Imperium

Roll III

THE GOVERNOR OF SICILY’S contemptuous defiance caught Cicero off guard. He had been convinced he had struck a gentlemen’s agreement which would safeguard his client’s life. “But then of course,” he complained bitterly, “none of them is a gentleman.” He stormed around the house in an uncharacteristic rage. He had been tricked! They had played him for a fool! He would march down to the Senate House right there and then and expose their villainous lies! I knew he would calm down before long, for he was only too aware that he lacked the rank simply to demand a hearing in the Senate: he would risk humiliation.

But there was no escaping the fact that he was under a heavy obligation to protect his client, and on the morning after Sthenius had learned his fate, Cicero convened a meeting in his study to determine how best to respond. For the first time that I can remember, all his usual callers were turned away, and six of us crammed into that small space: Cicero, brother Quintus, cousin Lucius, Sthenius, myself (to take notes), and Servius Sulpicius, already widely regarded as the ablest jurist of his generation. Cicero began by inviting Servius to give his legal opinion.

“In theory,” said Servius, “our friend has a right of appeal in Syracuse, but only to the governor, that is to Verres himself; so that avenue is closed to us. To bring a prosecution against Verres himself is not an option: as a serving governor, he has executive immunity; besides, Hortensius is the praetor of the extortion court until January; and besides both of these, the jury will be composed of senators who will never convict one of their own. You could table another motion in the Senate, but you have already tried that, and presumably if you tried again you would merely meet with the same result. Continuing to live openly in Rome is not an option for Sthenius-anyone convicted of a capital crime is automatically subject to banishment from the city, so it is impossible for him to remain here. Indeed, Cicero, you are liable to prosecution yourself if you harbor him under your roof.”

“So what is your advice?”

“Suicide,” said Servius. Sthenius let out a terrible groan. “No, really, I am afraid you should consider it. Before they catch hold of you. You do not want to suffer the scourge, the hot irons, or the torments of the cross.”

“Thank you, Servius,” said Cicero, cutting him off swiftly, before he had an opportunity to describe those torments in further detail. “Tiro, we need to find Sthenius a place where he can hide. He ca

“Which is?”

“To go to the tribunes.”

This suggestion produced an immediate stir of unease, for the tribunes were at that time an utterly discredited group. Traditionally they had checked and balanced the power of the Senate by voicing the will of the common people. But ten years earlier, after Sulla had defeated the forces of Marius, the aristocrats had stripped them of their powers. They could no longer summon meetings of the people, or propose legislation, or impeach the likes of Verres for high crimes and misdemeanors. As a final humiliation, any senator who became a tribune was automatically disqualified from standing for senior office-that is, the praetorship or the consulship. In other words, the tribuneship was designed to be a political dead end-a place to confine the ranting and the rancorous, the incompetent and the unpromotable: the effluent of the body politic. No senator of any nobility or ambition would go anywhere near it.

“I know your objections,” said Cicero, waving the room to be silent. “But the tribunes still have one small power left to them, do they not, Servius?”

“That is true,” agreed Servius. “They do have a residual potestas auxilii ferendi .” Our blank looks gave him satisfaction. “It means,” he explained pedantically, “that they have the right to offer their protection to private persons against the unjust decisions of magistrates. But I must warn you, Cicero, that your friends, among whom I have long counted it an honor to number myself, will think much the less of you if you start dabbling in the politics of the mob. Suicide,” he repeated. “Where is the objection? We are all mortal. For all of us, it is only a matter of time. And this way you go with honor.”

“I agree with Servius about the danger we run if we approach the tribunes,” said Quintus. (It was usually “we” when Quintus spoke about his elder brother.) “Whether we like it or not, power in Rome nowadays lies with the Senate and with the nobles. That’s why our strategy has always been to build your reputation carefully, through your advocacy in the courts. We shall do ourselves irreparable damage with the men who really matter if the feeling gets around that you are merely another rabble-rouser. Also-I hesitate to raise this, Marcus-but have you considered Terentia’s reaction if you were to follow this course?”

Servius guffawed at that. “You will never conquer Rome, Cicero, if you ca

“Conquering Rome would be child’s play, Servius, believe me, compared with ruling my wife.”

And so the debate went on. Lucius favored an immediate approach to the tribunes, no matter what the consequences. Sthenius was too numb with misery and fear to have a coherent opinion on anything. At the very end, Cicero asked me what I thought. In other company, this might have caused surprise, a slave’s view not counting for much in most Romans’ eyes, but these men were used to the way that Cicero sometimes turned to me for advice. I replied cautiously that it seemed to me that Hortensius would not be happy to learn of Verres’s action, and that the prospect of the case becoming a public scandal might yet force him to put more pressure on his client to see sense: going to the tribunes was a risk, but on balance it was one worth taking. The answer pleased Cicero.

“Sometimes,” he said, summing up the discussion with an aphorism I have never forgotten, “if you find yourself stuck in politics, the thing to do is start a fight-start a fight, even if you do not know how you are going to win it, because it is only when a fight is on, and everything is in motion, that you can hope to see your way through. Thank you, gentlemen.” And with that the meeting was adjourned.

THERE WAS NO TIME to waste, for if the news from Syracuse had already reached Rome, it was a fair assumption that Verres’s men were not far behind. Even while Cicero was talking, I had conceived an idea for a possible hiding place for Sthenius, and the moment the conference was over, I went in search of Terentia’s business manager, Philotimus. He was a plump and lascivious young man, generally to be found in the kitchen, pestering the maids to satisfy one or the other, or preferably both, of his vices. I asked him if there was a spare apartment available in one of his mistress’s tenement blocks, and when he replied that there was, I bullied him into giving me the key. I checked the street outside the house for suspicious loiterers, and when I was satisfied that it was safe, I persuaded Sthenius to follow me.

He was in a state of complete dejection, his dreams of returning to his homeland dashed, in hourly terror of being arrested. And I fear that when he first saw the squalid building in Subura in which I said he would now have to live, he must have felt that even we had abandoned him. The stairs were rickety and gloomy. There was evidence of a recent fire on the walls. His room, on the fifth floor, was barely more than a cell, with a straw mattress in the corner and a tiny window which offered no view, except across the street to another, similar apartment, close enough for Sthenius to reach out and shake hands with his neighbor. For a latrine he had a bucket. But if it didn’t offer him comfort, it at least offered him security-dropped, unknown, into this warren of slums, it would be almost impossible for him to be found. He asked me, in a plaintive tone, to sit with him awhile, but I had to get back and gather all the documents relating to his case, so that Cicero could present them to the tribunes. We were fighting time, I told him, and left at once.

The headquarters of the tribunes were next door to the Senate House, in the old Basilica Porcia. Although the tribunate was only a shell, from which all the flesh of power had been sucked, people still hung around its building. The angry, the dispossessed, the hungry, the militant-these were the denizens of the tribunes’ basilica. As Cicero and I walked across the Forum, we could see a sizable crowd jostling on its steps to get a view of what was happening inside. I was carrying a document case, but still I cleared a way for the senator as best I could, receiving some kicks and curses for my pains, as these were not citizens with any great love for a purple-bordered toga.

There were ten tribunes, elected a

I mention this here because young Cato-he was then twenty-three-was to become such an important figure, both in the life of Cicero and the death of the republic. Not that one would have guessed it at the time. He looked destined for nowhere more significant than the asylum. He finished his speech, and as he went by, wild-eyed and unseeing, he knocked into me. What remains in my mind is the animal stink of him, his hair matted with damp, and the patches of sweat the size of di