Imperium

He spun around and began walking toward the door, with me in tow, and I guess that must have felt to him like the longest walk he ever took, because we had almost reached the shadowy antechamber-and with it, surely, the black void of political oblivion-when a voice (it was that of Lucullus himself) shouted out, “Read it back!” Cicero halted, and we both turned around. “Read it back,” repeated Lucullus. “What Catulus said just now.”

Cicero nodded at me, and I fumbled for my notebook. “‘If what I have read here is true,’” I began, reciting in that flat, strange way of stenography being read back, “‘the state is threatened with civil war as a result of a criminal conspiracy if what I have read is false it is the wickedest forgery in our history for my own part I do not believe it is true because I do not believe such a record could have been produced by a living hand-’”

“He could have memorized that,” objected Catulus. “It is all just a cheap trick, of the sort you might see done by a conjurer in the Forum.”

“And the latter part,” persisted Lucullus. “Read out the last thing your master said.”

I ran my finger down my notation. “‘-never been any friends of mine I also believe I have demonstrated by my courage in the Senate today my willingness to stand up to these criminals no other candidate for consul has done it or will in the future I have made them my enemies and shown you what they are like but from you Catulus and from all of you I want nothing and if all you wish to do is insult me I bid you a good evening.’”

Isauricus whistled. Hortensius nodded and said something like, “I told you” or “I warned you”-I ca

“Come back, Cicero,” said Lucullus, beckoning to him. “I am satisfied. The record is genuine. Let us put aside for the time being the question of who needs whom the most, and start from the premise that each of us needs the other.”

“I am still not convinced,” grumbled Catulus.

“Then let me convince you with a single word,” said Hortensius impatiently. “Caesar. Caesar-with Crassus’s gold, two consuls and ten tribunes behind him!”

“So really, we must talk with such people?” Catulus sighed. “Well, Cicero perhaps,” he conceded. “But we certainly do not need you, ” he snapped, pointing at me, just as I was moving, as always, to follow my master. “I do not want that creature and his tricks within a mile of me, listening to what we say, and writing everything down in his damned untrustworthy way. If anything is to pass between us, it must never be divulged.”

Cicero hesitated. “All right,” he said reluctantly, and he gave me an apologetic look. “Wait outside, Tiro.”

I had no business to feel aggrieved. I was merely a slave, after all: an extra hand, a tool-a “creature,” as Catulus put it. But nevertheless I felt my humiliation keenly. I folded up my notebook and walked into the antechamber, and then kept on walking, through all those echoing, freshly stuccoed state rooms-Venus, Mercury, Mars, Jupiter-as the slaves in their cushioned slippers moved silently with their glowing tapers among the gods, lighting the lamps and candelabra. I went out into the soft, warm dusk of the park, where the cicadas were singing, and for reasons which I ca

IT WAS ALMOST DAWN when I awoke, stiff in my limbs and damp with cold from the dew. For a moment I had no idea where I was or how I had got there, but then I realized I was on a stone bench close to the front of the house, and that it was Cicero who had woken me. His face looming over me was grim. “We have finished here,” he said. “We must get back to the city quickly.” He glanced across to where the carriage was waiting and put his finger to his lips to warn me not to say anything in front of Hortensius’s steward. So it was in silence that we clambered into the carpentum, and as we left the park I remember turning for a final look at the great villa, the torches still burning along its terraces, but losing their sharpness now as the pale morning light came up; of the other aristocrats there was no sign.

Cicero, conscious that in little more than two hours he would have to leave his house to go down to the Field of Mars for the election, kept urging the driver to make better speed, and those poor horses must have been whipped until their hides were raw. But we were lucky that the roads were empty, save for a few very early voters walking into town for the election, and we hurtled along at a great speed, reaching the Fontinalian Gate just as it was opening, and then rattled up the paved slopes of the Esquiline Hill faster than a man could sprint. Just before the Temple of Tellus Cicero told the driver to stop and let us out, so that we could walk the last part of the way-an order which puzzled me, until I realized that he wanted to avoid being seen by the crowd of his supporters which was already begi

Among the first across the threshold was Quintus, who naturally demanded to know what was happening. He and the others had waited for our return in Atticus’s library until nearly midnight, and he was furious and anxious in equal measure. This put me in an awkward spot, and I could only stammer that I would prefer it if he addressed his questions directly to his brother. To be honest, seeing Cicero and his bitterest enemies all together in such a setting now seemed so unreal to me, I could almost have believed I had dreamed it. Quintus was not satisfied, but fortunately I was saved further embarrassment by the sheer number of visitors pouring through the door. I escaped by pretending I had to check everything was ready in the tablinum, and from there I slipped into my little cubicle and rinsed my neck and face with tepid water from my basin.

When I next saw Cicero, an hour later, he once again demonstrated those remarkable powers of recuperation which I have observed to be the distinguishing mark of all successful politicians. As I watched him come down the stairs in a freshly laundered white toga, his face washed and shaved and his hair combed and scented, I thought that no one could have guessed that he had not slept for the past two nights. The cramped house by this time was packed with his supporters. Cicero had the infant Marcus, whose first birthday it was, carefully balanced on his shoulders, and such a cheer went up when the two of them appeared, it must have shaken off several roof tiles: no wonder the poor child started crying. Cicero quickly lifted him down, lest this be seen as a bad omen for the day, and handed him to Terentia, who was standing behind him on the stairs. He smiled at her and said something, and at that moment I realized for the first time just how close they had become over the years, that what had started as a marriage of convenience was now a most formidable partnership. I could not hear what passed between them, and then he came down into the crowd.

So many people had turned out it was hard for him to struggle through the tablinum to the atrium, where Quintus, Frugi, and Atticus were surrounded by a very decent showing of senators. Among those present to demonstrate their support were Cicero’s old friend Servius Sulpicius; Gallus, the renowned scholar of jurisprudence, who had refused to run himself; the elder Frugi, with whom he was forming a family co

Just before we left, Quintus pulled him to one side to ask, quite angrily as I recall, where on earth he had been all night-he had almost sent men out looking for him-to which Cicero, conscious of the people all around him, replied quietly that he would tell him later. But that only made Quintus more aggrieved. “Who do you think I am?” he demanded. “Your maid? Tell me now!” And so Cicero told him then very rapidly about the journey out to the palace of Lucullus and the presence there of Metellus and Catulus, as well as Hortensius and Isauricus.

“The whole patrician gang!” whispered Quintus excitedly, his irritation entirely forgotten. “My gods, whoever would have thought it? And are they going to support us?”

“We talked for hour after hour, but in the end, they would not commit themselves until they had spoken to the other great families,” replied Cicero, glancing nervously around, but the din was too great for him to be overheard. “Hortensius, I think, would have agreed on the spot. Catulus remains instinctively opposed. The others will do what self-interest dictates. We shall just have to wait and see.”

Atticus, who had heard all this, said, “But they believed in the truth of the evidence you showed them?”

“I think so, yes. Thanks to Tiro. But we can discuss all this later. Put on your bravest faces, gentlemen,” he said, gripping the hands of each of us in turn. “We have an election to win!”

Seldom can a candidate have staged a more splendid show than Cicero did during his walk down to the Field of Mars, and for that much credit must go to Quintus. We made up a parade of three or four hundred, with musicians, young men carrying green boughs wound with ribbons, girls with rose petals, actor friends of Cicero’s from the theater, senators, knights, merchants, stall holders, regular spectators from the law courts, guild officers, legal clerks, representatives from the Roman communities in Sicily and Nearer Gaul. We set up a terrific noise of cheering and whistling as we came onto the campus and there was a great surge of voters toward us. It is always said of elections, in my experience, that whichever one is in progress at the time is the most significant there has ever been, and on that day, at least, it was arguably true, with the added excitement that no one knew how it would turn out, given the activity among the bribery agents, the sheer number of candidates, and the enmity between them following Cicero’s attack on Catilina and Hybrida in the Senate.