SPQR II: The Catiline Conspiracy

by John Maddox Roberts

  “Am I to take it that you do not admire your stepfather’s friends?” I asked.

  “It’s sufficient that they admire him.”She shrugged, a difficult gesture when reclining, and one which she performed to perfection, causing those superb breasts to roll enticingly. “There are always only a few to lead, and a great many cattle.”

  “I trust I am not one of the cattle,” I said.

  She looked me over coolly. “That may be,” she said after she had surveyed me, presumably for bovine qualities.

  “Why are these impecunious young men so drawn to Lucius?” I asked ingenuously.

  “Who would not be? He’s like Sulla. He can raise men from obscurity to the highest rank. That is a great attraction to men who could never accomplish such a thing on their own.”

  “If you will forgive my observation,” I said, “he has thus far been in no position to raise anyone from obscurity.”

  “For the moment,” she said, holding out her cup for refilling. “But that was the way it was with Sulla, once. He fought the battles and he captured Jugurtha, but old Marius took the credit. But the men who supported Sulla did well out of it in the end.”

  That was shrewdly put. My own family had done well out of Sulla’s reign as dictator. They had thought a man of intelligent, calculated violence preferable to a crazed old loon like Gaius Marius. At least, I had always accepted the accounts of men like my father that that had been their reasoning. Perhaps they just wanted to be on the winning side.

  “So does Lucius plan to stand for Consul yet again?” I asked.

  “I think it’s something like that,” she said, her expression unreadable as she raised her winecup and the rim obscured her face.

  “Decius,” Catilina said. He lay on the couch opposite me so we were separated by several feet and he had to speak loudly. “What is your opinion on the consulship of Cicero? We have just been discussing him.”

  “He is the best orator in Rome,” I said. “Perhaps the best who ever lived. He writes wonderfully and his grasp of the niceties of law and legal practice is legendary.”

  Catilina snorted. “In other words, he governs like a lawyer. Is this what Rome needs? Where are the soldiers who made us great? When did Cicero ever win glory in the field?”

  “Antonius is no lawyer,” I reminded him. Catilina looked sour. He had sought a coitio with Antonius for the election of the previous year, but something had gone wrong and Antonius had thrown in with Cicero instead.

  “Yes, well, he’s no soldier either, and I predict the Macedonians will have a rough time of it when he gets there next year.”Catilina lacked military distinction himself but, like most such men, he conceived of himself as a glorious general. His mediocre record he attributed to lack of opportunity.

  “I confess I was surprised that Cicero turned down the proconsular governorship of Macedonia,” I said, giving him an opening.

  He pounced. “It’s because Cicero is a coward! He knows that it will mean fighting and he has no stomach for it. He would rather stay here in Rome and be a nuisance, troubling better men with his piddling legal tricks.”

  “If his last accusations against you are true,” I said, “he hasn’t been very safe here in Rome either.”

  Catilina laughed uproariously and, I think, honestly. “He sees plots against his life everywhere. That is simply the way it is with cowards. Believe me, Decius”—now he looked at me very seriously and directly—”if I were to commit myself to desperate action, I would not confine myself to murdering the likes of Marcus Tullius Cicero.”He pronounced the name as if it were some rare disease.

  “I doubt our Decius has the nerve for truly desperate action,” said Cethegus, with precisely the same look and intonation as a ten-year-old bully. He was a dark man, with a saturnine face and a mouth that turned down at the corners. He was an easy man to hate.

  “I do suffer from an excess of intelligence,” I told him. “Only the truly stupid hazard their lives and fortunes without a chance of victory.”

  “Men like you can afford to be patient,” Cethegus said, contemptuously. “Not all of us have illustrious families to support us and push our careers.”Catilina was watching us both carefully. For some reason he was letting his flunky have his head.

  “Isn’t the curule Aedile Lentulus Spinther a close kinsman of yours?” I asked.

  “And what does that amount to?” he said hastily, as if it were a disgrace to be related to a high official.

  “I think I know what Decius means,” Laeca said. I had the distinct impression that some sort of signal had passed between him and Catilina, telling him to take my part. “There are so many Caecilii Metelli that one of many young men, just beginning public life, does not sit high in family councils, am I right, Decius?”

  I forced a good malcontent’s scowl. “I won’t deny it.”

  “And,” Laeca continued, “I daresay that the expenses of your office have been painful. When I was quaestor, it seemed as if the quaestores of the past decade had neglected the highways. I had to go deeply into debt to see to their paving.”He was a fat man, who spoke smoothly and agreeably.

  “How about it, Decius?” Catilina asked. “Have the expenses of the office sent you to the moneylenders?”

  I saw an opportunity. “Expenses! Do you think it is just a matter of paving the roads? No longer!” I tried to act slightly drunk, which, I swear, I was not. “Next I must stand for aedile. Since Caesar’s games two years ago, the people expect such entertainment from the aediles. That means I must borrow now to support that office. A few years ago, people thought that twenty pairs of gladiators was a fine show. Caesar has taught them to expect five hundred pairs at a single set of games! Not to mention the lions and bears and aurochs and so forth.”

  “Very true,” Laeca said. “Not just gladiators, but Cam-panian gladiators, from the best schools. Not just a public banquet after the games, but fresh meat and fish and foreign fruits for every last bricklayer in Rome. Who can compete with that sort of profligacy?” His fat face creased in a rueful, mock-sympathetic smile. “But surely your family will defray some of your expenses?”

  “They would for some of us,” I said, frowning. “My father has been helpful, but we’re not among the really rich Metelli, and none of the Metelli have wealth like Crassus or Lucullus. We are spread too thin for wealth to concentrate.”This last made a very neat wordplay in the Latin still in use at the time, and was applauded. The ladies applauded with special warmth, and it occurred to me that Fulvia and Sem-pronia had said nothing, a very suspicious circumstance. It was clear that Catilina was directing this conversation, and had forbidden them to speak until he was satisfied about something.

  “And have you been so fortunate as to find financial backers?” Laeca asked solicitously.

  “One is never sufficient,” I said a little stiffly. “Unless you have Crassus behind you.”

  “Crassus has recently forged ties with your family,” Catilina pointed out.

  “As I have said, there are a great many Metelli, and we are not held in equal esteem by Crassus, who considers me a personal enemy.”In this age of the First Citizen, people may have forgotten how great a man Crassus was in those days. Suffice it to say that for a mere quaestor to think that Crassus took enough notice of him to consider the wretch a personal enemy was the height of presumption. It was exactly the sort of thing men like these would find endearing.

  “And you can’t very well go to Pompey,” Laeca said, “if the rumors of a few years ago are true. He had you exiled.”

  “I found it expedient to leave the city for a year or two,” I said cryptically. What was true of Crassus was doubly true of Pompey. In truth, I was never more than a nuisance to Pompey. At this time, he might have had difficulty remembering me. He had more important things on his mind.

  “Your family,” Laeca said, “while famed for moderation, generally oppose the ambitions of Pompey. Yet your cousin, Metellus Nepos, is Pompey’s faithful legate. He has been electe
d Tribune of the plebs for next year and will be pushing legislation to further Pompey’s ambitions.”

  “A wise family always keeps a few members in every camp,” I said. “That way, you don’t lose everything if you’ve backed the wrong side. And Nepos will accomplish nothing as Tribune, because Cato will be his colleague and Cato will block every piece of pro-Pompey legislation he introduces. Cato stood for the tribunate just to oppose Nepos.”

  “There is always Lucullus,” Cethegus said, making it sound sarcastic. Everything he said sounded sarcastic.

  “Lucullus and I have never been at odds,” I said, “but I would not approach him. He is married to one of the sisters of Clodius, and Clodius hates me more than Pompey and Crassus combined.”

  “You have a rare knack for making enemies,” Catilina said, laughing. Taking their cue, the others laughed as well. Aurelia didn’t. “Well, any man Clodius hates is a friend of mine. So you’ve had to go to the professional moneylenders, then?”

  “Why all this curiosity about my financial affairs?” I asked.

  “Every man with ambition who was not born rich is in debt by definition,” Catilina said, “but any man indebted to one of the three we mentioned is in that man’s purse and cannot be trusted.”

  “Trusted?” I said. “Trusted in what fashion?”

  “We are all ambitious men,” Catilina said quietly, “and we know who stands between us and the power we are qualified to wield, the honors we deserve. They sequester to themselves every high office and command while keeping better men crushed beneath a burden of debt. Surely you don’t think that it is some form of accident that for the last twenty years the expenses of holding office have risen so tremendously?” His face was growing redder. “Is it any coincidence that we are pushed into the grasp of the money lenders? How did it come about that highborn men, whose families have produced Rome’s Consuls and generals for centuries, are beholden to baseborn cash-breeders our ancestors would not have considered worthy to be spat upon?”

  “Freedmen, most of them,” Cethegus said, “men who should have stayed slaves, even if they pretend to be citizens and equites.”

  “It is convenient for our higher officeholders,” I allowed.

  “It’s more than convenient,” Catilina insisted. “It is the result of plotting by a tiny clique of powerful men who will never willingly relinquish power. Who among us can live with such infamy and still call himself a man?” He was getting warmed up now, and the others were hanging on every word. I glanced at Aurelia and she was looking at him with adoration, but I detected something else in her expression. Was it mockery?

  “And now,” Catilina went on, “what sort of man assumes the leadership of Rome? Marcus Tullius Cicero! A lawyer! A man who has no qualification for office save a facility for bending words to his will. And there are more just like him. Such men could never bring themselves to make the sort of hard, quick, ruthless decisions a real Consul must make. They believe only in words, not deeds.”

  “So what sort of man does Rome need?” I asked him.

  “A man like Sulla,” Catilina said, surprising me. “Sulla took power when all had fallen into chaos. He sought neither the fawning favor of the mob nor the patronage of the aristocrats. He purged the Senate, proscribed enemies of the state, reformed the courts, gave us a new constitution and then, when he was done, he dismissed his lictors and walked from the Forum a private citizen, to retire to his country house and write his memoirs. That is the sort of man Rome needs.”

  There was much in what he said, but Catilina had left out a few details for rhetorical effect. For instance, that Sulla had been the cause as well as the queller of political chaos. Also, he could well afford to retire after his dictatorship, since he had killed or exiled all his enemies and left behind him his own partisans, firmly in power. There was no doubt of the identity of this putative new Sulla. I stared frowningly into my winecup, as if pondering, finally coming to a momentous decision.

  “I think,” I said solemnly, “that I could follow such a man. Twenty years ago, the Metelli were among the foremost supporters of Sulla. Why should I be less bold than they?”

  “Why, indeed,” Catilina said. He seemed to be satisfied, for now the women began to join the conversation. There was no more said of power or of cabals preventing worthy men from gaining office. I paid much attention to Aurelia, who seemed to be warming to me.

  As the wine flowed, the dice and knucklebones came out and we began to gamble. I joined in, although I ordinarily confine my betting to races or fights, where I flatter myself that I have some skill in predicting the outcome. I have little taste for wagering on pure chance.

  Although I did not lose heavily, 1 was a bit alarmed to see the sums the others were betting. For self-proclaimed poor men they seemed inordinately well furnished with cash. Although they all shouted loud, traditional curses when they lost, none of them seemed overly upset.

  “Are you a lucky man?” Aurelia asked as the dice cup made its way back around to me.

  “I wouldn’t be alive if I weren’t,” 1 said. “But when it comes to dice and knucklebones, I have never been lucky.”

  “Let me lend you some luck,” she whispered as I took the cup. She leaned toward me, as if watching the play over my shoulder, and I felt one prodigious breast pressing into my back. Through the cloth of my tunic and her gown, I could feel the hardness of her nipple. Almost as intimate was the softness of her breath on my ear. A surge of lust flooded me and I knew that it would be some time before I would be able to stand up without making a raucous spectacle of myself. To cover my discomfiture, I shook the leather cup with great vigor and smacked it down loudly upon the table, then jerked it back.

  “Venus!” Aurelia breathed, making it sound almost like a prayer. Indeed, it was venus, the highest score. Each of the knucklebones showed a different surface.

  “It will take some luck to match that,” Catilina said, taking the cup. “But I have always been a lucky gambler.”He shook the cup and slammed it down. He jerked the cup back and cursed, loudly and sincerely. I did not think it was because of the money he had lost. The knucklebones each showed the same surface, and it was the surface given the value of one. It was the lowest score, canicula, the little dog.

  5

  OVER THE NEXT WEEK, THERE were four more murders. All the victims were equites. Even for Rome, this was something unusual and the city was abuzz. One was bludgeoned, one had his throat cut, one was stabbed and the fourth was found floating in the Tiber, drowned. This last may have been accidental, but after five clear murders, nobody was ready to believe that.

  The usual wild ideas made the rounds. Soothsayers offered murky revelations. But the city was not really alarmed. In fact, the general attitude was one of quiet satisfaction. The equites were not popular. They lacked the prestige of the nobiles and the senatorial class and they did not have the numbers of the commons. Too many people were in debt to them. They had wealth and comfort and thus were envied. There was still much hard feeling over the Praetor Otho’s

  infamous action in reserving for the equites the fourteen rows of theater seats behind those traditionally reserved for the Senators and the Vestals. Overall, the general feeling in the city was that a few murders were just what that upstart class needed.

  One of the murdered men, named Decimus Flavius, was a director of the Red faction in the circus. I decided to investigate him first, for no better reason than that the Caecilii were traditionally members of the Red faction, although the rest of the Metelli were Whites. Both of these factions were dwindling as the Blues and Greens came to dominate the races. The Greens had become the faction of the common man, while the Blues were the faction of the aristocratic op-timates, their clients and supporters. Most of the equites were also Blues. These two factions would occupy facing sections of the circus and engage in great shouting matches before the races. Riots were still rare at that time, though.

  The logical place to find out about Flavius was the Circus
Maximus, and so on the morning after the murder was reported I made my way down from the Forum to the ancient Valley of Murcia between the Aventine and Palatine hills. Here was where Tarquin the Old had laid out Rome’s racecourse when the city was still little more than a cluster of villages atop the seven hills. The place was so ancient that nobody could remember why its Temple of Consus was underground.

  The Circus Maximus was the largest structure in Rome, a huge building complex housing everything necessary for getting four chariots, each with four horses and a charioteer, onto the sand in time for the race. This is not as simple as one might think. Horses were brought from as far away as Spain, Africa and Antioch. They were trained for a minimum of three years. The charioteers began their training in childhood and losses were high, so there had to be a steady supply of them. Chariots were made as light as possible to make them faster, so they had to be replaced constantly. Charioteers and horses needed a special diet. There were slaves to care for the chariots and harness, slaves to care for the charioteers, and immense numbers of slaves to care for the horses, cleaning out their stalls, seeing to their exercise, grooming them and doctoring them. There were even slaves who did nothing but talk to the horses to keep them contented and run alongside them on the way to the races, cheering them and raising their spirits.

  Wherever Rome went, the circus went, and the factions maintained headquarters wherever there was a circus. It was not unusual for a single faction to maintain a stud of eight or ten thousand stallions to keep a single, small province supplied. In short, the circus was the largest institution in our empire. And the Circus Maximus was the largest such building in the world.

  Its lowest courses of seats were of stone, but the rest of the building was wooden. When filled to capacity with more than 200,000 spectators, the timber superstructure emitted the most alarming squeaks and groans, although it had never collapsed. There was always talk of building a permanent structure of stone, but no steps had been made in that direction. I think the populace just liked the rickety old place, even if it was the most significant fire hazard in the city. The arches beneath the stands constituted a minor forum, with shops and stalls selling everything from sausages to the services of inexpensive prostitutes. It was said in Rome that, should anything be stolen from you, all that you had to do was loiter around the Circus Maximus for a while and someone would offer to sell it to you. The citizenry had never conceived quite as much affection for the Circus Flaminius, which lay outside the old city walls. It was not as large and was only a little more than 150 years old.