Caesar's Women (32 page)

“You send them, I'll try them,” said Caesar to Cato cheerfully.

Despite the fact that all of Rome had buzzed when Cato divorced Atilia and sent her back dowerless to her family, citing Caesar as her lover, it was not in Caesar's nature to feel at a disadvantage in these dealings with Cato. Nor was it in Caesar's nature to suffer qualms of conscience or pity at Atilia's fate; she had taken her chances, she could always have said no. Thus the president of the Murder Court and the incorruptible quaestor did well together.

Then Cato abandoned the small fish, the slaves, freed-men and centurions who had used those two-talent rewards to found fortunes. He decided to charge Catilina with the murder of Marcus Marius Gratidianus. It had happened after Sulla won the battle at the Colline Gate of Rome, and Marius Gratidianus had been Catilina's brother-in-law at the time. Later, Catilina inherited the estate.

“He's a bad man, and I'm going to get him,” said Cato to Caesar. “If I don't, he'll be consul next year.”

“What do you suspect he might do if he were consul?” Caesar asked, curious. “I agree that he's a bad man, but—”

“If he became consul, he'd set himself up as another Sulla.”

“As Dictator? He couldn't.”

These days Cato's eyes were full of pain, but they looked into Caesar's cold pale orbs sternly. “He's a Sergius; he has the oldest blood in Rome, even including yours, Caesar. If Sulla had not had the blood, he couldn't have succeeded. That's why I don't trust any of you antique aristocrats. You're descended from kings and you all want to be kings.”

“You're wrong, Cato. At least about me. As to Catilina—well, his activities under Sulla were certainly abhorrent, so why not try? I just don't think you'll succeed.”

“Oh, I'll succeed!” shouted Cato. “I have dozens of witnesses to swear they saw Catilina lop Gratidianus's head off.”

“You'd do better to postpone the trial until just before the elections,” Caesar said steadily. “My court is quick, I don't waste any time. If you arraign him now, the trial will be over before applications close for the curule elections. That means Catilina will be able to stand if he's acquitted. Whereas if you arraign him later, my cousin Lucius Caesar as supervisor would never permit the candidacy of a man facing a murder charge.”

“That,” said Cato stubbornly, “only postpones the evil day. I want Catilina banished from Rome and any dream of being consul.”

“All right then, but be it on your own head!” said Caesar.

The truth was that Cato's head had been just a little turned and swollen by his victories to date. Sums of two talents were pouring into the Treasury now because Cato insisted on enforcing the law the consul/censor Lentulus Clodianus had put on the tablets some years before, requiring that all such moneys be paid back no matter how peacefully they had been collected. Cato could foresee no obstacles in the case of Lucius Sergius Catilina. As quaestor he didn't prosecute himself, but he spent much thought on choosing a prosecutor—Lucius Lucceius, close friend of Pompey's and an orator of great distinction. This, as Cato well knew, was a shrewd move; it proclaimed that Catilina's trial was not at the whim of the boni, but an affair all Roman men must take seriously, as one of Pompey's friends was collaborating with the boni. Caesar too!

When Catilina heard what was in the wind, he shut his teeth together and cursed. For two consular elections in a row he had seen himself denied the chance to stand because of a trial process; now here he was again, on trial. Time to see an end to them, these twisted persecutions aimed at the heart of the Patriciate by mushrooms like Cato, descended from a slave. For generations the Sergii had been excluded from the highest offices in Rome due to poverty—a fact that had been as true of the Julii Caesares until Gaius Marius permitted them to rise again. Well, Sulla had permitted the Sergii to rise again, and Lucius Sergius Catilina was going to put his clan back in the consul's ivory chair if he had to overthrow the whole of Rome to do so! He had, besides, a very ambitious wife in the beauteous Aurelia Orestilla; he loved her madly and he wanted to please her. That meant becoming consul.

It was when he understood that the trial would come on well before the elections that he decided on a course of action: this time he would be acquitted in time to stand—if he could ensure acquittal. So he went to see Marcus Crassus and struck a bargain with that senatorial plutocrat. In return for Crassus's support throughout the trial, he undertook when consul to push Crassus's two pet schemes through the Senate and the Popular Assembly. The Trans-Padane Gauls would be enfranchised, and Egypt formally annexed into the empire of Rome as Crassus's private fief.

Though his name was never bruited as one of Rome's outstanding advocates for technique, brilliance or oratorical skills, Crassus nonetheless had a formidable reputation in the courts because of his doggedness and his immense willingness to defend even the humblest of his clients to the top of his bent. He was also very much respected and cultivated in knight circles because so much Crassus capital underlay all kinds of business ventures. And these days all juries were tripartite, consisting of one third of senators, one third of knights belonging to the Eighteen, and one third of knights belonging to the more junior tribuni aerarii Centuries. It was therefore safe to say that Crassus had tremendous influence with at least two thirds of any jury, and that this influence extended to those senators who owed him money. All of which meant that Crassus didn't need to bribe a jury to secure the verdict he wanted; the jury was disposed to believe that whatever verdict he wanted was the right verdict to deliver.

Catilina's defense was simple. Yes, he had indeed lopped off the head of his brother-in-law, Marcus Marius Gratidianus; he did not deny the deed because he could not deny the deed. But at the time he had been one of Sulla's legates, and he had acted under Sulla's orders. Sulla had wanted Marius Gratidianus's head to fire into Praeneste as a missile aimed at convincing Young Marius that he couldn't succeed in defying Sulla any longer.

Caesar presided over a court which listened patiently to the prosecutor Lucius Lucceius and his team of supporting counsel, and realized very soon that it was a court which had no intention of convicting Catilina. Nor did it. The verdict came in ABSOLVO by a large majority, and even Cato afterward was unable to find hard evidence that Crassus had needed to bribe.

“I told you so,” said Caesar to Cato.

“It isn't over yet!” barked Cato, and stalked off.

There were seven candidates for the consulship when the nominations closed, and the field was an interesting one. His acquittal meant Catilina had declared himself, and he had to be regarded as a virtual certainty for one of the two posts. As Cato had said, he had the blood. He was also the same charming and persuasive man he had been at the time he wooed the Vestal Virgin Fabia, so his following was very large. If too it consisted of too many men who skated perilously close to ruin, that did not negate its power. Besides which, it was now generally known that Marcus Crassus supported him, and Marcus Crassus commanded very many of the First Class of voters.

Servilia's husband Silanus was another candidate, though his health was not good; had he been hale and hearty, he would have had little trouble in gathering enough votes to be elected. But the fate of Quintus Marcius Rex, doomed to be sole consul by the deaths of his junior colleague and then the suffect replacement, intruded into everyone's mind. Silanus didn't look as if he would last out his year, and no one thought it wise to let Catilina hold the reins of Rome without a colleague, Crassus notwithstanding.

Another likely candidate was the vile Gaius Antonius Hybrida, whom Caesar had tried unsuccessfully to prosecute for the torture, maiming and murder of many Greek citizens during Sulla's Greek wars. Hybrida had eluded justice, but public opinion inside Rome had forced him to go into a voluntary exile on the island of Cephallenia; the discovery of some grave mounds had yielded him fabulous wealth, so when he returned to Rome to find himself expelled from the Senate, Hybrida simply started again. First he re-entered the Senate by becoming a tribune of the plebs; then in the following year he bribed his way into a praetorship, ardently supported by that ambitious and able New Man Cicero, who had cause to be grateful to him. Poor Cicero had found himself in a severe financial embarrassment brought about by his passion for collecting Greek statues and installing them in a plethora of country villas; it was Hybrida who lent him the money to extricate himself. Ever since then Cicero spoke up for him, and was doing so at the moment so strenuously that it could safely be deduced that he and Hybrida were planning to run as a team for the consulship, Cicero lending their campaign respectability and Hybrida putting up the money.

The man who might have offered Catilina the stiffest competition was undoubtedly Marcus Tullius Cicero, but the trouble was that Cicero had no ancestors; he was a homo novus, a New Man. Sheer legal and oratorical brilliance had pushed him steadily up the cursus honorum, but much of the First Class of the Centuries deemed him a presumptuous hayseed, as did the boni. Consuls ought to be men of proven Roman origins, and from illustrious families. Though everyone knew Cicero to be an honest man of high ability (and knew Catilina to be extremely shady), still and all the feeling in Rome was that Catilina deserved the consulship ahead of Cicero.

After Catilina was acquitted, Cato held a conference with Bibulus and Ahenobarbus, who had been quaestor two years before; all three were now in the Senate, which meant they were now fully entrenched within the ultra-conservative rump, the boni.

“We cannot permit Catilina to be elected consul!” brayed Cato. “He's seduced the rapacious Marcus Crassus into supporting him.”

“I agree,” said Bibulus calmly. “Between the two of them, they'll wreak havoc on the mos maiorum. The Senate will be full of Gauls, and Rome will have another province to worry about.”

“What do we do?” asked Ahenobarbus, a young man more famous for the quality of his temper than his intellect.

“We seek an interview with Catulus and Hortensius,” Bibulus said, “and between us we work out a way to swing opinion in the First Class from the idea of Catilina as consul.” He cleared his throat. “However, I suggest that we appoint Cato the leader of our deputation.”

“I refuse to be a leader of any kind!” yelled Cato.

“Yes, I know that,” Bibulus said patiently, “but the fact remains that ever since the Great Treasury War you've become a symbol to most of Rome. You may be the youngest of us, but you're also the most respected. Catulus and Hortensius are well aware of that. Therefore you will act as our spokesman.”

“It ought to be you” from Cato, annoyed.

“The boni are against men thinking themselves better than their peers, and I am of the boni, Marcus. Whoever is the most suitable on a particular day is the spokesman. Today, that's you.”

“What I don't understand,” said Ahenobarbus, “is why we have to seek an audience at all. Catulus is our leader, he ought to be summoning us.”

“He's not himself,” Bibulus explained. “When Caesar humiliated him in the House over that battering-ram business, he lost clout.” The cool silvery gaze transferred to Cato. “Nor were you very tactful, Marcus, when you humiliated him in public while Vibius was on trial for fraud. Caesar was self-evident, but a man loses huge amounts of clout when his own adherents upbraid him.”

“He shouldn't have said what he did to me!”

Bibulus sighed. “Sometimes, Cato, you're more a liability than an asset!”

The note asking Catulus for an audience was under Cato's seal, and written by Cato. Catulus summoned his brother-in-law Hortensius (Catulus was married to Hortensius's sister, Hortensia, and Hortensius was married to Catulus's sister, Lutatia) feeling a small glow of pleasure; that Cato should seek his help was balm to his wounded pride.

“I agree that Catilina cannot be allowed the consulship,” he said stiffly. “His deal with Marcus Crassus is now public property because the man can't resist an opportunity to boast, and at this stage he's convinced he can't lose. I've been thinking a lot about the problem, and I've come to the conclusion that we ought to use Catilina's boasting of his alliance with Marcus Crassus. There are many knights who esteem Crassus, but only because there are limitations to his power. I predict that droves of knights won't want to see Crassus's influence increased by an influx of clients from across the Padus, as well as from all that Egyptian money. If they thought Crassus would share Egypt with them, it would be different, but luckily everyone knows Crassus won't share. Though technically Egypt would belong to Rome, in actual fact it would become the private kingdom of Marcus Licinius Crassus to rape to his heart's content.”

“The trouble is,” said Quintus Hortensius, “that the rest of the field is horribly unappealing. Silanus, yes—if he were a well man, which he's so obviously not. Besides which, he declined to take a province after his term as praetor on the grounds of ill health, and that won't impress the voters. Some of the candidates—Minucius Thermus, for example—are hopeless.”

“There's Antonius Hybrida,” said Ahenobarbus.

Bibulus's lip curled. “If we take Hybrida—a bad man, but so monumentally inert that he won't do the State any harm—we also have to take that self-opinionated pimple Cicero.”

A gloomy silence fell, broken by Catulus.

“Then the real decision is, which one of two unpalatable men is the preferable alternative?” he said slowly. “Do the boni want Catilina with Crassus triumphantly pulling his strings, or do we want a low-class braggart like Cicero lording it over us?”

“Cicero,” said Hortensius.

“Cicero,” said Bibulus.

“Cicero,” said Ahenobarbus.

And, very reluctantly from Cato, “Cicero.”

“Very well,” said Catulus, “Cicero it is. Ye Gods, I'll find it hard to hang on to my gorge in the House next year! A jumped-up New Man as one of Rome's consuls. Tchah!”

“Then I suggest,” said Hortensius, pulling a face, “that we all eat very sparingly before meetings of the Senate next year.”