Imperium:

by Robert Harris

  History has always fascinated me. As Cicero himself once wrote: ‘To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child. For what is the worth of human life, unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history?’ I quickly forgot the cold and could have spent all day happily unwinding that roll, poring over the events of more than sixty years before. I discovered that in this particular year, Rome’s six hundred and twenty-first, King Attalus III of Pergamon had died, bequeathing his country to Rome; that Scipio Africanus Minor had destroyed the Spanish city of Numantia, slaughtering all of its five thousand inhabitants, apart from fifty whom he saved to walk in chains in his triumph; and that Tiberius Gracchus, the famous radical tribune, had introduced a law to share out the public land among the common people, who were then, as always, suffering great hardship. Nothing changes, I thought. Gracchus’s bill had infuriated the aristocrats in the senate, who saw it as threatening their estates, and they had persuaded or suborned a tribune named Marcus Octavius to veto the law. But because the people were unanimous in their support for the bill, Gracchus had argued from the rostra that Octavius was failing in his sacred duty to uphold their interests. He had therefore called upon the people to begin voting Octavius out of office, tribe by tribe, which they at once proceeded to do. When the first seventeen of the thirty-five tribes had voted overwhelmingly for Octavius’s removal, Gracchus had suspended the polling and appealed to him to withdraw his veto. Octavius had refused, whereupon Gracchus had ‘called upon the gods to witness that he did not willingly wish to remove his colleague’, had balloted the eighteenth tribe, achieved a majority, and Octavius had been stripped of his tribuneship (‘reduced to the rank of a private citizen he departed unobserved’). The agrarian law had then been passed. But the nobles, as Crassus had reminded Cicero, had exacted their revenge a few months later, when Gracchus had been surrounded in the Temple of Fides, beaten to death with sticks and clubs, and his body flung in the Tiber.

  I unfastened the hinged notebook from my wrist and took out my stylus. I remember how I glanced around to make sure I was alone before I opened it and started copying the relevant passages from the Annals, for now I understood why Cicero had been so emphatic about the need for secrecy. My fingers were freezing and the wax was hard; the script I produced was atrocious. At one point, when Catulus himself, the patron of the Archive, appeared in the doorway and stared straight at me, I felt as if my heart would shatter the bones of my breast. But the old man was shortsighted, and I doubt he would have known who I was in any case; he was not that sort of politician. After talking for a while with one of his freedmen, he left. I finished my transcription and almost ran out of that place, down the icy steps and back across the forum towards Cicero’s house, carrying my wax tablet pressed close to me, sensing I had never done a more significant morning’s work in my life.

  When I reached the house, Cicero was still ensconced with Antonius Hybrida, although as soon as he saw me waiting near the door, he drew their conversation to a close. Hybrida was one of those well-bred, fine-boned types, who had ruined himself and his looks with wine. I could smell his breath even from where I stood: it was like fruit rotting in a gutter. He had been thrown out of the senate a few years previously for bankruptcy and loose morals – specifically, corruption, drunkenness, and buying a beautiful young slave girl at an auction and living openly with her as his mistress. But the people, in that peculiar way of theirs, rather loved him for his rakish ways, and now that he had served a year as their tribune, he had worked his way back into the senate. I waited until he had gone before I gave Cicero my notes. ‘What did he want?’ I asked.

  ‘My support in the elections for praetor.’

  ‘He has a nerve!’

  ‘I suppose he has. I promised to back him, though,’ said Cicero carelessly, and seeing my surprise he explained: ‘At least with him as praetor I shall have one fewer rival for the consulship.’

  He laid my notebook on his desk and read it carefully. Then he put his elbows on either side of it, rested his chin in the palms of his hands, hunched forward and read it again. I pictured his quick thoughts running ahead in the way that water runs along the cracks in a tiled floor – first onwards, and then spreading to either side, blocked in one spot, advancing in another, widening and branching out, all the little possibilities and implications and likelihoods in shimmering fluid motion. Eventually, he said, half to himself and half to me, ‘Such a tactic had never been tried before Gracchus used it, and has never been attempted since. One can see why. What a weapon to put into any man’s hands! Win or lose, we should have to live with the consequences for years.’ He looked up at me. ‘I am not sure, Tiro. Perhaps it would be better if you erased it.’ But when I made a move towards the desk, he said quickly, ‘And then again perhaps not.’ Instead, he told me to fetch Laurea and a couple of the other slaves and have them run around to all the senators in Pompey’s inner group, asking them to assemble after the close of official business that afternoon. ‘Not here,’ he added quickly, ‘but in Pompey’s house.’ Thereupon he sat down and began writing out, in his own hand, a dispatch to the general, which was sent off with a rider who had orders to wait and return with a reply. ‘If Crassus wants to summon up the ghost of Gracchus,’ he said grimly, when the letter had gone, ‘he shall have him!’

  Needless to say, the others were agog to hear why Cicero had summoned them, and once the courts and offices were shut for the day, everyone turned up at Pompey’s mansion, filling all the seats around the table, except for the absent owner’s great throne, which was left empty as a mark of respect. It may seem strange that such clever and learned men as Caesar and Varro were ignorant of the precise tactics which Gracchus had used as tribune, but remember that he had been dead by then for sixty-three years, that huge events had intervened, and that there was not yet the mania for contemporary history which was to develop over the coming decades. Even Cicero had forgotten it until Crassus’s threat dislodged some distant memory from the time when he was studying for the bar. There was a profound hush as he read out the extract from the Annals, and when he had finished, an excited hubbub. Only the white-haired Varro, who was the oldest present, and who remembered hearing from his father about the chaos of the Gracchus tribunate, expressed reservations. ‘You would create a precedent,’ he said, ‘by which any demagogue could summon the people, and threaten to dispose of any of his colleagues whenever he felt he had a majority among the tribes. Indeed, why stop at a tribune? Why not remove a praetor, or a consul?’

  ‘We would not create the precedent,’ Caesar pointed out impatiently. ‘Gracchus created it for us.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Cicero. ‘Although the nobles may have murdered him, they did not declare his legislation illegal. I know what Varro means, and to a degree I share his unease. But we are in a desperate struggle, and obliged to take some risks.’

  There was a murmur of assent, but in the end the most decisive voices in favour were those of Gabinius and Cornelius, the men who would actually have to stand before the people and push the legislation through, and who would, as a consequence, be chiefly liable to the nobles’ retaliation, both physical and legal.

  ‘The people overwhelmingly want this supreme command, and they want Pompey to be given it,’ declared Gabinius. ‘The fact that Crassus’s purse is deep enough to buy two tribunes should not be allowed to frustrate their will.’

  Afranius wanted to know if Pompey had expressed an opinion.

  ‘This is the dispatch I sent to him this morning,’ said Cicero, holding it up, ‘and here on the bottom is the reply he sent back instantly, and which reached me here at the same time as you all did.’ Everyone could see what Pompey had scrawled, in his large, bold script: the single word, Agreed. That settled the matter. Afterwards, Cicero instructed me to burn the letter.

  THE MORNING OF the assembly was bitterly cold, with an icy wind whipping around the colonnades and temples of the forum. But the chill did no
t deter a vast assembly from turning out. On major voting days, the tribunes transferred themselves from the rostra to the Temple of Castor, where there was more space to conduct the ballot, and workmen had been busy overnight, erecting the wooden gangways up which the citizens would file to cast their votes. Cicero arrived early and discreetly, with only myself and Quintus in attendance, for as he said as he walked down the hill, he was only the stage manager of this production and not one of its leading performers. He spent a little while conferring with a group of tribal officers, then retreated with me to the portico of the Basilica Aemilia, from where he would have a good view of proceedings and could issue instructions as necessary.

  It was a dramatic sight, and I guess I must be one of the very few left alive who witnessed it – the ten tribunes lined up on their bench, among them, like hired gladiators, the two matched pairs of Gabinius and Cornelius (for Pompey), versus Trebellius and Roscius (for Crassus); the priests and the augurs all standing at the top of the steps to the temple; the orange fire on the altar providing a flickering point of colour in the greyness; and spread out across the forum the great crowd of voters, red-faced in the cold, milling around the ten-foot-high standard of their particular tribe. Each standard carried its name proudly in large letters – AEMILIA, CAMILIA, FABIA, and so on – so that its members, if they wandered off, could see where they were supposed to be. There was much joking and horse-trading between the groups, until the trumpet of the herald called them to order. Then the official crier gave the legislation its second reading in a penetrating voice, after which Gabinius stepped forward and made a short speech. He had joyful news, he said: the news that the people of Rome had been praying for. Pompey the Great, deeply moved by the sufferings of the nation, was willing to reconsider his position, and serve as supreme commander – but only if it was the unanimous desire of them all. ‘And is it your desire?’ demanded Gabinius, to which there was a huge demonstration of enthusiasm. This went on for some time, thanks to the tribal officers. In fact, whenever it seemed the volume might be waning, Cicero would give a discreet signal to a couple of these officers, who would relay it across the forum, and the tribal standards would start waving again, rekindling the applause. Eventually Gabinius motioned them to be quiet. ‘Then let us put it to the vote!’

  Slowly – and one had to admire his courage in standing up at all, in the face of so many thousands – Trebellius rose from his place on the tribunes’ bench and came forward, his hand raised to signal his desire to intervene. Gabinius regarded him with contempt, and then roared to the crowd, ‘Well, citizens, should we let him speak?’

  ‘No!’ they screamed in response.

  To which Trebellius, in a voice made shrill by nerves, shouted: ‘Then I veto the bill!’

  At any other time in the past four centuries, excepting the year when Tiberius Gracchus was tribune, this would have been the end of the legislation. But on that fateful morning, Gabinius motioned the jeering crowd to be silent. ‘Does Trebellius speak for you all?’

  ‘No!’ they chanted back. ‘No! No!’

  ‘Does he speak for anyone here?’ The only sound was the wind: even the senators who supported Trebellius dared not raise their voices, for they were standing unprotected among their tribes, and would have been set upon by the mob. ‘Then, in accordance with the precedent set by Tiberius Gracchus, I propose that Trebellius, having failed to observe the oath of his office and represent the people, be removed as tribune, and that this be voted on immediately!’

  Cicero turned to me. ‘And now the play begins,’ he said.

  For a moment, the citizenry simply looked at one another. Then they started nodding, and a sound grew out of the crowd of realisation – that is how I think of it now, at any rate, as I sit in my little study with my eyes closed and try to remember it all – a realisation that they could do this, and that the grandees in the senate were powerless to stop them. Catulus, Hortensius and Crassus, in great alarm, started pushing their way towards the front of the assembly, demanding a hearing, but Gabinius had stationed a few of Pompey’s veterans along the bottom steps and they were not allowed to pass. Crassus, in particular, had lost all his usual restraint. His face was red and contorted with rage as he tried to storm the tribunal, but he was pushed back. He noticed Cicero watching and pointed at him, and shouted something, but he was too far away and there was too much noise for us to hear. Cicero smiled at him benignly. The crier read out Gabinius’s motion – ‘That the people no longer desire Trebellius to be their tribune’ – and the electoral clerks dispersed to their stations. As usual, the Suburana were the first to vote, filing up the gangplank two abreast to cast their ballots, then down the stone steps at the side of the temple and back into the forum. The city tribes followed one after the other, and every one of them voted for Trebellius to be stripped of his office. Then the rural tribes started balloting. This all took several hours, and throughout it Trebellius looked grey with anxiety, and frequently conferred with his companion, Roscius. At one point he disappeared from the tribunal. I did not see where he went, but I guess it must have been to plead with Crassus to release him from his obligation. All across the forum, small huddles of senators gathered as their tribes finished voting, and I noticed Catulus and Hortensius going, grim-faced, from group to group. Cicero also did the rounds, leaving me behind as he circulated among the senators, talking to some of those, such as Torquatus and his old ally Marcellinus, whom he had secretly persuaded to switch to Pompey’s camp.

  At length, after seventeen tribes had voted to oust Trebellius, Gabinius ordered a pause in the balloting. He summoned Trebellius to the front of the tribunal and asked him whether he was prepared now to bow to the will of the people, and by so doing keep his tribunate, or whether it would be necessary to hold an eighteenth ballot and cast him out of office. This was Trebellius’s chance to enter history as the hero of his cause, and I have often wondered whether, in his old age, he looked back on his decision with regret. But I suppose he still had hopes of a political career. After a short hesitation, he signalled his assent and his veto was withdrawn. I need hardly add that he was subsequently despised by both sides and never heard of again.

  All eyes now turned to Roscius, Crassus’s second tribune, and it was at this point, some time in the early afternoon, that Catulus appeared again at the foot of the temple steps, cupped his hands to his mouth, and shouted up to Gabinius, demanding a hearing. As I have mentioned before, Catulus commanded great respect among the people for his patriotism. It was therefore hard for Gabinius to refuse him, not least because he was regarded as the senior ex-consul in the senate. He gestured to the veterans to let him pass, and Catulus, despite his age, shot up the steps like a lizard. ‘This is a mistake,’ Cicero muttered to me.

  Gabinius told Cicero afterwards that he thought the aristocrats, seeing that they had lost, might now be willing to concede in the interests of national unity. But not at all. Catulus railed against the lex Gabinia and the illegal tactics being used to drive it through. It was madness, he declared, for the republic to entrust its security to one man. Warfare was a hazardous business, especially at sea: what would happen to this special command if Pompey was killed? Who would be his replacement? A cry went up of ‘You!’ which, however flattering, was not at all the response that Catulus wanted. He knew he was far too old to go off soldiering. What he really wanted was a dual command – Crassus and Pompey – because even though he detested Crassus personally, he reckoned that the richest man in Rome would at least provide a counterweight to Pompey’s power. But by now Gabinius had begun to realise his error in letting Catulus speak. The winter days were short. He needed to finish the voting by sunset. He roughly interrupted the former consul and told him he had had his say: it was time to put the matter to the ballot. Roscius thereupon sprang forward and tried to make a formal proposal splitting the supreme command in two, but the people were becoming exasperated, and refused to give him a hearing. In fact they set up such a defeaning clamour i
t was said that the noise killed a raven flying overhead and sent it plummeting to the earth. All Roscius could do against the uproar was raise two fingers to veto the legislation and signify his belief that there should be two commanders. Gabinius knew that if he had to call yet another ballot to remove a tribune, he would lose the light, and with it the chance of establishing the supreme command that day – and who could tell what lengths the aristocrats might go to if they had a chance to regroup overnight? So he responded by turning his back on Roscius and ordering the bill to be put regardless.

  ‘That’s it,’ said Cicero to me, as the voting clerks sprang to their stations. ‘It’s done. Run up to Pompey’s house, and tell them to send a message to the general immediately. Write this down: “The bill is passed. The command is yours. You must set out for Rome at once. Be sure to arrive tonight. Your presence is required to secure the situation. Signed, Cicero.”’ I checked I had his words correctly, then hurried off on my errand, while Cicero plunged back into the crowded forum to practise his art – cajoling, flattering, sympathising, even occasionally threatening – for there was nothing, according to his philosophy, that could not be made or undone or repaired by words.

  THUS WAS PASSED, by a unanimous vote of all the tribes, the lex Gabinia, a measure which was to have immense consequences – for all those personally concerned, for Rome, and for the world.

  As night fell, the forum emptied and the combatants retired to their respective headquarters – the aristocratic diehards to the home of Catulus, on the brow of the Palatine; the adherents of Crassus to his own, more modest dwelling, lower down the same hill; and the victorious Pompeians to the mansion of their chief, on the Esquiline. Success had worked its usual fecund magic, and I should think that at least twenty senators crammed themselves into Pompey’s tablinum to drink his wine and await his victorious return. The room was brilliantly illuminated by candelabra, and there was that thick atmosphere of drink and sweat and the noisy racket of masculine conversation which often follows the release of tension. Caesar, Afranius, Palicanus, Varro, Gabinius and Cornelius were all present, but the newcomers outnumbered them. I cannot remember all their names. Lucius Torquatus and his cousin, Aulus, were certainly present, along with another notable young pair of bluebloods, Metellus Nepos and Lentulus Marcellinus. Cornelius Sisenna (who had been one of Verres’s most enthusiastic supporters) made himself thoroughly at home, putting his feet up on the furniture, as did the two ex-consuls, Lentulus Clodianus and Gellius Publicola (the same Gellius who was still smarting from Cicero’s joke about the philosophy conference). As for Cicero, he sat apart in an adjoining chamber, composing an acceptance speech for Pompey to deliver the next day. At the time, I could not understand his curious quietness, but with hindsight I believe he may have had an intuition that something had just cracked in the commonwealth which it would be hard even for his words to repair. From time to time he sent me out to the vestibule to check on Pompey’s whereabouts.