Imperium

Catilina swung around and frowned at him, as if he had momentarily forgotten who Cicero was. Then he laughed. He ruffled Clodius’s blond curls and let him go. Clodius staggered backward, coughing and massaging the side of his head and throat, and for an instant he gave Catilina a look of pure murder, but then he, too, started laughing, and straightened up. They embraced, Catilina called for some more wine, and we left them to it. “What a pair,” exclaimed Cicero, as we passed by the Temple of Luna on our way back home. “With any luck they will have killed each other by morning.”

BY THE TIME we had returned to Cicero’s house, Terentia was in labor. There was no mistaking it. We could hear the screams from the street. Cicero stood in the atrium, white with shock and alarm, for he had been away when Tullia was born, and nothing in his philosophy books had prepared him for what was happening. “Dear heavens, it sounds as though she is being tortured. Terentia!” He started toward the staircase which led to her room, but one of the midwives intercepted him.

We passed a long vigil in the dining room. He asked me to stay with him, but was at first too anxious to do any work. He lay stretched out on the same couch Terentia had been occupying when we left, and then, when he heard another scream, he would jump up and pace around. The air was hot and heavy, the candle flames motionless, their black threads of smoke as rigid as plumb lines suspended from the ceiling. I busied myself by emptying my case of the court papers I had carried back from Catilina’s house and sorting them into categories-charges, depositions, summaries of documentary evidence. Eventually, to distract himself, Cicero, still prone on the couch, stretched out a hand and started reading, picking up one roll after another and holding each to the lamp which I placed beside him. He kept flinching and wincing, but I could not tell whether it was because of the continuing howls from upstairs or the horrific allegations against Catilina, for these were indeed the most appalling accounts of violence and rape, dispatched by almost every town in Africa, from Utica to Thaenae, and from Thapsus to Thelepte. After an hour or two, he tossed them aside in disgust and asked me to fetch some paper so that he could dictate a few letters, begi

“It is a long time since I had a line from you. I have already written to you in detail about my election campaign. At the moment I am proposing to defend my fellow candidate Catilina. We have the jury we want, with full cooperation from the prosecution. If he is acquitted I hope he will be more inclined to work with me in the campaign. But should it go otherwise, I shall bear it philosophically.”

“Ha! That is certainly true enough.” He closed his eyes again.

“I need you home pretty soon. There is a decidedly strong belief going around that your noble friends are going to oppose my election-”

And at that point my writing stops, because instead of a scream we heard a different sound from above us-the gurgling cry of a baby. Cicero sprang from the couch and ran upstairs to Terentia’s room. It was some time before he reappeared, and when he did he silently took the letter from me and wrote across the top in his own hand:

“I have the honor to inform you that I have become the father of a little son. Terentia is well.”

HOW TRANSFORMED A HOUSE is by the presence of a healthy newborn baby! I believe, although it is seldom acknowledged, that this must be because it is a double blessing. The unspoken dreads which attend all births-of agony, death, and deformity-are banished, and in their place comes this miracle of a fresh life. Relief and joy are intertwined.

Naturally, I was not permitted upstairs to see Terentia, but a few hours later Cicero brought his son down and proudly showed him off to the household and his clients. To be frank, not much was visible, apart from an angry little red face and a lick of fine dark hair. He was wrapped up tight in the woollen swaddling clothes which had performed the same service for Cicero more than forty years earlier. The senator also had a silver rattle preserved from his infancy which he tinkled above the tiny face. He carried the infant tenderly into the atrium and pointed to the spot where he dreamed that one day his consular image would hang. “And then,” he whispered, “you will be Marcus Tullius Cicero, son of Marcus Tullius Cicero, the consul -how does that sound? Not bad, eh? There will be no taunts of “new man” for you! Here you are, Tiro-make the acquaintance of a whole new political dynasty.” He offered the bundle to me, and I held it nervously, in that way the childless do when handed a baby, and was relieved when the nurse took him from me.

Cicero, meanwhile, was once again contemplating the blank spot on his atrium wall and had fallen into one of his reveries. I wonder what it was he was seeing there: his death mask, perhaps, staring back at him, like a face in the mirror? I inquired after the health of Terentia, and he said, distractedly, “Oh, she is very well. Very strong. You know what she is like. Strong enough, at least, to resume belaboring me for making an alliance with Catilina.” He dragged his gaze away from the empty wall. “And now,” he sighed, “I suppose we had better keep our appointment with the villain.”

When we reached the house of Catilina, we found the former governor of Africa in a charming humor. Cicero later made a list of his “paradoxical qualities” and I give it here, for it was nicely put: “to attach many by friendship, and to retain them by devotion; to share what he possessed with all, and to be at the service of all his friends in time of need, with money, influence, effort, and-if necessary-with reckless crime; to control his natural temper as occasion required, and to bend and turn it this way and that; to be serious with the strict, easy with the liberal, grave with the old, amiable with the young, daring with criminals, dissolute with the depraved…” This was the Catilina who was waiting for us that day. He had already heard about the birth of Cicero’s son and pumped his advocate’s hand in warm congratulation, and then produced a beautiful calfskin box, which he insisted Cicero open. Inside was a baby’s silver amulet which Catilina had acquired in Utica. “It is merely a local trinket to ward off ill health and evil spirits,” he explained. “Please give it to your lad with my blessing.”

“Well,” replied Cicero, “this is handsome of you, Catilina.” And it was indeed exquisitely engraved, certainly no mere trinket: when Cicero held it to the light I saw all ma

“Why?” asked Catilina, with a puzzled smile. “Because you are my advocate, and advocates ca

“Actually,” said Cicero, drawing in his breath, “I have come to tell you I am not going to be your advocate.”

I was in the act of unpacking all the legal documents onto a small table which stood between the two men. I had been watching them in a sideways fashion, but now I put my head down and carried on. After what seemed to me a long silence, I heard Catilina say, in a quiet voice, “And why is that?”

“To speak frankly: because you are so obviously guilty.”

Another silence, and then Catilina’s voice, when it came, was once again very calm. “But Fonteius was guilty of extortion against the Gauls, and you represented him.”

“Yes. But there are degrees of guilt. Fonteius was corrupt but harmless. You are corrupt and something else entirely.”

“That is for the court to decide.”

“Normally I would agree. But you have purchased the verdict in advance, and that is not a charade I wish to be a part of. You have made it impossible for me to convince myself that I am acting honorably. And if I ca

At this point I risked a look at Catilina. He was standing completely motionless, his arms hanging loosely by his sides, and I was reminded of an animal that has suddenly come across a rival-it was a type of predatory stillness: watchful and ready to fight. He said lightly, but it seemed to me the lightness was now more strained, “You realize this is of no consequence to me, but only to yourself? It does not matter who is my advocate; nothing changes for me. I shall be acquitted. But for you now-instead of my friendship, you will have my enmity.”

Cicero shrugged. “I prefer not to have the enmity of any man, but when it is unavoidable, I shall endure it.”

“You will never have endured an enmity such as mine, I promise you that. Ask the Africans.” He gri

“You removed his tongue, Catilina. Conversation would be difficult.”

Catilina swayed forward slightly, and I thought he might do to Cicero what he had only half done to Clodius the previous evening, but that would have been an act of madness, and Catilina was never wholly mad: things would have been far easier if he had been. Instead he checked himself and said, “Well then, I suppose I must let you go.”

Cicero nodded. “You must. Leave the papers, Tiro. We have no need of them now.”

I ca