Conspirata (9 page)

Then one day came the news that Metellus Pius, the pontifex maximus, had died. It was not entirely a surprise. The old soldier was nearer seventy than sixty and had been ailing for several years. He never regained consciousness after the stroke he suffered on the Field of Mars. His body lay in state in his official residence, the old palace of the kings, and Cicero, as a senior magistrate, took his turn as one of the guard of honour standing watch over the corpse. The funeral was the most elaborate I had ever seen. Propped on his side, as though at a dinner, and dressed in his priestly robes, Pius was carried on a flower-decked litter by eight fellow members of the College of Priests, among them Caesar, Silanus, Catulus and Isauricus. His hair had been combed and pomaded, his leathery skin massaged with oil, his eyes were wide open; he seemed much more alive now that he was dead. His adopted son, Scipio, and his widow, Licinia Minor, walked behind the bier, followed by the Vestal Virgins and the chief priests of the official deities. Then came the chariots bearing the leaders of the Metelli, Celer at the front, and to see the family all together - and to see as well the actors parading behind them in the death masks of Pius's ancestors - was to be reminded that this was still the most powerful political clan in Rome.

The immense cortege passed along the Via Sacra, through the Fabian Arch (which was draped in black for the occasion) and across the forum to the rostra, where the litter was raised upright, so that the mourners could gaze on the body for a final time. The centre of Rome was packed. The entire senate wore togas  dyed black. Spectators clustered on the temple steps, on balconies and roofs and the bases of the statues, and they stayed all the way through the eulogies, even though these lasted for hours. It was as if we all knew that in bidding farewell to Pius - stern, stubborn, haughty, brave, and perhaps a little stupid - we were bidding farewell to the old republic, and that something else was struggling to be born.

Once the bronze coin had been placed in Pius's mouth and he had been borne off to lie with his ancestors, the question naturally arose: who should be his successor? By universal consent the choice lay between the two most senior members of the senate: Catulus, who had rebuilt the Temple of Jupiter, and Isauricus, who had triumphed twice and was even older than Pius. Both coveted the office; neither would yield to the other. Their rivalry was comradely but intense. Cicero, who had no preference, at first took little interest in the contest. The electorate was in any case confined to the fourteen surviving members of the College of Priests. But then, about a week after Pius's funeral, while he was waiting outside the senate house with the others for the session to begin, he chanced upon Catulus and casually asked if any decision on filling the post had yet been reached.

'No said Catulus. 'And it won't be soon, either

'Really? Why is that?

'We met yesterday and agreed that in view of the fact that there are two candidates of equal merit, we should go back to the old method, and let the people choose.'

'Is that wise?'

'I certainly think so said Catulus, tapping the side of his beaky nose and giving one of his thin smiles, 'because I believe that in a tribal assembly I shall win

'And Isauricus?'

   
'He also believes that
he will win

'Well, good luck to you both. Rome will be the winner whoever is the victor Cicero began to move away but then checked himself, and a slight frown crossed his face. He returned to Catulus. 'One more thing, if I may? Who proposed this widening of the franchise?'

'Caesar

Although Latin is a language rich in subtlety and metaphor, I cannot command the words, either in that tongue or even in Greek, to describe Cicero's expression at that moment. 'Dear gods he said in a tone of utter shock. 'Is it possible he means to stand himself?'

'Of course not. That would be ridiculous. He's far too young. He's thirty-six. He's not yet even been elected praetor

'Yes, but even so, in my opinion, you would be well advised to reconvene your college as quickly as possible and go back to the existing method of selection.'

'That is impossible

'Why?'

'The bill to change the franchise was laid before the people this morning

'By whom?'

'Labienus

Ah!' Cicero clapped his hand to his forehead.

'You're alarming yourself unnecessarily, Consul. I don't believe for an instant that Caesar would be so foolish as to stand, and if he did he would be crushed. The Roman people are not entirely mad. This is a contest to be head of the state religion. It demands the utmost moral rectitude. Can you imagine Caesar responsible for the Vestal Virgins? He has to live among them. It would be like entrusting your hen-coop to a fox!'

Catulus swept on, but I could see that the tiniest flicker of doubt had entered his eyes, and soon the gossip started that Caesar was indeed intending to stand. All the sensible citizens were appalled at the notion, or made ribald jokes and laughed out loud. Still, there was something about it - something breathtaking about the sheer cheek of it, I suppose - that even his enemies could not help but admire. 'That fellow is the most phenomenal gambler I have ever encountered,' remarked Cicero. 'Each time he loses, he simply doubles his stake and rolls the dice again. Now I understand why he gave up on Rullus's bill and the prosecution of Rabirius. He saw that the chief priest was unlikely to recover, calculated the odds, and decided that the pontificate was a much better bet than either He shook his head in wonder and set about doing what he could to make sure this third gamble also failed. And it would have done, but for two things.

The first was the incredible stupidity of Catulus and Isauricus. For several weeks Cicero went back and forth between them, trying vainly to make them see that they could not both stand, that if they did they would split the anti-Caesar vote. But they were proud and irritable old men. They would not yield, or draw lots, or agree on a compromise candidate, and in the end both their names went forward.

The other decisive factor was money. It was said at the time that Caesar bribed the tribes with so much cash the coin had to be transported in wheelbarrows. Where had he found it all? Everyone said the source must be Crassus. But even Crassus would surely have baulked at the twenty million - twenty million! - Caesar was rumoured to have laid out to the bribery agents. Whatever the truth, by the time the vote was held on the Ides of March, Caesar must have known that defeat would  mean his ruin. He could never have repaid such a sum if his career had been checked. All that would have been left to him were humiliation, disgrace, exile, possibly even suicide. That is why I am inclined to believe the famous story that on the morning of the poll, as he left his little house in Subura to walk to the Field of Mars, he kissed his mother goodbye and announced that he would either return as pontifex maximus or he would not return at all.

The voting lasted most of the day, and by one of those ironies that abound in politics, it fell to Cicero, who was once again in March the senior presiding magistrate, to announce the result. The early spring sun had fallen behind the Janiculum, and the sky was streaked in horizontal lines of purple, red and crimson, like blood seeping through a sodden bandage. Cicero read out the returns in a monotone. Of the seventeen tribes polled, Isauricus had won four, Catulus six, and Caesar had been backed by seven. It could scarcely have been closer. As Cicero climbed down from the platform, obviously sick to his stomach, the victor flung back his head and raised his arms to the heavens. He looked almost demented with delight - as well he might, for he knew that, come what may, he would now be pontifex maximus for life, with a huge state house on the Via Sacra and a voice in the innermost councils of the state. In my opinion, everything that happened subsequently to Caesar really stemmed from this amazing victory. That crazy outlay of twenty million was actually the greatest bargain in history: it would buy him the world.

  From this time on men began to look upon Caesar differently Although Isauricus accepted his defeat with the stoicism of an old soldier, Catulus - who had set his heart on the chief pontificate as the crown of his career - never entirely recovered from the blow. The following day he denounced his rival in the senate. 'You are no longer working underground, Caesar!' he shouted in such a rage his lips were flecked with spittle. 'Your artillery is planted in the open and it is there for the capture of the state!' Caesar's only response was a smile. As for Cicero, he was in two minds. He agreed with Catulus that Caesar's ambition was so reckless and gargantuan it might one day become a menace to the republic. And yet,' he mused to me, 'when I notice how carefully arranged his hair is, and when I watch him adjusting his parting with one finger, I can't imagine that he could conceive of such a wicked thing as to destroy the Roman constitution.' Reasoning that Caesar now had most of what he wanted, and that everything else - a praetorship, the consulship, command of an army - would come in due course, Cicero decided the time had come to try to absorb him into the leadership of the senate. For example, he felt it was unseemly to have the head of the state religion bobbing up and down during debates, alongside senators of the second rank, trying to catch the consul's eye. Therefore he  resolved to call upon Caesar early, straight after the praetorians. But this conciliatory approach immediately landed him with a fresh political embarrassment - and one that showed the extent of Caesar's cunning. It happened in the following way.

Very soon after Caesar was elected - it must have been within three or four days at most - the senate was in session, with Cicero in the chair, when suddenly there was a shout at the far end of the chamber. Pushing his way through the crowd of spectators gathered at the door was a bizarre apparition. His hair was wild and disordered and powdery with dust. He had hastily thrown on a purple-edged toga, but it did not entirely conceal the military uniform he was wearing underneath. In place of red shoes his feet were clad in a soldier's boots. He advanced down the central aisle, and whoever was speaking halted in mid-sentence as all eyes turned on the intruder. The lictors, standing near me just behind Cicero's chair, stepped forward in alarm to protect the consul, but then Metellus Celer shouted out from the praetorian benches: 'Stop! Don't you see? It's my brother!' and sprang up to embrace him.

Observing this, a great murmur of wonder and then alarm went round the chamber, for everyone knew that Celer's younger brother, Quintus Caecilius Metellus Nepos, was one of Pompey's legates in the war against King Mithradates, and his dramatic and dishevelled appearance, obviously fresh from the scene of war, might well mean that some terrible calamity had befallen the legions.

'Nepos!' cried Cicero. 'What is the meaning of this? Speak!'

Nepos disentangled himself from his brother. He was a haughty man, very proud of his handsome features and fine physique. (They say he preferred to lie with men rather than women, and certainly he never married or left issue; but that  is just gossip, and I should not repeat it.) He threw back his magnificent shoulders and turned to face the chamber. 'I come directly from the camp of Pompey the Great in Arabia!' he declared. 'I have travelled by the swiftest boats and the fastest horses to bring you great and joyful tidings. The tyrant and foremost enemy of the Roman people, Mithradates Eupator, in the sixty-eighth year of his life, is dead. The war in the East is won!' There followed that peculiar instant of startled silence that always succeeds dramatic news, and then the whole of the chamber rose in thunderous acclamation. For a quarter of a century Rome had been fighting Mithradates. Some say he massacred eighty thousand Roman citizens in Asia; others allege one hundred and fifty thousand. Whichever is true, he was a figure of terror. For as long as most could remember, the name of Mithradates had been used by Roman mothers to frighten their children into good behaviour. And now he was gone! And the glory was Pompey's! It did not matter that Mithradates had actually committed suicide rather than been killed by Roman arms. (The old tyrant had taken poison, but because of all the precautionary antidotes he had swallowed over the years it had had no effect, and he had been obliged to call in a soldier to finish him off.) It did not matter either that most knowledgeable observers credited Lucius Lucullus, still waiting outside the gates for his triumph, as the strategist who had really brought Mithradates to his knees. What mattered was that Pompey was the hero of the hour, and Cicero knew what he had to do. The moment the clamour died down, he rose and proposed that in honour of Pompey's genius, there should be five days of national thanksgiving. This was warmly applauded. Then he called on Hybrida to utter a few inarticulate words of praise, and next he allowed Celer to laud his brother for travelling a thousand miles  to bring the glad tidings. That was when Caesar got up; Cicero gave him the floor in honour of his status as chief priest, assuming he was going to offer ritual thanks to the gods.

"With all due respect to our consul, surely we are being niggardly with our gratitude?' said Caesar silkily. 'I move an amendment to Cicero's motion. I propose the period of thanksgiving be doubled to ten full days, and that for the rest of his life Gnaeus Pompey be permitted to wear his triumphal robes at the Games, so that the Roman people even in their leisure will ever be reminded of the debt they owe him.'

I could almost hear Cicero's teeth grinding behind his fixed smile as he accepted the amendment and put it to the vote. He knew that Pompey would mark well that Caesar had been twice as generous as he. The motion passed with only one dissenting voice: that of young Marcus Cato, who declared in a furious voice that the senate was treating Pompey as if he were a king, crawling to him and flattering him in a way that would have sickened the founders of the republic. He was jeered, and a couple of senators sitting near to him tried to pull him down. But looking at the faces of Catulus and the other patricians, I could tell how uncomfortable his words had made them.

Of all these great figures from the past who roost like bats in my memory and flutter from their caves at night to disturb my dreams, Cato is the strangest. What a bizarre creature he was! He was not much more than thirty at this time, but his face was already that of an old man. He was very angular. His hair was unkempt. He never smiled, and rarely bathed: he gave off a ripe smell, I can tell you. Contrariness was his religion. Even though he was immensely rich, he never rode in a litter or a carriage

but went everywhere on foot, and frequently refused to wear shoes, or sometimes even a tunic - he desired, he said, to train himself to care nothing for the opinion of the world on any matter, trivial or great. The clerks at the treasury were terrified of him. He had served there as a junior magistrate for a year and they often told me how he had made them justify every item of expenditure, down to the tiniest sum. Even after he had left the department he always came into the senate chamber carrying a full set of treasury accounts, and there he would sit, in his regular place on the furthest back bench, hunched forward over the figures, gently rocking back and forth, oblivious to the laughter and talk of the men around him.

The day after the news about the defeat of Mithradates, Cato came to see Cicero. The consul groaned when I told him Cato was waiting. He knew him of old, having acted briefly as his advocate when Cato - in another of his other-worldly impulses - had resolved to sue his cousin, Lepida, in order to force her to marry him. Nevertheless, he ordered me to show him in.

'Pompey must be stripped of his command immediately announced Cato the moment he entered the study, 'and summoned home at once

'Good morning, Cato. That seems a little harsh, don't you think, given his recent victory?'

'The victory is precisely the trouble. Pompey is supposed to be the servant of the republic, but we are treating him as our master. He will return and take over the entire state if we're not careful. You must propose his dismissal tomorrow.'

'I most certainly will not! Pompey is the most successful general Rome has produced since Scipio. He deserves all the honours we can grant him. You're falling into the same error as your great-grandfather, who hounded Scipio out of office.'

'Well, if you won't stop him, I shall.'

'You?'

'I intend to put myself forward for election as tribune. I want your support.'

'Do you, indeed!'

'As tribune I shall veto any bill that may be introduced by one of Pompey's lackeys to further his designs. It is my intention to be a politician entirely different to any who has gone before.'

'I am sure you will be,' replied Cicero, glancing over the young man's shoulder at me, and giving me the very slightest wink.

'I propose to bring to public affairs for the first time the full rigour of a coherent philosophy, subjecting each issue as it arises to the maxims and precepts of stoicism. You know that I have living in my household none other than Athenodorus Cordylion - whom I think you will agree is the leading scholar of the stoics. He will be my permanent adviser. The republic is drifting, Cicero, that is how I see it - drifting towards disaster on the winds and currents of easy compromise. We should never have given Pompey his special commands.'

'I supported those commands.'

'I know, and shame on you! I saw him in Ephesus on my way back to Rome a year or two ago, all puffed up like some Eastern emperor. Where's his authorisation for all these cities he's founded and provinces he's occupied? Has the senate discussed it? Have the people voted?'

'He's the commander on the spot. He must be allowed a degree of autonomy. And having defeated the pirates, he needed to set up bases to secure our trade. Otherwise the brigands would simply have come back again when he left

'But we are meddling in places we know nothing about! Now we have occupied Syria. Syria! What business do we have in

Syria? Next it will be Egypt. This is going to require permanent legions stationed overseas. And whoever commands the legions needed to control this empire, be it Pompey or someone else, will ultimately control Rome, and whoever raises a voice against it will be condemned for his lack of patriotism. The republic will be finished. The consuls will simply manage the civilian side of things, on behalf of some generalissimo overseas

'No one doubts that there are dangers, Cato. But this is the business of politics - to surmount each challenge as it appears and be ready to deal with the next. The best analogy for statesmanship in my opinion is navigation - now you use the oars and now you sail, now you run before a wind and now you tack into it, now you catch a tide and now you ride it out. All this takes years of skill and study,
not some manual written by Zeno’
‘
And where does it take you, this voyage of yours?' A very pleasant destination called survival
'Ha!' Cato's laugh was as disconcerting as it was rare: a kind of harsh, humourless bark. 'Some of us hope to arrive at a more inspiring land than that! But it will require a different kind of seamanship to yours. These will be my precepts he said, and he proceeded to count them off on his long and bony fingers: 'Never be moved by favour. Never appease. Never forgive a wrong. Never differentiate between tilings that are wrong - what is wrong is wrong, whatever the size of the misdemeanour, and that is the end of the matter. And finally never compromise on any of these principles. "The man who has the strength to follow them— "'

'"—is always handsome however misshapen, always rich however needy, always a king however much a slave
' I am familiar with the quotation, thank you, and if you want to go and live a quiet life in an academy somewhere, and apply your philosophy to your chickens and your fellow pupils, it might  possibly even work. But if you want to run this republic, you will need more books in your library than a single volume

'This is a waste of time. It is obvious you will never support me

'On the contrary, I shall certainly vote for you. Watching you as a tribune promises to be one of the most entertaining spectacles Rome will ever have seen

After Cato had gone, Cicero said to me, 'That man is at least half mad, and yet there is something to him.'

'Will he win?'

'Of course. A man with the name of Marcus Porcius Cato will always rise in Rome. And he has a point about Pompey. How do we contain him?' He thought for a while. 'Send a message to Nepos enquiring if he has recovered from his journey, and inviting him to attend a military council at the end of tomorrow's session of the senate

I did as commanded, and the message duly came back that Nepos was at the consul's disposal. So after the house was adjourned the following afternoon, Cicero asked a few senior ex-consuls with military experience to remain behind, in order to receive a more detailed report from Nepos of Pompey's plans. Crassus, who had tasted the delights both of the consulship and of the power that flows from great wealth, was increasingly obsessed with the one thing he had never had - military glory - and he was anxious to be included in this council of war. He even lingered around the consul's chair in the hope of an invitation. But Cicero despised him more than anyone except Catilina, and delighted in this opportunity to snub his old adversary. He ignored him so pointedly that eventually Crassus stamped off in a rage, leaving a dozen or so grey-headed senators gathered around Nepos. 1 stood discreetly to one side, taking notes.

It was shrewd of Cicero to include in this conclave men like Gaius Curio, who had won a triumph a decade earlier, and Marcus Lucullus, Lucius's younger brother, for my master's gravest weakness as a statesman was his ignorance of military affairs. In his youth, in delicate health, he had hated everything about military life - the raw discomfort, the boneheaded discipline, the dull camaraderie of the camp - and had retreated as soon as possible to his studies. Now he felt his inexperience keenly, and he had to leave it to the likes of Curio and Lucullus, Catulus and Isauricus, to question Nepos. They soon established that Pompey had a force of eight well-equipped legions, with his personal headquarters encamped - at any rate the last time Nepos had seen him - south of Judaea, a few hundred miles from the city of Petra. Cicero invited opinions.