“Any kind of reasonably legal government is preferable to no government at all, provided it is answerable at law for every one of its actions,” said Cato. “I approve of the measure.”
“I call upon the House to divide,” said Servius Rufus. “All those in favor of permitting Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus to stand for election as consul without a colleague, please stand to my right. Those against the motion, please stand to my left.”
Among the few men who stood to Servius Rufus’s left was Brutus, attending his first meeting of the Senate. “I cannot vote for the man who murdered my father,” he said loudly, chin up.
“Very well,” said Servius Rufus, surveying the bulk of the Senate to his right. “I will summon the Centuries for an election.”
“Why bother?” yelled Milo, who had also stood to the left. “Are we other consular candidates to be allowed to stand? For the same post, as consul without a colleague?”
Servius Rufus raised his brows. “Certainly, Titus Annius.”
“Why not save time, money and a walk out to the Saepta?” Milo went on bitterly. “We all know what the result will be.”
“I wouldn’t accept the commission on the Senate’s say-so,” said Pompey with immense dignity. “Let there be an election.”
“There should also be a law overriding the lex Annalis!” shouted Caelius. “It isn’t legal for a man to run again for consul until ten years have elapsed since his last consulship. Pompeius was consul for the second time only two years ago.”
“Quite right,” said Servius Rufus. “Conscript Fathers, I will see another division on the motion that the House recommend as a decree to the Popular Assembly a lex Caelia allowing Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus to run for consul.”
Which turned the tables neatly on Caelius.
*
By the beginning of March, Pompey the Great was consul without a colleague, and things began to happen. In Capua was sitting a legion destined for Syria; Pompey summoned it to Rome and cracked down on the street wars. Not that much effort was necessary; the moment the Centuries elected Pompey, Sextus Cloelius called off his dogs and reported to Pompey to collect a fat fee, gladly paid.
The rest of the elections were held, which meant that Mark Antony was officially appointed Caesar’s quaestor—and that there were praetors in office to open the courts and start hearing the massive backlog of cases. No trials had been held since the end of the year before last, thanks to the violence which had prevailed during the five months last year’s praetors had been in office. So men like Aulus Gabinius, ex-governor of Syria, who had been acquitted of treason but still had to face charges of extortion, were finally tried.
It had been Gabinius who accepted the commission to restore Ptolemy Auletes of Egypt to his throne after the irate Alexandrians had ejected him—not a senatorial commission, more the seizing of an offer and an opportunity. For a price rumored to be ten thousand silver talents. Perhaps that much had been the agreed price, but what was sure was that Gabinius had never been paid anything like it. Which didn’t impress the extortion court; halfheartedly defended by Cicero, Gabinius was convicted and fined the sum of ten thousand talents. Unable to find a tenth of this fabulous sum, Gabinius went into exile.
But Cicero did better defending Gaius Rabirius Postumus, the little banker who had reorganized the finances of Egypt once its king was back on his throne. His original mission had been to collect the debts Ptolemy Auletes owed certain Roman senators for favors (Gabinius being one of them) and certain Roman moneylenders for contributing heavily to his support during his exile. Returned to Rome penniless, Rabirius Postumus accepted a loan from Caesar and bounced back. Acquitted because Cicero gave a defense as fact filled and damning as his prosecution of Gaius Verres had been years before, Rabirius Postumus was able now to devote himself to Caesar’s cause.
The breach between Cicero and Atticus had not lasted long, of course; they were back together, writing to each other whenever Atticus went away on business, huddled together whenever both of them happened to be in Rome or the same town.
“There’s a flurry of laws,” said Atticus, frowning; he was not an ardent Pompey supporter.
“Some of which none of us like,” said Cicero. “Even poor old Hortensius has started to fight back. And Bibulus and Cato, no surprise. The surprise was that they ever put up the suggestion that Magnus be elected consul without a colleague.”
“Perhaps,” said Atticus pensively, “they feared that Pompeius would take over the State without benefit of law. That’s basically what Sulla did.”
“Well, anyway,” said Cicero, brightening, “Caelius and I intend that some of the prime movers in all this should suffer. The moment Plancus Bursa and Pompeius Rufus are out of office as tribunes of the plebs, we intend to prosecute them for inciting violence.” He grimaced. “Since Magnus has put a new violence law on the tablets, we may as well use it.”
“I can name one man who isn’t pleased with our new consul without a colleague,” said Atticus.
“Caesar, you mean?” No Caesar lover, Cicero beamed. “Oh, it was prettily done! I kiss Magnus’s hands and feet for it!”
But Atticus, more rational about Caesar, shook his head. “It wasn’t prettily done at all,” he said sternly, “and it may be that one day we’ll suffer for it. If Pompeius intended that Caesar not be allowed to stand for the consulship in absentia, why did he have the ten tribunes of the plebs pass their law saying Caesar could? Now he legislates a fresh law which forbids any man to stand in absentia, including Caesar.”
“Huh! Caesar’s creatures screamed loud enough.”
Since Atticus had been one of those who screamed, he almost said something waspish, then bit his tongue. What was the use? Not all the advocates in history could persuade Cicero to see Caesar’s side of things. Not after Catilina. And, like most worthy country squires, once Cicero held a grudge, he held it. “Fine and good,” he said. “Why should they not? Everyone lobbies. But to say, ‘Ooops! I forgot!’ and tack a codicil onto his law which exempts Caesar, then neglect to have the codicil inscribed on bronze, is disgraceful. Sly and underhanded. I’d have liked the man better if he’d just shrugged and said, Too bad for Caesar; let him put up with it!’ Pompeius has a swollen head and too much power. Power which he isn’t using wisely. Because he’s never used power wisely, not since he marched down the Via Flaminia with three legions—a mere youth of twenty-two!—to help Sulla ride roughshod over Rome. Pompeius hasn’t changed. He’s simply grown older, fatter, and craftier.”
“Craft is necessary,” said Cicero defensively; he had always been Pompey’s man.
“Provided that the craft is aimed at men who’ll fall for it. Cicero, I don’t believe Caesar is the right man to choose as a target. Caesar has more craft in his little finger than Pompeius in his whole body, if for no other reason than that he employs it more rationally. But the trouble with Caesar is that he’s also the most direct man I know. Craft doesn’t become a habit, it’s only a necessity as far as Caesar is concerned. Pompeius tangles himself in a web when he practises to deceive. Yes, he manipulates its strands well. But it’s still a web. Caesar weaves a tapestry. I haven’t divined exactly what the pattern is yet, but I fear him. Not for the reasons you do. But I fear him!”
“Nonsense!” cried Cicero.
Atticus closed his eyes, sighed. “It looks as if Milo will come to trial. How are you going to reconcile your allegiances then?” he asked.
“That’s a way of saying that Magnus doesn’t want Milo to get off,” said Cicero uneasily.
“He doesn’t want Milo to get off.”
“I don’t think he cares one way or the other.”
“Cicero, grow up! Of course he cares! He put Milo up to it, you must see that!”
“I don’t see it.”
“Have it your own way. Will you defend Milo?”
“Not the Parthians and the Armenians combined could stop me!” Cicero declared.
*
The trial of Milo came
on at dead of winter, which by the calendar (even after the insertion of those extra twenty-two days) was the fourth day of April. The court president was a consular, Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, and the prosecutors were the two young Appius Claudiuses assisted by two patrician Valerii, Nepos and Leo, and old Herennius Balbus. The defense was Olympian: Hortensius, Marcus Claudius Marcellus (a plebeian Claudian, not of Clodius’s family), Marcus Calidius, Cato, Cicero and Faustus Sulla, who was Milo’s brother-in-law. Gaius Lucilius Hirrus hovered on Milo’s side, but as he was Pompey’s close cousin he could do no more than hover. And Brutus came forward to offer himself in an advisory capacity.
Pompey had thought very carefully about how to stage this critical exercise, which was being conducted under his own violence legislation; the charge would not be murder, as no one had seen the murder. There were some innovations, among them the fact that the jury was not chosen until the final day of the case; Pompey personally drew the lots for eighty-one men, only fifty-one of whom would actually serve. By the time the final fifty-one were appointed by the lots and elimination, it would be too late to offer them bribes. The witnesses were to be heard on three consecutive days, after which, on the fourth day, their depositions were to be taken. Each witness was to be cross-examined. At the end of the fourth day, the entire court and all eighty-one potential jurors were to watch their names being inscribed on the little wooden balls, which were then to be locked up in the vaults under the temple of Saturn. And at dawn on the fifth day the fifty-one names would be drawn, with both prosecution and defense entitled to object to fifteen of the names produced.
Of slave witnesses there were very few, and none for Milo. On that first day the prosecution’s chief witnesses were Atticus’s cousin Pomponius and Gaius Causinius Schola: Clodius’s friends who had been with him. Marcus Marcellus did all the cross-examining for the defense, and did it superbly well. When he began to work on Schola, some of Sextus Cloelius’s gang members began a racket which prevented the court’s hearing what was said. Pompey was not present in the court; he was on the far side of the lower Forum, hearing cases for the fiscus just outside the Treasury doors. Ahenobarbus sent a message across to Pompey, complaining that he could not conduct his court under these circumstances, and adjourned.
“Disgraceful!” said Cicero to Terentia when he went home. “I sincerely hope that Magnus does something about it.”
“I’m sure he will,” said Terentia absently; she had other things on her mind. “Tullia is determined, Marcus. She’s going to divorce Crassipes at once.”
“Oh, why does everything have to happen at once? I can’t even begin to think about starting negotiations with Nero until my case is finished! And it’s important that I do start negotiating—I’ve heard that Nero is thinking of marrying one of the Claudia Pulchra troop.”
“One thing at a time,” said Terentia with suspicious sweetness. “I don’t think Tullia will be persuaded into another marriage hard on the heels of this one. Nor do I think that she likes Nero.”
Cicero glared. “She’ll do as she’s told!” he snapped.
“She’ll do as she wants!” snarled Terentia, sweetness gone. “She’s not eighteen anymore, Cicero, she’s twenty-five. You can’t keep shoving her into loveless marriages tailored to suit your own social-climbing ambitions!”
“I,” said Cicero, marching off to his study dinnerless, “am going to write my speech in defense of Milo!”
Rarely, in fact, did the consummate professional advocate Cicero devote the kind of time and care to a speech in someone’s defense that he did to the speech he wrote for Milo. Even in early draft it ranked with his best. Necessary that it do so, as the other members of the defending team had agreed that they would donate all their time to Cicero. On him, therefore, rested the entire onus of speaking so well that the jury voted ABSOLVO. He toiled for some hours rather pleasurably, nibbling on a plate of olives, eggs and stuffed cucumbers, then retired to bed well satisfied with how the speech was shaping up.
And went off to the Forum the next morning to discover that Pompey had dealt efficiently—if extremely—with the situation. A ring of soldiers stood around the area of open space in the lower Forum where Ahenobarbus had set up his court, and beyond those soldiers were patrols of soldiers moving incessantly; of a gang member there was no sign. Wonderful! thought Cicero, delighted. The proceedings could be conducted in absolute peace and quiet. Watch Marcus Marcellus destroy Schola now!
If Marcus Marcellus did not quite destroy Schola, he certainly managed to twist his testimony into knots. For three days the witnesses gave their evidence and endured cross-examination; on the fourth day they swore their depositions, and the court watched eighty-one little wooden balls inscribed with eighty-one different names of senators or knights or tribuni aerarii. Including the name of Marcus Porcius Cato, working for the defense and possibly a juror as well.
Cicero’s speech was perfect; he had rarely done better work. For one thing, it was not often that his co-advocates so generously yielded their time to him. The prosecution would have two hours to sum up, then the defense three hours. A whole three hours all to himself! Oh, what a man could do with that! Cicero looked forward with immense enjoyment to an oratorical triumph.
Walking home for a consular of Cicero’s standing was always a parade. One’s clients were there in droves; two or three of the fellows who collected Ciceronian witticisms hovered with wax tablets ready in case he uttered one; admirers clustered, talked, speculated about what he would say on the morrow. While he himself laughed, held forth, tried to think of some mot which would set the two or three collectors scribbling madly. Not a good time for the passing of a private message. Yet as Cicero started, puffing a little, up the Vestal Steps, someone brushed past him and slipped a note into his hand. How odd! Though why he didn’t produce the note and read it then and there he didn’t quite know. A feeling.
Not until he was alone in his study did he open it, peruse it, sit down with wrinkled brow. It was from Pompey, and merely instructed him to present himself at Pompey’s villa on the Campus Martius that evening. Unaccompanied, please. His steward informed him that dinner was ready; he ate it in solitude, not sorry that Terentia was annoyed with him. What could Pompey want? And why so furtive?
The meal concluded, he started out for Pompey’s villa by the shortest route, which took him nowhere near the Forum; he trotted down the Steps of Cacus into the Forum Boarium, and thus out to the Circus Flaminius, behind which lay Pompey’s theater, hundred-pillared colonnade, senatorial meeting chamber, and villa. Which villa, he remembered with a smile, he had likened to a dinghy behind a yacht. Well, it was. Not small, just dwarfed.
Pompey was alone, greeted Cicero cheerfully, mixed him an excellent white wine with special spring water.
“All ready for tomorrow?” the Great Man asked, turned sideways on the couch so that he could see Cicero at its far end.
“Never readier, Magnus. A beautiful speech!”
“Guaranteed to get Milo off, eh?”
“It will go a long way toward doing that, yes.”
“I see.”
For a long moment Pompey said nothing at all, just stared ahead past Cicero’s shoulder to where the golden grapes given to him by Aristobulus the Jew stood on a console table. Then he turned his eyes to Cicero and looked at him intently.
“I don’t want that speech given,” said Pompey.
Cicero’s jaw dropped. “What?” he asked stupidly.
“I don’t want that speech given.”
“But—but—I have to! I’ve been given the whole three hours allocated to the defense’s summing-up!”
Pompey got up and walked to the great closed doors which connected his study to the peristyle garden; they were of cast bronze and superbly paneled with scenes depicting the battle between the Lapiths and Centaurs. Copied from the Parthenon, of course, only those were marble bas-reliefs.
He spoke to the left-hand door. “I don’t want that speech given, Marc
us,” he said for the third time.
“Why?”
“In case it does get Milo off,” said Pompey to a Centaur.
Cicero’s whole face was prickling; he felt sweat running down the back of his neck, became conscious that his hands were trembling. He licked his lips. “I would appreciate some sort of explanation, Magnus,” he said with as much dignity as he could muster, and clenching his hands to still their shaking.
“I would have thought,” said Pompey casually to the vein-engorged hindquarters of the Centaur, “that it was obvious. If Milo gets off, he’ll be a hero to at least half of Rome. That means he’ll be elected consul next year. And Milo doesn’t like me anymore. He’ll prosecute me the moment I lay down my imperium, which is in three years’ time. As a respected and vindicated consular, he’ll have clout. I don’t want to have to spend the rest of my life doing what Caesar will spend the rest of his life doing—dodging prosecution on maliciously manufactured charges of everything from treason to extortion. On the other hand, if Milo is convicted, he’ll go into an irreversible exile. I’ll be safe. And that’s why.”
“But—but—Magnus, I can’t!” Cicero gasped.
“You can, Cicero. What’s more, you will.”
Cicero’s heart was behaving strangely, there was a webby mist before his eyes; he sat with them closed and drew a series of deep, strong breaths. Though he was a timid man, he was not at heart a coward. Once a sense of unfairness and injury entered into him, he could develop a surprising steeliness. And that crept into him now as he opened his eyes and stared at Pompey’s podgy back, covered by a thin tunic. This was a warm room.
“Pompeius, you’re asking me to give of less than my best for a client,” he said. “I do understand why, truly. But I cannot consent to rigging the race as if we were driving chariots at the circus! Milo is my friend. I’ll do my best for him no matter what the outcome might be.”
Masters of Rome Boxset: First Man in Rome, the Grass Crown, Fortune's Favourites, Caesar's Women, Caesar Page 488
