Imperium: Read online

  I know this because, as the meal was ending, I was unexpectedly sent for by Cicero. It was a still night, without a flicker of wind to disturb the candles, and the night-time sounds of Rome down in the valley mingled with the scent of the flowers in the warm June air – snatches of music, voices, the call of the watchmen along the Argiletum, the distant barking of the guard dogs set loose in the precincts of the Capitoline Triad. Lucius and Quintus were still laughing at some joke of Cicero’s, and even Terentia could not quite hide her amusement as she flicked her napkin at her husband and scolded him that that was quite enough. (Pomponia, thankfully, was away visiting her brother in Athens.)

  ‘Ah,’ said Cicero, looking round, ‘now here is Tiro, the master politician of us all, which means I can proceed to make my little declaration. I thought it appropriate that he should be present to hear this as well. I have decided to stand for election as aedile.’

  ‘Oh, very good!’ said Quintus, who thought it was all still part of Cicero’s joke. Then he stopped laughing and said in a puzzled way, ‘But that is not funny.’

  ‘It will be if I win.’

  ‘But you can’t win. You heard what Pompey said. He doesn’t want you to be a candidate.’

  ‘It is not for Pompey to decide who is to be a candidate. We are free citizens, free to make our own choices. I choose to run for aedile.’

  ‘There is no sense in running and losing, Marcus. That is the sort of pointlessly heroic gesture Lucius here believes in.’

  ‘Let us drink to pointless heroism,’ said Lucius, raising his glass.

  ‘But we cannot win against Pompey’s opposition,’ persisted Quintus. ‘And what is the point of incurring Pompey’s enmity?’

  To which Terentia retorted: ‘After yesterday, one might better ask, “What is the point of incurring Pompey’s friendship?”’

  ‘Terentia is right,’ said Cicero. ‘Yesterday has taught me a lesson. Let us say I wait a year or two, hanging on Pompey’s every word in the hope of favour, running errands for him. We have all seen men like that in the senate – growing older, waiting for half-promises to be fulfilled. They are hollowed out by it. And before they even know it, their moment has passed and they have nothing left with which to bargain. I would sooner clear out of politics right now than let that happen to me. If you want power, there is a time when you have to seize it. This is my time.’

  ‘But how is this be accomplished?’

  ‘By prosecuting Gaius Verres for extortion.’

  So there it was. I had known he would do it since early morning, and so, I am sure, had he, but he had wanted to take his time about it – to try on the decision, as it were, and see how it fitted him. And it fitted him very well. I had never seen him more determined. He looked like a man who believed he had the force of history running through him. Nobody spoke.

  ‘Come on!’ he said with a smile. ‘Why the long faces? I have not lost yet! And I do not believe I shall lose, either. I had a visit from the Sicilians this morning. They have gathered the most damning testimony against Verres, have they not, Tiro? We have it under lock and key downstairs. And when we do win – think of it! I defeat Hortensius in open court, and all this “second-best advocate” nonsense is finished for ever. I assume the rank of the man I convict, according to the traditional rights of the victorious prosecutor, which means I become a praetorian overnight – so no more jumping up and down on the back benches in the senate, hoping to be called. And I place myself so firmly before the gaze of the Roman people that my election as aedile is assured. But the best thing of all is that I do it – I, Cicero – and I do it without owing favours to anyone, least of all Pompey the Great.’

  ‘But what if we lose?’ said Quintus, finding his voice at last. ‘We are defence attorneys. We never prosecute. You have said it yourself a hundred times: defenders win friends; prosecutors just make enemies. If you don’t bring Verres down, there is a good chance he will eventually be elected consul. Then he will never rest until you are destroyed.’

  ‘That is true,’ conceded Cicero. ‘If you are going to kill a dangerous animal, you had better make sure you do it with the first thrust. But then – don’t you see? This way I can win everything. Rank, fame, office, dignity, authority, independence, a base of clients in Rome and Sicily. It opens my way clear through to becoming consul.’

  This was the first time I had heard him mention his great ambition, and it was a measure of his renewed confidence that he felt able to utter the word at last. Consul. For every man in public life, this was the apotheosis. The very years themselves were distinguished from one another on all official documents and foundation stones by the names of the presiding consuls. It was the nearest thing below heaven to immortality. How many nights and days must he have thought of it, dreamed of it, nursed it, since his gawky adolescence? Sometimes it is foolish to articulate an ambition too early – exposing it prematurely to the laughter and scepticism of the world can destroy it before it is even properly born. But sometimes the opposite occurs, and the very act of mentioning a thing makes it suddenly seem possible, even plausible. That was how it was that night. When Cicero pronounced the word ‘consul’ he planted it in the ground like a standard for us all to admire. And for a moment we glimpsed the brilliant, starry future through his eyes, and saw that he was right: that if he took down Verres, he had a chance; that he might just – with luck – go all the way to the summit.

  THERE WAS MUCH to be done over the following months, and as usual a great deal of the work fell upon me. First, I drew up a large chart of the electorate for the aedileship. At that time, this consisted of the entire Roman citizenry, divided into their thirty-five tribes. Cicero himself belonged to the Cornelia, Servius to the Lemonia, Pompey to the Clustumina, Verres to the Romilia, and so forth. A citizen cast his ballot on the Field of Mars as a member of his tribe, and the results of each tribe’s vote were then read out by the magistrates. The four candidates who secured the votes of the greatest number of tribes were duly declared the winners.

  There were several advantages for Cicero in this particular electoral college. For one thing – unlike the system for choosing praetors and consuls – each man’s vote, whatever his wealth, counted equally, and as Cicero’s strongest support was among the men of business and the teeming poor, the aristocrats would find it harder to block him. For another, it was a relatively easy electorate to canvass. Each tribe had its own headquarters somewhere in Rome, a building large enough to lay on a show or a dinner. I went back through our files and compiled a list of every man Cicero had ever defended or helped over the past six years, arranged according to his tribe. These men were then contacted and asked to make sure that the senator was invited to speak at any forthcoming tribal event. It is surely amazing how many favours there are to be called in after six years of relentless advocacy and advice. Cicero’s campaign schedule was soon filled with engagements, and his working day became even longer. After the courts or the senate had adjourned, he would hurry home, quickly bathe and change, and then rush out again to give one of his rousing addresses. His slogan was ‘Justice and Reform’.

  Quintus, as usual, acted as Cicero’s campaign manager, while cousin Lucius was entrusted with organising the case against Verres. The governor was due to return from Sicily at the end of the year, whereupon – at the very instant he entered the city – he would lose his imperium, and with it his immunity from prosecution. Cicero was determined to strike at the first opportunity, and, if possible, give Verres no time to dispose of evidence or intimidate witnesses. For this reason, to avoid arousing suspicion, the Sicilians stopped coming to the house, and Lucius became the conduit between Cicero and his clients, meeting them in secret at various locations across the city. I thus came to know Lucius much better, and the more I saw of him the more I liked him. He was in many respects very similar to Cicero. He was almost the same age, clever and amusing, a gifted philosopher. The two had grown up together in Arpinum, been schooled together in Rome, and travelled
together in the East. But there was one huge difference: Lucius entirely lacked worldly ambition. He lived alone, in a small house full of books, and did nothing all day except read and think – a most dangerous occupation for a man which in my experience leads invariably to dyspepsia and melancholy. But oddly enough, despite his solitary disposition, he soon came to relish leaving his study every day and was so enraged by Verres’s wickedness that his zeal to bring him to justice eventually exceeded even Cicero’s. ‘We shall make a lawyer of you yet, cousin,’ Cicero remarked admiringly, after Lucius had produced yet another set of damning affidavits.

  Towards the end of December an incident occurred which finally brought together, and in dramatic fashion, all these separate strands of Cicero’s life. I opened the door one dark morning to find, standing at the head of the usual queue, the man we had recently seen in the tribunes’ basilica, acting as defence attorney for his great-grandfather’s pillar – Marcus Porcius Cato. He was alone, without a slave to attend him, and looked as though he had slept out in the street all night. (I suppose he might have done, come to think of it, although Cato’s appearance was usually dishevelled – like that of a holy man or mystic – so that it was hard to tell.) Naturally, Cicero was intrigued to discover why a man of such eminent birth should have turned up on his doorstep, for Cato, bizarre as he was, dwelt at the very heart of the old republican aristocracy, connected by blood and marriage to a webwork of Servilii, Lepidi and Aemilii. Indeed, such was Cicero’s pleasure at having so high-born a visitor, he went out to the tablinum himself to welcome him, and conducted him into the study personally. This was the sort of client he had long dreamed of finding in his net one morning.

  I settled myself in the corner to take notes, and young Cato, never a man for small talk, came straight to the point. He was in need of a good advocate, he said, and he had liked the way Cicero had handled himself before the tribunes, for it was a monstrous thing when any man such as Verres considered himself above the ancient laws. To put it briefly: he was engaged to be married to his cousin, Aemilia Lepida, a charming girl of eighteen, whose young life had already been blighted by tragedy. At the age of thirteen, she had been humiliatingly jilted by her fiancé, the haughty young aristocrat Scipio Nasica. At fourteen, her mother had died. At fifteen, her father had died. At sixteen, her brother had died, leaving her completely alone.

  ‘The poor girl,’ said Cicero. ‘So I take it, if she is your cousin, that she must be the daughter of the consul of six years ago, Aemilius Lepidus Livianus? He was, I believe, the brother of your late mother, Livia?’ (Like many supposed radicals, Cicero had a surprisingly thorough knowledge of the aristocracy.)

  ‘That is correct.’

  ‘Why, then, I congratulate you, Cato, on a most brilliant match. With the blood of those three families in her veins, and with her nearest relatives all dead, she must be the richest heiress in Rome.’

  ‘She is,’ said Cato bitterly. ‘And that is the trouble. Scipio Nasica, her former suitor, who has just come back from Spain after fighting in the army of Pompey the so-called Great, has found out how rich she has become, now that her father and brother are gone, and he has reclaimed her as his own.’

  ‘But surely it is for the young lady herself to decide?’

  ‘She has,’ said Cato. ‘She has decided on him.’

  ‘Ah,’ replied Cicero, sitting back in his chair, ‘in that case, you may be in some difficulties. Presumably, if she was orphaned at fifteen, she must have had a guardian appointed. You could always talk to him. He is probably in a position to forbid the marriage. Who is he?’

  ‘That would be me.’

  ‘You? You are the guardian of the woman you want to marry?’

  ‘I am. I am her closest male relative.’

  Cicero rested his chin in his hand and scrutinised his prospective new client – the ragged hair, the filthy bare feet, the tunic unchanged for weeks. ‘So what do you wish me to do?’

  ‘I want you to bring legal proceedings against Scipio, and against Lepida if necessary, and put a stop to this whole thing.’

  ‘These proceedings – would they be brought by you in your role as rejected suitor, or as the girl’s guardian?’

  ‘Either.’ Cato shrugged. ‘Both.’

  Cicero scratched his ear. ‘My experience of young women,’ he said carefully, ‘is as limited as my faith in the rule of law is boundless. But even I, Cato, even I have to say that I doubt whether the best way to a girl’s heart is through litigation.’

  ‘A girl’s heart?’ repeated Cato. ‘What has a girl’s heart got to do with anything? This is a matter of principle.’

  And money, one would have added, if he had been any other man. But Cato had that most luxurious prerogative of the very rich: little interest in money. He had inherited plenty, and gave it away without even noticing. No: it was principle that always motivated Cato – the relentless desire never to compromise on principle.

  ‘We would have to go to the embezzlement court,’ said Cicero, ‘and lay charges of breach of promise. We would have to prove the existence of a prior contract between you and the Lady Lepida, and that she was therefore a cheat and a liar. We would have to prove that Scipio was a double-dealing, money-grubbing knave. I would have to put them both on the witness stand and tear them to pieces.’

  ‘Do it,’ said Cato, with a gleam in his eye.

  ‘And at the end of all that, we would probably still lose, for juries love nothing more than star-crossed lovers, save perhaps for orphans – and she is both – and you would have been made the laughing-stock of Rome.’

  ‘What do I care what people think of me?’ said Cato scornfully.

  ‘And even if we win – well, imagine it. You might end up having to drag Lepida kicking and screaming from the court through the streets of Rome, back to her new marital home. It would be the scandal of the year.’

  ‘So this is what we have descended to, is it?’ demanded Cato bitterly. ‘The honest man is to step aside so that the rascal triumphs? And this is Roman justice?’ He leapt to his feet. ‘I need a lawyer with steel in his bones, and if I cannot find anyone to help me, then I swear I shall lay the prosecution myself.’

  ‘Sit down, Cato,’ said Cicero gently, and when Cato did not move, he repeated it: ‘Sit, Cato, and I shall tell you something about the law.’ Cato hesitated, frowned, and sat, but only on the edge of his chair, so that he could leap up again at the first hint that he should moderate his convictions. ‘A word of advice, if I may, from a man ten years your senior. You must not take everything head-on. Very often the best and most important cases never even come to court. This looks to me like one of them. Let me see what I can do.’

  ‘And if you fail?’

  ‘Then you can proceed however you like.’

  After he had gone, Cicero said to me: ‘That young man seeks opportunities to test his principles as readily as a drunk picks fights in a bar.’ Nevertheless, Cato had agreed to let Cicero approach Scipio on his behalf, and I could tell that Cicero relished the opportunity this would give him to scrutinise the aristocracy at first hand. There was literally no man in Rome with grander lineage than Quintus Caecilius Metellus Pius Cornelius Scipio Nasica – Nasica meaning ‘pointed nose’, which he carried very firmly in the air – for he was not only the natural son of a Scipio, but the adopted son of Metellus Pius, pontifex maximus and the titular head of the Metelli clan. Father and adopted son had only recently returned from Spain, and were presently on Pius’s immense country estate at Tibur. They were expected to enter the city on the twenty-ninth day of December, riding behind Pompey in his triumph. Cicero decided to arrange a meeting for the thirtieth.

  The twenty-ninth duly arrived, and what a day that was – Rome had not seen such a spectacle since the days of Sulla. As I waited by the Triumphal Gate it seemed that everyone in the city had turned out to line the route. First to pass through the gate from the Field of Mars was the entire body of the senate, including Cicero, on foot, led by the c
onsuls and the other magistrates. Then the trumpeters, sounding the fanfares. Then the carriages and litters laden with the spoils of the Spanish war – gold and silver, coin and bullion, weapons, statues, pictures, vases, furniture, precious stones and tapestries – and wooden models of the cities Pompey had conquered and sacked, and placards with their names, and the names of all the famous men he had killed in battle. Then the massive, plodding white bulls, destined for sacrifice, with gilded horns hung with ribbons and floral garlands, driven by the slaughtering-priests. Then trudging elephants – the heraldic symbol of the Metellii – and lumbering ox-carts bearing cages containing the wild beasts of the Spanish mountains, roaring and tearing at their bars in rage. Then the arms and insignia of the beaten rebels, and then the prisoners themselves, the defeated followers of Sertorius and Perperna, shuffling in chains. Then the crowns and tributes of the allies, borne by the ambassadors of a score of nations. Then the twelve lictors of the imperator, their rods and axes wreathed in laurel. And now at last, to a tumult of applause from the vast crowd, the four white horses of the imperator’s chariot came trotting through the gate, and there was Pompey himself, in the barrel-shaped, gem-encrusted chariot of the triumphator. He wore a gold-embroidered robe with a flowered tunic. In his right hand he held a laurel bough and in his left a sceptre. There was a wreath of Delphic laurel on his head, and his handsome face and muscled body had been painted with red lead, for on this day he truly was the embodiment of Jupiter. Standing beside him was his eight-year-old son, the golden-curled Gnaeus, and behind him a public slave to whisper in his ear that he was only human and all this would pass. Behind the chariot, riding on a black war-horse, came old Metellus Pius, his leg tightly bandaged, evidence of a wound incurred in battle. Next to him was Scipio, his adopted son – a handsome young fellow of twenty-four: no wonder, I thought, that Lepida preferred him to Cato – and then the legionary commanders, including Aulus Gabinius, followed by all the knights and cavalry, armour glinting in the pale December sun. And finally the legions of Pompey’s infantry, in full marching order, thousand upon thousand of sunburnt veterans, the crash of their tramping boots seeming to shake the very earth, roaring at the top of their voices, ‘Io Triumphe!’ and chanting hymns to the gods and singing filthy songs about their commander-in-chief, as they were traditionally permitted to do in this, the hour of his glory.