Lustrum c-2

by Robert Harris

  'Consul,' said Sura, wincing as he was trussed, 'will you give me your word that no harm will befall my wife and family?'

  'Yes, I promise you that.'

  'And will you surrender our bodies to our families for burial?'

  'I will.' (Afterwards Mark Antony claimed that Cicero had denied this final request: yet another of his innumerable lies.)

  'This was not supposed to be my destiny. The auguries were quite clear.'

  'You allowed yourself to be suborned by wicked men.'

  Moments later the tying-up was finished and Sura looked around him. 'I die a Roman nobleman,' he shouted defiantly, 'and a patriot!'

  That was too much even for Cicero. 'No,' he said curtly, nodding to the carnifex, 'you die a traitor.'

  At those words, Sura was dragged towards the large black hole in the centre of the floor that was the only means of entrance to the execution chamber beneath us. Two powerful fellows lowered him into it, and I had a last glimpse of his handsome, baffled, stupid face in the torchlight. Then strong hands must have taken hold of him from beneath, for abruptly he disappeared. Statilius's limp form was let down immediately after Sura; then it was quickly the turn of Capito, who was shaking so much his teeth were rattling; then Caeparius, still in a swoon of terror; and finally Cethegus, who screamed and sobbed and put up such a tremendous struggle that two men had to sit on him while a third tied his wildly thrashing legs – in the end they tipped him through the hole head first and he fell with a thud. Nothing more was to be heard after that, apart from some occasional scuffling sounds; eventually those also ceased. I was told later that they were hanged in a row from hooks fixed in the ceiling. After what seemed an eternity, the carnifex called up that the job was done, and Cicero went reluctantly to the hole and peered down. A torch was flourished over the victims. The five strangled men lay in a row, gazing up at us with bulging sightless eyes. I felt no pity: I was remembering the violated body of the boy they had sacrificed to seal their pact. Cato was right, I thought: they deserved to die; and that remains my opinion to this day.

  Once he had assured himself that the conspirators were dead, Cicero could not wait to get away from that 'antechamber to hell', as he afterwards called it. We squeezed back out through the narrow tunnel of a doorway and straightened into the fresh night air – only to find that a most amazing sight awaited us. In the dusk, the whole of the forum was lit by torches – a great carpet of flickering yellow light. In every direction people were standing, motionless and silent, including the whole of the senate, which had now emerged from the Temple of Concordia, just next door to the prison. Everyone was looking towards Cicero. Obviously he had to announce what had happened, although he had no idea what the reaction might be, and he also had another peculiar difficulty, which showed the unprecedented nature of what had just occurred: it was a superstition in those days that a magistrate must never utter the words 'death' or 'died' in the forum, lest he bring down a curse on the city. So Cicero thought for a moment, cleared his throat of whatever thick bile had accumulated in the Carcer, threw back his shoulders and proclaimed, very loudly, ' They have lived! '

  His voice echoed off the buildings and was followed by a silence so profound that I feared the vast crowd might be hostile after all and we would be the next to be hanged. But I suppose they were just working out what he meant. A few senators started clapping. Others joined in. The clapping turned to cheers. And slowly the cheers began spreading across the vast throng. 'Hail, Cicero!' they called. 'Hail, Cicero!' 'Thank the gods for Cicero!' 'Cicero – the saviour of the republic!'

  Standing only a foot away from him, I saw the tears well up into his eyes. It was as if some dam had broken in him and all the emotions that had been accumulating behind it, not only during the past few hours but throughout his consulship, were suddenly allowed to burst forth. He tried to say something but could not, which only increased the volume of applause. Finally there was nothing for it but to descend the steps, and by the time he reached the level of the forum, with the cheers of friends and opponents alike ringing in his ears, he was weeping freely. Behind us, the bodies of the prisoners were being dragged out by hooks.

  The story of Cicero's last few days as consul may be swiftly told. No civilian in the history of the republic had ever been as lauded as he was at this time. After months of holding its breath, the city seemed to let out a great sigh of relief. On the night the conspirators were executed, the consul was escorted home from the forum by the whole of the senate in a great torchlit procession and was cheered every step of the way. His house was brilliantly illuminated to welcome him back; the entrance where Terentia waited for him with his children was decked with laurel; his slaves lined up to applaud him into the atrium. It was a strange homecoming. He was too exhausted to sleep, too hungry to eat, too eager to forget the horrible business of the executions to be capable of talking about anything else. I assumed he would recover his equilibrium in a day or two. Only later did I realise that something in him had changed for ever: had snapped, like an axle. The following morning, the senate bestowed upon him the title 'Father of his Country'. Caesar chose not to attend the session, but Crassus came and voted with the rest, and praised Cicero to the skies.

  Not every voice was raised in acclamation. Metellus Nepos, on taking up his tribunate a few days later, continued to insist that the executions were illegal. He predicted that when Pompey returned to Italy to restore order he would deal not only with Catilina but with this petty tyrant Cicero as well. Despite his immense popularity, Cicero was sufficiently worried to go to Clodia and ask her to tell her brother-in-law privately that if he persisted in this course, Cicero would prosecute him for his own links to Catilina. Clodia's lustrous brown eyes widened with delight at this opportunity to meddle in affairs of state. But Nepos coolly ignored the warning, reasoning correctly that Cicero would never dare to move against Pompey's closest political ally. All now depended, therefore, on how swiftly Catilina could be defeated.

  When the salutary news of the execution of Sura and the others reached Catilina's camp, a large number of his followers at once deserted him. (I doubt they would have done so if the senate vote had been for life imprisonment.) Realising that Rome was now secure against them, he and Manlius decided to take the rebel army north, with the intention of crossing the Alps into Further Gaul and creating a mountainous enclave in which they might hold out for years. But winter was coming, and the lower passes were blocked by Metellus Celer at the head of three legions. Meanwhile, in hard pursuit at the rebels' rear was the senate's other army, under the command of Hybrida. This was the opponent Catilina chose to turn and fight, picking his ground in a narrow plain to the east of Pisae.

  Not surprisingly, suspicions arose, which persist to this day, that Catilina and his old ally Hybrida had been in secret contact all along. Cicero had foreseen this, and when it became clear that battle was to be joined, Hybrida's veteran military legate, M. Petreius, opened the sealed orders he had been given in Rome. These appointed him the operational commander and directed that Hybrida should plead illness and take no part in the fighting; if he refused, Petreius was to arrest him. When the matter was put to Hybrida, he swiftly agreed, and announced that he was suffering from gout. In this way Catilina unexpectedly found himself facing one of the most able commanders in the Roman army, who was at the head of a force much larger and better equipped than his own.

  On the morning of the battle, Catilina addressed his soldiers, many of whom were armed only with pitchforks and hunting spears, in the following terms: 'Men, we fight for our country, our freedom and our life, whereas our opponents fight for a corrupt oligarchy. Their numbers may be greater but our spirit is stronger, and we will prevail. But if for any reason we do not, and Fortune turns against us, do not allow yourselves to be slaughtered like cattle, but fight like men and make sure that bloodshed and mourning are the price that the enemy will pay for victory.' The trumpets then sounded and the front lines advanced towards one another.r />
  It was a terrible carnage and Catilina was in the thick of it all day. Not one of his lieutenants surrendered. They fought with the ferocious abandon of men with nothing to lose. Only when Petreius sent in a crack praetorian cohort did the rebel army finally collapse. Every one of Catilina's followers, including Manlius, died where he stood; afterwards their wounds were found to be entirely in the front and none in the back. At nightfall, after the battle, Catilina was discovered deep inside his opponents' lines, surrounded by the corpses of the enemies he had hacked to pieces. He was still just breathing, but died soon afterwards from terrible wounds. On Hybrida's instructions his head was sent back to Rome in a barrel of ice and presented to the senate. But Cicero, who had left the consulship a few days earlier, refused to look at it, and thus ended the conspiracy of Lucius Sergius Catilina.

  PART TWO

  PATER PATRIAE

  62-58 BC

  Nam Catonem nostrum non tu amas plus quam ego; sed tamen ille optimo animo utens et summa fide nocet interdum rei publicae; dicit enim tamquam in Platonis politeia, non tamquam in Romuli faece, sententiam.

  As for our friend Cato, I have as warm a regard for him as you. But the fact remains that with all his patriotism and integrity he is sometimes a political liability. He speaks in the senate as though he were living in Plato's Republic rather than Romulus's shit hole.

  Cicero, letter to Atticus, 3 June 60 BC

  XII

  For the first few weeks after he ceased to be consul, everyone clamoured to hear the story of how Cicero had foiled the conspiracy of Catilina. There was not a fashionable dinner table in Rome that was not open to him. He went out often; he hated to be alone. Frequently I would accompany him, standing with other members of his entourage behind his couch as he regaled his fellow diners with extracts from his speeches, or the story of how he had escaped assassination on polling day on the Field of Mars, or the trap he had set on the Mulvian Bridge for Lentulus Sura. Usually he illustrated these tales by moving plates and cups around, in the manner of Pompey describing an old battle. If someone interrupted him or tried to raise another subject, he would wait impatiently for a gap in their conversation, give them a hard look and then resume: ' As I was saying…' Every morning the grandest of the grand families would flock to his levees and he would point to the very spot where Catilina had stood on the day he offered to be his prisoner, or to the exact pieces of furniture that had been used to barricade the door when the conspirators laid siege to the house. In the senate, whenever he rose to speak, a respectful hush fell over the assembly, and he never missed a chance to remind them that they were only meeting together at all because he had saved the republic. He became, in short – and whoever would have imagined saying this of Cicero? – a bore.

  It would have been so much better for him if he had left Rome for a year or two to govern a province; his mystique would have grown with his absence; he would have become a legend. But he had given away his governorships to Hybrida and Celer and there was nothing for him to do except to stay in the city and resume his legal practice. Familiarity makes even the most fascinating figure dull: one would probably be bored with Jupiter Himself if one passed Him on the street every day. Slowly Cicero's lustre faded. For several weeks he busied himself dictating to me an immense report on his consulship, which he wanted to present to Pompey. It was the size of a book and justified his every action in minute detail. I knew it was a mistake and tried all the tactics I could think of to delay sending it – to no avail. Off it went by special courier to the East, and while he awaited the great man's reply, Cicero set about editing and publishing the speeches he had delivered during the crisis. He inserted many purple passages about himself, especially in the public address he had made from the rostra on the day the plotters were arrested. I was sufficiently worried that one morning, when Atticus was leaving the house, I drew him aside and read out a couple of sections.

  ' This day on which we are saved is, I believe, as bright and joyous as the day on which we were born. And just as we thank the gods for the man who founded this city, so you and your descendants will be able to hold in honour the man who has saved the city.'

  'What?' exclaimed Atticus. 'I don't remember him saying that.'

  'Well he didn't,' I replied. 'For him to have compared himself to Romulus at such a moment would have seemed absurd. And listen to this.' I lowered my voice and looked around to make sure Cicero was nowhere near. ' In recognition of such great services, citizens, I shall demand of you no reward for my valour, no signal mark of distinction, no monument in my honour, except that this day be remembered for all time, and that the immortal gods should be thanked that there have arisen at such a moment in our history two men, one of whom has carried your empire to the limits not of earth but of heaven, and one who has preserved the home and seat of this empire… '

  'Let me see that,' demanded Atticus. He grabbed the speech from my hands and read it through, shaking his head in disbelief. 'Putting yourself on the same level as Romulus is one thing: comparing yourself with Pompey is quite another. It would be dangerous enough if someone else said it about him, but for him to say it about himself…? Let's just hope Pompey doesn't get to hear of it.'

  'He's bound to.'

  'Why?'

  'I've been ordered to send him a copy.' Once again I checked that no one was listening. 'Forgive me, sir, if I am speaking out of turn,' I said, 'but I'm becoming quite concerned about him. He's not been the same since the executions. He isn't sleeping well, he won't listen to anyone, and yet he can't bear to spend even an hour by himself. I think the sight of the dead men has affected him – you know how squeamish he is.'

  'It's not his delicate stomach that's troubling him, it's his conscience. If he were entirely satisfied that what he did was right, he wouldn't feel the need to justify himself so endlessly.'

  It was a shrewd remark, and I feel sorrier for Cicero in retrospect than I did at the time, for it must be a lonely business trying to turn oneself into a public monument. However, by far his greatest folly was not the vainglorious letter to Pompey, or the endless boasting, or the amended speeches: it was a house.

  Cicero was not the first politician, and I am sure he will not be the last, to covet a house beyond his means. In his case the property was the boarded-up mansion on the Palatine next to Celer's on Victory Rise that he had noticed when he went to persuade the praetor to take command of the army against Catilina. It now belonged to Crassus, but before that it had been the property of the immensely wealthy tribune M. Livius Drusus. The story went that the architect who built it had promised Drusus he would make sure he was not overlooked by any of his neighbours. 'No,' responded Drusus, 'rather construct it so that all my fellow citizens may see everything I do.' That was the sort of place it was: high up on the hill, tall, wide and ostentatious, easily visible from every part of the forum and the Capitol. Celer's house was on one side of it, and on the other was a large public garden and a portico that had been put up by Catulus's father. I do not know who planted the idea of buying the house in Cicero's head. I fancy it might have been Clodia. Certainly she told him over dinner one night that it was still on the market and that it would be 'wonderfully amusing' to have him as a next-door neighbour. Naturally that was enough to set Terentia dead against the purchase from the start.

  'It is modern and it is vulgar,' she told him. 'It is a parvenu's idea of where a gentleman might live.'

  'I am the Father of the Nation. The people will like the idea that I am looking down on them in a paternal manner. And it's where we deserve to be, up there among the Claudii, the Aemilii Scauri, the Metelli – the Ciceros are a great family now. Besides, I thought you hated this place.'

  'It's not moving in principle I object to, husband; it's moving there. And how can you possibly afford it? It's one of the largest houses in Rome – it must be worth at least ten million.'

  'I shall go and talk to Crassus. Maybe he'll let me have it cheap.'

  Crassus's own mansion
, which was also on the Palatine, was deceptively modest on the outside, especially for a man who was rumoured to have eight thousand amphorae filled with silver coin. Inside he sat with his abacus and his account books and the team of slaves and freedmen who ran his business interests. I accompanied Cicero when he went to see him, and after a little preliminary talk about the political situation, Cicero broached the subject of the Drusus house.

  'Do you want to buy it?' asked Crassus, suddenly alert.

  'I might. How much is it?'

  'Fourteen million.'

  'Ouch! That's too expensive for me, I fear.'

  'I'd let you have it for ten.'

  'That's generous, but it's still out of my range.'

  'Eight?'

  'No, really, Crassus – I appreciate it, but I should never have brought the subject up.' Cicero started to rise from his chair.

  'Six?' offered Crassus. 'Four?'

  Cicero sat down again. 'I could possibly manage three.'

  'Shall we settle on three and a half?'

  Afterwards, as we were walking home, I tried gently to suggest that taking possession of such a house for a quarter of its true value would not go down well with the voters. They would smell something fishy about it. 'Who cares about the voters?' replied Cicero. 'I'm barred from standing for the consulship for the next ten years whatever I do. In any case, they need never know how much I paid for it.'

  'It will get out somehow,' I warned.

  'For gods' sake, will you stop lecturing me about how I am to live? It is bad enough hearing it from my wife, without taking it from my secretary! Haven't I earned the right to some luxury at long last? Half this town would be nothing but charred brick and ashes if it weren't for me! Which reminds me – have we heard back from Pompey yet?'