SPQR II: The Catiline Conspiracy

by John Maddox Roberts

  For two days after the family gathering I fretted thus, having no new word from Catilina and no idea of how to proceed on my own. Then, as I left the temple and made my way to the baths, Valgius accosted me, being elaborately casual about it, as if anyone were paying the slightest attention.

  “We meet tonight at the house of Laeca,” he said, almost hissing the words. “Be there as soon as it is dark. The time is near. Good job on Asklepiodes, by the way.”He spoke as one craftsman to another.

  At last. Surely, Catilina had to move soon, if this conspiracy were to be anything but talk. And there had already been too many murders for these men to confine themselves to mere words. I proceeded to the baths as if nothing was amiss. In fact, I took my time and luxuriated in the best bathhouse in Rome, using the cold, tepid and hot pools followed by the steam room, then back into the cold pool and finishing off on the masseur’s table. I knew that it might be a very long time before I should be able to enjoy this homely, tranquil pleasure again.

  At home I made out my will, something I used to do frequently in times of disorder, uncertainty and stress. Having made disposition of my negligible property, I armed myself and went out into the darkening streets. It is one of the most annoying aspects of conspiracy that it compels one to blunder about the streets at night. I got lost several times trying to find the house of Laeca, and it is always embarrassing to have to pound on doors and ask directions.

  I found the house about an hour after sunset. It was Thorius who let me in. Apparently, the slaves had been confined for the duration of the meeting. That seemed to be about the only elementary precaution these people bothered with. Inside, about fifteen men were crowded into the atrium. All wore strained looks, as if the seriousness of what they were doing had at last become real to them. They spoke among themselves in tense mutters, as if each had a strangling hand at his throat. All fell silent when Catilina appeared from the rear of the house.

  “My friends!” he began. “Comrades! Fellow patriots! The time has come for us to act!” His mood was one of barely suppressed hilarity. He was trying to speak past a grin that split his face like a sword-cut. His excitement put a quaver into his voice and I could see, appallingly, how much time, hatred, disappointment and bitterness had gone into the plan that was at last to bear fruit. I had the horrifying feeling that he was about to break into a dance.

  “Today,” Catilina declared, “I have sent word to my lieutenant Gaius Manlius in Fiesole. He is to call his men together and raise the rebellion immediately.”The assembled men gave a hoarse cheer.

  “The same message,” he said when they were quiet, “has gone to Nobilior in Bruttium.”A more restrained cheer greeted this announcement. The others probably shared my opinion of the people of Bruttium. “When word reaches Rome that there is insurrection in Bruttium and Etruria, there will be panic in the Senate. That”—he shouted the word—”will be the time for us to rise here in the city. We will kill, and burn, and rouse the people against their oppressors, the moneylenders and the decadent aristocrats who have sequestered the high offices of state to themselves. We shall sweep over Rome like a cleansing fire, and restore the Republic to its ancient purity!” This, from the man who proposed to destroy the Republic utterly.

  And something rang terribly false in Catilina’s rant. His near-hysterical elation was desperate in its joy. Before, his confidence, however unjustified, had been real. Now it was forced. What could have happened? Had he suffered a sudden attack of reality? I doubted it.

  “As soon as we have shown our hand here in the city,” Catilina went on, “then I shall ride out to join our troops in the field. For it will be through fighting outside the walls that Rome shall be won. I will take with me those men who wish to win glory on the field of battle, while others remain here, to hold the city for me, a post equally honorable.”I saw all around me men who wore a look of great relief. Street fighting was something they knew, and they had no stomach for hazarding their lives on an open battlefield.

  Catilina seemed to be gaining confidence, as if it was something he absorbed from the worshipful devotion of his followers. He began to point out individuals and assign them their duties.

  “Valgius, Thorius, have your bands of fire-raisers ready. Cethegus, be sure that the weaponry is in good order to be handed out to our supporters here in the city. Junius, put your street spies on alert.”Then he turned toward me. “Me-tellus …”

  “Yes, Consul?” I said, all my innards quaking.

  “Remain here for a while after the others have left. I have duties for you to attend to.”

  “As my Consul commands!” I said dutifully. I felt a slight relief. Surely, if he had detected my true nature, he would have taken that moment to have his followers kill me.

  “This is a momentous day in the fortunes of the Republic,” Catilina proclaimed. “As momentous as that day almost seven centuries ago when we cast out the Tarquins, foreigners who had presumed to be kings of the Romans!” More cheering. “In years to come, whenever Roman school children are asked by their schoolmasters, ‘When was the Republic restored?’ they will answer, ‘Upon the night that the supporters of the Consul Catilina met at the house of Laeca.’ “ At this the cheering and applause were deafening. This lust for the adulation of unborn generations of schoolboys has always eluded me, but it was very real to the men gathered in that atrium.

  “Go, then!” Catilina cried. “Go to your stations of action. Now is not the time for talk, but for action. Do your duty now, by your rightful Consul, and future generations will bless and exalt your names. Monuments to the men present here this night will grace the Forum, for all to admire, and your names shall be as the names of our founding fathers.”A hoarse and ragged cheer greeted this, as if even this group could not believe that they would ever enjoy such esteem.

  When they were gone, I stood in the suddenly large room, fingering my dagger hilt and caestus.

  After a few minutes, Catilina returned to the room alone. He carried a scroll of papyrus. This he unrolled on a table, weighting its corners. He dipped a reed pen in a pot of ink and turned to me.

  “Decius, I want you to sign this. It’s a message to the Gauls, committing ourselves to the rebellion and promising to uphold their demands, restore their liberties and cancel their debts.”

  I looked at the papyrus. They had actually taken the bait. “Lucius, isn’t it unwise to commit something like this to writing?” Quickly, I looked over the document, which was as Catilina had described it. Foremost among the names, I saw the Praetor Publius Lentulus Sura, but none of the other high-ranking men whose names the conspirators had been so free with. Crassus, Hortalus, Lucullus and Caesar were conspicuously absent.

  “The war has begun, Decius,” Catilina said. “We are all as good as declared public enemies now. Our names on a paper will mean nothing … Unless you feel you have some reason for refusing to sign.”

  “Not at all,” I said, snatching up the reed pen and signing my name. I carefully used my title and my formal name, signing as Quaestor Decius Caecilius son of Decius grandson of Lucius great-grandson of Lucius Metellus. I wanted to ensure that no one could alter my name to implicate my father. Catilina glanced at my signature and made a satisfied sound. He scattered sand on the wet ink and shook it off, then rerolled the scroll.

  “Lucius,” I said, “you must send Orestilla and Aurelia away to someplace safe until this is over.”He just looked at me absently, as if he had his mind on more important things.

  “Orestilla?” he said, coming back from wherever his mind had wandered. “I’ve sent them both to a house in the country. They’ll be safe until I can send for them.”

  “What will you do now?” I asked, relieved.

  “I intend to watch the excitement,” he said, grinning. Now he sounded like the old Catilina. Whatever had unnerved him, he was shaking it off. “I will make some public speeches, pointing out the advantages of a change in government. Never fear, there will be plenty of popular support
for me when the swords are drawn.”This was the first I heard that he counted on much popular support.

  I thought of this as I walked home that night. It was not only dark but chill, rainy and suitably miserable. As I splashed through puddles and dodged disgruntled dogs, I reflected on the fickleness of the Roman electorate. Although Rome and the empire as a whole were richer than ever, the body of poor citizens was also unprecedentedly great. There were many crushed by debt, with little hope of relief. The labor market was flooded with cheap slaves and even skilled craftsmen could only manage a living wage. The situation was worse in some rural areas, where slave-worked latifundia had crowded out and impoverished the free farmers, and the people had no access to a public dole.

  Under such circumstances, many might grasp at a chance for a better condition. The rabble could easily be swayed by demagogues and opportunists, never thinking far enough ahead to see what they were being led into.

  And there was the simple fact of boredom. Times had been quiet, Rome was victorious, life was a pallid round of work, games, public holidays, religious festivals and sacrifices. In a word: dull. There were many, and not just among the urban poor, who missed the bad old days, when the mobs and private armies of Marius and Cinna, of Sulla and all the others had fought in the streets, when a common city-dweller might kill a Senator with impunity, when the houses of the rich were sacked and torched in the name of one tyrannical warlord or other. They had been heady times until their great harvest of misery brought people to their senses.

  But the temptation was always there, to revel in the swinishness of civil rapine and butchery, the mob glutting itself on blood and loot, heedless of the hangover that follows every great debauch. And what did they care? Civic participation in government had become little more than a hollow shell, now that a professional army did all the fighting and a few dozen families supplied most of the statesmen and slaves did most of the work. What did the people care whether a Cicero or a Catilina lorded it over them? Even a temporary respite from their misery would be desirable. That, and a little excitement.

  Cato opened my door with his usual sour looks and words. “Late again. Not only that, but this woman came calling for you this evening, and she insisted on waiting. She’s in the atrium.’’’’

  Puzzled and dripping, I went in. A heavily veiled woman rose at my entrance. No quantity of veils could hide that shape. “Aurelia!” I gasped.

  She threw back the veils that covered her face. I would have embraced her but Cato made a scandalized sound. “Go to bed, Cato,” I ordered. Grumbling, he left the theatrium. Then I could hear his voice and his wife’s coming from their quarters.

  “Decius,” Aurelia said, “don’t you think you should dry yourself?”

  I looked down at myself. Every fiber I wore dripped water onto my tiled floor. More water dripped from my hair. My dagger, I decided, was probably getting rusty.

  “I think there are some towels in my bedroom,” I said. “Wait here.”

  I went to my room and stripped off my clothing, snatched up a towel and began drying myself vigorously. As I rubbed at my hair I discovered that there was an extra pair of hands working the towel.

  “Do you mind if I help?” Aurelia asked.

  “Your impatience is flattering,” I told her. I turned and saw that she had already loosened her clothing. I needed only a few moments to finish the task, then she wore only her pearls. I was baffled by her presence there on that particular night, but my need for her drove all questions from my mind. She covered my lips with hers and we sank onto my narrow, bachelor’s bed. Our ingenuity made up for the inadequacy of the furniture and the oil in my lamp was as exhausted as I was before I had breath to spare for questions.

  “Catilina said that you and your mother were safe in the country,” I said. I lay on my back and she lay half-across me, her cheek and both hands on my chest.

  “I came back,” she said. “I could not stay away from you.”

  As deeply as I wished to believe this, I could not but note that she had successfully stayed away from me for quite a while. Had she been sent to spy on me? To make sure that I reported to no one tonight? But Catilina and his followers acted with such desperate recklessness that such a precaution seemed alien to them.

  “The city is too dangerous for you now,” I insisted. “How much do you know of your stepfather’s plans?”

  She stretched. “Enough to know that he will soon be the ruler of Rome. What of it?”

  “Within a few days he will be declared a public enemy by the Senate,” I said. “When that happens, no member of his family will be safe. There will be blood in the streets again, Aurelia.”

  She stifled a yawn. “There is always blood in the streets. Usually it’s common blood. A little noble blood is about to flow. Is that something to get excited about?”

  “It is if the blood is yours,” I said, then added “or mine.”

  “You mean you aren’t anxious to throw your life away for your new Consul?” She snuggled closer against me and slid a leg over my hip.

  “The whole idea behind a coup,” I told her, “is to get someone else to sacrifice himself for your own advantage. That’s what we are all in this for, after all. I could die heroically serving in some foreign war, without risking disgrace. I joined your stepfather’s cause in order to reach high office without having to wait for fifty elder Metellans to die first.”

  “That’s my Decius,” she said. “The others are fools, just cattle to be sacrificed, but you know what this rebellion is truly about. Of all my stepfather’s followers, only you have real intelligence.”

  “Followers are there to be used,” I said. “But what of the men even Catilina must defer to?” Even here I could not stop probing for information. With my left hand I stroked her spine, but this was not merely a caress. I was feeling for the involuntary tension that would precede a lie.

  “What do you mean?” she asked sleepily.

  “He told me that Crassus supported him.”It was a wild try, but I was desperate for any sort of confirmation of my suspicions.

  “He told you that?” she said, waking up. “Then you truly stand high in his estimation. I thought he had kept that secret from his closest companions.”

  It was true. I had it at last but not, as Cicero demanded it, in writing. And there was admiration in her voice. I was an even more important man than she had thought. I knew about Crassus.

  She yawned again. “He told you about meeting with Crassus last night?”

  “No,” I said, my scalp tingling. “The others were present.”

  “Crassus came to my mother’s house last night, after dark. They went into one of the rooms and closed the door. It sounded like they were arguing.”Her voice drifted off.

  So another knucklebone had taken an unexpected hop on the game board. Had Crassus reneged, after leading Catilina on? That would explain the shaken confidence Catilina had shown. If so, why? Had Crassus given up on the plot as misconceived or incompetently implemented? Or had he never been serious about his support in the first place? As I pondered it, I decided that this was the most likely explanation.

  With Pompey in the East and Lucullus in retirement, with at least one of the praetores involved in the conspiracy, Crassus was the most distinguished general left near the Capitol, with many veterans ready to come at his call and rally to the eagles. He expected that the Senate, in a panic, would call upon him to crush the rebellion, perhaps even name him Dictator for the duration of the emergency.

  But Cicero had already taken steps to prevent that. He might not take direct action to impeach Crassus, but he would make sure that the military command against Catilina was spread among as many commanders as possible. And in this he was undoubtedly wise and prudent. The enemy here would be no Pyrrhus, Hannibal, Jugurtha or Mithridates, nor even a Spartacus. No unified command would be necessary against what was essentially several packs of bandits raising insurrection in various parts of Italy.

  All of this
was a fascinating puzzle to work out, but it was not my main concern. What was happening in Rome, all over Italy and in far-flung parts of the empire that night was a splendid example of the chicanery, treachery, double-dealing and conspiracy that had become the lifeblood of Roman politics. And very little of it was my concern, now that I had notified Cicero of my findings.

  What had concerned me from the beginning had been the murders. I do not like murders in my city, especially those involving peaceable citizens. I now had all but one accounted for. They were creditors murdered as part of an initiation rite by Catilina’s followers.

  The one that did not fit the pattern was the murder of Decimus Flavius, at the Circus. He was not a moneylender and he had died in a strange place, killed with an uncommon weapon. I had a question to ask, and it was one I had wanted to avoid since seeing her at the Circus that morning. Gently, I shook Aurelia to wakefulness, keeping my fingers against her spine.

  “Aurelia, wake up.”

  She blinked. “What?”

  “I need to know something. Were you with Valgius and Thorius when they killed Decimus Flavius?” My fingertips felt the tension that crawled along her spine.

  “No. Why do you ask, anyway? He was just another eques.”She came wide awake with indignation. “Was his death any worse than that of the Greek physician you killed?”

  “When I encountered the three of you that morning,” I said, “you were not just passing by. You were actually entering that tunnel when I ran into the bearded twins.”

  “And what does that signify?” she asked, pouting.

  I stared at my ceiling, barely visible in the flickering lamplight. “It made no sense at first, but then I learned more of what Catilina planned. You’ve been assigned to supervise those two, haven’t you?”