Imperium

“Why is he so popular?” I asked.

“Dangerous men always attract a following, although that is not what concerns me. If it were simply a question of the mob in the street, he would be less of a threat. It is the fact that he has widespread aristocratic support-Catulus certainly, which probably also means Hortensius.”

“I should have thought him much too uncouth for Hortensius.”

“Oh, Hortensius knows how to make use of a street fighter when the occasion demands it. Many a cultured house is protected by a savage dog. And Catilina is also a Sergius, do not forget, so they approve of him on snobbish grounds. The masses and the aristocracy: that is a potent combination in politics. Let us hope he can be stopped in the consular elections this summer. I am only grateful that the task does not look like falling to me.”

I thought at the time that this was the sort of remark which proves there are gods, because whenever, in their celestial orbits, they hear such complacency, it amuses them to show their power. Sure enough, it was not long afterwards that Caelius Rufus brought Cicero some disturbing news. Caelius by this time was seventeen, and, as his father had stated, quite ungovernable. He was tall and well built and could easily have passed for a man in his early twenties, with his deep voice and the small goatee beard which he and his fashionable friends liked to sport. He would slip out of the house when it was dark and Cicero was preoccupied with his work and everyone else was asleep; often he would not return until just before dawn. He knew that I had a little money put by and was always pestering me to advance him small loans; one evening, after I had refused yet again, I retired to my cubicle to discover that he had found my hiding place and taken everything I possessed. I spent a miserable, sleepless night, but when I confronted him the next morning and threatened to report him to Cicero, tears came into his eyes and he promised to pay me back. And, in fairness to him, he did, and with generous interest; so I changed my hiding place and never said a word about it.

He drank and whored around the city at night with a group of very disreputable young noblemen. One of them was Gaius Curio, a twenty-year-old whose father had been consul and a great supporter of Verres. Another was Mark Antony, the nephew of Hybrida, who I reckon must then have been eighteen. But the real leader of the gang, chiefly because he was the eldest and richest and could show the others ways of getting into mischief they had never even dreamed of, was Clodius Pulcher. He was in his middle twenties and had been away for eight years on military service in the East, getting into all sorts of scrapes, including leading a mutiny against Lucullus-who also happened to be his brother-in-law-and then being captured by the very pirates he was supposed to be fighting. But now he was back in Rome, and looking to make a name for himself, and one night he a

When Caelius rushed in to tell Cicero the following morning, the senator at first refused to believe him. All he knew of Clodius were the scandalous rumors, widely circulating, that he had slept with his own sister-indeed these rumors had lately taken on a more substantial form, and had been cited by Lucullus himself as one of the grounds on which he had divorced his wife. “What would such a creature be doing in the law courts,” scoffed Cicero, “except as a defendant?” But Caelius, in his cheeky way, retorted that if Cicero wanted proof of what he was saying, he need only pay a visit to the extortion court in the next hour or two, when Clodius was pla

Already, in that mysterious way it does, news that something dramatic was about to happen had spread, and there was a crowd of a hundred or more hanging around the foot of the steps. The current praetor, a man named Orbius, afterwards governor of Asia, had just sat down in his curule chair and was looking around him, no doubt wondering what was up, when a group of six or seven smirking youths appeared, strolling from the direction of the Palatine, apparently without a care among them. They clearly fancied themselves the height of fashion, and I suppose they were, with their long hair and their little beards, and their thick, embroidered belts worn loosely around their waists. “By heavens, what a spectacle!” muttered Cicero as they pushed past us, trailing a fragrant wake of crocus oil and saffron unguents. “They look more like women than men!” One of their number detached himself from the rest and climbed the steps to the praetor. Midway up, he paused and turned to the crowd. He was, if I may express it vulgarly, “a pretty boy,” with long blond curls, thick, wet red lips, and a bronzed skin-a kind of young Apollo. But his voice when he spoke was surprisingly firm and masculine, marred only by his slangy, mock-plebeian accent, which rendered his family name as Clodius instead of Claudius: another of his fashionable affectations.

“I am Publius Clodius Pulcher, son of Appius Claudius Pulcher, consul, grandson of consuls in the direct line for the past eight generations, and I come this morning to lay charges in this court against Sergius Catilina for the crimes he lately committed in Africa.”

At the mention of Catilina’s name there was some muttering and whistling, and a big brute standing close to us shouted, “You want to watch your backside, girlie!”

But Clodius did not seem in the least concerned. “May my ancestors and the gods bless this undertaking, and bring it to a fruitful conclusion.” He trotted briskly up to Orbius and gave him the postulatus, all neatly bound up in a cylinder, with a seal and a red ribbon, while his supporters applauded noisily, Caelius among them, until Cicero silenced him with a look. “Run and find my brother,” he said to him. “Inform him of what has happened, and tell him we need to meet at once.”

“That is a job for a slave,” objected Caelius, with a pout, no doubt worried about losing face in front of his friends. “Surely Tiro here could go and fetch him?”

“Do as you are ordered,” snapped Cicero, “and while you are at it, find Frugi as well. And be grateful I have not yet told your father of the disreputable company you are keeping.” That made Caelius shift himself, and he disappeared out of the Forum toward the Temple of Ceres, where the plebeian aediles were normally to be found at that hour of the morning. “I have spoiled him,” Cicero said wearily, as we climbed the hill back to the house, “and do you know why? It is because he has charm, that most cursed of all the gifts, and I never can stop myself indulging someone with charm.”

As punishment, and also because he no longer fully trusted him, Cicero refused to let Caelius attend the day’s campaign meeting, but sent him off instead to write up a brief. He waited until he was out of the way before describing the morning’s events to Quintus and Frugi. Quintus was inclined to take a sanguine view, but Cicero was absolutely convinced that he would now have to fight Catilina for the consulship. “I have checked the calendar of the extortion court-you remember what that is like-and the truth is there is simply no chance of Catilina’s case being heard until July, which makes it impossible for him to be a consular candidate in this year. Therefore he comes inevitably into mine.” He suddenly pounded his fist on the desk and swore-a thing he rarely did. “I predicted exactly this outcome a year ago-Tiro is my witness.”

Quintus said, “Perhaps Catilina will be found guilty and sent into exile?”

“With that perfumed creature as his prosecutor? A man whom every slave in Rome knows to have been the lover of his own sister? No, no-you were right, Tiro. I should have taken down Catilina myself when I had the chance. He would have been easier to beat in court than he will be on the ballot.”

“Perhaps it is not too late,” I suggested. “Perhaps Clodius could be persuaded to yield the prosecution to you.”

“No, he will never do that,” said Cicero. “You had only to look at him-the arrogance of the fellow-a typical Claudian. This is his chance for glory, and he will not let it slip. You had better bring out our list of potential candidates, Tiro. We need to find ourselves a credible ru

In those days consular candidates usually submitted themselves to the electorate in pairs, for each citizen cast two votes for consul and it was obviously good tactics to form an alliance with a man who would complement one’s own strengths during the canvass. What Cicero needed to balance his ticket was someone with a distinguished name who had wide appeal among the aristocracy. In return, he could offer them his own popularity among the pedarii and the lower classes, and the support of the electoral machine which he had built up in Rome. He had always thought that this would be easy enough to arrange when the time came. But now, as we reviewed the names on the list, I saw why he was becoming so anxious. Palicanus would bring nothing to the ticket. Cornificius was an electoral no-hoper. Hybrida had only half a brain. That left Galba and Gallus. But Galba was so aristocratic, he would have nothing to do with Cicero, and Gallus-despite all Cicero’s pleadings-had said firmly that he had no interest in becoming consul.

“Can you believe it?” complained Cicero as we huddled around his desk, studying the list of likely ru

“And who is that?” asked Quintus.

“Catilina.”

“Marcus!”

“I am perfectly serious,” said Cicero. “Let’s think it through. Suppose, instead of attempting to prosecute him, I offer to defend him. If I secure his acquittal, he will be under an obligation to support me for consul. On the other hand, if he is found guilty and goes into exile-then that is the end of him. Either outcome is acceptable as far as I am concerned.”