“Let us smile indulgently when Marcus’ books are mentioned,” said Julius to his friends. “Then the mob, which never reads, will laugh at him, and he will remain comparatively harmless.”
“Nevertheless, all listen to him in the courts and in the Forum,” said Catilina.
“What a man says is soon forgotten,” replied Julius.
“The people love him,” said Catilina, with hatred.
“There is one thing certain,” said Julius. “What the mob loves today it can easily hate tomorrow. On this we build our lives.”
“Have you read your Cicero’s latest dissertation?” asked Crassus of Caesar. “Let me quote part of it to you: ‘Men of ambition neither listen to reason nor bow to public or legitimate authority, but chiefly resort to corruption and intrigue in order to obtain supreme power and to be masters by force rather than equals by law. Such men inevitably become slaves to the mob, so therefore the slaves of such capricious and ignorant rabble are themselves, at the last, no longer men of power.’* He means us.”
But Julius laughed. “So he does. However, who reads him but us? We tolerate him, moreover, so therefore even potential enemies among the literate will doubt he refers to our noble Crassus and his friends. It is a great advantage to men like us to be hailed as broad of mind and tolerant of disputants.”
Julius studied his dear friend Crassus for a moment. They were dining in Caesar’s home—Julius, Crassus, Catilina, and Pompey. But before Julius could speak again Catilina said, “I must be a Consul of Rome. I have waited too long, and am no longer young.”
Julius sighed. “So you say daily. Wait but a little longer. You served well as a governor of Africa, and I note that African suns have increased rather than diminished your beauty, sweet Lucius. However, as you know,” added Julius delicately, “even the debased Romans of today cannot overlook your impeachment for extortion, which disqualifies you for the office of Consul.”
“I was acquitted of that crime, through the work of my dear friend, Clodius,” said Catilina, with that open contempt of everyone which he invariably displayed. Julius mused. “And Clodius’ sister is the mistress of our beguiling and innocent Cicero.”
“You are implying that she keeps him blind?” asked Crassus with a smile.
“Women are a two-edged sword,” said Catilina. His deep blue eyes glittered with wrath when the others burst into laughter. When they had done, he repeated, “I must be Consul of Rome. You shall not distract me, as you have done in the past, with foreign assignments or petty offices in the city.” He struck the table with his fist, and his gemmed wristlet flashed in the lamplight with a many-colored flame.
“I warn you,” he said in his deadly voice, “that I have come to the end of my patience. No promises, no threats, will turn me aside now.”
They had heard all this before, but each time it had been more difficult to turn Catilina aside. He had requested this meeting tonight, almost as if he had commanded it. Julius thought, We should have poisoned him as he did his wife and his son, long before this. We fed the tiger so we could use him in our day of need. But even before that day of need he has broken from his confinement and threatens us.
Julius carefully met the eyes of Pompey and Crassus. The latter shrugged, then lifted his eyebrows. Julius selected a date from a silver dish and daintily ate it. It was the season of the Saturnalia, and Rome was cold and full of mist, presaging winter. Braziers warmed the pleasant and luxurious dining hall.
“What an actor you are, Caesar!” said Catilina with more contempt. “You are almost as cautious as that loathsome friend of yours, Cicero, for whose death I yearn and whose death—I swear it—I shall encompass in my own time with no further deference to you.”
He had never spoken so fiercely before, for all he was a fierce man, and with such cold disgust. He had never challenged them so utterly and in such a tone. They all thought of the huge and terrible mobs he controlled, the welter of the underground of Rome. He turned in his chair and with a tight smile he looked from one to another. “This is the hour,” he said. “For what are you waiting, you pusillanimous men? For an omen, you, Caesar, from your patron, Jupiter? He is an audacious god, the greatest of them all; you are no worthy servitor of him. I suspect you, Caesar, of this delay.”
“It is well to be certain before you move,” said Julius, but he spoke abstractedly, and he looked again at Crassus.
“Gods!” exclaimed Catilina, and struck the table again. “How more certain is it necessary to be? Who can withstand us, if we move tomorrow?”
“And you would begin by murdering Cicero?” asked Julius, idly.
“Yes! You pretend not to believe it, Caesar, but he is a monstrous danger to us. Has he not insulted Crassus to his face and has he not dared to warn him?”
“You have insulted Crassus yourself, dear Lucius, in your open threats tonight at this table.”
“Bah,” said Catilina. “Look at me! My temples are graying, there are wrinkles on my brow. I shall wait no longer.”
“You shall not murder Cicero,” said Pompey, who almost always only listened and rarely spoke.
Catilina stared at him incredulously. “You, too? What plot is this?”
“No plot,” said Pompey in his curiously quiet and impassive voice. “Merely intelligence. We know the people love Cicero. He has many powerful friends, even among the patricians. All the lawyers of Rome stand in awe before Cicero, and they are eloquent. Let Cicero be murdered and we shall be lost.”
“I agree,” said Julius. But Catilina grasped his bronzed temples where indeed the dark hair, shadowed with the color of autumn, was graying. There was also a growing madness in his eyes, which revealed, during emotion, strange and uncontrollable passions coming less and less under precarious discipline.
He exclaimed, “I fear no man now! Not the people, not my fellow patricians, not the whey-faced lawyers! Ah, Caesar, you look at me with speculation. You are considering having me quietly assassinated. Listen to me now: Let a hand be lifted against me, even the hand of Crassus, and all Hades will pour over Rome and you will all be engulfed. Do you think I have been idle, and peacefully waiting, since I returned from Africa? If you do not move immediately, then I shall do it alone, and let that man beware who opposes me.”
He is surely mad, as Livia was mad, thought Julius. He again caught the eye of Crassus, and then he smiled fondly on Catilina.
“I, too, am no longer young, Lucius,” he said. “My daughter is married to our brother, Pompey.” He laughed lightly. “And I am growing bald, which is an affliction, Adonis, which has not befallen you.”
But Catilina gazed at him implacably. “You move with me at once, or I move alone, Caesar. I have said it.” He turned his burning eyes upon the others and they all saw the overwhelming madness in him, the now totally uncontrollable desire and lust and determination.
Then Crassus said with quietness, “You have forgotten, Catilina. I am triumvir. I am the most powerful man in Rome, though you affect not to know it tonight. We shall move when I give the word. That word is not for tomorrow.
But Catilina was not to be intimidated. “I have said it is.” His voice was full of harsh fury. “I did not come here tonight to be diverted and reassured and deceived and turned aside again. I came with my ultimatum.”
“For which there was no necessity,” said Julius, in a bland voice. Catilina turned all the power of his eyes upon him, and a deep flush ran over his face. “We are ready to move, though not exactly and literally tomorrow, Lucius,” added the other man.
“Give me the day,” said Catilina with that imperiousness which both irritated Julius and inspired admiration in him.
“Let us be reasonable,” said the younger man. “You have demanded to be a Consul of Rome. The Consuls have already been elected, for the city, for the provinces. Let us say that we are not pleased by the choices of both the Optimate and the populares parties. Let us say that we wish to replace them.” Julius touched his lips with the tip of his to
ngue.
“And how will you accomplish that?” demanded Catilina.
But Crassus spoke with cold authority. “While you were in Africa we have not been idle. We have not been merely eating and excreting, as you appear to believe, Catilina. You speak of the fact that you are no longer young. But I am much older than you, and I have patience. I do not throw the dice before I know they are my own, and loaded. Had you not asked to come here tonight I should have sent for you.” This was a lie, but still it had some small truth in it. The truth, it had been agreed before, should not be divulged to the reckless Catilina for fear of him precipitating a crisis before all was ready. However, Catilina could no longer be restrained, so they must placate him.
“Tell me!” cried Catilina, the flush on his face deepening to crimson with excitement.
Julius said, in a very soft tone, almost inaudible, “We wish to replace the elected Consuls. We wish the offices filled with our friends. Now, if you will listen and bend your head to my ear—”
Marcus Tullius Cicero did not believe in the rumor his brother, Quintus, had brought to him. The very thought of the dissolute and monstrous Catilina being Consul of Rome was incredible to him. Crassus and Caesar and Pompey were not madmen. They were doubtless conspirators, though the exact nature of the conspiracy he suspected was not clear to Marcus; he only knew that in some way it was the seizure of absolute power in Rome. But certainly they would not offer Catilina to the Roman people and the Optimates for their approval of a Consulship for him! Catilina the mad, the furious, the murderer, the depraved and unreliable, the patrician whose arrogance must offend even his friends and fellow plotters, the debt-ridden and unscrupulous and venal, the profoundly contemptible: No, not even Crassus and Caesar and Pompey would permit such a man as Consul of Rome, where he would be in a position to vent his capricious rages upon themselves and even to destroy them.
Nevertheless, Marcus had long ago recovered from his belief that anything is truly incredible. He discreetly spoke to several of his friends, good men like himself. They, too, were incredulous. They could not believe that those three pragmatic and ambitious men would support Catilina for the Consulship and lend their august names to the aims of an evil and totally irresponsible madman.
“However, it is possible that they are afraid of him,” said Marcus. “One must remember the underworld of Rome whom Catilina controls. He has no restraints; he could loose the criminals, gladiators, slaves, freedmen, gamblers, pimps, murderers, disaffected veterans, malcontents, beggars, and perverts on Rome at a word.”
Marcus’ friends wondered at him. They thought it strange that so steadfast and sensible a lawyer was becoming extravagant and was seeing Furies in the nights. One of them whispered to another, “I am certain he searches under his bed before sleeping for a disheveled and unwashed Catilinian lion. But that is hysteria and unreasonable and even womanish, and I say this who loves Cicero. It is certain that the Catilina raves and is out of his mind and is cruel and debased, and hates all men. But it is also certain that he does not possess the terrible power Cicero ascribes to him. The Roman people, at heart, would not listen to such as Catilina. The forces he commands, though annoying and even troubling, are no real threat to Rome. To do as Cicero advises: watching the minions of Catilina at all times, and to openly outlaw them, would not only arouse the laughter of Rome but would violate the liberty of the individual and rebound disastrously on Cicero’s own reputation. Surely he does not wish to be named a violator of the rights of men, an autocrat of vehement opinion and an accuser of all who disagree with him!”*
“The time to be prepared to the utmost is during periods of tranquillity,” Marcus wrote to Atticus in Athens. “The methods I suggest for the safety of Rome command consternation among my friends or even accusations that I am immoderate and losing a sense of proportion. A man who can command the very dregs of a nation, and who has no love for his country, and who is revolutionary and hating and vengeful and envious and evil and a traitor, is not to be laughed at or ignored. My friends are too complacent; they believe that Rome is founded on rock and our Constitution invulnerable and our law too strong. They love to consider themselves tolerant of all men’s opinions and refuse to believe that some men are profoundly wicked and monstrous by nature. They look at their own pleasant and fatherly visages and believe that their mirrors reflect all others’. Do you know what they tell me? That Catilina’s following is a very small minority in Rome!”
In reply, Atticus the publisher wrote: “There are only two kinds of politicians: Those who love tolerance for its own sake and believe all men love it by nature, and those who espouse tolerance in order to hide the activities of the vicious who support them.”
To the latter, Marcus thought despondently, Crassus and Caesar and Pompey and Piso and Curius and all their friends belong. He could not so far name a name in the darkness which surrounded him. He visited Senators who admired him and laid his proposal before them: That Catilina be thoroughly investigated and be brought before the Senate for questioning. But those Senators also looked at Marcus with uneasiness. True, all knew what Catilina was. But, what proof did Marcus have of his activities in his Hades underground? None had heard that Crassus was agreeable to Catilina becoming Consul of Rome. Besides, the people had already elected the Consuls who would take office in the month of Janus, after the December Saturnalia.
Marcus said, “Why will you not listen to me? Catilina is mad. It is very possible that he has threatened Crassus, himself.”
The more smiling and disbelieving resistance he met the more stubborn Marcus became. Moreover, his intuition had come alive. Let them say he searched under his bed every night for an enemy. Better it would be for them if they did so also!
He said to Quintus, his brother; “You spoke of a rumor concerning Catilina. Have you pursued it?”
“I did. And like all rumors it dissolves like smoke on the instant of touching.”
“Then we are truly in danger.”
Publius Clodius, surnamed Pulcher, was devoted to his lovely and gaily promiscuous sister, Clodia, whose hair had not very originally been compared to the wing of a raven, and her eyes to midnight stars, and her breast to the breast of a dove. She had a husband, Caecilius Metellus Celer, of a most distinguished family, who had discovered that she was the only woman with whom he could conduct normal relationships. Wishing to disguise his predilections, he had married her, much to the envy of her many suitors. But after a few months of decorous intimacy he had yearned for his old companions and old pleasures.
She was fastidious and her lovers were carefully selected. She had her favorites, and among them was Marcus Tullius Cicero who preferred to believe that he was her only lover though he knew better. Clodia possessed not only beauty, wit and charm, but she had an excellent mind. There were many nights when they did not repair to Clodia’s luxurious chamber at all, but sat until dawn discussing philosophy and politics and the fate of man, with great content and satisfaction. Marcus knew he could never love another woman but the long-dead Livia, but he had a tremendous affection and admiration for the beauteous Clodia, and considered her a dear friend as well as a mistress. He bought for her the jewels which Terentia despised; he often filled her house with flowers and perfumes.
Her brother, Clodius, thought of himself as a “modern” man and so was tolerant of his sister’s affable sexual frolics. Moreover, he learned much of what was going on in Rome from her, for she had many devoted female friends also who listened avidly to their powerful husbands. Clodius thought of his sister as a Roman Aspasia, and sometimes he laughingly referred to Marcus as “your Pericles.”
One day she said to her brother, who had called to join her at her midday meal, “You know Mark Antony. He is a guileless young soldier, with the mind of an eternal boy, though he is valorous. He adores your ambiguous friend, Caesar; he basks in his shadow. Why this is I do not know, for I mistrust and dislike Caesar, who has attempted to seduce me.”
“Caesar never
lays eyes on a desirable woman that he does not attempt to seduce her,” said Clodius.
“I do not like libertines,” said Clodia with a severity that made her brother smile. She paused and studied her brother with her great black eyes. “Do you think I am a stupid woman? I know of your associations with Caesar and his friends. But, I have heard a rumor from my guileless Mark Antony.”
Clodius became alert. Though he was of the arcane brotherhood, and possessed one of its serpentine rings, he was not of the close companions who surrounded Crassus, notably Caesar, Curius, Piso, Catilina, and Pompey. He was a politician; nevertheless he knew only what the others wished him to know. He said, “No one would trust such a constant talker like young Mark Antony. You can rely on nothing he repeats.”
“He tells me that Marcus Tullius Cicero’s murder has been arranged during the first part of the month of Janus, when the elected Consuls take office.”
Clodius was disappointed. He laughed. “What nonsense! He is under Caesar’s protection.”
“So he is, or was. But Caesar, you may remember, has fits of epilepsy. Mark Antony is his favorite among all the young men who surround him. During one of those fits of epilepsy he babbled incoherently to Mark Antony, who was alone with him in his house. Caesar appeared beside himself with rage and emotion. He spoke of the coming murder of my Marcus, and the first week in Janus, and he wept and struck about him and threw himself at a wall and screamed that he was helpless. For Catilina had demanded it, and Crassus no longer will prevent it.” Clodia looked at her brother sternly. “Mark Antony is not concerned with Cicero or his fate. He thought it very exciting, that so famous a man as Cicero, and so ‘dull,’ as he said, should soon die.”
A Pillar of Iron: A Novel of Ancient Rome Page 67
