Imperium

by Robert Harris

  When the augur pronounced himself satisfied, Crassus came out of the sacred tent and the candidates gathered at the base of his tribunal. Among them, I should record, making his first attempt to enter the Senate, was Julius Caesar, who stood beside Cicero and engaged him in friendly conversation. They had known each other a long time, and indeed it was on Cicero’s recommendation that the younger man had gone to Rhodes to study rhetoric under Apollonius Molon. Much hagiography now clusters around Caesar’s early years, to the extent that you would think he had been marked out by his contemporaries as a genius ever since the cradle. Not so, and anyone who saw him in his whitened toga that morning, nervously fiddling with his thinning hair, would have been hard put to distinguish him from any of the other well-bred young candidates. There was one great difference, though: few can have been as poor. To stand for election, he must have borrowed heavily, for he lived in very modest accommodation in the Subura, in a house full of women—his mother, his wife, and his little daughter—and I picture him at this stage not as the gleaming hero waiting to conquer Rome, but as a thirty-year-old man lying sleepless at night, kept awake by the racket of his impoverished neighborhood, brooding bitterly on the fact that he, a scion of the oldest family in Rome, had been reduced to such circumstances. His antipathy toward the aristocrats was consequently far more dangerous to them than Cicero’s ever was. As a self-made man, Cicero merely resented and envied them. But Caesar, who believed he was a direct descendant of Venus, viewed them with contempt, as interlopers.

  But now I am running ahead of myself, and committing the same sin as the hagiographers, by shining the distorting light of the future onto the shadows of the past. Let me simply record that these two outstanding men, with six years difference in their ages but much in common in terms of brains and outlook, stood chatting amiably in the sun, as Crassus mounted the platform and read out the familiar prayer: “May this matter end well and happily for me, for my best endeavors, for my office, and for the People of Rome!” And with that the voting started.

  The first tribe into the pens, in accordance with tradition, were the Suburana. But despite all Cicero’s efforts over the years, they did not vote for him. This must have been a blow, and certainly suggested Verres’s bribery agents had earned their cash. But Cicero merely shrugged: he knew that many influential men who had yet to vote would be watching for his reaction, and it was important to wear a mask of confidence. Then, one after another, came the three other tribes of the city: the Esquilina, the Collina, and the Palatina. Cicero won the support of the first two, but not the third, which was scarcely surprising, as it was easily the most aristocratically inclined of Rome’s neighborhoods. So the score was two–two: a tenser start than he would have liked. And now the thirty-one rustic tribes started lining up: the Aemilia, Camilia, Fabia, Galeria…I knew all their names from our office files, could tell you who were the key men in each, who needed a favor and who owed one. Three of these four went for Cicero. Quintus came up and whispered in his ear, and for the first time he could perhaps afford to relax, as Verres’s money had obviously proved most tempting to those tribes composed of a majority of city dwellers. The Horatia, Lemonia, Papiria, Menenia…On and on, through the heat and the dust, Cicero sitting on a stool between counts but always rising whenever the voters passed in front of him after casting their ballots, his memory working to retrieve their names, thanking them, and passing on his respects to their families. The Sergia, Voltina, Pupinia, Romilia…Cicero failed in the last tribe, not surprisingly, as it was Verres’s own, but by the middle of the afternoon he had won the support of sixteen tribes and needed only two more for victory. Yet still Verres had not given up, and could be seen in huddled groups with his son and Timarchides. For a terrible hour, the balance seemed to tilt his way. The Sabatini did not go for Cicero, and nor did the Publilia. But then he just scraped in with the Scaptia, and finally it was the Falerna from northern Campania who put him over the top: eighteen tribes out of the thirty which had so far voted, with five left to come—but what did they matter? He was safely home, and at some point when I was not looking Verres quietly removed himself from the election field to calculate his losses. Caesar, whose own elevation to the Senate had just been confirmed, was the first to turn and shake Cicero’s hand. I could see Quintus triumphantly brandishing his fists in the air, Crassus staring angrily into the distance. There were cheers from the spectators who had been keeping their own tallies—those curious zealots who follow elections as fervently as other men do chariot racing—and who appreciated what had just happened. The victor himself looked stunned by his achievement, but no one could deny it, not even Crassus, who would shortly have to read it out, even though the words must have choked him. Against all odds, Cicero was an aedile of Rome.

  A BIG CROWD—they are always bigger after a victory—escorted Cicero from the Field of Mars all the way back to his house, where the domestic slaves were assembled to applaud him over the threshold. Even Diodotus the blind Stoic put in a rare appearance. All of us were proud to belong to such an eminent figure; his glory reflected on every member of his household; our worth and self-esteem increased with his. From the atrium, Tullia darted forward with a cry of “Papa!” and wrapped her arms around his legs, and even Terentia stepped up and embraced him, smiling. I still hold that image of the three of them frozen in my mind—the triumphant young orator with his left hand on the head of his daughter and his right clasped about the shoulders of his happy wife. Nature bestows this gift, at least, on those who rarely smile: when they do, their faces are transformed, and I saw at that moment how Terentia, for all her complaints about her husband, nonetheless relished his brilliance and success.

  It was Cicero who reluctantly broke the embrace. “I thank you all,” he declared, looking around at his admiring audience. “But this is not the time for celebrations. That time will come only when Verres is defeated. Tomorrow, at long last, I shall open the prosecution in the Forum, and let us pray to the gods that before too many days have passed, fresh and far greater honor will descend upon this household. So what are you waiting for?” He smiled and clapped his hands. “Back to work!”

  Cicero retired with Quintus to his study and beckoned to me to follow. He threw himself into his chair with a gasp of relief and kicked off his shoes. For the first time in more than a week the tension in his face seemed to have eased. I assumed he would now want to begin the urgent task of pulling together his speech, but apparently he had other plans for me. I was to go back out into the city with Sositheus and Laurea, and between us we were to visit all the Sicilian witnesses, give them the news of his election, check that they were holding firm, and instruct them all to present themselves in court the following morning.

  “All of them?” I repeated in astonishment. “All one hundred?”

  “That is right,” he replied. The old decisiveness was back in his voice. “And tell Eros to hire a dozen porters—reliable men—to carry every box of evidence down to court at the same time as I go down tomorrow.”

  “All the witnesses…A dozen porters…Every box of evidence…” I was making a list of his orders. “But this is going to take me until midnight,” I said, unable to conceal my bewilderment.

  “Poor Tiro. But do not worry—there will be time enough to sleep when we are dead.”

  “I am not worried about my sleep, senator,” I said stiffly. “I was wondering when I was going to have time to help you with your speech.”

  “I shall not require your help,” he said with a slight smile, and he raised a finger to his lips, to warn me that I must say nothing. But as I had no idea of the significance of his remark, there was hardly any danger of my revealing his plans, and not for the first time I left his presence in a state of some confusion.

  Roll IX

  AND SO IT CAME ABOUT that on the fifth day of August, in the consulship of Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus and Marcus Licinius Crassus, one year and nine months after Sthenius had first come to see Cicero, the trial of Gaius Verr
es began.

  Bear in mind the summer heat. Calculate the number of victims with an interest in seeing Verres brought to justice. Remember that Rome was, in any case, swarming with citizens in town for the census, the elections, and the impending games of Pompey. Consider that the hearing pitched the two greatest orators of the day in head-to-head combat (“a duel of real magnitude,” as Cicero later called it). Put all this together, and you may begin to guess something of the atmosphere in the extortion court that morning. Hundreds of spectators, determined to have a decent vantage point, had slept out in the Forum overnight. By dawn, there was nowhere left to stand that offered any shade. By the second hour, there was nowhere left at all. In the porticoes and on the steps of the Temple of Castor, in the Forum itself and in the colonnades surrounding it, on the rooftops and balconies of the houses, on the sides of the hills—anywhere that human beings could squeeze themselves into or hang off or perch on—there you would find the people of Rome.

  Frugi and I scurried around like a pair of sheepdogs, herding our witnesses into court, and what an exotic and colorful assembly they made, in their sacred robes and native dress, victims from every stage of Verres’s career, drawn by the promise of vengeance—priests of Juno and Ceres, the mystagogues of the Syracusan Minerva and the sacred virgins of Diana; Greek nobles whose descent was traced to Cecrops or Eurysthenes or to the great Ionian and Minyan houses, and Phoenicians whose ancestors had been priests of Tyrian Melcarth or claimed kindred with the Zidonian Iah; eager crowds of impoverished heirs and their guardians, bankrupt farmers and corn merchants and ship owners, fathers bewailing their children carried off to slavery, children mourning for their parents dead in the governor’s dungeons; deputations from the foot of Mount Taurus, from the shores of the Black Sea, from many cities of the Grecian mainland, from the islands of the Aegean, and of course from every city and market town of Sicily.

  I was so busy helping to ensure that all the witnesses were admitted, and that every box of evidence was in its place and securely guarded, that only gradually did I come to realize what a spectacle Cicero had stage-managed. Those evidence boxes, for example, now included public testimony collected by the elders of virtually every town in Sicily. It was only when the jurors started shouldering their way through the masses and taking their places on the benches that I realized—showman that he was—why Cicero had been so insistent on having everything in place at once. The impression on the court was overwhelming. Even the hard faces, like old Catulus and Isauricus, registered astonishment. As for Glabrio, when he came out of the temple preceded by his lictors, he paused for a moment on the top step, and swayed half a pace backward when confronted by that wall of faces.

  Cicero, who had been standing apart until the last possible moment, squeezed through the crowd and climbed the steps to his place on the prosecutor’s bench. There was a sudden quietness, a silent quiver of anticipation in the still air. Ignoring the shouts of encouragement from his supporters, he turned and shielded his eyes against the sun and scanned the vast audience, squinting to right and left, as I imagine a general might check the lie of the land and position of the clouds before a battle. Then he sat down, while I stationed myself at his back so that I could pass him any document he needed. The clerks of the court set up Glabrio’s curule chair—the signal that the tribunal was in session—and everything was ready, save for the presence of Verres and Hortensius. Cicero, who was as cool as I had ever seen him, whispered to me, “After all that, perhaps he is not coming.” Needless to say, he was coming—Glabrio sent one of his lictors to fetch him—but Hortensius was giving us a foretaste of his tactics, which would be to waste as much time as possible. Eventually, perhaps an hour late, to ironic applause, the immaculate figure of the consul-elect eased through the press of spectators, followed by his junior counsel—none other than young Scipio Nasica, the love rival of Cato—then Quintus Metellus, and finally came Verres himself, looking redder than usual in the heat. For a man with any shred of conscience, it would surely have been a vision out of hell to see those ranks of his victims and accusers, all ranged against him. But this monster merely bowed at them, as if he were delighted to greet old acquaintances.

  Glabrio called the court to order, but before Cicero could rise to begin his speech, Hortensius jumped up to make a point of order: under the Cornelian Law, he declared, a prosecutor was entitled to call no more than forty-eight witnesses, but this prosecutor had brought to court at least double that number, purely for the purpose of intimidation! He then embarked on a long, learned, and elegant speech about the origins of the extortion court, which lasted for what felt like an hour. At length Glabrio cut him off, saying there was nothing in the law about restricting the number of witnesses present in court, only the number giving verbal evidence. Once again, he invited Cicero to open his case, and once again, Hortensius intervened with another point of order. The crowd began to jeer, but he pressed on, as he did repeatedly whenever Cicero rose to speak, and thus the first few hours of the day were lost in vexatious legal point-scoring.

  It was not until the middle of the afternoon, as Cicero wearily rose to his feet for the ninth or tenth time, that Hortensius at last remained seated. Cicero looked at him, waited, then slowly spread his arms wide in mock amazement. A wave of laughter went around the Forum. Hortensius responded by gesturing with a foppish twirl of his hand to the well of the court, as if to say, “Be my guest.” Cicero bowed courteously and came forward. He cleared his throat.

  There could scarcely have been a worse moment at which to begin such an immense undertaking. The heat was unbearable. The crowd was bored and restless. Hortensius was smirking. There were only perhaps two hours left before the court adjourned for the evening. And yet this was to be one of the most decisive moments in the history of our Roman law—indeed, in the history of all law, everywhere, I should not wonder.

  “Gentlemen of the court,” said Cicero, and I bent my head over my tablet and noted the words in shorthand. I waited for him to continue. For almost the first time before a major speech, I had no idea what he was going to say. I waited a little longer, my heart thumping, and then nervously glanced up to find him walking across the court away from me. I thought he was going to stop and confront Verres, but instead he walked straight past him and halted in front of the senators in the jury.

  “Gentlemen of the court,” he repeated, addressing them directly, “at this great political crisis, there has been offered to you, not through man’s wisdom but almost as the direct gift of heaven, the very thing you most need—a thing that will help more than anything else to mitigate the unpopularity of your Order and the suspicion surrounding these courts. A belief has become established—as harmful to the republic as it is to yourselves—that these courts, with you senators as the jury, will never convict any man, however guilty, if he has sufficient money.”

  He put a wonderful, contemptuous stress on the last word. “You are not wrong there!” shouted a voice in the crowd.

  “But the character of the man I am prosecuting,” continued Cicero, “is such that you may use him to restore your own good name. Gaius Verres has robbed the Treasury and behaved like a pirate and a destroying pestilence in his province of Sicily. You have only to find this man guilty, and respect in you will be rightly restored. But if you do not—if his immense wealth is sufficient to shatter your honesty—well then, I shall achieve one thing at least. The nation will not believe Verres to be right and me wrong—but they will certainly know all they need to know about a jury of Roman senators!”

  It was a nice stroke to start off with. There was a rustle of approval from the great crowd that was like a wind moving through a forest, and in some curious sense the focus of the trial seemed at once to shift twenty paces to the left. It was as if the senators, sweating in the hot sun and squirming uncomfortably on their wooden benches, had become the accused, while the vast press of witnesses, drawn from every corner of the Mediterranean, was the jury. Cicero had never addressed such an
immense throng before, but Molon’s training on the seashore stood him in good stead, and when he turned to the Forum his voice rang clear and true.

  “Let me tell you of the impudent and insane plan that is now in Verres’s mind. It is plain to him that I am approaching this case so well prepared that I shall be able to pin him down as a robber and a criminal, not merely in the hearing of this court but in the eyes of the whole world. But in spite of this, he holds so low an opinion of the aristocracy, he believes the senatorial courts to be so utterly abandoned and corrupt, that he goes about boasting openly that he has bought the safest date for his trial, that he has bought the jury, and just to be on the safe side he has also bought the consular election for his two titled friends who have tried to intimidate my witnesses!”

  This was what the crowd had come to hear. The rustle of approval became a roar. Metellus jumped up in anger, and so did Hortensius—yes, even Hortensius, who normally greeted any taunt in the arena with nothing more vulgar than a raised eyebrow. They began gesticulating angrily at Cicero.