Imperium: Page 8

  ‘It’s bad,’ said Quintus, although one could already tell that from his face. ‘Pompey for consul and the rights of the tribunes restored, and with no opposition to be offered by the aristocrats. But in return – listen to this – in return, Hortensius and Quintus Metellus are to be consuls in the following year, with the full support of Pompey, while Lucius Metellus is to replace Verres as governor of Sicily. Finally, Crassus – Crassus! – is to rule with Pompey as joint consul, with both their armies to be dissolved on the day they take office.’

  ‘But I should have been in there,’ said Cicero, staring with dismay at the villa. ‘I should have been in there!’

  ‘Marcus,’ said his brother sadly, putting his hand on his shoulder, ‘none of them would have you.’

  Cicero looked stunned at the scale of this reversal – himself excluded, his enemies rewarded, Crassus elevated to the consulship – but then he shook his shoulder free and made angrily towards the doors. And perhaps his career might have been ended there by the sword of one of Pompey’s sentries, for I believe, in his desperation, Cicero had resolved to force his way through to the negotiating table and demand his share. But it was too late. The big men, their deal struck, were already coming out, their aides scampering ahead of them, their guards stamping to attention as they passed. Crassus emerged first, and then, from the shadows, Pompey, his identity obvious at once not only from the aura of power around him – the way the proximate air seemed almost to crackle as he moved – but from the cast of his features. He had a broad face, wide cheekbones, and thick wavy hair that rose in a quiff, like the prow of a ship. It was a face full of weight and command, and he possessed the body to go with it, wide shoulders and a strong chest – the torso of a wrestler. I could see why, when he was younger, and famed for his ruthlessness, he had been called the Butcher Boy.

  And so off they went, Baldhead and the Butcher Boy, noticeably neither talking nor even looking at one another, heading towards the gate, which swung open as they approached. A stampede of senators, seeing what was happening, set off in pursuit, and we were swept along in the rush, borne out of the Villa Publica and into what felt like a solid wall of noise and heat. Twenty thousand people must have gathered on the Field of Mars that afternoon, all bellowing their approval. A narrow avenue had been cleared by the soldiers, straining arms chain-linked at the elbows, feet scrabbling in the dust to hold back the crowd. It was just wide enough for Pompey and Crassus to walk abreast, although what their expressions were and whether they had started talking I could not see, as we were far back in the procession. They made slow progress towards the tribunal, where the officials traditionally stand at election time. Pompey heaved himself up first, to a renewed surge of applause, which he basked in for a while, turning his wide and beaming face this way and that, like a cat in sunshine. Then he reached down and hauled Crassus up after him. At this demonstration of unity between the two notorious rivals, the crowd let out another roar, and it came again and even louder when Pompey seized hold of Crassus’s hand and raised it above his head.

  ‘What a sickening spectacle,’ said Cicero. He had to shout into my ear to make himself heard. ‘The consulship demanded and conceded at the point of the sword. We are witnessing the beginning of the end of the republic, Tiro, remember my words!’ I could not help reflecting, however, that if he had been in that conference, and had helped engineer this joint ticket, he would now be hailing it as a masterpiece of statecraft.

  Pompey waved at the crowd for quiet, then began speaking in his parade-ground voice. ‘People of Rome! The leaders of the senate have graciously conveyed to me the offer of a triumph, and I am pleased to accept it. They have also told me that I will be allowed to stand as a candidate for the consulship, and I am pleased to accept that as well. The only thing that pleases me more is that my old friend Marcus Licinius Crassus will be my colleague.’ He concluded by promising that the following year he would hold a great festival of games, dedicated to Hercules, in honour of his victories in Spain.

  Well, these were fine words, no doubt, but he spoke them all too quickly, forgetting to leave the necessary pause after every sentence, which meant that those few who had managed to hear what he said had no opportunity to repeat it to those behind who had not. I doubt if more than a few hundred out of that vast assembly knew what he was saying, but they cheered in any case, and they cheered even more when Crassus immediately, and cunningly, upstaged him.

  ‘I hereby dedicate,’ he said, in the booming voice of a trained orator, ‘at the same time as Pompey’s games – on the same day as Pompey’s games – one tenth of my fortune – one tenth of my entire fortune – to providing free food to the people of Rome – free food for every one of you, for three months – and a great banquet in the streets – a banquet for every citizen – a banquet in honour of Hercules!’

  The crowd went into fresh ecstasies. ‘The villain,’ said Cicero admiringly. ‘A tenth of his fortune is a bribe of twenty million! But cheap at the price. See how he turns a weak position into a strong one? I bet you were not expecting that,’ he called out to Palicanus, who was struggling towards us from the tribunal. ‘He has made himself look Pompey’s equal. You should never have allowed him a platform.’

  ‘Come and meet the imperator,’ urged Palicanus. ‘He wants to thank you in person.’ I could see Cicero was in two minds, but Palicanus was insistent, tugging at his sleeve, and I suppose he thought he ought to try to salvage something from the day.

  ‘Is he going to make a speech?’ shouted Cicero, as we followed Palicanus towards the tribunal.

  ‘He doesn’t really make speeches,’ replied Palicanus over his shoulder. ‘Not yet, anyway.’

  ‘That is a mistake. They will expect him to say something.’

  ‘Well, they will just have to be disappointed, won’t they?’

  ‘What a waste,’ Cicero muttered to me in disgust. ‘What I would not give to have an audience such as this! How often do you see so many voters in one place?’

  But Pompey had little experience of public oratory, and besides, he was accustomed to commanding men, not pandering to them. With a final wave to the crowd, he clambered down from the platform. Crassus followed suit and the applause slowly died away. There was a palpable sense of anticlimax, as people stood around wondering what they should do next. ‘What a waste,’ repeated Cicero. ‘I would have given them a show.’

  Behind the tribunal was a small enclosed area, where it was the custom for the magistrates to wait before going up to officiate on election-day. Palicanus conducted us into it, past the guards, and here, a moment or two later, Pompey himself appeared. A young black slave handed him a cloth and he began dabbing at his sweating face and wiping the back of his neck. A dozen senators waited to greet him and Palicanus thrust Cicero into the middle of the line, then drew back with Quintus, Lucius and myself to watch. Pompey was moving down the queue, shaking hands with each of the senators in turn, Afranius at his back to tell him who was who. ‘Good to meet you,’ said Pompey. ‘Good to meet you. Good to meet you.’ As he came closer I had a better opportunity to study him. He had a noble face, no question of it, but there was also a disagreeable vanity in those fleshy features, and his grand, distracted manner only emphasised his obvious boredom at meeting all these tedious civilians. He reached Cicero very quickly.

  ‘This is Marcus Cicero, Imperator,’ said Afranius.

  ‘Good to meet you.’

  He was about to move on, but Afranius took his elbow and whispered, ‘Cicero is considered one of the city’s foremost advocates, and was very useful to us in the senate.’

  ‘Was he? Well, then – keep up the good work.’

  ‘I shall,’ said Cicero quickly, ‘for I hope next year to be aedile.’

  ‘Aedile?’ Pompey scoffed at the very idea. ‘No, no, I do not think so. I have other plans in that direction. But I’m sure we can always find a use for a clever lawyer.’

  And with that he really did move on – ‘Good to meet you
… Good to meet you …’ – leaving Cicero staring straight ahead and swallowing hard.

  V

  THAT NIGHT, FOR the first and last time in all my years in his service, Cicero drank too much. I could hear him arguing over dinner with Terentia – not one of their normal, witty, icily courteous disputes, but a row which echoed throughout the small house, as she berated him for his stupidity in ever trusting such an obviously dishonourable gang: Piceneans, all of them, not even proper Romans! ‘But then of course, you are not a proper Roman either’ – a dig at Cicero’s lowly provincial origins which invariably got under his skin. Ominously, I did not hear what he said back to her – it was delivered in such a quiet, malevolent tone – but whatever it was, it must have been devastating, for Terentia, who was not a woman easily shaken, ran from the dining room in tears and disappeared upstairs.

  I thought it best to leave him well alone. But an hour later I heard a crash, and when I went in Cicero was on his feet and swaying slightly, staring at a broken plate. The front of his tunic was stained with wine. ‘I really do not feel well,’ he said.

  I got him up to his room by hooking his arm over my shoulder – not an easy procedure, as he was heavier than I – laid him on his bed, and unlaced his shoes. ‘Divorce,’ he muttered into his pillow, ‘that is the answer, Tiro – divorce, and if I have to leave the senate because I can’t afford it – well, so what? Nobody would miss me. Just another “new man” who came to nothing. Oh dear, Tiro!’ I managed to get his chamber pot in front of him just before he was sick. Head down, he addressed his own vomit. ‘We shall go to Athens, my dear fellow, and live with Atticus and study philosophy and no one here will miss us …’ these last few words all running together into a long, self-pitying burble of slurred syllables and sibilant consonants which no shorthand symbol of mine could ever have reconstructed. I set the pot beside him, blew out the lamp and he was snoring even before I reached the door. I confess I went to bed that night with a troubled heart.

  And yet, the next morning, I was woken at exactly the usual pre-dawn hour by the sound of him going through his exercises – a little more slowly than usual, perhaps, but then it was awfully early, for this was the height of summer, and he can hardly have had more than a few hours’ sleep. Such was the nature of the man. Failure was the fuel of his ambition. Each time he suffered a humiliation – be it as an advocate in his early days when his constitution failed him, or on his return from Sicily, or now, with Pompey’s offhand treatment – the fire in him was temporarily banked, but only that it might flare up again even more fiercely. ‘It is perseverance,’ he used to say, ‘and not genius that takes a man to the top. Rome is full of unrecognised geniuses. Only perseverance enables you to move forward in the world.’ And so I heard him preparing for another day of struggle in the Roman forum and felt the old, familiar rhythm of the house reassert itself.

  I dressed. I lit the lamps. I told the porter to open the front door. I checked the callers. Then I went into Cicero’s study and gave him his list of clients. No mention was ever made, either then or in the future, of what had happened the previous night, and I suspect this helped draw us even closer. To be sure, he looked a little green, and he had to screw up his eyes to focus on the names, but otherwise he was entirely normal. ‘Sthenius!’ he groaned, when he saw who was waiting, as usual, in the tablinum. ‘May the gods have mercy upon us!’

  ‘He is not alone,’ I warned him. ‘He has brought two more Sicilians with him.’

  ‘You mean to say he is multiplying?’ He coughed to clear his throat. ‘Right. Let us have him in first and get rid of him once and for all.’

  As in some curious recurring dream from which one cannot wake, I found myself yet again conducting Sthenius of Thermae into Cicero’s presence. His companions he introduced as Heraclius of Syracuse and Epicrates of Bidis. Both were old men, dressed like him in the dark garb of mourning, with uncut hair and beards.

  ‘Now listen, Sthenius,’ said Cicero sternly, after he had shaken hands with the grim-looking trio, ‘this has got to stop.’

  But Sthenius was in that strange and remote private kingdom into which outside sounds seldom penetrate: the land of the obsessive litigant. ‘I am most grateful to you, Senator. Firstly, now that I have obtained the court records from Syracuse,’ he said, pulling a piece of paper from his leather bag and thrusting it into Cicero’s hands, ‘you can see what the monster has done. This is what was written before the verdict of the tribunes. And this,’ he said, giving him another, ‘is what was written afterwards.’

  With a sigh, Cicero held the two documents side by side and squinted at them. ‘So what is this? This is the official record of your trial for treason, in which I see it is written that you were present during the hearing. Well, we know that is nonsense. And here …’ his words began to slow as he realised the implications, ‘here it says that you were not present.’ He looked up, his bleary eyes starting to clear. ‘So Verres is falsifying the proceedings of his own court, and then he is falsifying his own falsification?’

  ‘Exactly!’ cried Sthenius. ‘When he realised you had produced me before the tribunes, and that all of Rome knew I could hardly have been in Syracuse on the first day of December, he had to obliterate the record of his lie. But the first document was already on its way to me.’

  ‘Well, well,’ said Cicero, continuing to scrutinise the paper, ‘perhaps he is more worried than we thought. And I see it also says here that you had a defence attorney representing you that day: “Gaius Claudius, son of Gaius Claudius, of the Palatine tribe.” You are a fortunate man, to have your very own Roman lawyer. Who is he?’

  ‘He is Verres’s business manager.’

  Cicero studied Sthenius for a moment or two. ‘What else do you have in that bag of yours?’ he said.

  Out it all came then, tipped over the study floor on that hot summer’s morning: letters, names, scraps of official records, scribbled notes of gossip and rumours – seven months’ angry labour by three desperate men, for it transpired that Heraclius and Epicrates had also been swindled out of their estates by Verres, one worth sixty thousand, the other thirty. In both cases, Verres had abused his office to bring false accusations and secure illegal verdicts. Both had been robbed at around the same time as Sthenius. Both had been, until then, the leading men in their communities. Both had been obliged to flee the island penniless and seek refuge in Rome. Hearing of Sthenius’s appearance before the tribunes, they had sought him out and proposed cooperation.

  ‘As single victims, they were weak,’ said Cicero, years later, reminiscing about the case, ‘but when they joined in common cause, they found they had a network of contacts which spread across the entire island: Thermae in the north, Bidis in the south, Syracuse in the east. These were men sagacious by nature, shrewd by experience, accomplished by education, and their fellow countrymen had opened up the secrets of their suffering to them, as they would never have done to a Roman senator.’

  Outwardly, Cicero still seemed the calm advocate. But as the sun grew stronger and I blew out the lamps, and as he picked up one document after another, I could sense his gathering excitement. Here was the sworn affidavit of Dio of Halaesa, from whom Verres had first demanded a bribe of ten thousand to bring in a not guilty verdict, and then stolen all his horses, tapestries and gold and silver plate. Here were the written testimonies of priests whose temples had been robbed – a bronze Apollo, signed in silver by the sculptor Myron, and presented by Scipio a century and a half earlier, stolen from the shrine of Aesculapius at Agrigentum; a statue of Ceres carried away from Catina, and of Victory from Henna; the sacking of the ancient shrine of Juno in Melita. Here was the evidence of farmers in Herbita and Agyrium, threatened with being flogged to death unless they paid protection money to Verres’s agents. Here was the story of the wretched Sopater of Tyndaris, seized in midwinter by Verres’s lictors and bound naked to an equestrian statue in full view of the entire community, until he and his fellow citizens agreed to hand over
a valuable municipal bronze of Mercury that stood in the local gymnasium. ‘It is not a province Verres is running down there,’ murmured Cicero, in wonder, ‘it is a fully fledged criminal state.’ There were a dozen more of these grim stories.

  With the agreement of the three Sicilians, I bundled the papers together and locked them in the senator’s strongbox. ‘It is vital, gentlemen, that not a word of this leaks out,’ Cicero told them. ‘By all means continue to collect statements and witnesses, but please do it discreetly. Verres has used violence and intimidation many times before, and you can be sure he will use them again to protect himself. We need to take the rascal unawares.’

  ‘Does that mean,’ asked Sthenius, hardly daring to hope, ‘that you will help us?’

  Cicero looked at him but did not answer.

  LATER THAT DAY, when he returned from the law courts, the senator made up his quarrel with his wife. He dispatched young Sositheus down to the old flower market in the Forum Boarium, in front of the Temple of Portunus, to buy a bouquet of fragrant summer blooms. These he then gave to little Tullia, telling her solemnly that he had a vital task for her. She was to take them in to her mother and announce they had come for her from a rough provincial admirer. (‘Have you got that, Tulliola? A rough provincial admirer.’) She disappeared very self-importantly into Terentia’s chamber, and I guess they must have done the trick, for that evening, when – at Cicero’s insistence – the couches were carried up to the roof and the family dined beneath the summer stars, the flowers had a place of honour at the centre of the table.