The Catiline Conspiracy (10 page)

"I was wondering." Her voice was languorous, her eyes hooded and inward-looking. "He is always surrounded by younger men these days." That was a statement open to various interpretations. I said nothing. "You don't look like them, though."

"Oh. They run to a type, then?" I asked. I was truly interested to learn what type of men I had thrown in with.

"Wellborn and worthless," she said succinctly. "Greek tutors, good clothes, no money, old enough for the legions but never served." She looked at my scar. "You've been with the legions. And you've taken the trouble to actually stand for office. And you don't wear a beard."

The back of my neck prickled and I took a sip of lightly watered wine to cover my excitement. "They wear beards?"

"Yes." She looked puzzled. "Most of them. It's their way of being unconventional, I think. It may be the only gesture within their capabilities. Surely you've noticed them?"

"My work keeps me underground most days," I said. "But I've seen them here and there around the city. I thought it was some horrid outbreak of philosophy."

"Far from it. Some are from old Marian families. At least, that's their excuse for being kept out of power. I think it more likely to be good taste on the part of the assemblies."

"Am I to take it that you do not admire your stepfather's friends?" I asked.

"It's sufficient that they admire him." She shrugged, a difficult gesture when reclining, and one which she performed to perfection, causing those superb breasts to roll enticingly. "There are always only a few to lead, and a great many cattle."

"I trust I am not one of the cattle," I said.

She looked me over coolly. "That may be," she said after she had surveyed me, presumably for bovine qualities.

"Why are these impecunious young men so drawn to Lucius?" I asked ingenuously.

"Who would not be? He's like Sulla. He can raise men from obscurity to the highest rank. That is a great attraction to men who could never accomplish such a thing on their own."

"If you will forgive my observation," I said, "he has thus far been in no position to raise anyone from obscurity."

"For the moment," she said, holding out her cup for refilling. "But that was the way it was with Sulla, once. He fought the battles and he captured Jugurtha, but old Marius took the credit. But the men who supported Sulla did well out of it in the end."

That was shrewdly put. My own family had done well out of Sulla's reign as dictator. They had thought a man of intelligent, calculated violence preferable to a crazed old loon like Gaius Marius. At least, I had always accepted the accounts of men like my father that that had been their reasoning. Perhaps they just wanted to be on the winning side.

"So does Lucius plan to stand for Consul yet again?" I asked.

"I think it's something like that," she said, her expression unreadable as she raised her winecup and the rim obscured her face.

"Decius," Catilina said. He lay on the couch opposite me so we were separated by several feet and he had to speak loudly. "What is your opinion on the consulship of Cicero? We have just been discussing him."

"He is the best orator in Rome," I said. "Perhaps the best who ever lived. He writes wonderfully and his grasp of the niceties of law and legal practice is legendary."

Catilina snorted. "In other words, he governs like a lawyer. Is this what Rome needs? Where are the soldiers who made us great? When did Cicero ever win glory in the field?"

"Antonius is no lawyer," I reminded him. Catilina looked sour. He had sought a
coitio
with Antonius for the election of the previous year, but something had gone wrong and Antonius had thrown in with Cicero instead.

"Yes, well, he's no soldier either, and I predict the Macedonians will have a rough time of it when he gets there next year." Catilina lacked military distinction himself but, like most such men, he conceived of himself as a glorious general. His mediocre record he attributed to lack of opportunity. "I confess I was surprised that Cicero turned down the proconsular governorship of Macedonia," I said, giving him an opening.

He pounced. "It's because Cicero is a coward! He knows that it will mean fighting and he has no stomach for it. He would rather stay here in Rome and be a nuisance, troubling better men with his piddling legal tricks."

"If his last accusations against you are true," I said, "he hasn't been very safe here in Rome either."

Catilina laughed uproariously and, I think, honestly, "He sees plots against his life everywhere. That is simply the way it is with cowards. Believe me, Decius"--now he looked at me very seriously and directly--"if I were to commit myself to desperate action, I would not confine myself to murdering the likes of Marcus Tullius Cicero." He pronounced the name as if it were some rare disease.

"I doubt our Decius has the nerve for truly desperate action," said Cethegus, with precisely the same look and intonation as a ten-year-old bully. He was a dark man, with a saturnine face and a mouth that turned down at the corners. He was an easy man to hate.

"I do suffer from an excess of intelligence," I told him. "Only the truly stupid hazard their lives and fortunes without a chance of victory."

"Men like you can afford to be patient," Cethegus said, contemptuously. "Not all of us have illustrious families to support us and push our careers." Catilina was watching us both carefully. For some reason he was letting his flunky have his head.

"Isn't the curule
Aedile
Lentulus Spinther a close kinsman of yours?" I asked.

"And what does that amount to?" he said hastily, as if it were a disgrace to be related to a high official.

"I think I know what Decius means," Laeca said. I had the distinct impression that some sort of signal had passed between him and Catilina, telling him to take my part. "There are so many Caecilii Metelli that one of many young men, just beginning public life, does not sit high in family councils, am I right, Decius?"

I forced a good malcontent's scowl. "I won't deny it."

"And," Laeca continued, "I daresay that the expenses of your office have been painful. When I was
quaestor
, it seemed as if the
quaestores
of the past decade had neglected the highways. I had to go deeply into debt to see to their paving." He was a fat man, who spoke smoothly and agreeably.

"How about it, Decius?" Catilina asked. "Have the expenses of the office sent you to the moneylenders?"

I saw an opportunity. "Expenses! Do you think it is just a matter of paving the roads? No longer!" I tried to act slightly drunk, which, I swear, I was not. "Next I must stand for
aedile
. Since Caesar's games two years ago, the people expect such entertainment from the
aediles
. That means I must borrow
now
to support that office. A few years ago, people thought that twenty pairs of gladiators was a fine show. Caesar has taught them to expect five hundred pairs at a single set of games! Not to mention the lions and bears and aurochs and so forth."

"Very true," Laeca said. "Not just gladiators, but
Campanian
gladiators, from the best schools. Not just a public banquet after the games, but fresh meat and fish and foreign fruits for every last bricklayer in Rome. Who can compete with that sort of profligacy?" His fat face creased in a rueful, mock-sympathetic smile. "But surely your family will defray some of your expenses?"

"They would for some of us," I said, frowning. "My father has been helpful, but we're not among the really rich Metelli, and none of the Metelli have wealth like Crassus or Lucullus. We are spread too thin for wealth to concentrate." This last made a very neat wordplay in the Latin still in use at the time, and was applauded. The ladies applauded with special warmth, and it occurred to me that Fulvia and Sempronia had said nothing, a very suspicious circumstance. It was clear that Catilina was directing this conversation, and had forbidden them to speak until he was satisfied about something.

"And have you been so fortunate as to find financial backers?" Laeca asked solicitously.

"One is never sufficient," I said a little stiffly. "Unless you have Crassus behind you."

"Crassus has recently forged ties with your family," Catilina pointed out.'

"As I have said, there are a great many Metelli, and we are not held in equal esteem by Crassus, who considers me a personal enemy." In this age of the First Citizen, people may have forgotten how great a man Crassus was in those days. Suffice it to say that for a mere
quaestor
to think that Crassus took enough notice of him to consider the wretch a personal enemy was the height of presumption. It was exactly the sort of thing men like these would find endearing.

"And you can't very well go to Pompey," Laeca said, "if the rumors of a few years ago are true. He had you exiled."

"I found it expedient to leave the city for a year or two," I said cryptically. What was true of Crassus was doubly true of Pompey. In truth, I was never more than a nuisance to Pompey. At this time, he might have had difficulty remembering me. He had more important things on his mind.

"Your family," Laeca said, "while famed for moderation, generally oppose the ambitions of Pompey. Yet your cousin, Metellus Nepos, is Pompey's faithful legate. He has been elected Tribune of the
plebs
for next year and will be pushing legislation to further Pompey's ambitions."

"A wise family always keeps a few members in every camp," I said. "That way, you don't lose everything if you've backed the wrong side. And Nepos, will accomplish nothing as Tribune, because Cato will be his colleague and Cato will block every piece of pro-Pompey legislation he introduces. Cato stood for the tribunate just to oppose Nepos."

"There is always Lucullus," Cethegus said, making it sound sarcastic. Everything he said sounded sarcastic.

"Lucullus and I have never been at odds," I said, "but I would not approach him. He is married to one of the sisters of Clodius, and Clodius hates me more than Pompey and Crassus combined."

"You have a rare knack for making enemies," Catilina said, laughing. Taking their cue, the others laughed as well. Aurelia didn't. "Well, any man Clodius hates is a friend of mine. So you've had to go to the professional moneylenders, then?"

"Why all this curiosity about my financial affairs?" I asked.

"Every man with ambition who was not born rich is in debt by definition," Catilina said, "but any man indebted to one of the three we mentioned is in that man's purse and cannot be trusted."

"Trusted?" I said. "Trusted in what fashion?"

"We are all ambitious men," Catilina said quietly, "and we know who stands between us and the power we are qualified to wield, the honors we deserve. They sequester to themselves every high office and command while keeping better men crushed beneath a burden of debt. Surely you don't think that it is some form of accident that for the last twenty years the expenses of holding office have risen so tremendously?" His face was growing redder. "Is it any coincidence that we are pushed into the grasp of the moneylenders? How did it come about that highborn men, whose families have produced Rome's Consuls and generals for centuries, are beholden to baseborn cash-breeders our ancestors would not have considered worthy to be spat upon?"

"Freedmen, most of them," Cethegus said, "men who should have stayed slaves, even if they pretend to be citizens and
equites
."

"It is convenient for our higher officeholders," I allowed.

"It's more than convenient," Catilina insisted. "It is the result of plotting by a tiny clique of powerful men who will never willingly relinquish power. Who among us can live with such infamy and still call himself a man?" He was getting warmed up now, and the others were hanging on every word. I glanced at Aurelia and she was looking at him with adoration, but I detected something else in her expression. Was it mockery?

"And now," Catilina went on, "what sort of man assumes the leadership of Rome? Marcus Tullius Cicero! A lawyer! A man who has no qualification for office save a facility for bending words to his will. And there are more just like him. Such men could never bring themselves to make the sort of hard, quick, ruthless decisions a real Consul must make. They believe only in words, not deeds."

"So what sort of man does Rome need?" I asked him.

"A man like Sulla," Catilina said, surprising me. "Sulla took power when all had fallen into chaos. He sought neither the fawning favor of the mob nor the patronage of the aristocrats. He purged the Senate, proscribed enemies of the state, reformed the courts, gave us a new constitution and then, when he was done, he dismissed his lictors and walked from the Forum a private citizen, to retire to his country house and write his memoirs. That is the sort of man Rome needs."

There was much in what he said, but Catilina had left out a few details for rhetorical effect. For instance, that Sulla had been the cause as well as the queller of political chaos. Also, he could well afford to retire after his dictatorship, since he had killed or exiled all his enemies and left behind him his own partisans, firmly in power. There was no doubt of the identity of this putative new Sulla. I stared frowningly into my winecup, as if pondering, finally coming to a momentous decision.

"I think," I said solemnly, "that I could follow such a man. Twenty years ago, the Metelli were among the foremost supporters of Sulla. Why should I be less bold than they?"

"Why, indeed," Catilina said. He seemed to be satisfied, for now the women began to join the conversation. There was no more said of power or of cabals preventing worthy men from gaining office. I paid much attention to Aurelia, who seemed to be warming to me.

As the wine flowed, the dice and knucklebones came out and we began to gamble. I joined in, although I ordinarily confine my betting to races or fights, where I flatter myself that I have some skill in predicting the outcome. I have little taste for wagering on pure chance.

Although I did not lose heavily, I was a bit alarmed to see the sums the others were betting. For self-proclaimed poor men they seemed inordinately well furnished with cash. Although they all shouted loud, traditional curses when they lost, none of them seemed overly upset.