Imperium

by Robert Harris

  The footman returned, and we followed him through into the tablinum. There, young Scipio lounged on a couch surrounded by a jumble of precious objects—statues, busts, antiques, rolls of carpet, and the like. It looked like the burial chamber of some Eastern potentate. He did not stand when Cicero entered (an insult to a senator), nor did he invite him to sit, but merely asked him in a drawling voice to state his business. This Cicero proceeded to do, firmly but courteously, informing him that Cato’s case was legally watertight, given that Cato was both formally betrothed to the young lady, and also her guardian. He gestured to the document case, which I held before me like a serving boy with a tray, and ran through the precedents, concluding by saying that Cato was resolved to bring an action in the embezzlement court, and would also seek a motion obsignandi gratia, preventing the young lady from having further contact with person or persons material to the case. There was only one sure way of avoiding this humiliation, and that was for Scipio to give up his suit immediately.

  “He really is a crackpot, isn’t he?” said Scipio languidly, and lay back on his couch with his hands behind his head, smiling at the painted ceiling.

  “Is that your only answer?” said Cicero.

  “No,” said Scipio, “this is my only answer. Lepida!” And at that, a demure young woman appeared from behind a screen, where she had obviously been listening, and moved gracefully across the floor to stand beside the couch. She slipped her hand into his. “This is my wife. We were married yesterday evening. What you see around you are the wedding gifts of our friends. Pompey the Great came directly from sacrificing on the Capitol to be a witness.”

  “Jupiter himself could have been a witness,” retorted Cicero, “but that would not suffice to make the ceremony legal.” Still, I could see by the way his shoulders slumped slightly that the fight had gone out of him. Possession, as the jurists say, is nine-tenths of the law, and Scipio not merely had the possession, but obviously the eager acquiescence, of his new bride. “Well,” Cicero said, looking around at the wedding presents, “on my behalf, I suppose, if not that of my client, I offer you congratulations. Perhaps my wedding gift to you should be to persuade Cato to recognize reality.”

  “That,” said Scipio, “would be the rarest gift ever bestowed.”

  “My cousin is a good man at heart,” said Lepida. “Will you convey my best wishes, and my hopes that one day we shall be reconciled?”

  “Of course,” said Cicero with a gentlemanly bow, and he was just turning to go when he stopped abruptly. “Now that is a pretty piece. That is a very pretty piece.”

  It was a bronze statue of a naked Apollo, perhaps half the size of a man, playing on a lyre—a sublime depiction of graceful masculinity, arrested in mid-dance, with every hair of his head and string of his instrument perfectly delineated. Worked into his thigh in tiny silver letters was the name of the sculptor: Myron.

  “Oh, that,” said Scipio, very offhand, “that was apparently given to some temple by my illustrious ancestor, Scipio Africanus. Why? Do you know it?”

  “If I am not mistaken, it is from the shrine of Aesculapius at Agrigentum.”

  “That is the place,” said Scipio. “In Sicily. Verres got it off the priests there and gave it to me last night.”

  IN THIS WAY Cicero learned that Gaius Verres had returned to Rome and was already spreading the tentacles of his corruption across the city. “Villain!” exclaimed Cicero as he walked away down the hill. He clenched and unclenched his fists in impotent fury. “Villain, villain, villain!” It was fair to assume that if Verres had given a Myron to young Scipio, then Hortensius, the Metellus brothers, and all his other prominent allies in the Senate would have received even heftier bribes—and it was precisely from among such men that the jury at any future trial would be drawn. A secondary blow was the discovery that Pompey had been present at Scipio’s wedding feast along with Verres and the leading aristocrats. Pompey had always had strong links with Sicily—as a young general he had restored order on the island, and had even stayed overnight in the house of Sthenius. Cicero had looked to him, if not exactly for support—he had learned his lesson there—then at least for benign neutrality. But Cicero saw the awful possibility that if he went ahead with the prosecution he might have every powerful faction in Rome united against him.

  But there was no time to ponder the implications of that now. Cato had insisted on hearing the results of Cicero’s interview immediately and was waiting for him at the house of his half sister, Servilia, which was also on the Via Sacra, only a few doors down from Scipio’s residence. As we entered, three young girls—none, I would guess, more than five years old—came running out into the atrium, followed by their mother. This was the first occasion, I believe, on which Cicero met Servilia, who was later to become the most formidable of Rome’s many formidable women. She was nearly thirty, about five years older than Cato, handsome but not at all pretty. By her late first husband, Marcus Brutus, she had given birth to a son when she was still only fifteen; by her second, the feeble Junius Silanus, she had produced these three daughters in quick succession. Cicero greeted them as if he had not a care in the world, squatting on his haunches to talk to them while Servilia looked on. She insisted that they meet every caller, and so become familiar with adult ways, for they were her great hope for the future, and she wished them to be sophisticated.

  A nurse came and took the girls away, and Servilia showed us through to the tablinum. Here Cato was waiting with Antipater the Tyrian, a Stoic philosopher who seldom left his side. Cato took the news of Lepida’s marriage as badly as one would have predicted, stamping around and swearing, which reminds me of another of Cicero’s witticisms—that Cato was always the perfect Stoic, as long as nothing went wrong.

  “Do calm yourself, Cato,” said Servilia after a while. “It is perfectly obvious the matter is finished, and you might as well get used to it. You did not love her—you do not know what love is. You do not need her money—you have plenty of your own. She is a drippy little thing. You can find a hundred better.”

  “She asked me to bring you her best wishes,” said Cicero, which provoked another outpouring of abuse from Cato.

  “I shall not put up with it!” he shouted.

  “Yes you will,” said Servilia. She pointed at Antipater, who quailed. “You tell him, philosopher. My brother thinks his fine principles are all the product of his intellect, when they are simply girlish emotions tricked out by false philosophers as manly points of honor.” And then, to Cicero again: “If he had had more experience of the female sex, Senator, he would see how foolish he is being. But you have never even lain with a woman, have you, Cato?”

  Cicero looked embarrassed, for he always had the equestrian class’s slight prudishness about sexual matters and was unused to the free ways of the aristocrats.

  “I believe it weakens the male essence and dulls the power of thought,” said Cato sulkily, producing such a shriek of laughter from his sister that his face turned as red as Pompey’s had been painted the previous day, and he stamped out of the room, trailing his Stoic after him.

  “I apologize,” said Servilia, turning to Cicero. “Sometimes I almost think he is slow-witted. But then, when he does get hold of a thing, he will never let go of it, which is a quality of sorts, I suppose. He praised your speech to the tribunes about Verres. He made you sound a very dangerous fellow. I rather like dangerous fellows. We should meet again.” She held out her hand to bid Cicero good-bye. He took it, and it seemed to me that she held it rather longer than politeness dictated. “Would you be willing to take advice from a woman?”

  “From you,” said Cicero, eventually retrieving his hand, “of course.”

  “My other brother, Caepio—my full brother, that is—is betrothed to the daughter of Hortensius. He told me that Hortensius was speaking of you the other day—that he suspects you plan to prosecute Verres, and has some scheme in mind to frustrate you. I know no more than that.”

  “And in the unlike
ly event that I was planning such a prosecution,” said Cicero, with a smile, “what would be your advice?”

  “That is simple,” replied Servilia, with the utmost seriousness. “Drop it.”

  Roll VI

  FAR FROM DETERRING HIM, his conversation with Servilia and his visit to Scipio convinced Cicero that he would have to move even more quickly than he had planned. On the first day of January, in the six hundred and eighty-fourth year since the foundation of Rome, Pompey and Crassus took office as consuls. I escorted Cicero to the inaugural ceremonies on Capitol Hill, and then stood with the crowd at the back of the portico. The rebuilt Temple of Jupiter was at that time nearing completion under the guiding hand of Catulus, and the new marble pillars from Mount Olympus and the roof of gilded bronze gleamed in the cold sunshine. According to tradition, saffron was burnt on the sacrificial fires, and those yellow flames, the smell of spice, the shiny clarity of the winter air, the golden altars, the shuffling, creamy white bullocks awaiting sacrifice, the white and purple robes of the watching senators—all of it made an unforgettable impression on me. I did not recognize him, but Verres was also there, Cicero told me afterwards, standing with Hortensius: he was aware of the two of them looking at him and laughing at some shared joke.

  For several further days nothing could be done. The Senate met and heard a stumbling speech from Pompey, who had never before set foot in the chamber, and who was able to follow what was happening only by constant reference to a bluffer’s guide to procedure, which had been written out for him by the famous scholar Varro, who had served under him in Spain. Catulus, as usual, was given the first voice, and he made a notably statesmanlike speech, conceding that, although he opposed it personally, the demand for the restoration of the tribunes’ rights could not be resisted, and that the aristocrats had only themselves to blame for their unpopularity. (“You should have seen the looks on the faces of Hortensius and Verres when he said that,” Cicero told me later.) Afterwards, following the ancient custom, the new consuls went out to the Alban Mount to preside over the celebrations of the Latin Festival, which lasted four days. These were followed by another two days of religious observance, during which the courts were closed. So it was not until the second week of the new year that Cicero was finally able to begin his assault.

  On the morning that Cicero planned to make his announcement, the three Sicilians—Sthenius, Heraclius, and Epicrates—came openly to the house for the first time in half a year, and together with Quintus and Lucius they escorted Cicero down the hill into the Forum. He also had a few tribal officials in his train, mainly from the Cornelia and the Esquilina, where his support was particularly strong. Some onlookers called out to Cicero as he passed, asking where he was going with his three strange-looking friends, and Cicero responded cheerfully that they should come along and see—they would not be disappointed. He always liked a crowd, and in this way he ensured he had one as he approached the tribunal of the extortion court.

  In those days, this court always met before the Temple of Castor and Pollux, at the very opposite end of the Forum to the Senate House. Its new praetor was Acilius Glabrio, of whom little was known, except that he was surprisingly close to Pompey. I say surprisingly because, as a young man, he had been required by the dictator Sulla to divorce his wife, even though she was then pregnant with his child, and yield her in marriage to Pompey. Subsequently this unfortunate woman, whose name was Aemilia, died in childbirth in Pompey’s house, whereupon Pompey returned the infant—a son—to his natural father; the boy was now twelve, and the joy of Glabrio’s life. This bizarre episode was said not to have made the two men enemies but friends, and Cicero gave much thought as to whether this was likely to be helpful to his cause or not. In the end he could not decide.

  Glabrio’s chair had just been set up for him, the signal that the court was ready to open for business, and it must have been cold, for I have a very clear memory of Glabrio wearing mittens and sitting beside a charcoal brazier. He was stationed on that platform which runs along the front of the temple, halfway up the stairs. His lictors, their bundled rods over their shoulders, were standing in line, stamping their feet, on the steps beneath him. It was a busy spot, for as well as housing the extortion court, the Temple of Castor was the venue of the Bureau of Standards, where tradesmen went to check their weights and measures. Glabrio looked surprised to see Cicero with his train of supporters advancing toward him, and many other curious passersby turned to watch. The praetor waved to his lictors to let the senator approach the bench. As I opened the document case and handed Cicero the postulatus, I saw anxiety in his eyes, but also relief that the waiting was finally over. He mounted the steps and turned to address the spectators.

  “Citizens,” he said, “today I come to offer my life in service to the Roman people. I wish to announce my intention to seek the office of aedile of Rome. I do this not out of any desire for personal glory, but because the state of our republic demands that honest men stand up for justice. You all know me. You know what I believe in. You know that I have long been keeping an eye on certain aristocratic gentlemen in the Senate!” There was a murmur of approval. “Well, I have in my hand an application to prosecute—a postulatus, as we lawyers call it. And I am here to serve notice of my intention to bring to justice Gaius Verres for the high crimes and misdemeanors committed during his term as governor of Sicily.” He waved it above his head, finally extracting a few muted cheers. “If he is convicted he will not only have to pay back what he has stolen: he will lose all civil rights as a citizen. Exile or death will be his only choices. He will fight like a cornered animal. It will be a long, hard battle, make no mistake, and on its outcome, I hereby wager everything—the office I seek, my hopes for the future, the reputation which I have risen early and toiled in the heat to gain—but I do so in the firm conviction that right will prevail!”

  And with that he marched up the remaining few steps to Glabrio, who was looking mightily bemused, and gave him his application to prosecute. The praetor glanced at it quickly, then passed it to one of his clerks. He shook Cicero’s hand—and that was it. I am afraid the whole business had fallen embarrassingly flat, the trouble being that Rome was constantly witnessing individuals declaring their intention to run for some office or another—at least fifty were elected annually—and nobody saw Cicero’s announcement in quite the same historic terms as he did. As for the prosecution, it had been more than a year since he had stirred up the original excitement about Verres, and people, as he frequently remarked, have short memories: they had forgotten all about the wicked governor of Sicily. I could see that Cicero was suffering a dreadful sense of anticlimax, which even Lucius, who was usually good at making him laugh, could not shake him out of.

  We reached the house and Quintus and Lucius tried to amuse him by picturing the responses of Verres and Hortensius when they learned that a charge had been laid: the slave running back from the Forum with the news, Verres turning white, a crisis meeting summoned. But Cicero would have none of it. I guessed he was thinking of the warning Servilia had given him, and the way Hortensius and Verres had laughed at him on inauguration day. “They knew this was coming,” he said. “They have a plan. The question is: what? Do they know our evidence is too weak? Is Glabrio in their pocket? What?”

  The answer was in his hands before the morning was out. It came in the form of a writ from the extortion court, served upon him by one of Glabrio’s lictors. He took it with a frown, broke open the seal, read it quickly, and then said a soft “Ah…”

  “What is it?” asked Lucius.

  “The court has received a second application to prosecute Verres.”

  “That is impossible,” said Quintus. “Who else would want to do that?”

  “A senator,” replied Cicero, studying the writ. “Caecilius Niger.”

  “I know him,” piped up Sthenius. “He was Verres’s quaestor, in the year before I had to flee the island. It was said that he and the governor quarreled over money.”r />
  “Hortensius has informed the court that Verres has no objection to being prosecuted by Caecilius, on the grounds that he seeks ‘personal redress,’ whereas I, apparently, merely seek ‘public notoriety.’”

  We all looked at one another in dismay. Months of work seemed to be turning to dust.

  “It is clever,” said Cicero ruefully. “You have to say that for Hortensius. What a clever devil he is! I assumed he would try to have the whole case thrown out without a hearing. I never imagined that instead he would seek to control the prosecution as well as the defense.”

  “But he cannot do that!” spluttered Quintus. “Roman justice is the fairest system in the world!”