When he was gone, Cicero, for reasons that seemed best to him, probably oratorical ones, waited for calm to return to the Senate chamber. It also gave Catilina time to get away, a calculated move on Cicero's part, I think. When he rose to speak, he held high a piece of papyrus that looked familiar to me.
Amid the stunned silence, he explained what it was, and how it had come into his hands. He cleared the Allobrogian envoys of wrongdoing and explained the role of Fabius Sanga. It restored the shaken spirit of the Senate to hear the ancient name of Fabius mentioned as a preserver of the state. Then he began to read the names. Shouts of rage and indignation greeted the recital of each name. Then I heard my own name read out. The men to either side of me stepped away as if I had some rare new disease. With unutterable relief I heard Cicero's next words:
"The Quaestor Decius Caecilius Metellus attended the meetings of the conspirators with my knowledge. He acted under authority granted him by the Praetor Metellus Celer. He is innocent of any wrongdoing." Now the men to either side took my sweaty hand and clapped me on the back. Then I was instantly forgotten as the speech continued. When Bestia's name was read out my cousin Nepos stood.
"The tribune-elect Bestia was never a part of the conspiracy!" he shouted. "He acted on behalf of General Pompey to ferret out this plot to endanger Rome and put the empire under the yoke of tyranny."
Cicero's face went scarlet, but his voice dripped with the sort of sarcasm only Cicero could muster. "How convenient. And since when has our esteemed and illustrious General Pompey had the authority to assign spies within the city of Rome? The last time I consulted the tables of the law, a proconsul wields imperium only within the borders of his assigned province. Is this some new interpretation of the Sibylline Books I have not been informed of?" It was no use. Pompey was just too popular, especially among the commons, who had little respect for the legal niceties. Bestia would be safe. I was galled by the knowledge. I wondered which of the equites he had killed to retain credibility with the conspirators. I determined to look into it, when all this was over.
And it would not be over for some time. Before the Senate session was done, Catilina and his followers were declared public enemies. This was only the beginning. Lamps were brought in as the daylight dimmed and messengers ran to and fro. Senators sent their slaves to their homes or to the taverns and stalls of the food sellers. They ate standing, on the steps of the Curia, talking among themselves in small groups.
State scribes scribbled frantically as commands were authorized, drafted and sent out. Mobilization orders flew about like so many birds. Magistrates were appointed to arrest the conspirators wherever they might be found. We junior magistrates were given orders to organize night watches to guard against arson. At last, we thought, something to do!
The next day, a number of the conspirators were apprehended. In this day of the First Citizen, with his reorganization of the vigiles into a true, and very efficient, police force, it may be wondered that so many public enemies moved about at will during a state of emergency, and that Catilina and a number of his followers escaped from the city without difficulty.
The fact was that Rome in those days had no police, and no mechanism for apprehending and incarcerating large numbers of felons. Ordinarily, when an arrest order was handed down, a praetor or curule aedile, accompanied by lictors, would approach the subject and summon him to court. The actual arrest was carried out by the lictors, using an ancient formula. If there was resistance, the magistrate would call upon any citizens nearby to aid him and they would haul the arrestee to court by force, if need be. This procedure was clearly inadequate when dealing with the conspirators.
At first, there was support for Catilina, especially among the ruined and the destitute. You will earn few enemies in Rome by attacking moneylenders and promising to cancel debts. For a while, Catilina's thugs roamed freely, made streetcorner speeches, and in general made life precarious for anyone in public office or belonging to a distinguished family.
The tide began to turn irrevocably against them on the third day after Catilina's flight, when all the stories about planned arson came out and several fire-raisers were caught in the act. After that, there was no sympathy for the Catalinarians in Rome, and a good deal of summary justice instead.
During this time, I was kept too busy to brood over Catilina or Aurelia. I organized a band of vigiles and we patrolled the streets during the hours of darkness, carrying torches and lanterns, occasionally running into other such bands, and avoiding brawls by shouting out watchwords at one another. Occasionally we encountered drunken bands of Catilina's supporters and then we brawled in earnest. It was deadly serious, but everyone seemed to enjoy it immensely. In years to come we were to get a bellyful of such activity, but at the time it was a welcome relief after the boring years of peace and prosperity.
The young equites, remembering their military tradition, armed themselves and formed self-appointed guard units around the homes of magistrates and distinguished men, foiling any planned assassination attempts. Seeing all of this half-organized, half-military activity, Cicero gave in to the inevitable and on the afternoon of the day following Catilina's flight the chief herald ascended the Rostra. For the first time since the sacrifice of the October Horse, his huge voice boomed through the Forum.
"OFF WITH THE TOGA AND ON WITH THE SAGUM!" At this a tremendous cheer erupted. This was another of those ancient formulae, and its meaning was that the Roman people, as a whole, were under military discipline. All citizens were to take off the garment of peace and assume the red cloak of war. It was the last time this formula was ever to be used in Rome.
And so I clattered importantly about in my red cloak and hobnailed caligae, although I did not wear sword or armor within the pomerium. With my old retainer Burrus acting as centurion, I commanded a light century of fifty vigiles and had all the fun of soldiering without having to leave the city and live in a leaky tent. My father and his formidable pack of retainers guarded the Ostian Gate, and he grumbled because he wasn't given one of the field commands.
During this time, I had one moment of great satisfaction. Under rigorous questioning, a captured Catalinarian revealed that word had reached the city that full-scale arson was to begin. That night, with a half score of my men, I waited in hiding outside the Circus Maximus until I saw two shadowy figures dash beneath the arcades. I waited a few minutes longer, then signaled my men to dash into the tunnel where I knew we would find them. We had slung our caligae around our necks and ran barefoot to make no sound. We covered our lanterns with our cloaks and were like ghosts as we crossed the pave.
Within the tunnel, I whipped my cloak from my lantern and others did the same. The sudden light revealed the white, bearded and terrified faces of Valgius and Thorius. The two were crouched over a smoking, low-flaming fire at the base of the great trash heap.
"Quintus Valgius and Marcus Thorius," I shouted as one of my men doused the fire with a bucket of water, "in the name of the Senate and People of Rome, I arrest you! Come with me to the praetor." I had hoped they would resist, but they broke down in tears and supplications. Disgusted, I turned to my centurion.
"Burrus, don't let the men kill them. They must be tried."
"Damned shame, that," the gray old soldier grumbled. "My boy's with the Tenth in Gaul, and these traitors want to stir up trouble there, getting the barbarians to murder Romans in their sleep."
"Nevertheless," I said, "they are citizens and must be tried first."
Burrus brightened. "Well, they ought to make a good public show, anyway, perhaps something with leopards." As we walked to the basilica where arrestees were being kept, the vigiles argued over the best way to put the fire-raisers to death. Every groan of terror from the bearded ones came to my ears as the songs of Orpheus.
But amid all of this exhilaration, there was a darker side. Catilina had joined Manlius in the area of Picenum, and he had gathered a credible military force, mostly Sullan veterans and other discontented soldiers left over fr
om various wars, along with people from the municipia and a surprising number of wellborn young men who left Rome to join him, scenting an opportunity for quick advancement.
Darkest of all were certain events in Rome. I have mentioned the lack of provision for arresting numbers of felons. There was a similar problem when it came to putting highborn men or holders of high office into custody. In the past, when serious perfidy was detected in such a person, he was given opportunity to slink from the city in disgrace and go into exile. This was different. Men who planned the violent overthrow of the state could not be allowed to leave and join their leader. The highest of the conspirators were delivered to the praetors , who kept them under guard in their own homes.
Since Publius Cornelius Lentulus Sura was a praetor himself, Cicero personally arrested him and led him by the hand to the Temple of Concord, where he and the other leaders were to be tried. There Cicero argued that the leaders of the insurrection should be put to death immediately. There were some who protested that the Senate had no authority to try citizens, and that this could only be done by a duly constituted court. Cicero argued that the state of emergency forbade this, and that the sooner they were killed, the sooner the rebellion would collapse.
Caesar rose and spoke forcefully against any such course of action. He said that it ill-befitted Roman statesmen to act in the heat of passion. These were excellent sentiments, but they caused word to spread that he was involved with the conspiracy, or was at least a sympathizer. He was threatened by the mob as he left the temple.
Cato, naturally enough, called for execution. That was just the sort of action that appealed to him: simple, brutal and direct. Many men, especially Cato himself, believed that because he led an upright life of virtue and austerity, he must be right. In any case he spoke eloquently, and it may have been his speech that swayed the Senate to its final decision. Before sunset on that day, Lentulus, Cethegus and several others were taken to the prison beneath the Capitol and there were strangled by the public executioner. Richly as they deserved this fate, these executions were not constitutional and when the excitement and hysteria were over, people understood that they had set a fearsome precedent. Then men who had called for the blood of the conspirators called as loudly for Cicero's exile.
Other ugly incidents abounded. Men saw a chance to implicate their enemies, and did so forthwith. Luckily, except for his haste to dispose of the high-ranking conspirators, Cicero stayed calm and disposed of most of these spurious accusations with his withering sarcasm. A man named Tarquinius, captured on his way to join Catilina, claimed that he had been given a message of encouragement by Crassus to deliver to Catilina. Cicero refused to countenance the accusation, although he was happy enough that some doubt was cast upon Crassus's loyalty. In later times, Crassus claimed that Cicero had put Tarquinius up to this accusation, but I never believed it.
Catulus and Piso, bitter enemies of Caesar, tried to bribe the Allobroges and others to implicate Caesar in the conspiracy. Caesar's eloquent speech in protest of the death sentence for the conspirators lent credence to this accusation, but once again Cicero refused to recognize mere word-of-mouth accusations.
Was Caesar involved? He was certainly capable of it, but I do not think that his defense of the conspirators was evidence. Throughout his career, Caesar was happy to kill droves of barbarians, but he was always reluctant to execute citizens. His clemency was a byword, sometimes used in derision by enemies who at first thought him to be softhearted. In the end, it was his undoing. When a later conspiracy ended in his assassination, many of the conspirators were men he had spared when they were within his power and he had good reason to execute them. I do not think that Caesar was especially merciful. It was just his way of showing contempt for his enemies and confidence in his own powers. He was always a vain man.
Various of the magistrates with imperium were directed to deal with the enemy outside of Rome. Complications were added by the fact that it was the end of the year and some magistrates would be stepping down while others would be assuming office. Cicero's brother Quintus, for instance, was a praetor-elect, and he was sent to deal with the Catilinarians in Bruttium. By the time he got there, he would have his full powers. Caius Antonius Hibrida, waiting near Picenum, still had imperium as Consul, and he was alerted to the Catilinarian menace. The Praetor Metellus Celer was to march north with an army. Since Antonius was taking Macedonia, and Cicero had refused proconsular command, Celer had been given Cisalpine Gaul. The campaign would be merely part of his march to his province. The Praetor Pompeius Rufus was sent to Capua, to watch for Catilinarian subversion among the gladiator's schools there. Ever since Spartacus we have been nervous about a rebellion of gladiators, and in those days most of the schools were in Capua. Campania was the home of the gladiatorial cult. Actually, except when discharging their duties in the amphitheater or when hired as bullies for politicians, gladiators are usually the mildest of men. The fear was constant, though.
The Praetor-elect Bibulus was sent to smash the Catilinarians among the Paeligni, which required only a small force of men. The Paeligni had not amounted to much for quite some time, although they made a show of independence up in their mountains.
Much of this, you understand, I heard secondhand or read about later. As a mere quaestor, I was not yet a full member of the Senate, and so I did not hear all these speeches nor take part in the debates. I was kept too busy with my city patrols to do more than catch up on proceedings at the bathhouses frequented by Senators.
Even then, I think, I was half-aware that I was seeing the death throes of the old Republic.
Chapter XII
I was in at the kill, although I had no desire to be. It was the next year, and the new Consuls were in power. Cicero was already in trouble, with his opponents calling for his impeachment for condemning the Catilinarians to death. Nobody questioned the justice of his action, only its legality.
The tribunes Nepos and Bestia had introduced a law calling for the Senate to summon Pompey from Asia to deal with Catilina, but that was a vain hope. Cicero had laid his groundwork too well. It was obvious to everyone that the various magistrates authorized to deal with the Catilinarians piecemeal would settle the problem long before Pompey could make an appearance.
I was assigned to the army of Metellus Celer. When I was given the assignment, the panic in the city was over. The citizens had redonned the toga, although the red flag still flew atop the Janiculum, in token of the state of war. As I packed to go and join the army, I somehow knew that it would be for a long time. I put my military gear in order and gave my slaves orders to keep my house well, against my return. Then I mounted my horse and rode through the winter drizzle, leading a pack-horse bearing my comforts and personal belongings.
I have never left Rome happily. I always felt a wrench when duty forced me to leave the city, and this time was no exception. There was no one to see me off, and I rode out through the gate as desolate as any stranger leaving Rome.
After a long, cold ride I joined Celer's army near Picenum. Dreams of glory are wonderful, but as quaestor my position in the army was paymaster, scarcely the most heroic of ranks. Even so, I was able to throw myself into the supply and logistics apparatus of the army with some energy. As hastily thrown together as the force was, there was much work to be done.
The fortunes of Catilina had ebbed and flowed according to events in Rome. He had started with a fairly large and enthusiastic force of men, raised first by Manlius and then reinforced by the men who followed Catilina from Rome. They had gathered veterans, deserters, runaway slaves and other malcontents in good numbers for a while. Then, when news of the execution of his supporters in Rome reached them, his followers deserted in great numbers. Thus, one might say that the executions, however illegal, were of benefit to Rome.
What we had facing us at the end was a force of two understrength legions. Just north of the Arno, near Pistoia, we brought him to battle. He had been campaigning in the mountains, retreatin
g toward Gaul. From deserters, Celer had determined Catilina's route of march and had made a sweep around him and placed his legions right across it. With Antonius pushing slowly north with a far larger force, Catilina was being squeezed into a trap.
On the final day, I sat in my saddle next to Celer, uncomfortable in my armor. Before us we could see the rebel force: two understrength legions, a pitiful army with which to conquer the world. They were determined soldiers, though, and we were not going to get through the day without a hard fight. Celer signaled, the trumpets sounded, and the armies rushed together.
The Catilinarians fought with desperate courage, even though their cause was plainly lost. It was a painful thing, to see so many Romans and Italians behaving so heroically, without a chance of victory. There were no mounted troops. Catilina had sent his horse with the others to the rear, in order to fight on foot among his supporters. This was the act of a fine general.
The spears flew, the swords flashed and weapon rattled on shield and armor. It was a long, hard, grinding fight for there were no surrenders from the enemy. Not a single prisoner was taken that day, and none of the defeated sought mercy. It was as if they had all caught the disease of insanity and desperation from Catilina, although I am certain that Celer would have readily granted quarter, had it been asked.
In the end, I saw Catilina's last gesture. We had been taking bad casualties, so hard was the fight. With Celer, I had ridden to a position just behind the center. Over the helmets of several ranks of men, I could see Catilina next to his eagle, waving his sword and urging on his men. As he saw his flanks crumple inward and his forward ranks disintegrate, he came charging through his own ranks, stabbing and slashing. He pushed past his own front rank and plunged into ours, apparently trying to carve a path all the way through our ranks and cut down our commander. It was a Homeric act, and one belonging to the realm of legend, not to the real world.
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