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.
“I, Lucius Sergius Catilina, have received medals and honors from my generals, and I have been embraced by them because of my services to my country! Was Sulla a liar, lords, or a traitor, that he could so honor me? Did multitudes of my countrymen vote for me for their Consul, and did they, in their voting, stigmatize themselves as liars and traitors? When I was Praetor, did I loot my country and betray her? Has Crassus here, or Julius Caesar the Magnus, or Pompey the Magnus, or the noble Publius Clodius, surnamed Pulcher, risen here to denounce me, I, their companion in many a battle, a brother, a fellow patrician, a comrade-in-arms? No! They have not risen. Not a single voice has accused me or denounced me. Save one.”
He lifted his arm and pointed to Cicero as one would point at a dog of such obscenities that he chose not to speak its name. His attitude was so offended, so full of revulsion, so vibrant with anger, that several virtuous Senators believed him and shifted in their seats and let their eyes reveal their indignation.
“Save one!” he exclaimed. “Save only one! And who is he who accuses me? Not a Roman born within the gates of Rome, but only a Roman by courtesy, born near Arpinum in the countryside, a ‘new man,’ a man devoid of honor, a newcomer, a man who cannot possibly know what it is to be a Roman born and bred within these hallowed gates, within halls resounding with the blessings of heroic ancestors, in the sight of altars raised to the gods of heroes!
“Is he a soldier, lords? Does he bear upon his flesh what you see before you on my flesh? Where is his sword, his shield, his armor of Rome? He prates of law—but it was my ancestors who wrote the law and inscribed it for the generations of Romans yet unborn! It was my ancestors who wrote our Consitution with pens dipped in their own blood. It was my ancestors who administered the laws they created, and it was my ancestors who set the feet of Romans on the path to glory and strength and majesty. Lords! Did the ancestors of this man do so, this man of undistinguished family, this man, the son of tradesmen and mean shopkeepers and petty merchants? No! Yet he prates of law, as an ass would bray at the moon!”
He struck his breast with his clenched fist. His countenance was inflamed, his great blue eyes striking each face like lightning.
“This man, in this holy Temple, before your faces, before your honor and your love of country, your birth and your breeding, before the memories of your ancestors, before the lictors and the fasces and the banners of our country, before the mighty history of Rome, dares to accuse me—me! of the most monstrous crimes that ever disgraced the spirits of men, of the most unmentionable corruptions, of treason! Treason!”
Again he struck his breast and the awful blue fire of his eyes turned upon Cicero with scorn and loathing.
“Lords, do you know what truly fills him now and what filled him before? Envy. Greed. Hatred of what he can never aspire to so long as Rome exists! He is Consul of Rome. It is not enough for him. Through guile and a mellifluous voice he has seduced the wits of Romans and made some fame for himself. It is not enough for him. He has risen from poverty to riches—the riches of Rome. It is not enough for him. He is envious. He wishes to be what I am, a patrician. Failing that, he would destroy and devour what he can never attain, what the gods have denied to him.
“On four separate occasions he has furiously and madly attacked me, in his envy and his frustration. I have heard him twice. On two occasions I did not come here, for very shame for my country. I did not fear him. I did not fear that you would believe him, in his horrible accusations against a son of Rome. I disdained to hear him, for who would give credence to one of low birth and mean ancestry? Only animals, as gluttonous as he.
“And now, he has the effrontery—which would never have been countenanced in the days of your fathers and mine—to demand that I die ignominiously for crimes I have never committed, and which as a patrician Roman I could not commit, nay, not even if I were deranged! I have endured him. Lords, I can endure him no more. I ask that you remember our common blood and the souls of our ancestors, and ask yourselves if I could be guilty of the stupendous crimes of which I have been accused—by this Marcus Tullius Cicero whose ancestors were fullers and washed our clothing! Search your hearts and your memories, lords, and then look upon what Rome has spewed up in these days, that low-born and base men can rise up, with impunity, and denounce men like myself who are the very spirit of Rome!”
He flung himself into his chair again and pressed his clenched fists upon his knees, and his breast heaved and he stared at the floor as if he saw a fearful and intimidating vision which he repudiated with all his blood and the force of his passions.
Quintus, who stood near his brother, felt his mouth fill with bile and the lust to do death. His burly face, usually so highly colored, was white as linen. His large hand rose and gripped Cicero’s arm, and he found it as rigid as stone, and he saw that his brother was staring at Catilina as one would stare at a Gorgon’s head.
Then in the profound and deadly silence Julius Caesar rose again, clothed splendidly, and faintly smiling. He addressed the Senate, who reluctantly tore their eyes from Catilina to listen to him.
“Lords,” he said in a gentle and reasonable voice, “we have heard the accuser and the accused. Catilina’s words indeed strike to the heart of every proud man. But, lords, we have the evidence! Cicero’s accusations are not based on envy and wind. We have Catilina’s lieutenants’ confessions, which in justice and in the search of truth were not extracted from them by durance and torture, but which were freely admitted by the mouths of patricians themselves, and with the patrician’s contempt for lies.”
Catilina raised his beautiful and terrible head and looked directly at Julius, who smiled with slight indulgence.
“These days are not the days of our fathers, alas,” said Julius with sadness. “Patricians in earlier days did not consort with foolish and plotting zealots of excitable ambitions. But life was simpler in the days of our fathers, and not so demoralized and so complex and so bewildering and not so shaken by the many winds of change and differences. A man knew his duty in those simple days. He was not mystified as to what was best for his country. He fought for her, simply, and died for her. His politics were not confounded and abstruse and intricate as now they are. Out of confusion, even out of good will and a love for one’s fellows, there must inevitably rise, at times, a certain bafflement, a certain tendency to be duped by beguiling tongues, a certain unsureness of aims. What seemed good for our fathers no longer seems good to, alas, many of the unstable of character. Shall we call this instability, this confusion, treason, the most unpardonable of crimes? Or shall we call it deplorable and have compassion upon the silly perpetrators?”
Crassus suppressed his dark smile. Clodius moved uncomfortably. Pompey looked at Caesar and the impassive eyes narrowed. But the young Marcus Porcius Cato, grandson of the fiery old patriot and Censor, looked upon Caesar with horror and with Cicero’s own silent wrath.
“It is not unknown,” Caesar continued with ripe sorrow and regret, “that even aristocrats can be deluded and confused. Catilina has been accused by his own lieutenants of plotting against Rome, of a desire to fire and destroy her in a kind of exultant madness, of betraying her. One must remember that those lieutenants, in their eagerness to escape just punishment for their own crimes, might tend to exaggeration. Let us grant that Catilina listened to them and dreamed great mad dreams. After all, they are his fellow patricians. But young men! lords, and one knows the excesses of young and ardent men! Catilina is no longer young. And, he has been wounded many times in the service of his country, and suffered many fevers in foreign parts, and these are enough in themselves to throw a man’s reason into disorder and to affect his judgment. I know him well; I have known him from childhood. I have fou
ght side by side with him, and never was there a braver or more dedicated soldier! I found in him, in our youth together, no sign of this derangement which is alleged to possess him now—the result of hearkening to men of impatient passions and more impatient lusts.
“There may be much truth in what his lieutenants have said—and much imagination on their part. If Catilina listened, and was confused, and did not know what to do in these arduous and changing days and complexities of living and government, then his very listening was stupid. But, does that constitute treason? Perhaps. Perhaps not.
“Nevertheless, it does call for a penalty, and I demand it.”
He looked at Catilina whose perfect mouth was set in an expression of mournful dejection, and whose head was bowed again.
“Let him go forth!” cried Julius as if tortured by regret and indignation and yet by pity. “Let him spend the last years of his life in exile, where he can do penance for his folly and remember, unavailingly, the city of his fathers. Let us give him assurance that there will be no sentries at the gates, no ambushes to murder him on that road to exile. Let us forget the name of Catilina, as he, himself, must desire to be forgotten. Let us have mercy, remembering his services to his country in the past, and his bravery and his heroism. Let him go, to meditate on his follies and recall, as the years pass, that his fellow Romans could be moved to compassion and to spare him.” At this, Julius put his hands over his face as if to hide his tears, and then he averted his face and sat down in an attitude of exhaustion and pain.*
Cicero said to himself with the utmost despair: He has betrayed me and Rome. How did Catilina reach him, that he dishonored himself so? O Julius, I thought no better of you, but I have had my hopes! I thought that at the last you would stand with your country. Now all is lost.
Cicero saw the faces of the Senators and saw the struggle upon them and the fear and the darkness. And worst of all, the doubt and unsureness.
It was then that young Cato rose, the man with the refined face and the unafraid and wrathful eyes and the delicate features. Cato came to stand beside Cicero and to take his hand in the unaffected gesture of a comrade. And he looked at the Senators and his eyes became bright and steadfast. Then slowly he turned to Julius, who had suddenly recovered from his grief and was sitting upright in his ivory chair, as if he saw a marble Hermes come to life and confront him. Cato raised his hand and pointed at Caesar and began to speak in a voice that trembled and was at first shy, and then slowly gathered strength.
“Caesar! Son of a great and honored house! Caesar the Magnus, the famed soldier! Caesar who has today dishonored all that he is, and his country, too!”
The Senators straightened in their seats and could not believe their eyes and their ears. They looked at each other, dumfounded.
“Caesar, the dissembler, the liar!” cried Cato, with all the power of his anger. “He knows that what Cicero has said is truth; he knows that what the lieutenants of Catilina have said is truth! Why does he deny it? Tell me, Caesar, of what are you afraid? What emotions crowd your subtle heart? What deviousnesses of brain and soul?
“You have heard the truth many times, yet now you speak softly. Softly! What softness is this in behalf of traitors, Caesar? Why do you insult our intelligence, our knowledge, our rationality as men, our awareness of the truth? Must there be softness for traitors, for the enemies of our country? Must there be the excuse that they were duped, that they were confused, that they did not know what they did? That they intended well, out of the goodness of their hearts, and that only the result was vile and not the intention? When they disseminated treason, did they do it only out of the love of man and a burning desire for justice, however misguided or dangerous? Were they only dissatisfied and did they only do what they did in order to better the lot of all Romans, particularly those they called the ‘oppressed?’ Was their impatience, as you call it, only the impatience of those who ache to improve society? Were they frustrated, merely, at the slowness of the law, and the slow correction of what is unworthy in the law? Or, Caesar, are they what you know they are—traitors and murderers and assassins and renegades, with a full knowledge of their crimes and with a lust for power?”
His voice choked with his godlike emotion and rage. And the Senators, moved again and coming as out of a dream, listened. Julius smiled musingly. Crassus betrayed nothing in his expression. Pompey smiled an inscrutable smile. Clodius affected to examine his nails.
Cato continued, trembling for all to see, but not with fear:
“What I advise—what I now demand and what all Romans demand with me—is this, that since the State, by a known and treasonable combination of dissolute citizens, has been brought into the most monstrous peril, and since the plotters, including Catilina, are among us, and more, convicted on their own confession of having thought up massacres and riot, incendiarisms, and all sorts of inhuman and cruel outrages on their fellow citizens, punishment be inflicted according to old-fashioned and ancient precedent, as on men found guilty of capital crimes!”*
So fascinated were the Senators, and so struck by the simplicity and ardor and passionate honesty of the young man, whom they had known as a gentle and serious squire, a studious patrician, a valorous but unassuming Roman, that they did not notice that Catilina had risen, in his distant station, and had suddenly disappeared, melting away through the throngs and even the soldiers at the door who were as fascinated and as struck as themselves. The massed people outside were themselves unaware of his fast and gliding passage, for they had been listening to Caesar and to Cato and were astonished and entranced, their heads lifted and strained so as not to miss a word, their voices, always so exuberant, for once silenced. They did not notice nor heed Catilina’s soft escape; if they were aware at all they thought it a mere jostling. It did not occur to them, until too late, to know that he had escaped. Too, the winter sun had become dazzling so that the eye ached and watered as it tried to peer through the brilliance to the dusk within the Temple.
Only one saw that stealthy exit and that was Julius Caesar, and he never started or betrayed what he had seen and kept his expression thoughtful. At last, when he heard no outcry beyond the Temple, he became aware that he had been holding his breath and that his lungs were protesting. He smiled in himself with intense relief, and glanced warily at Cicero. But Cicero’s head was bowed, for he had been deeply moved by Cato’s words and the touch of his hand. He heard the murmur of the Senators when Cato had finished speaking, and he pondered in himself before he lifted his head and addressed them again, knowing that only too many were hostile to him and despised him.
“Lords, Cato is of the opinion that men who have attempted to deprive us of life, to destroy this Republic, and to blot out the name of the Roman people, ought not to enjoy for a single second the privilege of life and the breath which we all share; and he bears in mind that this particular punishment has often been resorted to at Rome in dealing with disloyal citizens. Caesar understands that death has not been ordained by the immortal gods as a method of punishment, but is either an inevitable consequence of natural existence or a peaceful release from labors and afflictions. Thus the wise have never faced death with reluctance and the brave have often met it gladly. But imprisonment and especially death have certainly been devised as the exceptional penalty for abominable crimes. Caesar, however, proposes that Catilina and his conspirators be exiled from Rome and be distributed to unfortunate other towns or hamlets throughout Italy, which would seem, lords, to be an act of unfairness to those towns or hamlets!” He sighed and shook his head.
“If you adopt Caesar’s proposal, which is in accord with his own political life which is considered ‘popular,’ I shall have less reason to fear an outburst of public resentment, for many love Catilina. If you adopt the alternative of death, I shall bring upon myself a larger amount of danger. But let me ask this of Caesar: Surely he is aware that the Sempronian Law was enacted for the benefit of Roman citizens only, and that a man who is an open enemy of the Stat
e cannot really be a citizen, and therefore cannot suffer only exile!
“Lords, I have concluded my exhortations, and the decision is now yours. You can only determine, in the light of evidence, and with courage, as to the supreme welfare of yourselves and of the Roman people, as to your wives and children, as to your altars and your hearths, your sanctuaries and temples, the buildings and homes of the whole city, as to your sovereignty and your liberty, the safety of Italy, the whole commonwealth of Rome. I am your Consul. I will not hesitate to obey your instructions, whatever they may be. And I will take it upon myself the entire responsibility.”*
He looked at the Senators with quiet severity and did not glance away from them. He stood with his brother at one hand and Cato at the other. The fate of Rome lay with these Senators, and he was resigned to their hesitation and their ultimate rejection of his demand for Catilina’s death.
But the people outside had rapidly passed his final words among themselves to the farthest reaches of the Forum, and now the Temple, as Cicero waited and the Senators conducted a whispered consultation with each other, was suddenly invaded by a huge and thunderous roar: “Death to Catilina and all the traitors! Death! Death!”
Cicero heard and the faintest of smiles passed over his stern features. Caesar heard, and looked into Crassus’ eyes and read nothing there that he could interpret. And the Senators heard, and listened acutely, and knew that they had no alternative. The oldest among them directed his eyes upon the Consul and said:
“Death to Catilina and his conspirators.”
He had hardly finished speaking when Quintus started forward and gave a signal to his soldiers to arrest Catilina. But Catilina was not there, and at once those within the Temple joined their angered cries with those outside. Catilina, on his great black horse, and followed by several of his companions was, at that very moment, sweeping furiously through the nearest gates of Rome to join old Manlius.
A Pillar of Iron: A Novel of Ancient Rome Page 78
