembly.
'If this senate will not vote Pompey the command,' said Nepos, 'then I give you fair warning that I shall lay a bill before the people as soon as I take office as tribune demanding his recall.'
'And I give you fair warning,' retorted Cato, 'that I shall veto your bill.'
'Gentlemen, gentlemen!' cried Cicero, having to shout to make himself heard. 'We shall do neither the state nor ourselves any good by bickering at a time of national emergency! Tomorrow there will be a public assembly. I shall report to the people on our deliberations, and I hope,' he added, staring hard at Sura and his cronies, 'that those senators whose bodies may be with us but whose loyalties lie elsewhere will search their hearts overnight and act accordingly. This house stands adjourned.'
Normally after a session ended Cicero liked to stand outside for a while so that any senator who wished to speak to him could do so. It was one of those tools by which he exerted his control over the chamber, this knowledge he had of every man, however minor – his strengths and weaknesses, what he desired and what he feared, what he would put up with and what he would not stomach under any circumstances. But that afternoon he hurried away, his face rigid with frustration. 'It's like fighting the Hydra!' he complained furiously when we got home. 'No sooner do I lop off one head than anoth
er two grow back in its place! So while Catilina storms out, his henchmen all sit there as calm as you please, and now Pompey's faction are starting to stir! I have one month,' he ranted, 'just one month – if I can survive that long – before the new tribunes come into office. Then the agitation for Pompey's recall will really get started. And in the meantime we can't even be sure we'll actually have two new consuls in January because of this fucking lawsuit!' And with that he swept his arm across his desk and sent all the documents relating to Murena's prosecution flying across the floor.
In such a mood he was quite unreasonable, and I had learned from long experience that there was no point in attempting to reply. He waited irritably for me to respond and then, failing to get satisfaction, he stamped out in search of someone else to shout at, while I knelt and calmly gathered up all the rolls of evidence. I knew he would come back sooner or later, in order to prepare his address to the people for the following day, but the hours passed, dusk fell and the lamps and candles were lit, and I began to feel alarmed. Afterwards I discovered he had gone with his guards and lictors to the nearby gardens and spent the time pacing round and round so ceaselessly they thought he would wear a groove in the stones. When at last he came back, his face was very pale and grim. He had devised a plan, he told me, and he did not know which frightened him more: the thought that it might fail or the possibility that it might succeed.
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