I waited a long time and when at last I dared to look out through my spy hole, I saw that the room was empty. Only the disarrangement of the chairs proved that there had been a meeting at all. It took an effort to restrain myself from wrenching aside the tapestry and making a run for the door. But the agreement was that I would wait for Caelius, so I forced myself to sit hunched in that narrow space, my back to the wall, my knees drawn up and my arms clasped around them. I have no idea how long the conference had lasted, except that it was long enough to fill the four notebooks I had brought with me, nor how long I sat there. It is even possible I fell asleep, because when Caelius returned, the lamps and candles, including my own, had all burned away to darkness. I jumped when he pulled back the tapestry. Without speaking, he put out his hand to help me, and together we crept back through the sleeping house to the storeroom. After I had scrambled up stiffly into the alley, I turned to whisper my thanks.
“No need,” he whispered in return. I could just make out the excited gleam of his eyes in the moonlight—eyes so wide and bright that when he added, “I enjoyed it,” I knew that it was not mere bravado, but that the young fool was telling the truth.
IT WAS WELL AFTER MIDNIGHT when I finally returned home. Everyone else was asleep, but Cicero was waiting up for me in the dining room. I could tell he had been there for hours by the scattering of books around the couch. He sprang up the moment I appeared. “Well?” he said, and when I nodded to signify my mission had succeeded he pinched my cheek and declared me the bravest and cleverest secretary any statesman ever had. I pulled the notebooks from my pocket to show him. He flipped one open and held it to the light. “Ah, of course, they are all your damned hieroglyphics,” he said with a wink. “Come and sit down and I shall fetch you some wine, and you can tell me everything. Would you like something to eat?” He looked around vaguely; the role of waiter was not one which came naturally to him. Soon I was sitting opposite him with an untouched cup of wine and an apple, my notebooks spread before me, like a schoolboy called to recite his lesson.
I no longer possess those wax tablets, but Cicero kept my subsequent transcription among his most secret papers, and looking at it now, I am not surprised that I could not follow the original discussion. The conspirators had obviously met many times before, and their deliberations that night presupposed a good deal of knowledge. There was much talk of legislative timetables, and amendments to drafts of bills, and divisions of responsibilities. So you must not imagine that I simply read out what I had written and all was clear. It took the two of us many hours of puzzling over various cryptic remarks, and fitting this to that, until at last we had the whole thing plainly in sight. Every so often, Cicero would exclaim something like, “Clever devils! They are such clever devils!” and get up and prowl around, then return to work some more. And to cut it short, and give you the gist, it turned out that the plot which Caesar and Crassus must have been hatching over many months fell into four parts. First, they aimed to seize control of the state by sweeping the board in the general elections, securing not only both consulships but also all ten tribunates, and a couple of praetorships besides; the bribery agents reported that the thing was more or less a fait accompli, with Cicero’s support slipping daily. The second stage called for the introduction by the tribunes of a great land reform bill in December, which would demand the breaking up of the big publicly owned estates, in particular the fertile plains of Campania, and their immediate redistribution as farms to five thousand of the urban plebs. The third step involved the election in March of ten commissioners, headed by Crassus and Caesar, who would be given immense powers to sell off conquered land abroad, and to use the funds thereby released to compulsorily purchase further vast estates in Italy, for an even greater program of resettlement. The final stage demanded nothing less than the annexation of Egypt the following summer, using as a pretext the disputed will of one of its dead rulers, King Ptolemy the something-or-other, drawn up some seventeen years earlier, by which he had supposedly bequeathed his entire country to the Roman people; again, the revenue from this was to be given to the commissioners, for further acquisition of land in Italy.
“Dear gods: it is a coup d’état disguised as an agrarian reform bill!” cried Cicero when we finally reached the end of my record. “This commission of ten, led by Crassus and Caesar, will be the real masters of the country; the consuls and the other magistrates will be mere ciphers. And their domination at home will be maintained in perpetuity by the proceeds of extortion abroad.” He sat back and was silent for a long while, his arms folded, his chin on his chest.
I was drained by what I had endured and longed only for sleep. Yet the early summer light now beginning to seep into the room showed we had worked right through the night and it was already election eve. I was aware of the dawn chorus starting up outside, and soon after that heard the tread of someone coming down the stairs. It was Terentia in her nightdress, her hair awry, her un-made-up face soft with sleep, a shawl drawn around her narrow shoulders. I stood respectfully and looked away in embarrassment. “Cicero!” she exclaimed, taking no notice of me. “What on earth are you doing down here at this hour?”
He looked up at her and wearily explained what had happened. She had a very quick mind for anything political or financial—had she not been born a woman, and given her spirit, there is no telling what she might have done—and the moment she grasped it she was horrified, for Terentia was an aristocrat to her core, and to her the notion of privatizing state land and giving it to the plebs was a step on the road to the destruction of Rome.
“You must lead the fight against it,” she urged Cicero. “This could win you the election. All the decent men will rally to you.”
“Ah, but will they?” Cicero picked up one of my notebooks. “Outright opposition to this could rebound on me badly. A large faction in the Senate, half of them patriotic and the other half just plain greedy, has always favored seizing Egypt. And out on the streets, the cry of “Free farms for all!” is far more likely to gain Catilina and Hybrida votes than cost them. No, I am trapped.” He stared at the transcript of the conference and shook his head slowly, like an artist ruefully contemplating the work of some talented rival. “It really is an extraordinary scheme—a stroke of true political genius. Only Caesar could have dreamed it up. And as for Crassus—for a down payment of just twenty million, he can expect to gain control of most of Italy and the whole of Egypt. Even you would concede that that is a good return on your investment.”
“But you have to do something,” persisted Terentia. “You cannot simply allow it to happen.”
“And what exactly would you have me do?”
“And you are supposed to be the cleverest man in Rome?” she asked in exasperation. “Is it not obvious? Go to the Senate this morning and expose what they are plotting. Denounce them!”
“A brilliant tactic, Terentia,” responded Cicero sarcastically. (I was beginning to find my position between them increasingly uncomfortable.) “I both reveal the existence of a popular measure and I denounce it at the same time. You are not listening to me: the people who stand to benefit the most from this are my supporters.”
“Well, then, you have only yourself to blame for depending on such a rabble in the first place! This is the problem with your demagoguery, Cicero—you may think you can control the mob, but the mob will always end up devouring you. Did you seriously believe you could beat men like Crassus and Catilina when it came to a public auction of principles?” Cicero grunted irritably; however I noticed he did not argue with her. “But tell me,” she continued, needling away at him, “if this ‘extraordinary scheme,’ as you call it—or ‘criminal enterprise,’ as I should prefer it—really is as popular as you say, why all this skulking around at night? Why do they not come out with it openly?”
“Because, my dear Terentia, the aristocrats think like you. They would never stand for it. First it will be the great public estates that are broken up and redistributed, next it will b
e their private domains. Every time Caesar and Crassus give a man a farm, they will create another client for themselves. And once the patricians start to lose control of the land, they are finished. Besides, how do you think Catulus or Hortensius would react to being ordered around by a ten-man commission elected by the people? The people! To them it would seem like a revolution—Tiberius Gracchus all over again.” Cicero threw the notebook back onto the dining table. “No, they would scheme and bribe and kill to preserve the status quo, just as they always have done.”
“And they would be right!” Terentia glowered down at him. Her fists were clenched; I almost expected her to hit him. “They were right to take away the powers of the tribunes, just as they were right to try to stop that provincial parvenu, Pompey. And if you had any sense, you would go to them now with this, and you would say to them, ‘Gentlemen, this is what Crassus and Caesar are proposing to do—support me and I shall try to put a stop to it!’”
Cicero sighed in exasperation and slumped back onto the couch. For a while he was silent. But then he suddenly glanced up at her. “By heavens, Terentia,” he said quietly, “what a clever shrew you are.” He jumped up and kissed her on the cheek. “My brilliant, clever shrew—you are quite correct. Or rather, half correct, for there is actually no need for me to do anything with it at all. I should simply pass it to Hortensius. Tiro, how long would it take you to make a fair copy of this transcript—not of all of it necessarily, just enough to whet Hortensius’s appetite?”
“A few hours,” I said, bewildered by his dramatic change of mood.
“Quick!” he said, more alive with excitement than I can ever remember seeing him. “Fetch me a pen and paper!”
I did as I was ordered. He dipped the nib in the inkpot, thought about it for a moment, and then wrote the following, as Terentia and I watched over his shoulder:
From: Marcus Tullius Cicero
To: Quintus Hortensius Hortalus
Greetings!
I feel it is my patriotic duty to share with you in confidence this record of a meeting held last night at the home of M. Crassus, involving G. Caesar, L. Catilina, G. Hybrida, P. Sura, and various candidates for the tribuneship whose names will be familiar to you. I intend to tackle certain of these gentlemen in a speech to the Senate today, and if you would care to discuss the matter further, I shall be afterwards at the home of our esteemed mutual friend T. Atticus.
“That should do the trick,” he said, blowing on the ink to dry it. “Now, Tiro, make as full a copy of your notes as you can, being sure to include all the passages which will make their blue blood run cold, and deliver it, together with my letter, personally into the hands of Hortensius—personally, mark you: not to any aide—at least an hour before the Senate meets. Also, send one of the lads with a message to Atticus, asking him to call on me before I leave.” He gave me the letter and hurried out the door.
“Do you want me to ask Sositheus or Laurea to bring in your clients?” I called after him, for by now I could hear them queuing outside in the street. “When do you want the doors opened?”
“No clients in the house this morning!” he shouted in reply, already halfway up the stairs. “They can accompany me to the Senate if they wish. You have work to do and I have a speech to compose.”
His footsteps thumped along the boards above our heads to his room and I found myself alone with Terentia. She touched her hand to her cheek where her husband had kissed her and looked at me in puzzlement. “Speech?” she said. “What speech is he talking about?”
But I had to confess that I had no idea, and thus can claim no hand in, or even prior knowledge of, that extraordinary piece of invective which all the world knows by the name of In toga candida.
I WROTE AS QUICKLY and as neatly as my tiredness would allow, setting out my document like the script of a play, with the name of the speaker first, and then his remarks. I excised a great deal of what I considered irrelevant material, but then at the end I wondered if I was really competent enough to judge. Therefore I decided to keep my notebooks with me, in case I might need to refer to them during the day. Once it was done, I sealed it and placed it in a cylinder, and set off. I had to push my way through the throng of clients and well-wishers blocking the street, who clutched at my tunic and demanded to know when the senator would appear.
Hortensius’s house on the Palatine was subsequently bought, many years later, by our dear and beloved emperor, so that gives you an idea of how fine it was. I had never been to it before and I had to stop several times and ask for directions. It was right at the top of the hill, on the southwestern side overlooking the Tiber, and one might have been in the country rather than the city, with its view over the dark green trees to the gentle silver curve of the river and the fields beyond. His brother-in-law, Catulus, as I think I have mentioned, owned the house next door, and the whole spot—fragrant with the scent of honeysuckle and myrtle, and silent save for the twittering of the birds—was redolent of good taste and old money. Even the steward looked like an aristocrat, and when I said I had a personal message for his master from Senator Cicero, you might have thought I had farted, such an exquisite expression of distaste spread across his bony face at the mention of the name. He wanted to take the cylinder from me, but I refused, so he bade me wait in the atrium, where the masks of all Hortensius’s consular ancestors stared down at me with their blank, dead eyes. Displayed on a three-legged table in the corner was a sphinx, wonderfully carved from a single huge piece of ivory, and I realized that this must be the very sphinx which Verres had given to his advocate all those years ago, and which Cicero had made his joke about. I was just stooping to examine it when Hortensius came into the room behind me.
“Well,” he said, as I stood up, feeling guilty, “I never thought to see a representative of Marcus Cicero under the roof of my ancestors. What is all this about?”
He was wearing his full senatorial rig, but with slippers on his feet instead of shoes, and was obviously still getting ready to depart for the morning’s debate. It seemed strange to me, too, to see the old enemy unarmored, as it were, outside the arena. I gave him Cicero’s letter, which he broke open and read in front of me. When he saw the names it mentioned, he gave me a sharp glance, and I could tell that he was hooked, although he was too well bred to show it.
“Tell him I shall inspect it at my leisure,” he said, taking the document from me, and strolled back the way he had come, as if nothing less interesting had ever been placed in his manicured hands—although I am sure that the moment he was out of sight he must have run to his library and broken open the seal. For myself, I went back out into the fresh air and descended to the city by the Caci Steps, partly because I had time to kill before the Senate convened and could afford to take a long way around, and partly because the other route took me nearer to the house of Crassus than I cared to go. I came out into that district on the Etruscan road where all the perfume and incense shops are located, and the scented air and the weight of my tiredness combined to make me feel almost drugged. My mood was oddly separated from the real world and its concerns. By this time tomorrow, I remember thinking, the voting on the Field of Mars would be well under way, and we would probably know whether Cicero was to be consul or not, and in either event the sun would shine and in the autumn it would rain. I lingered in the Forum Boarium and watched the people buying their flowers and their fruit and all the rest of it, and wondered what it would be like not to have any interest in politics but simply to live, as the poet has it, vita umbratilis, “a life in the shade.” That was what I planned to do when Cicero gave me my freedom and my farm. I would eat the fruit I grew and drink the milk of the goats I reared; I would shut my gate at night and never give a fig for another election. It was the closest to wisdom I have ever come.
By the time I eventually reached the Forum, two hundred or more senators had assembled in the senaculum and were being watched by a crowd of curious gawkers—out-of-towners, to judge by their rustic dress, who had co
me to Rome for the elections. Figulus was sitting on his consular chair in the doorway of the Senate House, the augurs beside him, waiting for a quorum, and every so often there was a minor commotion as a candidate erupted into the Forum with his corona of supporters. I saw Catilina arrive, with his curious mixture of young aristocrats and the dregs of the streets, and then Hybrida, whose rackety assemblage of debtors and gamblers, such as Sabidius and Panthera, seemed quite respectable by comparison. The senators began to file into the chamber and I was just beginning to wonder if some mishap had befallen Cicero when, from the direction of the Argiletum, came the noise of drums and flutes, and then two columns of young men rounded the corner into the Forum, carrying freshly cut boughs above their heads, with children scampering excitedly all around them. These were followed by a mass of respectable Roman knights led by Atticus, and then came Quintus with a dozen or so backbench senators. Some maids were scattering rose petals. It was a vastly better show than any of its rivals had managed, and the crowd around me greeted it with applause. At the center of all this whirling activity, as in the eye of a tornado, walked the candidate himself, clad in the gleaming toga candida which had already seen him through three victorious election campaigns. It was rare that I was able to watch him from a distance—usually I was tucked in behind him—and for the first time I appreciated what a natural actor he was, in that when he donned his costume he found his character. All those qualities which the traditional whiteness was supposed to symbolize—clarity, honesty, purity—seemed to be personified in his solid frame and steady gaze as he walked, unseeing, past me. I could tell by the way he moved, and his air of detachment, that he was heavy with a speech. I fell in at the back of the procession and heard the cheers from his supporters as he entered the chamber, and the answering catcalls of his opponents.
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