Lustrum

by Robert Harris

  At that moment Pompey walked past, looking thoughtful, and the group fell silent until he was far enough away not to be able to hear them.

  Cicero said quietly, 'There goes The Pharaoh. I expect that great ponderous mind of his will be grinding like a mill-wheel. I certainly know what conclusion I'd come to in his place.'

  'What's that?' asked Cato.

  'I'd make a deal with Caesar.'

  The others all shook their heads in disagreement. 'That will never happen,' said Hortensius. 'Pompey can't abide to see another man getting a share of the glory.'

  'He'll put up with it this time, though,' said Cicero. 'You gentlemen won't help him get his laws through, but Caesar will promise him the earth – anything in return for Pompey's support in the elections.'

  'Not this summer, at least,' said Lucullus firmly. 'There are too many mountains and rivers between here and the Atlantic. Caesar can't get back in time to put his name on the ballot.'

  'And there's another thing,' added Cato. 'Caesar will want to triumph, and he'll have to stay outside the city until he does.'

  'And we can hold him up for years,' said Lucullus, 'just as he made me wait for half a decade. My revenge for that insult is going to taste better than any meal.'

  Cicero however did not look convinced. 'Well, maybe, but I have learned by hard experience never to underestimate our friend Gaius.'

  It was a wise remark, because about a week later a second dispatch reached the senate from Further Spain. Again, Celer read it aloud to the assembled senators: in view of the fact that his newly conquered territory was entirely subdued, Caesar announced that he was returning to Rome.

  Cato got up to object. 'Provincial governors should remain at their posts until this house gives them permission to do otherwise,' he said. 'I move that we tell Caesar to stay where he is.'

  'It's a bit late for that!' someone next to me shouted from the doorway. 'I've just seen him on the Field of Mars!'

  'That is impossible,' insisted Cato, looking flustered. 'The last time we heard from him, he was boasting that he was on the Atlantic coast.'

  Nevertheless, Celer took the precaution of sending a slave out on to the Field of Mars to check the rumour, and he returned an hour later to announce that it was true: Caesar had overtaken his own messenger and was staying at the home of a friend outside the city.

  The news threw Rome into a frenzy of hero-worship. The next day Caesar sent an emissary to the senate to ask that he be granted his triumph in September, and that in the interim he be permitted to stand for the consulship in absentia. There were plenty in the senate willing to grant him his wish, for they recognised that Caesar's renown, combined with his new wealth, had made his candidacy well-nigh unstoppable. If a vote had been called, his supporters would probably have won it. Accordingly, day after day, whenever the motion was brought before the house, Cato rose and talked it out. He droned on about the overthrow of the kings of Rome. He bored away about the ancient laws. He wearied everyone with the importance of asserting senatorial control over the legions. He repeatedly warned of the dangerous precedent it would set if a candidate were allowed to seek office at election time whilst still holding military imperium: 'Today Caesar asks for the consulship, tomorrow he may demand it.'

  Cicero did not take part himself, but signalled his support for Cato by coming into the chamber whenever he spoke and sitting on the front bench nearest to him. Time was running out for Caesar, and it looked certain that he would miss the deadline for submitting his nomination. Naturally everyone expected that he would choose to triumph rather than become a candidate: Pompey had done that; every victorious general in Rome's history had done it; there was surely nothing to equal the glory of a triumph. But Caesar was never a man to mistake power's show for its substance. Late one afternoon on the fourth day of Cato's filibuster, when the chamber was almost empty and the long green summer shadows were creeping over the deserted benches, into the senate house strolled Caesar. The twenty or so senators who were present could not believe their eyes. He had taken off his uniform and put on a toga.

  Caesar bowed to the chair and took his place on the front bench opposite Cicero. He nodded politely across the aisle to my master and settled down to listen to Cato. But for once the great didact was lost for words. Having no further motivation to talk, he sat down abruptly, and the following month Caesar was elected consul by a unanimous vote of all the centuries – the first candidate to achieve this feat since Cicero.

  XVI

  The whole of Rome now waited to see what Caesar would do. 'The only thing we can expect,' said Cicero, 'is that it will be unexpected.' And so it was. It took five months, but when Caesar made his move it was masterly.

  One day towards the end of the year, in December, shortly before Caesar was due to be sworn in, Cicero received a visit from the eminent Spaniard Lucius Cornelius Balbus.

  This remarkable creature was then forty years old. Born in Gades of Phoenician extraction, he was a trader, and very rich. His complexion was dark, his hair and beard as black as jet, his teeth and the whites of his eyes as bright as polished ivory. He had a very quick way of talking, and he laughed a lot, throwing back his small neat head in delight, so that the most boring men in Rome all fancied themselves great wits after a short time in his company. He had a particular gift for attaching himself to powerful figures – first to Pompey, under whom he served in Spain, and who arranged to make him a Roman citizen, and then to Caesar, who picked him up in Gades when he was governor, appointed him his chief engineer during his conquest of Lusitania, and then brought him back to Rome to run his errands. Balbus knew everyone, even if at first they did not know him, and he bustled in to see Cicero on that December morning with his hands held wide as if he were meeting his closest friend.

  'My dear Cicero,' he said in his thickly accented Latin, 'how are you? You look as well as I have ever seen you – and I have never seen you looking anything other than well!'

  'Then I suppose I am very much the same as ever.' Cicero gestured to Balbus to take a seat. 'And how is Caesar?'

  'He is marvellous,' replied Balbus, 'completely marvellous. He asks me to give you his very warmest regards, and his absolute assurance that he is your greatest and most sincere friend in the world.'

  'Time for us to start counting our spoons, then, Tiro,' said Cicero, and Balbus clapped his hands and pulled up his knees and literally rocked with laughter.

  'Well, that is very funny – “count the spoons” indeed! I shall tell him you said that, and he will be most amused. The spoons!' He wiped his eyes and recovered his breath. 'Oh dear! But seriously, Cicero, when Caesar offers his friendship to a man, it is not an empty thing. He takes the view that deeds, not words, are what count in this world.'

  Cicero had a mountain of legal documents to read. 'Balbus,' he said wearily, 'you have obviously come here to say something – so would you kindly just say it?'

  'Of course. You are busy, I can see that. Forgive me.' He pressed his hand to his heart. 'Caesar wishes me to tell you that he and Pompey have reached an agreement. They intend to settle this question of land reform once and for all.'

  Cicero gave me a quick look: it was exactly as he had predicted. To Balbus he said: 'On what terms is this to be settled?'

  'The public lands in Campania will be divided between Pompey's demobbed legionaries and those among the Roman poor who wish to farm. The whole scheme will be administered by a commission of twenty. Caesar hopes very much to have your support.'

  Cicero laughed in disbelief. 'But this is almost precisely the bill he tried to bring in at the start of my consulship and which I opposed!'

  'There will be one great difference,' said Balbus with a grin. 'This is between us, please. Yes?' His eyebrows danced in delight. He ran his small pink tongue over the edges of his large white teeth. 'The official commission will be of twenty, but there will be an inner commission of just five magistrates who will take all the decisions. Caesar would be most honoured – most
honoured indeed – if you would agree to join it.'

  That caught Cicero off his guard. 'Would he indeed? And who would be the other four?'

  'Apart from yourself, there would be Caesar, Pompey, one other still to be decided, and' – Balbus paused for effect, like a conjuror about to produce an exotic bird from an empty basket – 'and Crassus.'

  Up to that point, Cicero had been treating the Spaniard with a kind of friendly disdain – as a joke figure: one of those self-important go-betweens who often crop up in politics. Now he gazed at him in wonder. 'Crassus?' he repeated. 'But Crassus can barely abide to be in the same city as Pompey. How is he going to sit beside him on a committee of five?'

  'Crassus is a dear friend of Caesar. And also Pompey is a dear friend of Caesar. So Caesar played the marriage-broker, in the interests of the state.'

  'The interests of themselves more like! It will never work.'

  'It most certainly will work. The three have met and agreed it. And against such an alliance, nothing else in Rome will stand.'

  'If it has already been agreed, why am I needed?'

  'As Father of the Nation, you have a unique authority.'

  'So I am to be brought in at the last moment to provide a covering of respectability?'

  'Not at all, not at all. You would be a full partner, absolutely. Caesar authorises me to say that no major decision in the running of the empire would be made without consulting you first.'

  'So this inner commission would, in effect, act as the executive government of the state?'

  'Precisely.'

  'And how long would it exist?'

  'I am sorry?'

  'When will it dissolve?'

  'It will never dissolve. It will be permanent.'

  'But this is outrageous! There is no precedent in our history for such a body. It would be the first step on the road to a dictatorship!'

  'My dear Cicero, really!'

  'Our annual elections would become meaningless. The consuls would be puppets, the senate might as well not exist. This inner group would control the allocation of all land and taxes—'

  'It would bring stability—'

  'It would be a kleptocracy!'

  'Are you actually rejecting Caesar's offer?'

  'Tell your master I appreciate his consideration and I have no desire to be anything other than his friend, but this is not something I can countenance.'

  'Well,' said Balbus, plainly shocked, 'he will be disappointed – indeed he will be sorrowful – and so will Pompey and Crassus. Obviously they would like your assurance that you will not oppose them.'

  'I am sure they would!'

  'Yes, they would. They desire no unpleasantness. But if opposition is offered, you must understand, it will have to be met.'

  With great effort, Cicero controlled his temper. 'You can tell them I have struggled for more than a year on Pompey's behalf to secure a fair settlement for his veterans – in the teeth, I might add, of strenuous opposition from Crassus. You can tell them I won't go back on that. But I want no part of any secret deal to establish a government by cabal. It would make a mockery of everything I have ever stood for in my public life. You can see yourself out, I think.'

  After Balbus had gone, Cicero sat silent in his library as I tiptoed around him arranging his correspondence into piles. 'Imagine,' he said eventually, 'sending that Mediterranean carpet salesman to offer me a fifth share of the republic at a knockdown price! Our Caesar fancies himself to be a great gentleman, but really he is the most awful vulgar crook.'

  'There may be trouble,' I warned.

  'Well then, let there be trouble. I am not afraid.' But clearly he was afraid, and suddenly here it was again, that quality I admired the most about him – his reluctant, nervous resolution in the end to do the right thing. Because he must have known that from this time on his position in Rome would start to become untenable. After another long period of reflection, he said: 'All the time that Spanish pimp was talking, I kept thinking of what Calliope says to me in my poetic autobiography. Do you recall her lines?' He closed his eyes and recited:

  'Meantime the paths which you from earliest days did seek –

  Yes, and when consul too, as mood and virtue called –

  These hold, and foster still your fame and good men's praise.

  'I have my faults, Tiro – you know them better than any man: no need to point them out – but I am not like Pompey, or Caesar or Crassus. Whatever I've done, whatever mistakes I've made, I've done for my country; and whatever they do, they do for themselves, even if it means helping a traitor like Catilina.' He gave a long sigh. He seemed almost surprised at his own principled stand. 'Well, there it all goes, I suppose – a peaceful old age, reconciliation with my enemies, power, money, popularity with the mob …' He folded his arms and contemplated his feet.

  'It's a lot to throw away,' I said.

  'It is a lot. Perhaps you should run after Balbus and tell him I've changed my mind.'

  'Shall I?' My tone was eager – I was desperate for a quiet life – but Cicero did not seem to hear me. He continued to brood on history and heroism, and after a while I went back to arranging his correspondence.

  I had thought that 'The Beast with Three Heads', as the triumvirate of Caesar, Pompey and Crassus came to be known, might renew its offer, but Cicero heard no more. The following week Caesar became consul and quickly laid his land bill before the senate. I was watching from the door with a large crowd of jostling spectators when he started asking the senior members for their opinions on the proposed law. He began with Pompey. Naturally the great man approved at once, and so did Crassus. Cicero was called on next, and with Caesar watching him keenly, and with many reservations, added his assent. Hortensius rejected it. Lucullus rejected it. Celer rejected it. And when eventually Caesar worked his way down the list of the great and the good and came to Cato, he too stated his disapproval. But instead of simply giving his view like the others and then sitting down, Cato continued with his denunciation, reaching far back into antiquity for precedents to argue that common land was held in trust for all the nation and was not to be parcelled out by unscrupulous 'here today and gone tomorrow' politicians for their own gain. After an hour it became clear he had no intention of resuming his place and was resorting to his old trick of talking out the day's business.

  Caesar grew more and more irritated, tapping his foot impatiently. At last he stood. 'We have heard enough from you,' he said, interrupting Cato in mid-sentence. 'Sit down, you damned sanctimonious windbag, and let someone else speak.'

  'Any senator has the right to talk for as long as he wishes,' retorted Cato. 'You should look up the laws of this house if you want to preside over it,' and so saying, he carried on talking.

  'Sit down!' bellowed Caesar.

  'I shall not be intimidated by you,' replied Cato, and he refused to yield the floor.

  Have you ever seen a bird of prey tilt its head from one side to the other, as it detects a potential kill? Well, that was very much how Caesar looked at that instant. His avian profile bent first to the left and then to the right, and then he extended a long finger and beckoned to his chief lictor. He pointed to Cato. 'Remove him,' he rasped. The proximate lictor looked unwilling. 'I said,' repeated Caesar in a terrible voice, 'remove him!'

  The terrified fellow did not need telling twice. Gathering half a dozen of his colleagues, he set off down the aisle towards Cato, who continued to speak even as the lictors clambered over the benches to seize him. Two men took hold of each of his arms and dragged him towards the door, and another picked up all his treasury accounts, while the senate watched in horror.

  'What shall we do with him?' called the proximate lictor.

  'Throw him in the Carcer,' commanded Caesar, 'and let him address his wisdom to the rats for a night or two.'

  As Cato was bundled from the chamber, some senators began objecting to his treatment. The great stoic was carried directly past me, unresisting but continuing to shout out some obscure
point about the Scantian forests. Celer rose from the front bench and hurried out after him, closely trailed by Lucullus, and then by Caesar's own consular colleague, Marcus Bibulus. I should think thirty or forty senators must have joined this demonstration. Caesar came down off his dais and tried to intercept a few of those departing. I remember him catching hold of the arm of old Petreius, the commander who had defeated Catilina's army at Pisae. 'Petreius!' he said. 'You are a soldier like me. Why are you leaving?'

  'Because,' said Petreius, pulling himself free, 'I would rather be in prison with Cato than here with you!'

  'Go then!' Caesar shouted after him. 'Go, all of you! But remember this: as long as I am consul, the will of the people will not be frustrated by procedural tricks and ancient customs! This bill will be placed before the people, whether you gentlemen like it or not, and it will be voted on by the end of the month.' He strode back up the aisle to his chair and glared around the chamber, defying anyone else to challenge his authority.

  Cicero stayed uncomfortably in his place as the roll call resumed, and after the session was over he was intercepted outside the senate house by Hortensius, who demanded to know in a reproachful voice why he had not walked out with the others. 'Don't blame me for the mess you have landed us in,' replied Cicero. 'I warned you what would happen if you continued to treat Pompey with contempt.' Nevertheless, I could tell he was embarrassed, and as soon as he could he escaped to his home. 'I have contrived the worst of all worlds for myself,' he complained to me as we climbed the hill. 'I gain no benefit from supporting Caesar, yet I am denounced by his enemies as a turncoat. What a political genius I have turned out to be!'

  In any normal year, Caesar would have either failed with his bill, or at the very least been obliged to compromise. His measure was opposed, first and foremost, by his fellow consul, M. Bibulus, a proud and irascible patrician whose misfortune throughout his career had been to hold office at the same time as Caesar, and who in consequence had been so entirely overshadowed that people usually forgot his name. 'I am tired of playing Pollux to his Castor,' he declared angrily, and he vowed that now he was consul it would be different. Also ranged against Caesar were no fewer than three tribunes: Ancharius, Calvinus and Fannius, each of whom wielded a veto. But Caesar was determined to get his way, whatever the price, and now began his deliberate destruction of the Roman constitution – an act for which I trust he will be cursed by humanity until the end of time.