Lustrum c-2

by Robert Harris

  'It will never happen,' said Cicero. 'The state authorities will never allow him to transfer. And if by some amazing mischance they do, do you really think that I – after all that I've achieved in this city, starting from nothing – do you honestly believe that I can't handle a giggling puerile pervert such as our Little Miss Beauty? I could snap his spine in a single speech!'

  'You're right,' said Hortensius, 'and I want you to know that we will never abandon you. If he does dare to attack you, you will always have our complete support. Is that not so, Lucullus?'

  'Of course.'

  'Don't you agree, Catulus?' But the old patrician did not answer. 'Catulus?' Again there was no reply. Hortensius sighed. 'I'm afraid he's grown very old of late. Wake him, will you, Tiro?'

  I put my hand on Catulus's shoulder and shook him gently. His head lolled over on to one side and I had to grab him to stop him sliding to the floor. His head flopped back so that his leathery old face was suddenly staring up into mine. His eyes were open. His mouth hung loose, leaking spit. I snatched away my hand in shock, and it was Quintus who had to step forward to feel his neck and pronounce him dead.

  Thus passed from this world Quintus Lutatius Catulus, in the sixty-first year of his life: consul, pontiff, and fierce upholder of the prerogatives of the senate. He was of an earlier, sterner era, and I look back on his death, as I do on that of Metellus Pius, as a milestone in the demise of the republic. Hortensius, who was Catulus's brother-in-law, took a candle from Cicero and held it to the old man's face, and softly tried to call him back to life. Never have I seen the point of the ancient tradition more clearly than at that moment, for it really did seem as if Catulus's spirit had just slipped out of the room and could easily return if properly summoned. We waited to see if he might revive, but of course he did not, and after a while Hortensius kissed his forehead and closed his eyes. He wept a little, and even Cicero looked red-eyed, for although he and Catulus had started out as enemies, they had ended up making common cause, and he had come to respect the old man for his integrity. Only Lucullus appeared unmoved, but by then I believe he had reached a stage where he preferred fish to human beings.

  Naturally, all discussion of the trial was ended. Catulus's slaves were summoned to carry their master's corpse the short distance to his house, and once this had been done, Hortensius went off to break the news to his own household, while Lucullus retired to dine alone, no doubt on larks' wings and the tongues of nightingales, in his vast Room of Apollo. As for Quintus, he announced that he was to depart at dawn the next morning on the start of his long journey to Asia. Cicero knew that his brother was under orders to leave as soon as the jury returned its verdict, but even so I could tell that this was the hardest of all the blows he had endured that day. He summoned Terentia and little Marcus to say goodbye, and then abruptly withdrew to his library alone, leaving me to accompany Quintus to the door.

  'Goodbye, Tiro,' Quintus said, taking my hand in both of his. He had hard, calloused palms; not like Cicero's soft lawyer's hands. 'I shall miss your counsel. Will you write to me often and tell me how my brother is faring?'

  'Gladly.'

  He seemed about to step into the street, but then he turned and said, 'He should have given you your freedom when he ceased to be consul. That was his intention. Did you know that?'

  I was stunned by this revelation. 'He had stopped talking about it,' I stammered. 'I assumed he had changed his mind.'

  'He says he is frightened of how much you know.'

  'But I would never utter to anyone a word I had learned in confidence!'

  'I know that, and in his heart so does he. Don't be concerned. It's really just an excuse. The truth is he's scared of the thought that you might leave him too, just as Atticus and I are doing. He relies on you more than you know.'

  I was too overcome to speak.

  'When I return from Asia,' he continued, 'you shall have your freedom, I promise you. You belong to the family, not just to my brother. In the meantime, look out for his safety, Tiro. There's something happening in Rome that I don't like the smell of.'

  He raised his hand in farewell and, accompanied by his attendants, set off down the street. I stood on the step and watched his familiar sturdy figure, with its broad shoulders and steady tread, stride down the hill until it was out of sight.

  XV

  Clodius was supposed to go straight off to Sicily as a junior magistrate. Instead he chose to linger in Rome to savour his victory. He even had the nerve to take his seat in the senate, to which he was now entitled. It was the Ides of May, two days after the trial, and the house was debating the political situation in the aftermath of the fiasco. Clodius entered the chamber just as Cicero was speaking. Greeted by loud hisses, he smiled to himself, as if he found the hostility amusing, and when no senator would budge along their bench to make room for him, he leaned against the wall and folded his arms, regarding the speaker with a smirk. Crassus, sitting in his usual place on the front row, looked distinctly uncomfortable, and pretended to examine a scratch on his red leather shoe. Cicero simply ignored Clodius and continued with his speech.

  'Gentlemen,' he said, 'we must not flag or falter because of a single blow. I agree we have to recognise that our authority has been weakened, but that doesn't mean we should panic. We would be fools to ignore what has happened, but cowards to let it frighten us. The jury may have let loose an enemy upon the state-'

  Clodius called out, 'I was acquitted not as an enemy of the state but as the man to clean up Rome!'

  'Clodius, you are mistaken,' said Cicero calmly, not even deigning to look at him. 'The jury has preserved you not for the streets of Rome but for the death cell. They don't want to keep you with us, but rather to deprive you of the chance of exile.' He resumed his speech. 'And so, gentlemen, take heart and maintain your dignity-'

  'And where's your dignity, Cicero?' shouted Clodius. 'You take bribes!'

  'The political consensus of honest men still holds-'

  'You took a bribe so that you could buy a house!'

  Now Cicero turned to face him. 'At least,' he said, 'I didn't buy a jury.'

  The senate rang with laughter, and I was reminded of an old lion cuffing an unruly cub. Still Clodius pressed on: 'I'll tell you why I was acquitted – because your evidence was a lie, and the jury didn't credit it.'

  'On the contrary, twenty-five members of that jury gave me credit and thirty-one gave you none – they demanded their money in advance.'

  It may not sound especially funny now, but at the time one would have thought that Cicero had made the wittiest remark in history. I suppose the senate laughed so much because they wanted to show him their support, and each time Clodius tried to respond they laughed even louder, so that in the end he gave up irritably and left the chamber. This sally was considered a great success for Cicero, especially as a couple of days later Clodius left Rome to go off to Sicily, and for the next few months he was able to put 'Little Miss Beauty' out of his mind.

  It was made clear to Pompey the Great that if he wanted to stand for a second consulship he would have to give up his hopes of a triumph and come into Rome to campaign, and this he could not bring himself to do, for much as he relished the substance of power, he loved the show of it even more – the gaudy costumes, the blaring trumpets, the roar and stink of the wild beasts in their cages, the tramping boots and raucous cheers of his soldiers, the adulation of the crowd.

  So he abandoned the idea of becoming consul, and the date of his triumphal entry into the city was fixed, at his request, to coincide with his forty-fifth birthday, at the end of September. Such was the scale of his achievement, however, that the parade – which it was reckoned would extend for at least twenty miles – had to be spread over two whole days. Therefore it was actually on the eve of the imperator's birthday that Cicero and the rest of the senate went out to the Field of Mars to greet the conqueror formally. Not only had Pompey coloured his face red for the occasion, he had dressed himself in the mos
t fabulous golden armour, and was wearing a magnificent cloak that had once belonged to Alexander the Great. Drawn up around him were thousands of his veterans guarding hundreds of wagons laden with booty.

  Until this point, Cicero had not really grasped the extent of Pompey's wealth. As he remarked to me: 'One million, or ten million, or a hundred million – what are these? Mere words. The imagination cannot comprehend their meaning.' But Pompey had gathered these riches all in one place, and by doing so revealed his power. For example, a skilled man at that time might work an entire day in Rome and at the end of it count himself lucky if he had earned one silver drachma. Pompey had laid out open chests on glistening display that morning which contained seventy-five million silver drachmae: more than the annual tax revenue of the entire Roman world. And that was just the cash. Towering over the parade, and requiring a team of four oxen to pull it, was a solid gold statue of Mithradates that was twelve feet tall. There was Mithradates's throne and his sceptre, also gold. There were thirty-three of his crowns, made of pearl, and three golden statues of Apollo, Minerva and Mars. There was a mountain shaped like a pyramid and made of gold, with deer and lions and fruit of every variety, and a golden vine entwined all around it. There was a chequered gaming board, three feet long by four feet broad, made of precious green and blue stones, with a solid gold moon upon it weighing thirty pounds. There was a sundial made of pearls. Another five wagons were required to carry the most precious books from the royal library. It made a profound impression on Cicero, who recognised that such wealth was bound to have unforeseeable consequences for Rome and its politics. He took great delight in going over to Crassus and teasing him. 'Well, Crassus, you once had the distinction of being the richest man in Rome – but not any more, I fancy. After this, even you will be applying to Pompey for a loan!' Crassus gave a crooked smile; one could tell the sight was choking him.

  Pompey sent all this into the city on the first day, but remained himself outside the gates. On the second day, his birthday, the Triumphal parade proper began with the prisoners he had brought back from the East: first the army commanders, then the officials of Mithradates's household, then a group of captured pirate chiefs, then the King of the Jews, followed by the King of Armenia with his wife and son, and finally, as the highlight of this part of the procession, seven of Mithradates's children and one of his sisters. The thousands of Romans in the Forum Boarium and the Circus Maximus jeered and flung lumps of shit and earth at them, so much so that by the time they finally stumbled down the Via Sacra towards the Carcer they looked like clay figures come to life. There they were made to wait beneath the gaze of the carnifex and his assistants, trembling at the thought of their fate, while the distant roars from the direction of the Triumphal Gate signalled that at last their conqueror had entered the city.

  Cicero waited too, with the rest of his colleagues, outside the senate house. I was on the opposite side of the forum, and as the parade passed between us, I kept losing sight of him amid all that torrent of glory. There were wagons with gaudy tableaux depicting each of the nations Pompey had subdued – Albania, Syria, Palestine, Arabia and so forth – followed by some of the eight hundred heavy bronze ramming beaks of the pirate ships he had captured, and the glittering heaps of armour and shields and swords he had seized from Mithradates's armies. Behind all this tramped Pompey's soldiers, chanting bawdy verses about their commander, and then at last Pompey himself came into the forum, riding in his jewel-studded chariot, wearing a purple toga embroidered with golden stars, and of course the cloak of Alexander. Clinging on to the platform behind him was the slave traditionally charged with intoning in his ear that he was only human. I did not envy that poor fellow his job, and he was clearly starting to get on Pompey's nerves, because the moment the charioteer pulled the horses up outside the Carcer and the parade came to a halt, Pompey pushed him roughly off the platform and turned his broad red-painted face to address the muddy apparitions of the prisoners.

  'I, Pompey the Great, conqueror of three hundred and twenty-four nations, having been granted the power of life and death by the senate and people of Rome, do hereby declare that you, as vassals of the Roman empire, shall immediately' -he paused- 'be granted a full pardon and set free to return to the lands of your birth. Go, and tell the world of my mercy!'

  It was as magnificent as it was unexpected, for Pompey had been known in his youth as 'The Butcher Boy', and had seldom showed much clemency to anyone. The crowd seemed disappointed at first, but then began to applaud, while the prisoners, when they were told what he had said, stretched out their hands and cried out to Pompey in a babble of foreign tongues. Pompey acknowledged their gratitude with a twirling gesture of his hand, then jumped down from his chariot and walked towards the Capitol, where he was due to sacrifice to Jupiter. The senate, Cicero included, trailed after him, and I was about to follow when I made a most remarkable discovery.

  Now that the parade had ended, the wagons laden with arms and armour were queuing to leave the forum, and for the first time I saw at close quarters some of the swords and knives. I was no expert when it came to soldiering, but even I could recognise that these brand-new weapons, with their curved Oriental blades and mysterious engravings on their hilts, were exactly the same as the ones that Cethegus had been hoarding in his house, and of which I had made an inventory on the eve of his execution. I made a move to pick one up, intending to take it back and show it to Cicero, but the legionary who was guarding the wagon shouted at me roughly to keep my distance. I was on the point of telling him who I was and why I needed it when good sense checked my tongue. I turned without a word and hurried away, and when I looked back the legionary was still watching me suspiciously.

  Cicero had been obliged to attend Pompey's great official banquet following the sacrifice, and it was not until late in the evening that he returned home – in a bad mood, as he usually was after spending much time with Pompey. He was surprised to find me waiting up for him, and listened intently as I explained my discovery. I was inordinately pleased with my cleverness and expected him to congratulate me. Instead, he became increasingly irritated. 'Are you trying to tell me,' he demanded, after he had heard me out, 'that Pompey sent back captured weapons from Mithradates in order to arm Catilina's conspiracy?'

  'All I know is that the markings and the design were identical-'

  Cicero cut me off. 'This is treasonous talk! I cannot have you saying such things! You've seen how powerful Pompey is. Don't ever mention it again, do you hear me?'

  'I'm sorry,' I said, gulping with embarrassment. 'Forgive me.'

  'Besides, how would Pompey have got them to Rome? He was a thousand miles away.'

  'I wondered if perhaps they came back with Metellus Nepos.'

  'Go to bed,' he said angrily. 'You're talking nonsense.' But he obviously must have thought about it overnight, because the next morning his attitude was more subdued. 'I suppose you could be right that the weapons came from Mithradates. After all, the entire royal arsenal was captured, and it's plausible that Nepos might have brought a consignment with him to Rome. However, that's not the same thing as saying that Pompey was actively assisting Catilina.'

  'Of course not,' I said.

  'That would simply be too appalling to contemplate. Those blades were intended to cut my throat.'

  'Pompey would never do anything to harm either you or the state,' I assured him.

  The following day Pompey asked Cicero to come and see him.

  The Warden of Land and Sea had taken up residence again in his old house on the Esquiline Hill. Over the summer its appearance had been transformed. Dozens of the ramming beaks from captured pirates' warships now bristled from the walls. Some were fashioned in bronze to look like gorgons' heads. Others bore the snouts and horns of animals. Cicero had not seen them before, and regarded them with great distaste. 'Imagine having to sleep here every night,' he said as we waited for the porter to open the door. 'It's like the death chamber of a pharaoh.' And from this time on
he often privately referred to Pompey as 'The Pharaoh' or sometimes 'The Shah'.

  A large crowd stood outside, admiring the house. Inside, the public rooms were thronged with petitioners hoping to find space to feed at Pompey's golden trough. Some were bankrupt senators looking to sell their votes. Others were businessmen with schemes in which they hoped to persuade Pompey to invest. There were ship-owners and horse-trainers and furniture-makers and jewellers, and some who were plainly just beggars, out to catch Pompey's sympathy with a hard-luck story. Much to their envy, we were shown straight past all these mendicants and into a large private room. In one corner was a tailor's dummy displaying Pompey's triumphal toga and the cloak of Alexander; in another a large head of Pompey made entirely of pearls, which I recognised from the triumphal parade. And in the centre, set up on two trestles, was an architect's model of an immense complex of buildings, over which loomed Pompey, holding a pair of toy wooden temples in either hand. A group of men behind him seemed to be waiting anxiously for his decision.

  'Ah,' he said, looking up, 'here is Cicero. He's a clever fellow. He will have a view. What do you think, Cicero? Should I build four temples here, or three?'

  'I always build my temples in fours,' replied Cicero, 'providing I have the space.'

  'Excellent advice!' exclaimed Pompey. 'Four it will be,' and he set them down in a row, to the applause of his audience. 'We shall decide which gods they are to be dedicated to later. Well?' he said to Cicero, gesturing to the model. 'What do you think?'

  Cicero peered down at the elaborate construction. 'Most impressive. What is it? A palace?'

  'A theatre, with seating for ten thousand. Here will be public gardens, surrounded by a portico. And here temples.' He turned to one of the men behind him, who I realised must be architects. 'Remind me again: how big is it going to be?'