“I’ve just heard the most amazing rumor!” he said breathlessly.
“What?” asked Cato apathetically.
“That Milo sneaked into Rome during the fire!”
The other two stared.
“He wouldn’t have that kind of courage,” said Bibulus.
“Well, my informant swears that he saw Milo watching the blaze from the Capitol, and though the doors of his house are bolted, there’s definitely someone home—and I don’t mean servants.”
“Who put him up to it?” asked Cato.
Ahenobarbus blinked. “Did anyone have to? He and Clodius were bound to clash personally sooner or later.”
“Oh, I think someone put him up to it,” said Bibulus, “and I think I know who that someone was.”
“Who?” asked Ahenobarbus.
“Pompeius, of course. Egged on by Caesar.”
“But that’s conspiracy to murder!” gasped Ahenobarbus. “We all know Pompeius is a barbarian, but he’s a cautious barbarian. Caesar can’t be caught, he’s in Italian Gaul, but Pompeius is here. He’d never put himself voluntarily in that kind of boiling soup.”
“Provided no one can prove it, why should he care?” asked Cato contemptuously. “He divorced Milo a year and more ago.”
“Well, well!” said Bibulus, smiling. “It becomes steadily more important that we acquire this Picentine barbarian for our cause, doesn’t it? If he’s obliging enough to wag his tail and turn cartwheels at Caesar’s dictate, think what he could do for us! Where’s Metellus Scipio?”
“Shut in his house since they begged him to take the fasces.”
“Then let’s walk round and make him let us in,” said Cato.
*
After forty years of enduring friendship, Cicero and Atticus had a falling-out. Whereas Cicero, who had endured paroxysms of fear because of Publius Clodius, thought Clodius’s death the best news Rome could possibly get, Atticus genuinely grieved.
“I don’t understand you, Titus!” Cicero cried. “You’re one of the most important knights in Rome! You have business interests in almost every sort of enterprise, therefore you were one of Clodius’s chief targets! Yet here you are sniveling because he’s dead! Well, I am not sniveling! I am rejoicing!”
“No one should rejoice at the untimely loss of a Claudius Pulcher,” said Atticus sternly. “He was brilliant and he was the brother of one of my dearest friends, Appius Claudius. He had wit and he had a good measure of erudition. I enjoyed his company very much, and I’ll miss him. I also pity his poor little wife, who loved him passionately.” Atticus’s bony face took on a wistful look. “Passionate love is rare, Marcus. It doesn’t deserve to be cut off in its prime.”
“Fulvia?” squawked Cicero, outraged. “That vulgar strumpet who had the gall to barrack for Clodius in the Forum when she was so heavy with child she took up the space of two? Oh, Titus, really! She might be the daughter of Gaius Gracchus’s daughter, but she’s a disgrace to the name Sempronius! And the name Fulvius!”
Mouth pinched, Atticus got up abruptly. “Sometimes, Cicero, you’re an insufferably puckered-up prude! You ought to watch it—there’s still straw behind your Arpinate ears! You’re a bigoted old woman from the outer fringes of Latium, and no Tullius had ventured to take up residence in Rome when Gaius Gracchus walked the Forum!”
He stalked out of Cicero’s reception room, leaving Cicero flabbergasted.
“What’s the matter with you? And where’s Atticus?” barked Terentia, coming in.
“Gone to dance attendance on Fulvia, I presume.”
“Well, he likes her, always did. She and the Clodias have always been very broadminded about his affection for boys.”
“Terentia! Atticus is a married man with a child!”
“And what’s that got to do with the price of fish?” demanded Terentia. “Truly, Cicero, you’re an old woman!”
Cicero flinched, winced, said nothing.
“I want to talk to you.”
He indicated the door to his study. “In there?” he suggested meekly. “Unless you don’t mind being overheard?”
“It makes no difference to me.”
“Then here will do, will it, my dear?”
She cast him a suspicious glance, but decided that bone was not worth a pick and said, “Tullia wants to divorce Crassipes.”
“Oh, what’s the matter now?” cried Cicero, exasperated.
Terentia’s superbly ugly face grew uglier. “The poor girl is beside herself, that’s what’s the matter! Crassipes treats her like dog’s mess on the sole of his boot! And where’s the promise you were so convinced he showed? He’s an idler and a fool!”
Hands to his face, Cicero gazed at his wife in dismay. “I am aware that he’s a disappointment, Terentia, but it isn’t you who has to find another dowry for Tullia, it’s me! If she divorces Crassipes he’ll keep the hundreds of thousands of sesterces I gave him along with her, and I’ll have to find another lot on top of that! She can’t stay single like the Clodias! A divorced woman is the target for every gossip in Rome.”
“I didn’t say she intended to stay single,” said Terentia enigmatically.
Cicero missed the significance of this, concerned only about the dowry. “I know she’s a delightful girl, and luckily she’s attractive. But who will marry her? If she divorces Crassipes, she’ll be trailing two husbands behind her at the age of twenty-five. Without producing a child.”
“There’s nothing wrong with her baby works,” said Terentia. “Piso Frugi was so sick he didn’t have the energy before he died, and Crassipes doesn’t have the interest. What Tullia needs is a real man.” She snorted. “If she finds one, it will be more than I ever did.”
Why that statement should have caused a name to pop into his mind instantaneously, Cicero afterward didn’t know. Just that one did. Tiberius Claudius Nero! A full patrician, a wealthy man—and a real man.
He brightened, forgot Atticus and Fulvia. “I know just the fellow!” he said gleefully. “Too rich to need a big dowry too! Tiberius Claudius Nero!”
Terentia’s thin-lipped mouth fell open. “Nero?”
“Nero. Young, but bound to reach the consulship.”
“Grrr!” snarled Terentia, marching out of the room.
Cicero looked after her, bewildered. What had happened to his golden tongue today? It could charm no one. For which, blame Publius Clodius.
“It’s all Clodius’s fault!” he said to Marcus Caelius Rufus when Caelius walked in.
“Well, we know that,” Caelius said with a grin, threw an arm about Cicero’s shoulders and steered him studyward. “Why are you out here? Unless you’ve taken to keeping the wine out here?”
“No, it’s right where it always is, in the study,” Cicero said, sighing in relief. He poured wine, mixed it with water, sat down. “What brings you today? Clodius?”
“In a way,” said Caelius, frowning.
He was, to use Terentia’s phrase, a real man, Caelius. Tall enough, handsome enough and virile enough to have attracted Clodia and kept her for several years. And he had been the one to do the dropping, for which Clodia had never forgiven him; the result had been a sensational trial during which Cicero, defending Caelius, had aired Clodia’s scandalous behavior so effectively that the jury had been pleased to acquit Caelius of attempting to murder her. The charges had been multiple and gone much further, but Caelius got off and Publius Clodius had never forgiven him.
This year he was a tribune of the plebs in a very interesting College which was largely pro-Clodius, anti-Milo. But Caelius was pro-Milo, very definitely.
“I’ve seen Milo,” he said to Cicero.
“Is it true he came back to town?”
“Oh, yes. He’s here. Lying low until he sees which way the wind in the Forum is blowing. And rather unhappy that Pompeius chose to vanish.”
“Everyone I’ve spoken to is siding with Clodius.”
“I’m not, so much I can assure you!” snapped Caelius.
“Start canvassing for the consulship. We had a long talk, and agreed that his best course is to behave as if nothing out of the way happened. Clodius encountered him on the Via Appia and attacked him. Clodius was alive when Milo and his party retreated. Well, that’s the truth of it.”
“Indeed it is.”
“As soon as the stink of fire in the Forum dies down, I’m going to call a meeting of the Plebs,” said Caelius, holding out his goblet for more wine-and-water. “Milo and I agreed that the smartest thing to do is to get in first with Milo’s version of what happened.”
“Excellent!”
A small silence fell, which Cicero broke by saying diffidently, “I imagine Milo has freed all the slaves who were with him.”
“Oh, yes.” Caelius grinned. “Can’t you see all the Clodius minions demanding Milo’s slaves be tortured? Yet who can believe anything said under torture? Therefore, no slaves.”
“I hope it won’t come to trial,” said Cicero. “It ought not to. Self-defense precludes the need for trial.”
“There’ll be no trial,” said Caelius confidently. “By the time there are praetors to hear the case, it will be a distant memory. One good thing about the present state of anarchy: if some tribune of the plebs who bears Milo a grudge—Sallustius Crispus, for example—tries to institute a trial in the Plebeian Assembly, I’ll veto it. And tell Sallustius what I think of men who seize an unhappy accident as an excuse to get back at a man who flogs another man for plundering his wife’s virtue!”
They both smiled.
“I wish I knew exactly where Magnus stands in all this,” said Cicero fretfully. “He’s grown so cagey in his old age that one can never be sure what he thinks.”
“Pompeius Magnus is suffering from a terminal case of overinflated self-importance,” said Caelius. “I never used to think that Julia was an influence for the good, but now she’s gone I’ve changed my mind. She kept him busy and out of mischief.”
“I’m inclined to back him for Dictator.”
Caelius shrugged. “I haven’t made up my mind yet. By rights Magnus ought to back Milo to the hilt, and if he does, then he’s got my support.” He grimaced. “The trouble is, I’m not sure he does intend to back Milo. He’ll wait and see which way the wind in the Forum is blowing.”
“Then make sure you give a terrific speech for Milo.”
*
Caelius did give a terrific speech in support of Milo, who appeared dressed in the blindingly white toga of a consular candidate and stood to listen with a nice mixture of interest and humility. To strike first was a good technique, and Caelius an extremely good orator. When he invited Milo to speak as well, Milo gave a version of the clash on the Via Appia which firmly placed the blame for it on Clodius. As he had worked up his speech very carefully, he sounded splendid. The Plebs went away thoughtful, having been reminded by Milo that Clodius had resorted to violence long before any rival street gangs had come into being, and that Clodius was the enemy of both the First and the Second Classes.
Milo himself proceeded from the Forum to the Campus Martius; Pompey was definitely home again.
“I’m very sorry, Titus Annius,” said Pompey’s steward, “but Gnaeus Pompeius is indisposed.”
A great guffaw of laughter emanated from some inner room, and Pompey’s voice came clearly on its dying echoes: “Oh, Scipio, what a thing to happen!”
Milo stiffened. Scipio? What was Metellus Scipio doing closeted with Magnus? Milo walked back to Rome in a lather of fear.
Pompey had been so enigmatic. Had he made a promise? “You might be pardoned for thinking so” was what he had said. At the time it had seemed crystal clear. Do away with Clodius, and I will reward you. But was that really what he meant? Milo licked his lips, swallowed, became conscious that his heart was beating much faster than a brisk walk could provoke in such a fit man as Titus Annius Milo.
“Jupiter!” he muttered aloud. “He set me up! He’s flirting with the boni; I’m just a handy tool. Yes, the boni like me. But will they go on liking me if they learn to like Magnus better?”
And to think that he had gone today prepared to tell Pompey he would step down as a candidate for consul! Well, not now. No!
*
Plancus Bursa, Pompeius Rufus and Sallustius Crispus called another meeting of the Plebeian Assembly to answer Caelius and Milo. It was equally well attended, and by the same men. The best speaker of the three was Sallust, who followed the rousing speeches of Bursa and Pompeius Rufus with an even better one.
“Absolute claptrap!” Sallust shouted. “Give me one good reason why a man accompanied by thirty slaves armed only with swords should attack a man whose bodyguard consisted of one hundred and fifty bully-boys in cuirasses, helmets and greaves! Armed with swords, daggers and spears! Rubbish! Nonsense! Publius Clodius wasn’t foolish! Would Caesar himself have attacked were Caesar in a similar situation? No! Caesar does spectacular things with very few men, Quirites, but only if he thinks he can win! What kind of battleground is the Via Appia for a heavily outnumbered civilian? Flat as a board, no shelter, and, on the stretch where it happened, no help either! And why, if it happened the way Milo’s mouthpiece Caelius—and Milo himself!—say it happened, did a defenseless, humble innkeeper die? We are supposed to believe that Clodius killed him! Why? It was Milo stood to gain by the despicable murder of a poor little man like the innkeeper, not Clodius! Milo, who freed his slaves, if you please, and so very generously that they’ve scattered far and wide—can’t be traced, let alone found! But how clever to take along your hysterical wife on a mission of murder! For the only man who might have been able to give us the true story, Quintus Fufius Calenus, was so busy inside a carpentum dealing with a panicked woman that he can say— and I believe him, for I know the lady well!—”
Chuckles everywhere.
“—he can say he saw nothing! The only testimony we can ever hear about the circumstances in which Publius Clodius actually died is testimony from Milo and his henchmen, murderers all!”
Sallust paused, grinning; a neat touch, to disarm Caelius by himself referring to his affair with Fausta. He drew a long breath and launched into his peroration.
“All of Rome knows that Publius Clodius was a disruptive influence, and there are many of us who deplored his strategies and tactics. But the same can be said for Milo, whose methods are far less constitutional than Clodius’s. Why murder a man who threatens your public career? There are other ways of dealing with such men! Murder is not the Roman way! Murder is inevitably an indication of even nastier things! Murder, Quirites, is the way a man starts to undermine the State! To take it over! A man stands in your path and refuses to get out of it, and you murder him? When you might simply pick him up—is Milo a weakling?—and lift him out of your path? This is Milo’s first murder, but will it be his last? That is the real question we should all be asking ourselves! Who among us can boast a bodyguard like Milo’s, far larger than the mere one hundred and fifty he had with him on the Via Appia? Cuirassed, helmeted, greaved! Swords, daggers, spears! Publius Clodius always had a bodyguard, but not like Milo’s professionals! I say that Milo intends to overthrow the State! It’s he who has created this climate! It’s he who has started on a program of murder! Who will be next? Plautius, another consular candidate? Metellus Scipio? Pompeius Magnus, the greatest threat of all? Quirites, I beg you, put this mad dog down! Make sure his tally of murder remains at one!”
There were no Senate steps to stand on, but most of the Senate was standing in the well of the Comitia to hear. When Sallust was done, Gaius Claudius Marcellus Major raised his voice from the well.
“I convoke the Senate at once!” he roared. “The temple of Bellona on the Campus Martius!”
“Ah, things are happening,” said Bibulus to Cato. “We’re to meet in a venue Pompeius Magnus can attend.”
“They’ll propose that he be appointed Dictator,” said Cato. “I won’t hear of it, Bibulus!”
“Nor will I. But I don’t think it will be that.”
“What, then?”
“A Senatus Consultum Ultimum. We need martial law, and who better to enforce it than Pompeius? But not as Dictator.”
Bibulus was right. If Pompey expected to be asked again, and this time officially, to assume the dictatorship, he gave no sign of it when the House met in Bellona an hour later. He sat in his toga praetexta in the front row among the consulars, and listened to the debate with just the right expression of interest.
When Messala Rufus proposed that the House pass a Senatus Consultum Ultimum authorizing Pompey to raise troops and defend the State—but not as Dictator—Pompey acceded graciously without displaying any chagrin or anger.
Messala Rufus gave him the chair gratefully; as the senior consul last year, he had perforce been conducting the meetings, but beyond organizing the appointment of an interrex he could do nothing. And in that he had failed.
Pompey didn’t. The big jars full of water which held the little wooden balls of the lots were brought out on the spot, and the names of all the patrician leaders of the Senate’s decuries were inscribed on the wooden balls. They fitted into one jar; the lid was tied down, the jar spun quickly, and out of the spout near the top a little ball popped. The name on it was Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, who was the first Interrex. But the lots proceeded until every wooden ball was ejected from the jar—not that any member of the Senate wished an endless string of interreges, as had happened last year. The order had to be established, that was all. Everyone confidently expected that the second Interrex, Messala Niger, would successfully hold the elections.
“I suggest,” said Pompey, “that the College of Pontifices insert an extra twenty-two days in the calendar this year after the month of February. An intercalaris will afford the consuls something fairly close to a full term. Is that possible, Niger?” he asked of Messala Niger, second Interrex and a pontifex.
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