“I note that Publius Cethegus is among those voting for his brother’s execution,” said Cicero, “and that Gaius Cassius is among those voting for his cousin’s execution. The vote is near enough to unanimous.”
“The bastard! He always exaggerates!” growled Labienus.
“Why not?” asked Caesar, shrugging. “Memories are short and verbatim reports prone to reflect statements like that, as Gaius Cosconius and his scribes are not likely to want to record names.”
“Where’s the note?” asked Labienus, avid to see it.
“Cicero’s got it now.”
“Not for long!” said Labienus, turned, walked up to the senior consul pugnaciously, and wrested it from him. “Here, it belongs to you,” he said, holding it out to Caesar.
“Oh, do read it first, Labienus!” said Caesar, laughing. “I fail to see why you shouldn’t know what everyone else knows, even the lady’s husband.”
Men were returning to their seats, but Caesar stood until Cicero recognized him.
“Conscript Fathers, you have indicated that nine men must die,” said Caesar without emotion. “That is, according to the argument put forward by Marcus Porcius Cato, infinitely the worst punishment the State can decree. In which case, it should be enough. I would like to move that nothing more is done. That no property should be confiscated. The wives and children of the condemned men will never again set eyes on their faces. Therefore that too is punishment enough for harboring a traitor in their bosoms. They should at least continue to have the wherewithal to live.”
“Well, we all know why you’re advocating mercy!” howled Cato. “You don’t want to have to support gutter-dirt like the three Antonii and their trollop of a mother!”
Lucius Caesar, brother of the trollop and uncle of the gutter-dirt, launched himself at Cato from one side, and Mamercus Princeps Senatus from the other. Which brought Bibulus, Catulus, Gaius Piso and Ahenobarbus to Cato’s defense, fists swinging. Metellus Celer and Metellus Nepos joined the fray, while Caesar stood grinning.
“I think,” he said to Labienus, “that I ought to ask for tribunician protection!”
“As a patrician, Caesar, you’re not entitled to tribunician protection,” Labienus said solemnly.
Finding the fight impossible to break up, Cicero decided to break the meeting up instead; he grabbed Caesar by the arm and hustled him out of the temple of Concord.
“For Jupiter’s sake, Caesar, go home!” he begged. “What a problem you can be!”
“That cuts both ways,” said Caesar, glance contemptuous, and made a move to re-enter the temple.
“Go home, please!”
“Not unless you give me your word that there will be no confiscation of property.”
“I give you my word gladly! Just go!”
“I’m going. But don’t think I won’t hold you to your word.”
*
He had won, but that speech of Caesar’s swirled remorselessly through Cicero’s mind as he plodded with his lictors and a good party of militia to the house of Lucius Caesar, where Lentulus Sura still lodged. He had sent four of his praetors to fetch Gaius Cethegus, Statilius, Gabinius Capito and Caeparius, but felt he must collect Lentulus Sura himself; the man had been consul.
Was the price too high? No! The moment these traitors were dead Rome would quieten magically; any thought of insurrection would vanish from all men’s imaginations. Nothing deterred like execution. If Rome executed more often, crime would diminish. As for the trial process, Cato was right on both counts. They were guilty out of their own mouths, so to try them was a waste of State money. And the trouble with the trial process was that it could so easily and deftly be tampered with, provided someone was prepared to put up enough cash to meet the jury’s price. Tarquinius had accused Crassus, and though logic said Crassus could not be involved in any way—it had been he, after all, who gave Cicero the first concrete evidence—the seed was sown in Cicero’s mind. What if Crassus had been involved, then thought better of it, and craftily engineered those letters?
Catulus and Gaius Piso had accused Caesar. So had Cato. None of them with one iota of proof, and all of them Caesar’s implacable enemies. But the seed was sown. What about that item Cato produced about Caesar’s conspiring to assassinate Lucius Cotta and Torquatus nearly three years before? There had been a wild rumor about an assassination plot at the time, though the culprit at the time had been said to be Catilina. Then Lucius Manlius Torquatus had shown his disbelief of the rumor by defending Catilina at his extortion trial. No hint of Caesar’s name then. And Lucius Cotta was Caesar’s uncle. Yet… Other Roman patricians had conspired to kill close relatives, including Catilina, who had murdered his own son. Yes, patricians were different. Patricians obeyed no laws save those they respected. Look at Sulla, Rome’s first true dictator—and a patrician. Better than the rest. Certainly better than a Cicero, a lodger from Arpinum, a mere resident alien, a despised New Man.
He would have to watch Crassus, decided Cicero. But he would have to watch Caesar even more closely. Look at Caesar’s debts—who stood to gain more than Caesar by a general cancellation of debt? Wasn’t that reason enough to back Catilina? How else could he hope to extricate himself from an otherwise inevitable ruin? He would need to conquer vast tracts as yet untouched by Rome, and Cicero for one deemed that impossible. Caesar was no Pompey; he had never commanded armies. Nor would Rome be tempted to endow him with special commissions! In fact, the more Cicero thought about Caesar, the more convinced he became that Caesar had been a part of the Catilinarian conspiracy, if only because victory for Catilina meant that his burden of debt would be removed.
Then as he was returning to the Forum with Lentulus Sura (whom again he led by the hand like a child), another Caesar intruded. Neither as gifted nor as dangerous as Gaius, Lucius Caesar was still a formidable man: consul the year before, an augur, and likely to be elected censor at some time in the future. He and Gaius were close cousins, and they liked each other.
But Lucius Caesar had stopped in his tracks, incredulity written on his face as his eyes took in the sight of Cicero leading Lentulus Sura by the hand.
“Now?” he asked Cicero.
“Now,” said Cicero firmly.
“Without preparation? Without mercy? Without a bath, clean clothes, the right frame of mind? Are we barbarians?”
“It has to be now,” Cicero said miserably, “before the sun sets. Don’t try to obstruct me, please.”
Lucius Caesar stepped out of the way ostentatiously. “Oh, the Gods preserve me from obstructing Roman justice!” he said, sneering. “Have you broken the news to my sister that her husband is to die without a bath, without clean clothes?”
“I haven’t the time!” cried Cicero for something to say. Oh, this was awful! He was only doing his duty! But he couldn’t say that to Lucius Caesar, could he? What could he say?
“Then I had better go to her house while it’s still in Sura’s name!” Lucius Caesar snapped. “No doubt you’ll be convening the Senate tomorrow to dispose of all the property.”
“No, no!” Cicero said, almost weeping. “I’ve given your cousin Gaius my solemn word that there will be no confiscation of property.”
“Big of you,” said Lucius Caesar. He looked at his brother-in-law Lentulus Sura, lips parted as if to say something; then he shut them firmly, shook his head, and turned away. Nothing could help, nor did he think Lentulus Sura capable of hearing. Shock had parted him from his wits.
*
Trembling from that encounter, Cicero proceeded down the Vestal Steps into the lower Forum, which was jammed with people—and not all of them professional Forum frequenters, either. As his lictors pushed a path through those masses of people, Cicero fancied he caught glimpses of faces he knew. Was that young Decimus Brutus Albinus? Surely that wasn’t Publius Clodius! Gellius Poplicola’s outcast son? Why would any of them be mingling cheek by jowl with the ordinary folk of Rome’s back streets?
There was a feeling in
the air, and its nature frightened the already shaken Cicero. People were growling, their eyes were dark, their faces sullen, their bodies hard to move aside for Rome’s senior consul and the victim he led by the hand. A frisson of terror flashed up Cicero’s spine, almost caused him to turn about and run. But he couldn’t. This was his doing. He had to see it through now. He was the father of his country; he had single-handedly saved Rome from a nest of patricians.
On the far side of the Gemonian Steps, which led up onto the Arx of the Capitol, lay Rome’s ramshackle, tumbledown (and only) prison, the Lautumiae; its first and most ancient building was the Tullianum, a tiny, three-sided relic of the days of the kings. In the wall facing onto the Clivus Argentarius and the Basilica Porcia was its only door, a thick wooden ugliness always kept closed and locked.
But this evening it stood wide open, its aperture filled by half-naked men, six of them. Rome’s public executioners. They were slaves, of course, and lived in barracks on the Via Recta outside the pomerium together with Rome’s other public slaves. Where their lot differed from the other tenants of that barracks lay in the fact that Rome’s public executioners did not cross the pomerium into the city except to perform their duty. A duty normally confined to putting their big, brawny hands around foreign necks only, snapping them; a duty normally occurring only once or twice in any year, during a triumphal parade. It was a very long time since the necks they would break had belonged to Romans. Sulla had killed many Romans, but never officially inside the Tullianum. Marius had killed many Romans, but never officially inside the Tullianum.
Luckily the physical location of the execution chamber did not permit the entire front of that crowd to witness what happened, and by the time Cicero had assembled his five wretched condemned and placed a solid wall of lictors and militia between them and the masses, there was little indeed to see.
When Cicero mounted the few steps to stand outside the door, the smell hit him. Fierce, foetid, an overwhelming stench of decay. For no one ever cleaned out the execution chamber. A man went in; he approached a hole in the middle of the floor, and descended into the depths below. There some feet down his executioners waited to break his neck. After which his body simply lay there and rotted. The next time the chamber was needed, the executioners shoved the moldering remains into an open conduit which joined the sewers.
Gorge rising, Cicero stood ashen-faced as the five men filed inside, Lentulus Sura first, Caeparius last. None of them so much as spared him a glance, for which he was very grateful. The inertia of shock held them fast.
It took no more than a few moments. One of the executioners emerged from the door and nodded to him. I can leave now, thought Cicero, and walked behind his lictors and militia to the rostra.
From its top he gazed down on the crowd stretching away to the limit of his vision, and wet his lips. He was within the pomerium, Rome’s sacred boundary, and that meant he could not use the word “dead” as part of an official pronunciation.
What could he say instead of “dead”? After a pause he threw his arms wide and shouted, “Vivere!” “They have lived!” Past perfect, over and done with, finished.
No one cheered. No one booed. Cicero climbed down and began to walk in the direction of the Palatine while the crowd dispersed mostly toward the Esquiline, the Subura, the Viminal. When he reached the little round House of Vesta a large group of knights of the Eighteen led by Atticus appeared, torches kindled because it was growing quite dark. And they hailed him as the savior of his country, as pater patriae, as a hero straight out of myth. Balm to his animus! The conspiracy of Lucius Sergius Catilina was no more, and he alone had exposed it, killed it.
V
from DECEMBER 5 of 63 B.C.
until MARCH of 61 B.C.
1
Caesar stalked home to the Domus Publica in a towering rage, Titus Labienus almost running to keep up with him. A peremptory jerk of Caesar’s head had summoned Pompey’s tame tribune of the plebs to accompany him, for what reason Labienus didn’t know; he went because in Pompey’s absence Caesar was his controller.
The invitation to help himself to liquid refreshments was given by another jerk of Caesar’s head; Labienus poured wine, sat down, and watched Caesar pace the confines of his study.
Finally Caesar spoke. “I will make Cicero wish he had never been born! How dared he presume to interpret Roman law! And how did we ever elect such a swan senior consul?”
“What, didn’t you vote for him?”
“Neither for him nor for Hybrida.”
“You voted for Catilina?” Labienus asked, surprised.
“And Silanus. Candidly, there was no one I really wanted to vote for, but one can’t not vote, that’s to avoid the issue.” The red spots still burned in Caesar’s cheeks, and the eyes were, thought Labienus with unusual imagination, frozen yet on fire.
“Sit down, man, do! I know you don’t touch wine, but tonight is exceptional. A drink will do you good.”
“A drink never does any good,” Caesar said emphatically; he did, however, sit down. “If I am not in error, Titus, your uncle Quintus Labienus perished under a tile in the Curia Hostilia thirty-seven years ago.”
“Together with Saturninus, Lucius Equitius and the rest, yes.”
“And how do you feel about that?”
“How else than that it was as unforgivable as unconstitutional? They were Roman citizens, and they had not been tried.”
“True. However, they were not officially executed. They were murdered to avoid keeping them alive to undergo a trial process neither Marius nor Scaurus could be sure would not cause far worse violence. Naturally it was Sulla who solved the dilemma by murder. He was Marius’s right hand in those days—very quick, very clever, very ruthless. So fifteen men died, there were no incendiary treason trials, the grain fleet arrived, Marius distributed it dirt-cheap, Rome settled down full-bellied, and later on Scaeva the slave got all the credit for murdering those fifteen men.”
Labienus frowned, added more water to his wine. “I wish I knew where you’re going.”
“I know where, Labienus, which is what matters,” said Caesar, smiling to reveal clenched teeth. “Consider if you will that dubious piece of relatively recent Republican expedience, the senatus consultum de re publica defendenda—or, as Cicero so cutely renamed it, the Senatus Consultum Ultimum. Invented by the Senate when no one wanted a dictator appointed to make the decisions. And it did serve the Senate’s purpose in the aftermath of Gaius Gracchus, not to mention Saturninus, Lepidus and some others.”
“I still don’t know where you’re going,” said Labienus.
Caesar drew a breath. “Now here is the Senatus Consultum Ultimum again, Labienus. But look what’s happened to it! In Cicero’s mind for one it has become respectable, inevitable, and highly convenient. Seduce the Senate into passing it, and then beneath its shelter proceed to flout both constitution and mos maiorum! Without altering it at law in any way, Cicero has employed his Senatus Consultum Ultimum to crush Roman windpipes and snap Roman necks without trial—without ceremony—without even common decency! Those men went to their deaths faster than soldiers are cut down in a lost battle! Not unofficially beneath a rain of tiles from a roof, but with the full sanction of the Senate of Rome! Which at Cicero’s urging took upon itself the functions of judge and jury! How do you think it must have looked to that crowd in the Forum this evening, Labienus? I will tell you how it looked. As if from this day forward, no Roman citizen can ever again be sure that he will be accorded his absolutely inalienable right to a trial before any condemnation. And that so-called brilliant man, that conceited and feckless fool Cicero, actually thinks he has extricated the Senate from a very difficult situation in the best and most suitable way! I will grant him that for the Senate it was the easy way. But for the vast majority of Roman citizens of every kind from the First Class to the Head Count, what Cicero engineered today spells the death of an inalienable right should the Senate decide under a future Senatus Consultum
Ultimum that Roman men must die without a trial, without due process of the law! What’s to stop its happening again, Labienus? Tell me what?”
Suddenly short of breath, Labienus managed to put his goblet down on the desk without spilling its contents, then stared at Caesar as if he had never seen him before. Why did Caesar see so many ramifications when no one else had? Why hadn’t he, Titus Labienus, understood better what Cicero was actually doing? Ye gods, Cicero hadn’t understood! Only Caesar had. Those who voted against execution had done so because their hearts could not approve, or else had groped after the truth like blind men debating the nature of an elephant.
“When I spoke this morning I made a terrible mistake,” Caesar went on angrily. “I chose to be ironic, I didn’t think it right to inflame feelings. I decided to be clever, to point out the insanity of Cicero’s proposal by talking of the time of the kings and saying that Cicero was abrogating the Republic by dragging us back to the time of the kings. It wasn’t simple enough. I ought to have been down on a child’s level, slowly spelling out manifest truths. But I deemed them grown and educated men of some little intelligence, so I chose to be ironic. Never realizing that they wouldn’t fully follow where my argument was going, why I was taking that tack. I ought to have been blunter then than I am now to you, but I didn’t want to set their backs up because I thought rage would blind them! They were already blind, I had nothing to lose! I don’t often make mistakes, but I made one this morning, Labienus. Look at Cato! The one man I felt sure would support me, little though he likes me. What he said made absolutely no sense. But they chose to follow him like a lot of eunuchs after Magna Mater.”
“Cato is a yapping dog.”
“No, Labienus, he’s just the worst kind of fool there is. He thinks he’s not a fool.”
“That’s true of most of us.”
Up went Caesar’s brows. “I am not a fool, Titus.”
Then Titus was to soften it, of course. “Granted.” Why was it that when one was in the company of a man who did not drink wine, wine lost its allure? Labienus poured himself water. “No point in going over lost ground now, Caesar. I believe you when you say you’ll make Cicero wish he’d never been born, but how?”
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