Lustrum

by Robert Harris

  'Now, gentlemen, it is clear to me where my own interest lies. If you adopt the motion of Caesar, since he is a populist, I shall have less reason to fear the attacks of the people, because I shall be doing what he has proposed. Whereas if you adopt the alternative, I fear that more trouble may be brought down upon my head. But let the interests of the republic count for more than considerations of danger to myself. We must do what is right. Answer me this: if the head of a household were to find his children killed by a slave, his wife murdered and his house burned, and did not inflict the supreme penalty in return, would he be thought kindly and compassionate or the most inhuman and cruel of men not to avenge their suffering? To my mind, a man who does not soften his own grief and suffering by inflicting similar distress upon the man responsible is unfeeling and has a heart of stone. I support the proposal of Silanus.'

  Caesar quickly rose to intervene. 'But surely the flaw in the consul's argument is that the accused have not committed any such acts – they are being condemned for their intentions, rather than for anything they have done.'

  'Exactly!' cried a voice from the other side of the chamber, and all heads turned to Cato.

  If the vote had been taken at this point, I have little doubt that Caesar's proposal would have carried the day, regardless of the consul's view. The prisoners would have been packed off across Italy, to rot or be reprieved according to the caprices of politics, and Cicero's future would have worked out very differently. But just as the outcome seemed assured, there arose from the benches near the back of the temple a familiar gaunt and illkempt apparition, his hair all awry, his shoulders bare despite the cold, his sinewy arm stretched out to indicate his desire to intervene.

  'Marcus Porcius Cato,' said Cicero uneasily, for one could never be sure which way Cato's rigid logic would lead him. 'You wish to speak?'

  'Yes, I wish to speak,' said Cato. 'I wish to speak because someone has to remind this house of exactly what it is we're facing. The whole point, gentlemen, is precisely that we're not dealing with crimes that have been committed, but with crimes that are planned. For that very reason it will be no good trying to invoke the law afterwards – we shall all have been slaughtered!' There was a murmur of acknowledgement: he spoke the truth. I glanced up at Cicero. He was also nodding. 'Too many sitting here,' proclaimed Cato, his voice rising, 'are more concerned for their villas and their statues than they are for their country. In heaven's name, men, wake up! Wake up while there's still time, and lend a hand to defend the republic! Our liberty and lives are at stake! At such a time does anyone here dare talk to me of clemency and compassion?'

  He came down the gangway barefoot and stood in the aisle, that harsh and remorseless voice grating away like a blade on a grindstone. It was as if his famous great-grandfather had just stepped out of his grave and was shaking his furious grey locks at us.

  'Do not imagine, gentlemen, that it was by force of arms that our ancestors transformed a petty state into this great republic. If it were so, it would now be at the height of its glory, since we have more subjects and citizens, more arms and horses, than they ever had. No, it was something else entirely that made them great – something we entirely lack. They were hard workers at home, just rulers abroad, and to the senate they brought minds that were not racked by guilt or enslaved by passion. That is what we've lost. We pile up riches for ourselves while the state is bankrupt and we idle away our lives, so that when an assault is made upon the republic there's no one left to defend it.

  'A plot has been hatched by citizens of the highest rank to set fire to their native city. Gauls, the deadliest foes of everything Roman, have been called to arms. The hostile army and its leader are ready to descend upon us. And you're still hesitating and unable to decide how to treat public enemies taken within your own walls?' He literally spat out his sarcasm, showering the senators nearest him with phlegm. 'Why then, I suggest you take pity on them – they are young men led astray by ambition. Armed though they are, let them go. But mind what you're doing with your clemency and compassion – if they draw the sword, it will be too late to do anything about it. Oh yes, you say, the situation is certainly ugly, but you're not afraid of it. Nonsense! You're quaking in your shoes! But you're so indolent and weak that you stand irresolute, each waiting for someone else to act – no doubt trusting to the gods. Well, I tell you, vows and womanish supplications won't secure divine aid. Only vigilance and action can achieve success.

  'We're completely encircled. Catilina and his army are ready to grip us by the throat. Our enemies are living in the very heart of the city. That is why we must act quickly. This therefore is my proposal, Consul. Write it down well, scribe: Whereas by the criminal designs of wicked citizens the republic has been subjected to serious danger; and whereas, by testimony and confession, the accused stand convicted of planning massacre, arson and other foul atrocities against their fellow citizens: that, having admitted their criminal intention, they should be put to death as if they had been caught in the actual commission of capital offences, in accordance with ancient custom.'

  For thirty years I attended debates in the senate and I witnessed many great and famous speeches. But I never saw one – not one: not even close – that rivalled in its effects that brief intervention by Cato. What is great oratory, after all, except the distillation of emotion into exact words? Cato said what a majority of men were feeling but had not the language to express, even to themselves. He admonished them, and they loved him for it. All across the temple, senators rose from their seats applauding and went to stand beside their hero to indicate that he had their support. He was no longer the eccentric on the back bench. He was the rock and bone and sinew of the old republic. Cicero looked on in astonishment. As for Caesar, he jumped up demanding the right to reply, and actually started making a speech. But everyone could see that his true intention was to talk out Cato's motion and prevent a vote, for the light was very low now and shadows were deep across the chamber. There were shouts of rage from those around Cato, and some jostling, and several of the knights who had been watching from the doorway rushed in with their swords drawn. Caesar was twisting his shoulders back and forth to throw off the hands that were trying to pull him down, and still he kept on speaking. The knights looked to Cicero for instruction. All it would have taken was a nod from him, or a raised finger, and Caesar would have been run through on the spot. And for the briefest of instants he did hesitate. But then he shook his head, Caesar was released, and in the chaos he must have rushed from the temple, for I lost sight of him after that. Cicero came down off his dais. Striding along the aisle, shouting at the senators, he and his lictors separated the combatants, pushed a few of them back into their places, and when some sort of order had been restored he returned to his chair.

  'Gentlemen,' he said, his face as white as milk in the darkness, his voice very thin and strained, 'the sentiment of the house is clear. Marcus Cato's motion passes. The sentence is death.'

  Speed was now vital. The condemned men had to be moved quickly to the execution chamber before their friends and supporters realised their fate. To fetch each prisoner, Cicero placed a former consul at the head of a detachment of guards: Catulus went for Cethegus, Torquatus for Capito, Piso for Caeparius and Lepidus for Statilius. After settling the details, and requesting that the other senators remain in their places while the deed was done, he himself went off last of all to collect the most senior of the accused, Lentulus Sura.

  Outside, the sun had just gone down. The forum was ominously crowded, yet the people parted at once to let us through. They reminded me of spectators at a sacrifice – solemn, respectful, filled with awe at the mysteries of life and death. We went with our escort up on to the Palatine, to the home of Spinther, who was a kinsman of Sura, and found our prisoner in the atrium playing dice with one of the men assigned to guard him. He had just made his throw: the dice clattered on to the board as we came in. He must have realised at once from Cicero's expression that it was all over for h
im. He glanced down to inspect his score, then looked back up at us and gave a bleak smile. 'I seem to have lost,' he said.

  I cannot reproach Sura for his behaviour. His grandfather and his great-grandfather had both been consuls and they would have been proud of his conduct in this last hour at least. He handed over a purse with some money to be distributed among his guards, then walked out of the house as calmly as if he were going to take a bath. He offered only the mildest of reproaches. 'I believe you laid a trap for me,' he said.

  'You trapped yourself,' replied Cicero.

  Sura didn't say another word as we crossed the forum, but trod steadily with his chin thrust out. He still wore the plain tunic he had been given the previous day. Yet from their demeanours one would have guessed that the deathly pale Cicero, despite his consular purple, was the condemned man and Sura his captor. I felt the eyes of the vast crowd upon us; they were as curious and docile as sheep. At the foot of the steps leading up to the Carcer, Sura's stepson Mark Antony ran out in front of the guards, crying out to know what was happening.

  'I have a short appointment,' replied Sura calmly. 'It will all be over soon. Go and comfort your mother. She will have more need of you now than I.'

  Antony bellowed with grief and anger and tried to reach out to touch Sura, but he was pushed out of the way by the lictors. We passed on up the steps between the pickets of troops, ducked through a doorway that was low but very thick, almost like a tunnel, and into a windowless circular stone chamber lit by torches. The air was close, noxious with the stink of death and human waste. As my eyes adjusted to the gloom, I recognised Catulus, Piso, Torquatus and Lepidus, with the folds of their togas pressed to their noses, and also the short and broad figure of the state executioner, the carnifex, in his leather apron, attended by half a dozen assistants. The other prisoners were already lying on the ground with their arms tightly pinioned behind their backs. Capito, who had spent the day with Crassus, was crying softly. Statilius, who had been held at Caesar's official residence, was insensible from the effects of wine. Caeparius was lost to the world, curled up in a ball with his eyes closed. Cethegus was protesting loudly that this was illegal and demanding the right to address the senate; someone kicked him in the ribs and he went quiet. The carnifex seized Sura's arms and bound them quickly at the wrists and elbows.

  'Consul,' said Sura, wincing as he was trussed, 'will you give me your word that no harm will befall my wife and family?'

  'Yes, I promise you that.'

  'And will you surrender our bodies to our families for burial?'

  'I will.' (Afterwards Mark Antony claimed that Cicero had denied this final request: yet another of his innumerable lies.)

  'This was not supposed to be my destiny. The auguries were quite clear.'

  'You allowed yourself to be suborned by wicked men.'

  Moments later the tying-up was finished and Sura looked around him. 'I die a Roman nobleman,' he shouted defiantly, 'and a patriot!'

  That was too much even for Cicero. 'No,' he said curtly, nodding to the carnifex, 'you die a traitor.'

  At those words, Sura was dragged towards the large black hole in the centre of the floor that was the only means of entrance to the execution chamber beneath us. Two powerful fellows lowered him into it, and I had a last glimpse of his handsome, baffled, stupid face in the torchlight. Then strong hands must have taken hold of him from beneath, for abruptly he disappeared. Statilius's limp form was let down immediately after Sura; then it was quickly the turn of Capito, who was shaking so much his teeth were rattling; then Caeparius, still in a swoon of terror; and finally Cethegus, who screamed and sobbed and put up such a tremendous struggle that two men had to sit on him while a third tied his wildly thrashing legs – in the end they tipped him through the hole head first and he fell with a thud. Nothing more was to be heard after that, apart from some occasional scuffling sounds; eventually those also ceased. I was told later that they were hanged in a row from hooks fixed in the ceiling. After what seemed an eternity, the carnifex called up that the job was done, and Cicero went reluctantly to the hole and peered down. A torch was flourished over the victims. The five strangled men lay in a row, gazing up at us with bulging sightless eyes. I felt no pity: I was remembering the violated body of the boy they had sacrificed to seal their pact. Cato was right, I thought: they deserved to die; and that remains my opinion to this day.

  Once he had assured himself that the conspirators were dead, Cicero could not wait to get away from that 'antechamber to hell', as he afterwards called it. We squeezed back out through the narrow tunnel of a doorway and straightened into the fresh night air – only to find that a most amazing sight awaited us. In the dusk, the whole of the forum was lit by torches – a great carpet of flickering yellow light. In every direction people were standing, motionless and silent, including the whole of the senate, which had now emerged from the Temple of Concordia, just next door to the prison. Everyone was looking towards Cicero. Obviously he had to announce what had happened, although he had no idea what the reaction might be, and he also had another peculiar difficulty, which showed the unprecedented nature of what had just occurred: it was a superstition in those days that a magistrate must never utter the words 'death' or 'died' in the forum, lest he bring down a curse on the city. So Cicero thought for a moment, cleared his throat of whatever thick bile had accumulated in the Carcer, threw back his shoulders and proclaimed, very loudly, 'They have lived!'

  His voice echoed off the buildings and was followed by a silence so profound that I feared the vast crowd might be hostile after all and we would be the next to be hanged. But I suppose they were just working out what he meant. A few senators started clapping. Others joined in. The clapping turned to cheers. And slowly the cheers began spreading across the vast throng. 'Hail, Cicero!' they called. 'Hail, Cicero!' 'Thank the gods for Cicero!' 'Cicero – the saviour of the republic!'

  Standing only a foot away from him, I saw the tears well up into his eyes. It was as if some dam had broken in him and all the emotions that had been accumulating behind it, not only during the past few hours but throughout his consulship, were suddenly allowed to burst forth. He tried to say something but could not, which only increased the volume of applause. Finally there was nothing for it but to descend the steps, and by the time he reached the level of the forum, with the cheers of friends and opponents alike ringing in his ears, he was weeping freely. Behind us, the bodies of the prisoners were being dragged out by hooks.

  The story of Cicero's last few days as consul may be swiftly told. No civilian in the history of the republic had ever been as lauded as he was at this time. After months of holding its breath, the city seemed to let out a great sigh of relief. On the night the conspirators were executed, the consul was escorted home from the forum by the whole of the senate in a great torchlit procession and was cheered every step of the way. His house was brilliantly illuminated to welcome him back; the entrance where Terentia waited for him with his children was decked with laurel; his slaves lined up to applaud him into the atrium. It was a strange homecoming. He was too exhausted to sleep, too hungry to eat, too eager to forget the horrible business of the executions to be capable of talking about anything else. I assumed he would recover his equilibrium in a day or two. Only later did I realise that something in him had changed for ever: had snapped, like an axle. The following morning, the senate bestowed upon him the title 'Father of his Country'. Caesar chose not to attend the session, but Crassus came and voted with the rest, and praised Cicero to the skies.

  Not every voice was raised in acclamation. Metellus Nepos, on taking up his tribunate a few days later, continued to insist that the executions were illegal. He predicted that when Pompey returned to Italy to restore order he would deal not only with Catilina but with this petty tyrant Cicero as well. Despite his immense popularity, Cicero was sufficiently worried to go to Clodia and ask her to tell her brother-in-law privately that if he persisted in this course, Cicero would prosecute him
for his own links to Catilina. Clodia's lustrous brown eyes widened with delight at this opportunity to meddle in affairs of state. But Nepos coolly ignored the warning, reasoning correctly that Cicero would never dare to move against Pompey's closest political ally. All now depended, therefore, on how swiftly Catilina could be defeated.

  When the salutary news of the execution of Sura and the others reached Catilina's camp, a large number of his followers at once deserted him. (I doubt they would have done so if the senate vote had been for life imprisonment.) Realising that Rome was now secure against them, he and Manlius decided to take the rebel army north, with the intention of crossing the Alps into Further Gaul and creating a mountainous enclave in which they might hold out for years. But winter was coming, and the lower passes were blocked by Metellus Celer at the head of three legions. Meanwhile, in hard pursuit at the rebels' rear was the senate's other army, under the command of Hybrida. This was the opponent Catilina chose to turn and fight, picking his ground in a narrow plain to the east of Pisae.

  Not surprisingly, suspicions arose, which persist to this day, that Catilina and his old ally Hybrida had been in secret contact all along. Cicero had foreseen this, and when it became clear that battle was to be joined, Hybrida's veteran military legate, M. Petreius, opened the sealed orders he had been given in Rome. These appointed him the operational commander and directed that Hybrida should plead illness and take no part in the fighting; if he refused, Petreius was to arrest him. When the matter was put to Hybrida, he swiftly agreed, and announced that he was suffering from gout. In this way Catilina unexpectedly found himself facing one of the most able commanders in the Roman army, who was at the head of a force much larger and better equipped than his own.