Catilina's riddle

'Do you?’ I said, feeling a chill despite the warm summer sun.

'Yes.' He looked vaguely distressed 'Ah, but first, I wonder if the private facilities are as impressive as the more public ones?'

'You'll find a privy down that hall,' I said Cicero excused himself.

Caelius leaned forward 'Dyspepsia,' he said confidentially. 'And loose bowels. It's been worse than ever in the last year. Do you know, I sometimes wonder how Cicero manages to finish a speech before the Senate.'

'Thank you for sharing that confidence, Marcus Caelius.'

He laughed 'Actually, his digestion improved considerably for a while after the Senate passed that bill in the spring.'

'What bill?’

'The one that pardoned everyone concerned in putting the conspirators to death.'

'Ah, yes, I wasn't yet back in the city when that happened But my son wrote to me with the details: "To all members of the Senate and to all magistrates, witnesses, informers, and other agents involved in any violations of law which may have been committed in relation to the execution without trial of Publius Cornelius Lentulus Sura, Gaius Cornelius Cethegus, et alii, the Senate of Rome grants permanent immunity against prosecution." In other words, the Senate rather sweepingly let everyone off the hook.'

'And a good thing for Cicero. For a while he was truly afraid he might be brought to trial for murder.'

'And why not? The executions were completely illegal'

'Please, Gordianus, don't say such a thing when Cicero returns! Or at least wait until I'm gone.'

'Leaving, so soon?'

'I can't stay. I have to see a man in the Street of the Weavers about buying some rugs for my new apartment. He uses a new dye that no one else has. It duplicates exactly the green of the eyes of a certain widow I'm trying to impress.'

'You've always had such refined taste, Marcus Caelius—'

'Thank you.'

'—that I'm left puzzled by your choice of loyalties. Knowing both of them as well as you must have, and having wavered between them, how did you ever come to choose Cicero over Catilina?'

'Gordianus, really! You show your own lack of good taste in asking; such a question.'

'Because it impugns your youthful idealism?'

'No, because it impugns my common sense. Why would I have chosen to be on the losing side in such a conflict? Oh, yes, I know what you mean about Catilina, and about Cicero. But sometimes, Gordianus, expediency wins out over good taste.' He sipped his wine. Keeping an eye on the door through which Cicero had departed, he leaned forward and spoke in a confidential tone. 'But if you want to know the truth of the matter, the real truth—'

'As opposed to the false truth?'

'Exactly. The fact of the matter is this: all during the last year I was serving neither Catilina nor Cicero, though both of them believed me to be their man.'

'Neither of them? Who, then?'

'My old mentor, Crassus.' When he saw the look of disbelief on my face, Caelius shrugged. 'Well, he needed someone to keep an eye on both Cicero and Catilina and to report back to him on anything that might concern him; I was able to do both jobs at once. Do you think that Cicero is the only man who keeps spies all over Rome? And Crassus pays considerably better.'

'As you should know, if all three of them were paying you at once. I supposed you must have become rather confused sometimes, spying on yourself. Crassus, you say?'

He smiled. 'I tell you this in confidence, Gordianus, knowing that you're one of the few men in Rome I can trust to keep a secret. Knowing, too, that you're not really sure whether to believe me or not.'

‘I wonder, Caelius, if you yourself know whom you truly serve.'

He sat back with a bemused look on his handsome young face. 'You know, Gordianus, I think it suits you to be back in the city. You seem so much more relaxed, so much sharper than when we met on your farm.'

A moment later Cicero rejoined us, looking relieved. Caelius stood and bade us both farewell.

'Leaving so soon?' said Cicero.

'It has something to do with rugs and green eyes,' I explained. Cicero smiled to cover his puzzlement, and Caelius departed.

'Now, as I was saying, I have a small favour to ask of you, Gordianus.'

'I wasn't aware that I owed you one.'

'Gordianus, look around you!' he said, indicating the splendour of the garden, with its statuary and its fountains. "You yourself just gave me credit for—'

'Credit once removed. Believe me, Cicero, I earned this house myself, every stone of id' I spoke with such passion that he drew back to reconsider his rhetorical thrust

'Very well. But hear the favour I ask before you reject it'

'It seems to me that if anyone is owed a favour between us, it's me. Call it reparations, if you will. Some months ago, while I was still living in the country, considerable damage was done to my house by men from Rome. They were pursuing Catilina and thought to find him under my roof. Who could have sent them on such an errand? Who authorized them to ransack my house and cause such great distress to my family and myself? Had they found him, I have no doubt they would have slain Catilina on the spot Even then it struck me that such an act would have amounted to murder.'

Cicero made a face. Either I was begi

I put down my wine and crossed my arms.

Cicero smiled. 'It's such a simple thing, really. Well, then, officially, there were no survivors from Catilina's army after the battle of Pistoria…'

'So I've heard,' I said, my mind suddenly flooded with memories of blood and steel. 'They all died with their wounds in the front'

'Yes, Romans to the end, no matter how woefully misguided. Nonetheless, unofficially it's come to my ears that there were at least two survivors of that battle, a man and his son.'

'Really? How do you- know that?'

'I still have my spies, Gordianus. There's something I want from those survivors.'

'Not more revenge, I hope. Surely there were enough trials and purges in the months that followed Catilina's defeat. I thought all the enemies of the state had been rounded up and punished already.'

'No, nothing like that From those survivors, I want their memories of Catilina's speech.'

'His speech?'

'The one he delivered to his troops before the battle. He must have given a speech; every Roman general does.'

'Perhaps. Why are you so interested in it?'

'To complete the record of my year as consul. I have copies of all the speeches I made against Catilina, and Tiro and his staff made a complete transcript of the debate that took place in the Senate before the executions. I have copies of the incriminating letters that doomed the conspirators, and a copy of the speech that Antonius's lieutenant made to his troops before the battle.'

'Because Antonius was crippled by a hangnail.'

'By gout!' said Cicero in the sympathetic tones of a man who suffers from chronic dyspepsia. 'But what I don't have, what no one has, is a copy of the speech that Catilina delivered to his troops. Forget my talk of a favour; I should gladly reward with silver the man who could recall that speech for me.'

'Does this have something to do with your memoirs, Cicero?'

'Perhaps. Why not? Catilina's conspiracy against the state was one of the most crucial events in the whole history of the Republic. As for the part I played in suppressing it, there are those who go so far as to say that in the hours when I wielded absolute power I fulfilled Plato's vision of the philosopher-king. Perhaps they exaggerate, but still—'