Imperium:

by Robert Harris

  ‘No,’ said Cicero firmly, ‘I am afraid you are wrong, Quintus. This story has the ring of truth, and I blame myself for not recognising the danger earlier.’ He was on his feet now, and pacing around, as he always did when he was thinking hard. ‘It started with those Games of Apollo given by Hybrida – Crassus must have paid for those. The games were what brought Hybrida back from the political dead. And could Catilina really have raised the funds to bribe his jury simply by selling a few statues and pictures? Of course not. And even if he did, who is paying his campaign expenses now? Because I have been inside his house and I can tell you: that man is bankrupt.’ He wheeled around, his gaze darting to right and left, bright and unseeing, his eyes working as rapidly as his thoughts. ‘I have always known in my bones that there was something wrong about this election. I have sensed some invisible force against me from the very outset. Hybrida and Catilina! These creatures should never even have been candidates in any normal canvass, let alone the front-runners. They are merely the tools of someone else.’

  ‘So we are fighting Crassus?’ said Quintus, sounding resigned to it at last.

  ‘Crassus, yes. Or is it really Caesar, using Crassus’s money? Every time I look around, I seem to see a flash of Caesar’s cloak, just disappearing out of view. He thinks he is cleverer than anyone, and perhaps he is. But not on this occasion. Atticus –’ Cicero stopped in front of him, and took his hands in both of his ‘– my old friend. I cannot thank you enough.’

  ‘For what? I merely listened to a bore, and then plied him with a little drink. It was hardly anything.’

  ‘On the contrary, the ability to listen to bores requires stamina, and such stamina is the essence of politics. It is from the bores that you really find things out.’ Cicero squeezed his hands warmly, then swung around to his brother. ‘We need to find some evidence, Quintus. Ranunculus and Filum are the men who can sniff it out – not much moves at election time in this city that those two are not aware of.’

  Quintus agreed, and in this way the shadow-boxing of the consular election finally ended, and the real fight began.

  XVI

  TO DISCOVER WHAT was going on, Cicero devised a trap. Rather than simply asking around about what Crassus was up to – which would have got him nowhere, and would also have alerted his enemies that he was suspicious – he called Ranunculus and Filum to him, and told them to go out into the city and let it be known that they were representing a certain anonymous senator who was worried about his prospects in the forthcoming consular ballot, and was willing to pay fifty sesterces per vote to the right electoral syndicate.

  Ranunculus was a runtish, almost half-formed creature, with a flat, round face at the end of a feeble body, who well deserved his nickname of ‘Tadpole’. Filum was a giant spindle, an animated candlestick. Their fathers and grandfathers had been bribery agents before them. They knew the score. They disappeared into the back streets and bars, and a week or so later reported back to Cicero that something very strange was going on. All the usual bribery agents were refusing to cooperate. ‘Which means,’ as Ranunculus put it, in his squeaky voice, ‘either that Rome is full of honest men for the first time in three hundred years, or that every vote that was up for sale has already been bought.’

  ‘There must be someone who will crack for a higher price,’ insisted Cicero. ‘You had better do the rounds again, and this time offer a hundred.’

  So back they went, and back they returned after another week with the same story. Such was the huge amount that the bribery agents were already being paid, and such was their nervousness about antagonising their mysterious client, that there was not a single vote to be had, and not a breath of rumour as to who that client might be. Now you might well wonder, given the thousands of votes involved, how such an immense operation could remain so tight a secret. The answer is that it was very cleverly organised, with perhaps only a dozen agents, or interpretes as they were called, knowing the identity of the buyer (I regret to say that both Ranunculus and Filum had acted as interpretes in the past). These men would contact the officials of the voting syndicates and strike the initial bargain – such-and-such a price for fifty votes, say, or five hundred, depending on the size of the syndicate. Because naturally no one trusted anyone else in this game, the money would then be deposited with a second category of agent, known as the sequestres, who would hold the cash available for inspection. And finally, when the election was over and it was time to settle up, a third species of criminal, the so-called divisores, would distribute it. This made it extremely difficult to bring a successful prosecution, for even if a man was arrested in the very act of handing over a bribe, he might genuinely have no idea of who had commissioned the corruption in the first place. But still Cicero refused to accept that someone would not talk. ‘We are dealing with bribery agents,’ he shouted, in a rare show of anger, ‘not an ancient order of Roman knights! Somewhere you will find a man who will betray even as dangerous a paymaster as Crassus, if the money is good enough. Go and track him down and find his price – or must I do everything myself?’

  By this time – I suppose it must have been well into June, about a month before the election – everyone knew that something strange was going on. It was turning into one of the most memorable and closely fought campaigns in living memory, with a field of no fewer than seven for the consulship, a reflection of the fact that many men fancied their chances that year. The three front-runners were reckoned to be Catilina, Hybrida and Cicero. Then came the snobbish and acerbic Galba, and the deeply religious Cornificius. The two no-hopers were the corpulent ex-praetor Cassius Longinus, and Gaius Licinius Sacerdos, who had been governor of Sicily even before Verres, and who was at least a decade older than his rivals. (Sacerdos was one of those irritating candidates who enter elections ‘not out of any personal ambition’, as they like to say, but solely with the intention of ‘raising issues’ – ‘Always beware of the man who says he is not seeking office for himself,’ said Cicero, ‘for he is the vainest of the lot.’) Realising that the bribery agents were unusually active, the senior consul, Marcius Figulus, was prevailed upon by several of these candidates to bring before the senate a severe new law against electoral malpractice: what he hoped would become the lex Figula. It was already illegal for a candidate to offer a bribe; the new bill also made it a criminal offence for a voter to accept one.

  When the time came for the measure to be debated in the senate, the consul first went round each of the candidates in turn to ask for his opinion. Sacerdos, as the senior man, spoke first, and made a pious speech in favour; I could see Cicero squirming with irritation at his platitudes. Hybrida naturally spoke against, but in his usual bumbling and unmemorable way – no one would ever have believed his father had once been the most eagerly sought advocate in Rome. Galba, who was going to lose badly in any case, took this opportunity to withdraw from the election, loftily announcing that there was no glory in participating in such a squalid contest, which disgraced the memory of his ancestors. Catilina, for obvious reasons, also spoke against the lex Figula, and I must concede that he was impressive. Utterly without nerves, he towered over the benches around him, and when he came to the end of his remarks he pointed at Cicero and roared that the only men who would benefit from yet another new piece of legislation were the lawyers, which drew the usual cheers from the aristocrats. Cicero was in a delicate position, and as he rose I wondered what he would say, because obviously he did not wish to see the legislation fail, but nor, on the eve of the most important election of his life, did he want to alienate the voting syndicates, who naturally regarded the bill as an attack on their honour. His response was adroit.

  ‘In general I welcome this bill,’ he said, ‘which can only be a terror to those who are guilty. The honest citizen has nothing to fear from a law against bribery, and the dishonest should be reminded that a vote is a sacred trust, not a voucher to be cashed in once a year. But there is one thing wrong with it: an imbalance which needs to be redressed.
Are we really saying that the poor man who succumbs to temptation is more to be condemned than the rich man who deliberately places temptation in his way? I say the opposite: that if we are to legislate against the one, we must strengthen the sanctions against the other. With your permission, therefore, Figulus, I wish to propose an amendment to your bill: That any person who solicits, or seeks to solicit, or causes to be solicited, the votes of any citizen in return for money should be liable to a penalty of ten years’ exile.’ That produced an excited and long-drawn-out ‘Oohh!’ from all around the chamber.

  I could not see Crassus’s face from where I was standing, but Cicero delightedly assured me afterwards that it turned bright red, for that phrase, or causes to be solicited, was aimed directly at him, and everyone knew it. The consul placidly accepted the amendment, and asked if any member wished to speak against it. But the majority of the house were too surprised to react, and those such as Crassus who stood to lose most dared not expose themselves in public by openly opposing it. Accordingly, the amendment was carried without opposition, and when the house divided on the main bill, it was passed by a large margin. Figulus, preceded by his lictors, left the chamber, and all the senators filed out into the sunshine to watch him mount the rostra and give the bill to the herald for an immediate first reading. I saw Hybrida make a move towards Crassus, but Catilina caught his arm, and Crassus walked rapidly away from the forum, to avoid being seen with his nominees. The usual three weekly market days would now have to elapse before the bill could be voted upon, which meant that the people would have their say almost on the eve of the consular election.

  Cicero was pleased with his day’s work, for the possibility now opened up that if the lex Figula passed, and if he lost the election because of bribery, he might be in a position to launch a prosecution not only against Catilina and Hybrida, but also against his arch-enemy Crassus himself. It was only two years, after all, since a previous pair of consuls-elect had been stripped of their offices for electoral malpractice. But to succeed in such an action he would require evidence, and the pressure to find it became even more intense. Every waking hour he now spent canvassing, going about with a great crowd of supporters, but never with a nomenclator at his elbow to whisper the names of the voters: unlike his opponents Cicero took great pride in being able to remember thousands of names, and on the rare occasion when he met someone whose identity he had forgotten, he could always bluff his way through.

  I admired him greatly at this time, for he must have known that the odds were heavily against him and the chances were that he was going to lose. Piso’s prediction about Pompey had proved amply correct, and the great man had not lifted a finger to assist Cicero during the campaign. He had established himself at Amisus, on the eastern edge of the Black Sea – which is about as far away from Rome as it is possible to get – and there, like some great Eastern potentate, he was receiving homage from no fewer than twelve native kings. Syria had been annexed. Mithradates was in headlong retreat. Pompey’s house on the Esquiline had been decorated with the captured beaks of fifty pirate triremes and was nowadays known as the domus rostra – a shrine to his admirers all across Italy. What did Pompey care any more about the pygmy struggles of mere civilians? Cicero’s letters to him went unanswered. Quintus railed against his ingratitude, but Cicero was fatalistic: ‘If it is gratitude you want, get a dog.’

  THREE DAYS BEFORE the consular election, and on the eve of the vote on the bribery law, there was at last a breakthrough. Ranunculus came rushing in to see Cicero with the news that he had found a bribery agent named Gaius Salinator, who claimed to be in a position to sell three hundred votes for five hundred sesterces apiece. He owned a bar in the Subura called the Bacchante, and it had been agreed that Ranunculus would go to see him that very night, give him the name of the candidate for whom the bribed electors were to vote, and at the same time hand over the money to one of the sequestres, who was trusted by them both. When Cicero heard about this he became very excited, and insisted that he would accompany Ranunculus to the meeting, with a hood pulled down to conceal his well-known face. Quintus was against the plan, considering it too dangerous, but Cicero was insistent that he needed to gather evidence at first hand. ‘I shall have Ranunculus and Tiro with me for protection,’ he said (I assume this was one of his jokes), ‘but perhaps you could arrange for a few loyal supporters to be drinking in the neighbourhood, just in case we need more assistance.’

  I was by this time almost forty, and after a life devoted exclusively to clerical duties my hands were as soft as a maiden’s. In the event of trouble it would be Cicero, whose daily exercises had given him an imposing physique, who would be called upon to protect me. Nevertheless, I opened up the safe in his study and began counting out the cash we needed in silver coin. (He had a well-stocked campaign fund, made up of gifts from his admirers, which he drew on to pay for such expenses as his tour of Nearer Gaul: this money was not bribes, as such, although obviously it was comforting for the donors to know that Cicero was a man who famously never forgot a name.) Anyway, this silver was fitted into a money belt which I had to strap around my waist, and with a heavy tread, in both senses of the phrase, I descended with Cicero at dusk into the Subura. He cut a curious figure wearing a hooded tunic borrowed from one of his slaves, for the night was very warm. But in the crowded slums of the poor, the bizarrely dressed are an everyday sight, and when people saw a man with a hood pulled down low over his face they gave him a wide berth, perhaps fearing that he had leprosy or some disfiguring complaint which they might catch. We followed Ranunculus, who darted, appropriately tadpole-like, through the labyrinth of narrow, squalid alleys which were his natural habitat, until at last we came to a corner where men were sitting leaning against the wall, passing back and forth a jar of wine. Above their heads, beside the door, was a painting of Bacchus with his groin thrust out, relieving himself, and the spot had the smell to match the sign. Ranunculus stepped inside and led us behind the counter and up some narrow wooden stairs to a raftered room, where Salinator was waiting, along with another man, the sequester, whose name I never learned.

  They were so anxious to see the money, they paid little attention to the hooded figure behind me. I had to take off my belt and show them a handful of coins, whereupon the sequester produced a small pair of scales and began weighing the silver. Salinator, who was a flabby, lank-haired, pot-bellied creature, watched this for a while, then said to Ranunculus, ‘That seems well enough. Now you had better give me the name of your client.’

  ‘I am his client,’ said Cicero, throwing back his hood. Needless to say, Salinator recognised him at once, and stepped back in alarm, crashing into the sequester and his scales. The bribery agent struggled to recover, hopelessly trying to turn his stumble into a sequence of bows, and began some improvised speech about what an honour it was and so forth to help the senator in his campaign, but Cicero shut him up quickly. ‘I do not require any help from the likes of you, wretch! All I require is information.’

  Salinator had just begun to whine that he knew nothing when suddenly the sequester dropped his scales and made a dive for the staircase. He must have got about halfway down before he ran into the solid figure of Quintus, who spun him around, hauled him up by his collar and the seat of his tunic and threw him back into the room. I was relieved to see, coming up the stairs behind Quintus, a couple of stout young lads who often served as Cicero’s attendants. At the sight of so many, and confronted by the most famous advocate in Rome, Salinator’s resistance began to weaken. What finished it altogether was when Cicero threatened to hand him over to Crassus for trying to sell the same votes twice. He was more scared of retribution at Crassus’s hands than of anything, and I was reminded of that phrase about Old Baldhead which Cicero had repeated years before: ‘the most dangerous bull in the herd’.

  ‘Your client is Crassus, then?’ asked Cicero. ‘Think carefully before you deny it.’

  Salinator’s chin twitched slightly: the nearest he dar
ed come to a nod.

  ‘And you were to deliver three hundred votes to Hybrida and Catilina for the consulship?’

  Again he gave the ghost of a nod. ‘For them,’ he said, ‘and the others.’

  ‘Others? You mean Lentulus Sura for praetor?’

  ‘Yes. Him. And the others.’

  ‘You keep saying “the others”,’ said Cicero, frowning. ‘Who are these “others”?’

  ‘Keep your mouth shut!’ shouted the sequester, but Quintus kicked him in the stomach and he groaned and rolled over.

  ‘Ignore him,’ said Cicero affably. ‘He is a bad influence. I know the type. You can tell me.’ He put an encouraging hand on the bribery agent’s arm. ‘The others?’

  ‘Cosconius,’ said Salinator, casting a nervous glance at the figure writhing on the floor. Then he took a breath and said rapidly, in a quiet voice: ‘Pomptinus. Balbus. Caecilius. Labienus. Faberius. Gutta. Bulbus. Calidius. Tudicius. Valgius. And Rullus.’

  As each new name was mentioned, Cicero looked more and more astonished. ‘Is that it?’ he said, when Salinator had finished. ‘You are sure there is no one left in the senate you have forgotten?’ He glanced across at Quintus, who was looking equally amazed.

  ‘That is not just two candidates for consul,’ said Quintus. ‘That is three candidates for praetor and ten for tribune. Crassus is trying to buy the entire government!’

  Cicero was not a man who liked to show surprise, but even he could not disguise it that night. ‘This is completely absurd,’ he protested. ‘How much is each of these votes costing?’

  ‘Five hundred for consul,’ replied Salinator, as if he were selling pigs at market. ‘Two hundred for praetor. One hundred for tribune.’

  ‘So you are telling me,’ said Cicero, frowning as he performed the calculation, ‘that Crassus is willing to pay three quarters of a million merely for the three hundred votes in your syndicate?’