Masters of Rome Boxset: First Man in Rome, the Grass Crown, Fortune's Favourites, Caesar's Women, Caesar

by Colleen McCullough

  The first attempt failed miserably. Catulus proposed to the House that Cato be given a special task, checking army accounts, as he was so brilliant at checking accounts. But Cato simply stood his ground by recommending the names of four men who could be temporarily employed to do a job no elected quaestor should be asked to do. Thank you, he would stick to what he was there for.

  After that Catulus thought of craftier ploys, none of which worked. While the broom sweeping out every corner of the Treasury never wore down or wore out. In March the heads began to roll. First one, then two, then three and four and five Treasury officials found Cato had terminated their tenure and emptied out their desks. Then in April the axe descended: Cato fired Marcus Vibius, and added insult to injury by having him prosecuted for fraud.

  Neatly caught in the patron’s trap, Catulus had no alternative other than to defend Vibius personally in court. One day’s airing of the evidence was enough to tell Catulus that he was going to lose. Time to appeal to Cato’s sense of fitness, to the time-honored precepts of the client-and-patron system.

  “My dear Cato, you must stop,” said Catulus as the court broke up for the day. “I know poor Vibius hasn’t been as careful as perhaps he ought, but he’s one of us! Fire all the clerks and bookkeepers you like, but leave poor Vibius in his job, please! I give you my solemn word as a consular and an ex-censor that from now on Vibius will behave impeccably. Just drop this awful prosecution! Leave the man something!”

  This had been said softly, but Cato had only one vocal volume, and that was top of his voice. His answer was shouted in his usual stentorian tones, and arrested all progress out of the area. Every face turned; every ear cocked to listen.

  “Quintus Lutatius, you ought to be ashamed of yourself!” yelled Cato. “How could you be so blind to your own dignitas as to have the effrontery to remind me you’re a consular and ex-censor, then try to wheedle me out of doing my sworn duty? Well, let me tell you that I will be ashamed if I have to summon the court’s bailiffs to eject you for attempting to pervert the course of Roman justice! For that is what you’re doing, perverting Roman justice!”

  Whereupon he stalked off, leaving Catulus standing bereft of speech, so nonplussed that when the case resumed the following day he didn’t appear for the defense at all. Instead, he tried to acquit himself of his patron’s duty by talking the jury into a verdict of ABSOLVO even if Cato succeeded in producing more damning evidence than Cicero had to convict Verres. Bribe he would not; talk was both cheaper and more ethical. One of the jurors was Marcus Lollius, Cato’s colleague in the quaestorship. And Lollius agreed to vote for acquittal. He was, however, extremely ill, so Catulus had him carried into court on a litter. When the verdict came in, it was ABSOLVO. Lollius’s vote had tied the jury, and a tied jury meant acquittal.

  Did that defeat Cato? No, it did not. When Vibius turned up at the Treasury, he found Cato barring his path. Nor would Cato consent to re-employ him. In the end even Catulus, summoned to preside over the unpleasantly public scene outside the door into the Treasury, had to give up. Vibius had lost his position, and that was going to be that. Then Cato refused to give Vibius the pay owing to him.

  “You must!” cried Catulus.

  “I must not!” cried Cato. “He cheated the State, he owes the State far more than his pay. Let it help to compensate Rome.”

  “Why, why, why?” Catulus demanded. “Vibius was acquitted!”

  “I am not,” shouted Cato, “going to take the vote of a sick man into account! He was out of his head with fever.”

  And so in the end it had to be left. Absolutely sure that Cato would lose, the survivors in the Treasury had been planning all kinds of celebrations. But after Catulus shepherded the weeping Vibius away, the survivors in the Treasury took the hint. As if by magic every account and every set of books settled into perfect order; debtors were made to rectify years of neglected repayments, and creditors were suddenly reimbursed sums outstanding for years. Marcellus, Lollius, Catulus and the rest of the Senate took the hint too. The Great Treasury War was over, and only one man stood on his feet: Marcus Porcius Cato. Whom all of Rome was praising, amazed that the Government of Rome had finally produced a man so incorruptible he couldn’t be bought. Cato was famous.

  “What I don’t understand,” said a shaken Catulus to his much loved brother-in-law Hortensius, “is what Cato intends to make of his life! Does he really think he can vote-catch by being utterly incorruptible? It will work in the tribal elections, perhaps, but if he continues as he’s begun, he’ll never win an election in the Centuries. No one in the First Class will vote for him.”

  Hortensius was inclined to temporize. “I understand what an invidious position he put you in, Quintus, but I must say I do rather admire him. Because you’re right. He’ll never win a consular election in the Centuries. Imagine the kind of passion it needs to produce Cato’s sort of integrity!”

  “You,” snarled Catulus, losing his temper, “are a fish-fancying dilettante with more money than sense!”

  *

  But having won the Great Treasury War, Marcus Porcius Cato set out to find fresh fields of endeavor, and succeeded when he started perusing the financial records stored in Sulla’s Tabularium. Out of date they might be, but one set of accounts, very well kept, suggested the theme of his next war. These were the records itemizing all those who during Sulla’s dictatorship had been paid the sum of two talents for proscribing men as traitors to the State. In themselves they spoke no more than figures could, but Cato began to investigate each person on the list who had been paid two talents (and sometimes several lots of two talents) with a view to prosecuting those who turned out to have extracted it by violence. At the time it had been legal to kill a man once he was proscribed, but Sulla’s day had gone, and Cato thought little of the legal chances these hated and reviled men would stand in today’s courts—even if today’s courts were Sulla’s brainchild.

  Sadly, one small canker ate at the righteous virtue of Cato’s motives, for in this new project he saw an opportunity to make life very difficult for Gaius Julius Caesar. Having finished his year as curule aedile, Caesar had been given another job; he was appointed as the iudex of the Murder Court.

  It never occurred to Cato that Caesar would be willing to co-operate with a member of the boni by trying those recipients of two talents who had murdered to get them; expecting the usual sort of obstructive tactics that court presidents used to wriggle out of trying people they didn’t think ought to be on trial, Cato discovered to his chagrin that Caesar was not only willing, but even prepared to be helpful.

  “You send them, I’ll try them,” said Caesar to Cato cheerfully.

  Despite the fact that all of Rome had buzzed when Cato divorced Atilia and sent her back dowerless to her family, citing Caesar as her lover, it was not in Caesar’s nature to feel at a disadvantage in these dealings with Cato. Nor was it in Caesar’s nature to suffer qualms of conscience or pity at Atilia’s fate; she had taken her chances, she could always have said no. Thus the president of the Murder Court and the incorruptible quaestor did well together.

  Then Cato abandoned the small fish, the slaves, freed-men and centurions who had used those two-talent rewards to found fortunes. He decided to charge Catilina with the murder of Marcus Marius Gratidianus. It had happened after Sulla won the battle at the Colline Gate of Rome, and Marius Gratidianus had been Catilina’s brother-in-law at the time. Later, Catilina inherited the estate.

  “He’s a bad man, and I’m going to get him,” said Cato to Caesar. “If I don’t, he’ll be consul next year.”

  “What do you suspect he might do if he were consul?” Caesar asked, curious. “I agree that he’s a bad man, but—”

  “If he became consul, he’d set himself up as another Sulla.”

  “As Dictator? He couldn’t.”

  These days Cato’s eyes were full of pain, but they looked into Caesar’s cold pale orbs sternly. “He’s a Sergius; he has the oldest blood in Rome
, even including yours, Caesar. If Sulla had not had the blood, he couldn’t have succeeded. That’s why I don’t trust any of you antique aristocrats. You’re descended from kings and you all want to be kings.”

  “You’re wrong, Cato. At least about me. As to Catilina—well, his activities under Sulla were certainly abhorrent, so why not try? I just don’t think you’ll succeed.”

  “Oh, I’ll succeed!” shouted Cato. “I have dozens of witnesses to swear they saw Catilina lop Gratidianus’s head off.”

  “You’d do better to postpone the trial until just before the elections,” Caesar said steadily. “My court is quick, I don’t waste any time. If you arraign him now, the trial will be over before applications close for the curule elections. That means Catilina will be able to stand if he’s acquitted. Whereas if you arraign him later, my cousin Lucius Caesar as supervisor would never permit the candidacy of a man facing a murder charge.”

  “That,” said Cato stubbornly, “only postpones the evil day. I want Catilina banished from Rome and any dream of being consul.”

  “All right then, but be it on your own head!” said Caesar.

  The truth was that Cato’s head had been just a little turned and swollen by his victories to date. Sums of two talents were pouring into the Treasury now because Cato insisted on enforcing the law the consul/censor Lentulus Clodianus had put on the tablets some years before, requiring that all such moneys be paid back no matter how peacefully they had been collected. Cato could foresee no obstacles in the case of Lucius Sergius Catilina. As quaestor he didn’t prosecute himself, but he spent much thought on choosing a prosecutor—Lucius Lucceius, close friend of Pompey’s and an orator of great distinction. This, as Cato well knew, was a shrewd move; it proclaimed that Catilina’s trial was not at the whim of the boni, but an affair all Roman men must take seriously, as one of Pompey’s friends was collaborating with the boni. Caesar too!

  When Catilina heard what was in the wind, he shut his teeth together and cursed. For two consular elections in a row he had seen himself denied the chance to stand because of a trial process; now here he was again, on trial. Time to see an end to them, these twisted persecutions aimed at the heart of the Patriciate by mushrooms like Cato, descended from a slave. For generations the Sergii had been excluded from the highest offices in Rome due to poverty—a fact that had been as true of the Julii Caesares until Gaius Marius permitted them to rise again. Well, Sulla had permitted the Sergii to rise again, and Lucius Sergius Catilina was going to put his clan back in the consul’s ivory chair if he had to overthrow the whole of Rome to do so! He had, besides, a very ambitious wife in the beauteous Aurelia Orestilla; he loved her madly and he wanted to please her. That meant becoming consul.

  It was when he understood that the trial would come on well before the elections that he decided on a course of action: this time he would be acquitted in time to stand—if he could ensure acquittal. So he went to see Marcus Crassus and struck a bargain with that senatorial plutocrat. In return for Crassus’s support throughout the trial, he undertook when consul to push Crassus’s two pet schemes through the Senate and the Popular Assembly. The Trans-Padane Gauls would be enfranchised, and Egypt formally annexed into the empire of Rome as Crassus’s private fief.

  Though his name was never bruited as one of Rome’s outstanding advocates for technique, brilliance or oratorical skills, Crassus nonetheless had a formidable reputation in the courts because of his doggedness and his immense willingness to defend even the humblest of his clients to the top of his bent. He was also very much respected and cultivated in knight circles because so much Crassus capital underlay all kinds of business ventures. And these days all juries were tripartite, consisting of one third of senators, one third of knights belonging to the Eighteen, and one third of knights belonging to the more junior tribuni aerarii Centuries. It was therefore safe to say that Crassus had tremendous influence with at least two thirds of any jury, and that this influence extended to those senators who owed him money. All of which meant that Crassus didn’t need to bribe a jury to secure the verdict he wanted; the jury was disposed to believe that whatever verdict he wanted was the right verdict to deliver.

  Catilina’s defense was simple. Yes, he had indeed lopped off the head of his brother-in-law, Marcus Marius Gratidianus; he did not deny the deed because he could not deny the deed. But at the time he had been one of Sulla’s legates, and he had acted under Sulla’s orders. Sulla had wanted Marius Gratidianus’s head to fire into Praeneste as a missile aimed at convincing Young Marius that he couldn’t succeed in defying Sulla any longer.

  Caesar presided over a court which listened patiently to the prosecutor Lucius Lucceius and his team of supporting counsel, and realized very soon that it was a court which had no intention of convicting Catilina. Nor did it. The verdict came in ABSOLVO by a large majority, and even Cato afterward was unable to find hard evidence that Crassus had needed to bribe.

  “I told you so,” said Caesar to Cato.

  “It isn’t over yet!” barked Cato, and stalked off.

  *

  There were seven candidates for the consulship when the nominations closed, and the field was an interesting one. His acquittal meant Catilina had declared himself, and he had to be regarded as a virtual certainty for one of the two posts. As Cato had said, he had the blood. He was also the same charming and persuasive man he had been at the time he wooed the Vestal Virgin Fabia, so his following was very large. If too it consisted of too many men who skated perilously close to ruin, that did not negate its power. Besides which, it was now generally known that Marcus Crassus supported him, and Marcus Crassus commanded very many of the First Class of voters.

  Servilia’s husband Silanus was another candidate, though his health was not good; had he been hale and hearty, he would have had little trouble in gathering enough votes to be elected. But the fate of Quintus Marcius Rex, doomed to be sole consul by the deaths of his junior colleague and then the suffect replacement, intruded into everyone’s mind. Silanus didn’t look as if he would last out his year, and no one thought it wise to let Catilina hold the reins of Rome without a colleague, Crassus notwithstanding.

  Another likely candidate was the vile Gaius Antonius Hybrida, whom Caesar had tried unsuccessfully to prosecute for the torture, maiming and murder of many Greek citizens during Sulla’s Greek wars. Hybrida had eluded justice, but public opinion inside Rome had forced him to go into a voluntary exile on the island of Cephallenia; the discovery of some grave mounds had yielded him fabulous wealth, so when he returned to Rome to find himself expelled from the Senate, Hybrida simply started again. First he re-entered the Senate by becoming a tribune of the plebs; then in the following year he bribed his way into a praetorship, ardently supported by that ambitious and able New Man Cicero, who had cause to be grateful to him. Poor Cicero had found himself in a severe financial embarrassment brought about by his passion for collecting Greek statues and installing them in a plethora of country villas; it was Hybrida who lent him the money to extricate himself. Ever since then Cicero spoke up for him, and was doing so at the moment so strenuously that it could safely be deduced that he and Hybrida were planning to run as a team for the consulship, Cicero lending their campaign respectability and Hybrida putting up the money.

  The man who might have offered Catilina the stiffest competition was undoubtedly Marcus Tullius Cicero, but the trouble was that Cicero had no ancestors; he was a homo novus, a New Man. Sheer legal and oratorical brilliance had pushed him steadily up the cursus honorum, but much of the First Class of the Centuries deemed him a presumptuous hayseed, as did the boni. Consuls ought to be men of proven Roman origins, and from illustrious families. Though everyone knew Cicero to be an honest man of high ability (and knew Catilina to be extremely shady), still and all the feeling in Rome was that Catilina deserved the consulship ahead of Cicero.

  After Catilina was acquitted, Cato held a conference with Bibulus and Ahenobarbus, who had been quaestor two years
before; all three were now in the Senate, which meant they were now fully entrenched within the ultra-conservative rump, the boni.

  “We cannot permit Catilina to be elected consul!” brayed Cato. “He’s seduced the rapacious Marcus Crassus into supporting him.”

  “I agree,” said Bibulus calmly. “Between the two of them, they’ll wreak havoc on the mos maiorum. The Senate will be full of Gauls, and Rome will have another province to worry about.”

  “What do we do?” asked Ahenobarbus, a young man more famous for the quality of his temper than his intellect.

  “We seek an interview with Catulus and Hortensius,” Bibulus said, “and between us we work out a way to swing opinion in the First Class from the idea of Catilina as consul.” He cleared his throat. “However, I suggest that we appoint Cato the leader of our deputation.”

  “I refuse to be a leader of any kind!” yelled Cato.

  “Yes, I know that,” Bibulus said patiently, “but the fact remains that ever since the Great Treasury War you’ve become a symbol to most of Rome. You may be the youngest of us, but you’re also the most respected. Catulus and Hortensius are well aware of that. Therefore you will act as our spokesman.”

  “It ought to be you” from Cato, annoyed.

  “The boni are against men thinking themselves better than their peers, and I am of the boni, Marcus. Whoever is the most suitable on a particular day is the spokesman. Today, that’s you.”

  “What I don’t understand,” said Ahenobarbus, “is why we have to seek an audience at all. Catulus is our leader, he ought to be summoning us.”

  “He’s not himself,” Bibulus explained. “When Caesar humiliated him in the House over that battering-ram business, he lost clout.” The cool silvery gaze transferred to Cato. “Nor were you very tactful, Marcus, when you humiliated him in public while Vibius was on trial for fraud. Caesar was self-evident, but a man loses huge amounts of clout when his own adherents upbraid him.”