The Dictator

by Robert Harris

  Cicero replied mildly, “You forget, Terentia: I’ve tried that once, and see where it left us. Our only hope is to stay here and win back our position.”

  “And how are you to do that when you can’t even walk in safety down a busy street in broad daylight?”

  “I shall find a way.”

  “And in the meantime, what lives do the rest of us have?”

  “Normal lives!” Cicero suddenly shouted back at her. “We defeat them by leading normal lives! We sleep together as man and wife for a start.”

  I glanced away in embarrassment.

  Terentia said, “You wish to know why I keep you from my room? Then look!”

  And to Cicero’s astonishment and certainly to mine, this most pious of Roman matrons began to unfasten the belt of her dress. She called to her maid to come and help. Turning her back to her husband, she opened her gown and her maid pulled it down all the way from the nape of her neck to the base of her spine, exposing the pale flesh between her thin shoulders, which was savagely criss-crossed by at least a dozen livid red welts.

  Cicero stared at the scars, transfixed. “Who did this to you?”

  Terentia pulled the dress back up and her maid knelt to fasten her belt.

  “Who did this?” repeated Cicero quietly. “Clodius?”

  She turned to face him. Her eyes were not wet but dry and full of fire. “Six months ago I went to see his sister, as one woman to another, to plead on your behalf. But Clodia is not a woman: she is a Fury. She told me I was no better than a traitor myself—that my presence defiled her house. She summoned her steward and had him whip me off the premises. She had her louche friends with her. They laughed at my shame.”

  “Your shame?” cried Cicero. “The only shame is theirs! You should have told me!”

  “Told you? You, who greeted the whole of Rome before he greeted his own wife?” She spat out the words. “You may stay and die in the city if you wish. I shall take Tullia and Marcus to Tusculum and see what lives we can have there.”

  The following morning, she and Pomponia left with the children, and a few days later, amid much mutual shedding of tears, Quintus also departed to buy grain for Pompey in Sardinia. Prowling round the empty house, Cicero was keenly aware of their absence. He told me he felt every blow that Terentia had endured as if it were a lash upon his own back, and he tortured his brain to find some means of avenging her, but he could see no way through, until one day, quite unexpectedly, the glimmer of an opportunity presented itself.

  —

  It happened that around this time, the distinguished philosopher Dio of Alexandria was murdered in Rome while under the roof of his friend and host, Titus Coponius. The assassination caused a great scandal. Dio had come to Italy supposedly with diplomatic protection, as the head of a delegation of one hundred prominent Egyptians to petition the Senate against the restoration of their exiled pharaoh, Ptolemy XII, nicknamed “the Flute Player.”

  Suspicion naturally fell on Ptolemy himself, who was staying with Pompey at his country estate in the Alban hills. The Pharaoh, detested by his people for the taxes he levied, was offering the stupendous reward of six thousand gold talents if Rome would secure his restoration, and the effect of this bribe upon the Senate was as dignified as if a rich man had thrown a few coins into a crowd of starving beggars. In the scramble for the honour of overseeing Ptolemy’s return, three main candidates had emerged: Lentulus Spinther, the outgoing consul, who was due to become governor of Cilicia and therefore would legally command an army on the borders of Egypt; Marcus Crassus, who yearned to possess the same wealth and glory as Pompey and Caesar; and Pompey himself, who feigned disinterest in the commission but behind the scenes was the most active of the three in trying to secure it.

  Cicero had no desire to become embroiled in the affair. There was nothing in it for him. He was obliged to support Spinther, in return for Spinther’s efforts to end his exile, and lobbied discreetly behind the scenes on his behalf. But when Pompey asked him to come out and meet the Pharaoh to discuss the death of Dio, he felt unable to turn the summons down.

  The last time we had visited the house was almost two years earlier, when Cicero had gone to plead for help in resisting Clodius’s attacks. On that occasion Pompey had pretended to be out to avoid seeing him. The memory of his cowardice still rankled with me, but Cicero refused to dwell on it: “If I do, I shall become bitter, and a man who is bitter hurts no one but himself. We must look to the future.” Now, as we rattled up the long drive to the villa, we passed several groups of olive-skinned men wearing exotic robes and exercising those sinister yellowish prick-eared greyhounds so beloved of the Egyptians.

  Ptolemy awaited Cicero with Pompey in the atrium. He was a short, plump, smooth figure, dark-complexioned like his courtiers, and so quietly spoken that one found oneself bending forward to catch what he was saying. He was dressed Roman-style in a toga. Cicero bowed and kissed his hand, and I was invited to do the same. His perfumed fingers were fat and soft like a baby’s, but the nails I noticed with disgust were broken and dirty. Coyly peering around him with her arms clasped across his stomach was his young daughter. She had huge charcoal-black eyes and a painted ruby mouth—an ageless slattern’s mask even at the age of eleven, or so it seems to me now, but perhaps I am being unfair and allowing my memory to be distorted by what was to come, for this was the future Queen Cleopatra, later to cause such mischief.

  Once the niceties were out of the way and Cleopatra had departed with her maids, Pompey came to the point: “This killing of Dio is starting to become embarrassing, both to me and to His Majesty. And now to cap it all, a murder charge has been brought by Titus Coponius, Dio’s host when he was killed, and by his brother Gaius. The whole thing is ridiculous, of course, but apparently they are not to be persuaded out of it.”

  “Who is the accused?” enquired Cicero.

  “Publius Asicius.”

  Cicero paused to remember the name. “Isn’t he one of your estate managers?”

  “He is. That’s what makes it embarrassing.”

  Cicero had the tact not to ask whether Asicius was guilty or not. He considered the matter purely as a lawyer. He said to Ptolemy, “Until this matter blows over, I would strongly advise Your Majesty to remove yourself as far away from Rome as possible.”

  “Why?”

  “Because if I were the Coponius brothers, the first thing I should do is issue a subpoena summoning you to give evidence.”

  “Can they do that?” asked Pompey.

  “They can try. To save His Majesty the embarrassment, I would advise him to be miles away when the writ is served—out of Italy, if possible.”

  “But what about Asicius?” said Pompey. “If he’s found guilty, that could look very bad for me.”

  “I agree.”

  “Then he must be acquitted. You’ll take the case, I hope? I’d regard it as a favour.”

  This was not what Cicero wanted. But Pompey was insistent, and in the end, as usual, he had no option but to accede. Before we left, Ptolemy, as a token of his thanks, presented Cicero with a small and ancient jade statue of a baboon, which he explained was Hedj-Wer, the god of writing. I expect it was quite valuable, but Cicero couldn’t abide it—“What do I want with their primitive mud gods?” he complained to me afterwards, and he must have thrown it away; I never saw it again.

  Asicius, the accused man, came to see us. He was a former legionary commander who had served with Pompey in Spain and the East. He looked eminently capable of murder. He showed Cicero his summons. The charge was that he had visited Coponius’s house early in the morning with a forged letter of introduction. Dio was in the act of opening it when Asicius whipped out a small knife he had concealed in his sleeve and stabbed the elderly philosopher in the neck. The blow had not been immediately fatal. Dio’s cries had brought the household running. According to the writ, Asicius had been recognised before he managed to slash his way out of the house.

  Cicero did not enquire a
bout the truth of the matter. He merely advised Asicius that his best chance of acquittal lay in a good alibi. Someone would need to vouch that he was with them at the time of the murder—and the more witnesses he could produce and the less connection they had with Pompey, or indeed Cicero, the better.

  Asicius said, “That’s easy enough. I have just the fellow lined up: a man known to be on bad terms both with Pompey and yourself.”

  “Who?”

  “Your old protégé Caelius Rufus.”

  “Rufus? What’s he doing mixed up in this business?”

  “Does it matter? He’ll swear I was with him at the hour the old man was killed. And he’s a senator nowadays, don’t forget—his word carries weight.”

  I half expected Cicero to tell Asicius to find another advocate, such was his distaste for Rufus. But to my surprise he said, “Very well, tell him to come and see me and we’ll depose him.”

  After Asicius had gone, Cicero said, “Surely Rufus is a close friend of Clodius? Doesn’t he live in one of his apartments? In fact, isn’t Clodia his mistress?”

  “She certainly used to be.”

  “That was what I thought.” The mention of Clodia made him thoughtful. “So what is Rufus doing offering an alibi to an agent of Pompey?”

  Later that same day, Rufus came to the house. At twenty-five, he was the youngest member of the Senate, and very active in the law courts. It was odd to see him swaggering through the door wearing the purple-striped toga of a senator. Only nine years before, he had been Cicero’s pupil. But then he had turned on his former mentor, and eventually beaten him in court by prosecuting Cicero’s consular colleague, Hybrida. Cicero could have forgiven him that—he always liked to see a young man on the rise as an advocate—but his friendship with Clodius was a betrayal too far. So he greeted him very icily and pretended to read various documents while Rufus dictated his statement to me. Cicero must have been listening keenly, however, for when Rufus described how he was entertaining Asicius in his house at the time of the killing, and gave as his home address a property on the Esquiline, Cicero suddenly looked up and said, “But don’t you rent a property from Clodius on the Palatine?”

  “I’ve moved,” replied Rufus casually, but there was something too offhand in his tone, and Cicero detected it at once.

  He pointed his finger at him and said, “You’ve quarrelled.”

  “Not at all.”

  “You’ve quarrelled with that devil and his sister from hell. That’s why you’re doing this favour for Pompey. You always were the most hopeless liar, Rufus. I see through you as clearly as if you were made of water.”

  Rufus laughed. He had great charm: he was said to be the most handsome young man in Rome. “You seem to forget, I don’t live in your house any more, Marcus Tullius. I don’t have to give an account of my friendships to you.” He swung himself easily on to his feet. He was also very tall. “Now I’ve given your client his alibi, as was requested, and our business here is done.”

  “Our business will be done when I say it is,” Cicero called after him cheerfully. He did not bother to rise. I showed Rufus out, and when I returned, he was still smiling. “This is what I’ve been waiting for, Tiro. I can feel it. He’s fallen out with those two monsters, and if that’s the case, they won’t rest until they’ve destroyed him. We need to ask around town. Discreetly. Spread some money around if we have to. But we must find out why he’s left that house!”

  —

  The trial of Asicius ended the day it began. The case boiled down to the word of a few household slaves against that of a senator, and on hearing Rufus’s affidavit, the praetor directed the jury to acquit. This was the first of many legal victories for Cicero following his return, and he was soon in high demand, appearing in the Forum most days, just as in his prime.

  Throughout this time the violence in Rome worsened. On some days the courts could not sit because of the risks to public safety. A few days after setting upon Cicero in the Via Sacra, Clodius and his followers attacked the house of Milo and attempted to burn it down. Milo’s gladiators drove them off and retaliated by occupying the voting pens on the Field of Mars in a vain attempt to prevent Clodius’s election as aedile.

  Cicero sensed opportunity in the chaos. One of the new tribunes, Cannius Gallus, laid a bill before the people demanding that Pompey alone should be entrusted with restoring Ptolemy to the throne of Egypt. The bill so incensed Crassus that he actually paid Clodius to organise a popular campaign against Pompey. And when Clodius eventually won the aedileship, he used his powers as a magistrate to summon Pompey to give evidence in an action he brought against Milo.

  The hearing took place in the Forum in front of many thousands. I watched it with Cicero. Pompey mounted the rostra, but had hardly uttered more than a few sentences when Clodius’s supporters started to drown him out with catcalls and slow handclaps. There was a kind of heroism in the way that Pompey simply put his shoulders down and went on reading out his text, even though no one could hear him. This must have gone on for an hour or more, and then Clodius, who was standing a few feet along the rostra, started really working up the crowd against him.

  “Who’s starving the people to death?” he shouted.

  “Pompey!” roared his followers.

  “Who wants to go to Alexandria?”

  “Pompey!”

  “Whom do you want to go?”

  “Crassus!”

  Pompey looked as if he had been struck by lightning. Never had he been insulted in such a way. The crowd started heaving like a stormy sea, one side pushing against the other, with little eddies of scuffles breaking out here and there, and suddenly from the back, ladders appeared and were passed rapidly over our heads to the front, where they were thrown up against the rostra and a group of ruffians began scaling it—Milo’s ruffians, it transpired, for the moment they reached the platform they charged at Clodius and hurled him off it, a good twelve feet down on to the spectators. There were cheers and screams. I didn’t see what happened after that, as Cicero’s attendants hustled us out of the Forum and away from danger, but we learned later that Clodius had escaped unharmed.

  The following evening, Cicero went off to dine with Pompey and came home rubbing his hands with pleasure. “Well, if I’m not mistaken, that’s the beginning of the end of our so-called triumvirate, at least as far as Pompey’s concerned. He swears Crassus is behind a plot to murder him, says he’ll never trust him again, threatens that if necessary Caesar will have to return to Rome to answer for his mischief in creating Clodius in the first place and destroying the constitution. I’ve never seen him in such a rage. As for me, he couldn’t have been friendlier, and assures me that whatever I do, I can rely on his support.

  “But better even than that—when he was deep in his cups, he finally told me why Rufus has switched allegiance. I was right: there’s been the most tremendous falling-out between him and Clodia—so much so that she’s claiming he tried to poison her! Naturally, Clodius has taken his sister’s side, thrown Rufus out of his house and called in his debts. So Rufus has had to turn to Pompey in the hope of some Egyptian gold to pay off what he owes. Isn’t it all marvellous?”

  I agreed it was all marvellous, though I couldn’t see why it warranted quite such ecstasies of joy.

  Cicero said, “Bring me the praetors’ lists, quick!”

  I went and fetched the schedule of court cases that were due to be heard over the next seven days. Cicero told me to look up when Rufus was next due to appear. I ran my finger down the various courts and cases until I found his name. He was scheduled to begin a prosecution in the constitutional court for bribery in five days’ time.

  Cicero said, “Who is he prosecuting?”

  “Bestia.”

  “Bestia! That villain!”

  Cicero lay back on the couch in his familiar posture when cooking up a scheme, with his hands clasped behind his head, staring at the ceiling. L. Calpurnius Bestia was an old enemy of his, one of Catilina’s tame tr
ibunes, lucky not to have been executed for treason with his five fellow conspirators. Yet here he was, apparently still active in public life, being prosecuted for buying votes during the recent praetorian elections. I wondered what possible interest Bestia could hold for Cicero, and after a long period during which he said nothing, I ventured to ask him.

  His voice seemed to come from a long way away, as if I had interrupted him in a dream. “I was just thinking,” he said slowly, “that I might offer to defend him.”

  The next morning, Cicero went to call on Bestia, taking me with him. The old rogue had a house on the Palatine. His expression when Cicero was shown in was comical in its astonishment. He had with him his son Atratinus, a clever lad who had only just donned the toga of manhood and was eager to begin his career. When Cicero announced that he wished to discuss his impending prosecution, Bestia naturally assumed he was about to receive another writ and grew quite menacing. It was only thanks to the intervention of the boy, who was in awe of Cicero, that he was persuaded to sit down and listen to what his distinguished visitor had to say.

  Cicero said, “I have come here to offer my services in your defence.”

  Bestia gaped at him. “And why in the name of the gods would you do that?”

  “I have undertaken later in the month to appear on behalf of Publius Sestius. Is it true that you saved his life during the fighting in the Forum when I was in exile?”

  “I did.”

  “Well then, Bestia, chance for once throws us on the same side. If I appear for you, I can describe the incident at great length and that will help me lay the ground for Sestius’s defence, which will be heard by the same court. Who are your other advocates?”

  “Herennius Balbus to open, and then my son here to follow.”