A Pillar of Iron

by Taylor Caldwell

  “I am sure that you have ranted so to your freedmen and malefactors and malcontents and old, disgruntled veterans,” said Caesar with irony.

  Catilina laughed and his white teeth blazed in his face. “No, but should I tell them they would be joyful to die that Rome might be cured of their pestilence!”

  He rose and put his fur cloak over his stately shoulders and he smiled down at Caesar. “Tomorrow, my noble advocate, you will defend me, for do you not love me, and are we not blood brothers through our oath, and are we not both patricians?”

  After he was gone Caesar hastily summoned a slave and sent a message to Cicero that Catilina would appear the next day at the Temple of Concord. He sent similar messages to Crassus and the others. Then he sat until the blue dawn appeared at his windows and considered what he must do.

  He must die, thought Marcus Tullius Cicero, on his way to the Temple of Concord in the Forum. The time for prudence, for temperance, has gone. He must die and his followers with him. There is no other way to save Rome—if indeed Rome can now be saved at all. Oh, why did I delay! I had the murderer in my hand and let him escape. Indeed, I have no valor; I am a temporizer; I am a lawyer; I hate violence and bloody deeds and death; I love law. But sometimes all these are pusillanimous when your country is in desperate danger. Then you must strike or watch your prudence destroy what you have striven to save.

  The Senate was meeting in the Temple to consider the fate of Catilina’s lieutenants whom Cicero had arrested. By now they must know that Catilina himself would be present. Rumor always ran like lightning in Rome, from the palaces on the Palatine to the gutters of the Trans-Tiber. So Cicero, accompanied by his brother and the latter’s legion, was not surprised to find the Forum filled again with a huge mob in spite of the wintry snow and the bitter wind that blew from the Campagna. The first sun was just striking the highest red roofs on the hills though the lower city still fumed with mist and dimness.

  I am tired, thought Marcus. I am weary unto death. I have struggled for a whole lifetime for my country, and it is now as if I have only just joined the battle. Will it never cease? No, said the sober blood of his ancestors in his veins. It will never cease so long as some men are ambitious and many men are slaves in their spirits.

  The Senate was already awaiting him, to hear his fourth oration against Catilina and the enemies of Rome. He wore, again, his white woolen toga and his staff of office, but all noted the marks of strain on his pale face and that, even in these past few weeks, his hair had grown grayer and that his wonderful eyes were sunken. But his step was firm and slow as he stood in the middle of the Temple, after he had first made obeisance at the altar and had lit a votive light. (He had watched the fugitive light waver, as if it were deciding his fate, and then it had flared into brilliance and he bowed again and returned to the center of the Temple.)

  He stood in silence, thinking. The awful picture was confused, swampish and full of stench to him and flitting shadows. Could the people be less confused than himself? He must make the darkness more clear to them as he must make it for himself, for otherwise all was lost. He lifted his eyes and searched in the crowded and smoky gloom for Catilina. The sun had gone behind the clouds; only candlelight and torches dimly illuminated the winter dusk. Then one large candle flared up and Cicero saw Catilina, grand as before, in his white fur coat and his jewels and with his beautiful, idle smile. He was seated near the door of the Temple, as if he had only strolled negligently within to hear an unimportant priest recite his dull office. All at once Cicero remembered his childhood and the tales Noë ben Joel had told him of the terrible adversary of man—Satan, he who was an archangel of death and terror and destruction, but an archangel still full of awesome beauty and ghastly splendor.

  Cicero began to speak calmly and slowly, but in a voice like an echoing trumpet. He addressed the Senators, fixing them with his strongly glowing eyes.

  “My lords, we are here today to discuss the fate of the lieutenants of Lucius Sergius Catilina, the patrician and the soldier and the conspirator against the peace and freedom of our country. And I am here as the advocate of Rome, as often I appeared as the advocate of many before, who were in the most frightful of dangers—death.

  “I perceive, my lords, that the faces and the eyes of all present are turned toward me. I perceive that you are anxious not only as to the danger to yourselves and the country, supposing that danger to be averted, but even to the personal danger to me.” Cicero smiled sadly, raised his hands and dropped them. “What is danger to me, when my country’s fate is far more important?

  “Pleasant to me indeed in the midst of misfortunes, and gratifying in the midst of sorrow, is this exhibition of your good will. But, by the love of heaven, cast that good will aside, forget my own safety and think only of yourselves, your children and Rome! I am Consul of Rome, my lords, for whom neither the Forum in which all justice is centered nor the Campus, which is hallowed by the auspices of the consular elections, nor the Senate, which is the asylum of the world, nor the home, which is the universal sanctuary, nor the bed which is dedicated to rest, no, nor even this honored seat of office, has ever been free from peril of death and from secret treason.

  “I have held my peace as too much; I have patiently endured much. I have conceded much; I have remedied much with a certain amount of suffering to myself—though the reason for alarm was yours. At the present moment, if it was the will of heaven that the crowning work of my Consulship should be the preservation of you and the Roman people from a most cruel massacre, of your wives and children and the Vestal Virgins from a most grievous persecution, of the preservation of God in our nation, against those who would exile Him, of the temples and shrines and this most fair fatherland of us all from the most hideous flames, of the whole of Italy from war and devastation, let me now confront whatever terrors fortune has in store for me alone!”

  He flung out his arms and exposed his throat as if offering himself as a sacrifice for Rome, as if offering himself for her safety and redemption. It was a most sincere and a most moving gesture, and the Senators stirred on their chairs. But Catilina laughed openly if without making a sound. His luminous eyes searched the rows of the Senators, and he appeared to be satisfied. He folded his brown arms over his breast and fixed his derisive gaze on Cicero.

  Cicero continued in his ardent voice: “Lords, take thought for yourselves, provide for your fatherland, preserve yourselves, your wives, your children, and your properties, defend the name and existence of the Roman people! Strain every nerve for the preservation of the State, look in every quarter for the storms which will burst upon you if you do not see them in time. We have seized the lieutenants of Catilina—who profanes the name of Rome by his very presence among us today—these men who have remained behind in Rome to burn down the city, to massacre you all, and to welcome Catilina in triumph. They are inciting the slave population, the dark and bloody underground of criminals and the perverse in the city, the disaffected, the traitors, in Catilina’s behalf. In short, they have formed the design that by the murder of us all no single man shall be left even to weep for the name of the Roman people and to lament the downfall of this great nation. All these facts have been reported by the informers, confessed by the accused, themselves, and adjudged true by this august body of the Senate. You have already declared them guilty!”

  Some of the Senators looked at Crassus who pursed his lips with solemn righteousness and nodded. Few noticed that Julius Caesar sat frowning and in a state of abstraction.

  Cicero raised his arm and pointed at Catilina and cried out, “Behold the terror of Rome, the traitor, the murderer, the evil spirit who has designed our doom! Look upon his face and see all crime branded upon it! I know him well, lords. I have watched him for many years. I knew his plots, and sensed them.

  “I saw long ago that great recklessness was rife in this state, and that some new agitation was proceeding, and that some mischief was brewing. But even I, who know Catilina so well, never ful
ly imagined that Roman citizens were engaged in a conspiracy so vast and so destructive as this. At the present moment, whatever the matter is, in whatever direction your feelings and your sentiments incline, you must come to a decision before sunset. You see how serious an affair has been brought to your notice; if you think that only a few men are implicated in it, you are gravely mistaken. The seeds of this evil conspiracy have been carried further than you think; the contagion has not only spread through Italy but it has crossed the Alps and has already infected many of the provinces in its insidious progress.”

  Now Cicero raised his voice until it echoed against the walls of the Temple, and his whole slender body shook with indignant passion and his eyes shone with stern anger. Catilina lifted his fine head abruptly and stared at him as if struck.

  “It cannot possibly be stamped out by suspense of judgment or judicious pleas for tolerance of opinions,’ and procrastination! However you decide to deal, you must take severe measures at once, without delay—in the name of Rome, in the name of Rome’s freedom, in the name of all that has made Rome free and great!”*

  One of the Senators, after a sharp silence in the Temple, addressed himself to Cicero. “What is your desire for this body?”

  Cicero did not answer immediately. He looked with sudden bitterness on Crassus and company, on the half-hidden face of Caesar, into the eyes of the quiet Pompey and the mobile face of Clodius. He then looked fully at Catilina. He raised his arm and pointed again at the beautiful patrician. In a great voice like the stroke of a drum he cried out:

  “I demand death for this man’s lieutenants, whom we now hold in custody, and I demand death for this renegade, this would-be destroyer of Rome, this traitor, this Vandal, this defamer of our name, this enemy, this tiger in human form, this panderer to the base and unspeakable—in short, Lucius Sergius Catilina!”

  Then, as before, the people without the Temple raised a mighty and terrible cry: “Death to Catilina! Death to the traitors!”

  The Senators listened. Some of them turned to neighbors and whispered, “Cicero has inflamed the mob. It is not the people of Rome who speak.” And some replied, “Do you have the ear of the people and their voice? Or, is it your own only?”

  The interior of the Temple was utterly silent now, as if filled by statues who sat and stood in the brown and fiery gloom and the smoke of incense and torches, a white cheek caught here and there in a flicker of flame, or folded hands, or a still shoulder, or a pale carved mouth. It was like a dusky cave inside, where the Fates lurked at their thread and their looms in total quiet. But outside the pale blue light of winter gleamed on the cloaked heads of the assembled people and revealed their dark faces and vehement eyes and the tossing of their upraised hands.

  The challenge of death had been uttered in the Temple. None looked at Catilina in his contemptuous and smiling splendor. All looked at Cicero standing in the center of the tessellated floor, tall and slender and white-robed, a graying man with a white and resolute face and eyes like changing jewels. He began to speak again, and his voice though strong shook like an oak in a storm.

  “I, lords, am an advocate, a lawyer, and was so long before I was a politician or even became interested in politics. I have been Praetor of Rome. I am now the Consul. In all these years of public service I have defended men from impending sentence of death. As Praetor I upheld the laws of Rome but did not ask that any man be made to suffer the final humiliation. As Consul, I have asked no magistrate, nor this august body of the Senate, to condemn any man.

  “Death is the great ignominy. We sing of the death of heroes, and we honor their memory. But death in many ways is a sacrilege against life, for it mortifies the restraint of our senses. We speak of the noble visages of the dead. We do not mention the sudden loosening of the sphincter muscles which flood the expired flesh with dung and urine. We do not mention it for we instinctively have reverence for life and avert our faces from the mortifications which death inflicts upon it. All our being is revolted at this abasement of a man, this open scorn of nature upon him as if she has declared, ‘He is no better than the beast of the field and dies as voluptuously shameful, with a spewing out of what is contained in his bowels and his bladder.’

  “But we know that man is no beast of the field, for God has implanted in us a horror of death, the most powerful aversion against it, a rebellion of our senses against its humiliation. That which animated the flesh, though departed, has left a sanctity upon it and though we cannot evade nature’s last vile contempt for what has always defied her, we keep our decent silence. Therefore, in our decency, we hesitate against condemning a man to the remorseless processes of nature, for when one man is mortified all other men are disgraced also. This to me is worse than death itself.

  “Nevertheless, men are often forced to defend themselves, their families and their countries. We are often forced to surmount our instinctive loathing for death and its obscenities. Only a man bereft of all manhood can rejoice in the extinction of another, even an enemy. Only a beast can feel triumphant at the sight of a bloody battlefield, even if his own nation has conquered. The true man, surveying that battlefield, must bow his head and pray for the souls of friend and foe alike—for both were men.

  “It is with no malice, therefore, and no exultation, that I ask that this august body of the Senate condemn Lucius Sergius Catilina to death, and his lieutenants with him. In their final ignominy even just men must share. But our country is greater than we. All that Rome is is nobler than any individual man. We are faced with the most direful of choices: Catilina lives or Rome dies!”

  Catilina stirred then in that assemblage of statues, and his beautiful and jeweled evil seemed to catch a thousand tiny fires in the bronze gloom, glittering from his eyes to his shoulders to his arms to his gemmed crimson leather boots. He caught scores of eyes which became fixed upon him. But he looked only at Cicero, and his white teeth, bared in a haughty and derisive smile, sparkled like illuminated pearls. And Cicero returned his gaze and between them stood the misty form of a maiden who had been done hideously to death, and both knew it without the shadow of a doubt.

  For a long passing of time all were mute in the Temple and all waited. It was as if they had sunken in a trance from which no one would wake. Then all started at the rustle and movement of a body and they saw that Julius Caesar, grave but with smiling eyes, had risen and was facing the Senate beyond the figure of Cicero.

  “My dear friend, Marcus Tullius Cicero, has spoken eloquently and with patriotic fervor,” he said in his rich voice. “Patriotism is to be greatly admired and honored. It is only its excess which is to be feared.”

  Cicero started. He looked at Julius with incredulous bitterness and outrage and wrath. And Julius, though not facing him, raised his hand in protest as if Cicero had cried out.

  Julius continued to the blank faces of the Senators, “Catilina has been denounced, his death demanded by the noble Consul of Rome. But he is permitted to defend himself by the very laws which Cicero upholds. Let, then, Catilina speak in his defense, lest we be shamed.”

  He sat down and did not glance at Cicero. Crassus pursed his lips and studied the floor. Cicero could not move; he did not appear to breathe. Catilina stood up and as if at a signal the red torches flared and flooded him with bloody light, and he had the aspect of a terrible but magnificent demon. It was then, at beholding him in his arrogance and surety, that a wave of tremendous emotion ran like water over Cicero’s face, seeming to increase its proportions.

  Catilina bowed ceremoniously and slowly to the whole Senate, to Julius and Crassus and company. All his movements were grace, and superb. When he spoke his aristocrat’s voice rose without effort and with pride.

  “Lords,” he said, “I, Lucius Sergius Catilina, patrician of Rome, son of generations of Romans, soldier, officer, warrior of Rome, have been accused on four separate and hysterical occasions before you of the most malignant crimes against my country. I have been accused of conspiracy against my
nation and my brothers-in-arms, my generals, my blood which many of you here today share. I have been accused of the most detestable treason against Rome, against her ordinances and safety and welfare and security. I have, disbelievingly, listened to myself being denounced as an enemy of the State! I, Lucius Sergius Catilina!”

  He paused as if what he had said was so incredible that he was stunned, or that he had been dreaming and had not heard aright. He looked from face to face, and now his own was full of cold and forbidding rage. He appeared to increase in stature. He clenched his hand on his sword. His face was full of contorted and affronted beauty, and his quick breath was loud in the silent Temple.

  “Surely, lords, you sharers of my station and my blood, do not believe this? Surely you are as horribly offended as am I! My ancestors fought for Rome and died on her many battlefields in defense of her honor—as did yours. They were brought home to their grieving wives and children—as were yours—carried on their shields. Their heroic swords were stained with the blood of many races, during Olympian battles fought before the faces of the gods, themselves! The annals of Rome beat like thunder with their blessed and manly names—as the names of your ancestors beat also. Nowhere is there the whisper of dishonor upon them, or the taint of cowardice or fear or desertion. In war and in peace they served their country. As did I.

  “Look upon me, lords! Look upon my wounded breast and my scars, received in the service of my country!”

  He rent open the scarlet top of his long robe and showed his chest, indeed crossed and recrossed with the scars of old wounds. And the Senate looked upon them and did not speak or move, though emotion rippled over many a face as the memories of old soldiers stirred within them.