Catilina's riddle rsr-3

by Steven Saylor

  'No tactic is too low. He issued orders to break up the gladiator farms across Italy — as if I were the instigator of a slave uprising! He offered huge rewards to anyone who would come forward and betray the so-called conspiracy — for slaves, freedom and a hundred thousand sesterces; for free men, two hundred thousand sesterces and a full pardon! So far, no one has come forward to claim these glittering prizes. Such silence is merely proof of the fear these monsters inspire in their minions, says Cicero — ignoring the obvious point that there is no plot to betray!'

  Catilina shook his head. 'When one of his lackeys brought charges against me, using the Plautian Law, I thought it best to simply submit, to make a show of cooperation. My enemies have subjected me to so many spurious trials that one more hardly casts fear in my heart. Not that I didn't manage to have a bit of fun at Cicero's expense.' Lit by the flames, I thought I saw a mischievous smile on his lips.

  'What do you mean?'

  'Why, I went straight to Cicero and offered to put myself into his custody! If I must be under house arrest, I said, let it be in the house of the consul himself — where else might I be more closely watched and kept from my nefarious plotting? What a quandary that posed for Cicero! If I was such an immediate menace, it would seem to be his duty to take me into custody; on the other hand, how could he continue to rant about my mad schemes if he had me safely under his own roof? It didn't suit his purpose, so he turned down my offer. Even so, he managed to twist matters to his own advantage. Not being safe in the same city with me, he said, how could he be safe having me in his house? I would murder him and his whole family if I had the chance, with my bare hands if I had to. Others turned down my offer as well, either because they were afraid to associate with me or were afraid for their lives. When I finally put myself into the charge of Marcus Metellus, as impartial a man as I could imagine, Cicero said I was merely taking refuge with one of my supporters. Poor Metellus! Now I've given him the slip, and everyone will think the worst of him.'

  'Why did you flee the city?' said Meto.

  'Because today, before the Senate, Cicero said that he would see me dead — as bluntly as that! I have no reason to doubt him I fled for my life.'

  "The men Cicero sent after you tell another story,' I said. 'They say you sent men to murder Cicero, yesterday morning.'

  'The men Cicero sent after me will murder me if they catch me!'

  'But what they say — is it true?' said Meto.

  'Another lie!' He heaved a weary sigh. 'Cicero claims that two nights ago I slipped out of Meteflus's house and attended a secret meeting where I hatched a plan to assassinate him. Supposedly two of my friends — Gaius Cornelius and Lucius Vargunteius — were to show up at his door, pretending to make a morning visit, get inside and stab him. As if either of them would commit such an act, without hope of escape or of being able to show just cause to the Senate! But Cicero is clever; in the middle of the night he sends for certain senators who still doubt his rantings. Come at once to my house, he tells them. What can it be, they wonder, to rouse us from our sleep? When they arrive, lamps are lit everywhere and the house is full of armed guards. You see how he sets the stage for exploiting their credulity by resorting to such cheap melodrama? He tells them that an informant has just arrived with terrible information: Catilina and his conspirators have been meeting that very night at a house in the Street of the Scythemakers, plotting his murder. The agents will be Gaius Cornelius and Lucius Vargunteius, known associates of Catilina and notorious troublemakers. Just watch, he says, they will arrive in the morning, bent on bloodshed. You will be my witnesses.

  'And lo, the next morning, Cornelius and Vargunteius duly arrive at Cicero's house. They bang on the door; the slaves refuse to admit them. They bang more, demanding to see the consul. The slaves hang from the windows and pour abuse on them; Cornelius and Vargunteius become abusive in turn. Bodyguards appear and show flashes of steel; Cornelius and Vargunteius turn on their heels and flee.

  'Cicero's prediction has come true. The witnesses see it all. But what have they seen? Two men, already in a precarious position because of their association with me, who arrived at Cicero's door — not with the intention of killing him, but because they were roused from their beds by a summons from an anonymous caller, who said that if they valued their lives they had better go at once to the consul's house! Yes, it was Cicero who engineered the whole episode! Everything appeared just as Cicero wished, for of course Cornelius and Vargunteius arrived in an agitated state, fearful and not knowing what to expect, and when they encountered abuse they quickly became abusive and threatening in return. They were duped into playing the part of frustrated assassins, and never knew it until Cicero's speech in the Senate today, when he announced his absurd story of having survived a murder plot and gestured to his so-called reputable witnesses, who all nodded their heads in agreement! The man is a monster. The man is a genius,' said Catilina bitterly.

  'You see, when he first used the trick of saying his life was in jeopardy back in the summer, when he tried to postpone the elections a second time, no one believed him; his exaggerated bodyguard and the breastplate beneath his toga were too absurd. This time he came up with a wilier and more subtle trick. When he told his tale to the Senate today, I could hardly believe my ears. I had no rejoinder. Only afterwards did I speak with Cornelius and Vargunteius and see through his deception. There was no plot to murder Cicero. Oh, not that I would mind seeing him dead. Few things would please me more—'

  'Nothing would make me happier,' said Tongilius, who quietly reappeared in the glow of the fire. His cloak was wet, and beads of water clung to his ruffled hair. 'The storm shows no signs of stopping; it's raining harder than ever. The sky is aflame with lightning. Here, your apple is seared enough, Lucius. Time to pull it from the fire. Don't eat it too soon, though, or you'll burn your tongue. Would that I could set Cicero's tongue aflame!' He looked into the darkness of the tunnel and laughed aloud at the image in his mind. Did the look of cruelty on his face enhance his beauty or mar it? His laughter was brief; he began to pace, unable to keep still.

  .'Tongilius has his own reasons to be bitter,' said Catilina in a low voice. 'Cicero hasn't hesitated to bandy his name about, calling him my catamite. Curious, how sexless creatures like Cicero love to exploit the very details of intimacy which they claim to find so repulsive. Everyone knows that Cicero despises his wife, and he married offhis poor daughter before she was thirteen! Hardly a lover of women; hardly a lover at all. Yet he holds up Tongilius for ridicule without the least quiver of shame. Shameless, sexless; the cavities in Cicero's character where those qualities should be are filled with arrogance and spite.'

  'What happened today in the Senate, Catilina?' I said.

  'I received word that Cicero planned to deliver a speech against me. I could hardly stay away, could I? I thought I could defend myself and show him up for a fool. That was my hubris, I suppose, thinking myself his match with words; now the gods have punished me for it.

  'There was no formal speech. Cicero shouted; I shouted; the senators shouted me down. I found myself abandoned and sitting almost alone, except for a handful of those closest to me. I think you cannot know the shame of that, Gordianus, to be shunned by your colleagues in such a manner. I implored them to remember my name — Lucius Sergius Catilina. A Sergius was there at the side of Aeneas when he fled from burning Troy and made his way to Italy. We have been among the most respected families in Rome since her very beginnings. And who is Cicero? Who ever heard of the Tullius family from Arpinum, a town with one tavern and two pigsties? An interloper, an intruder, hardly better than a foreigner! An immigrant — that's what I called him to his face!'

  'Strong words, Catilina.'

  'Hardly strong enough, considering that he was threatening my life! "Why is such a man still alive?" — he said those very words to the Senate. He brought up instances in the distant past when the Senate put reformers to death, and mocked those present, saying they lacked the moral
fibre to do the same. He noted the laws that prevent a consul or the Senate from executing a citizen, and declared that I stood outside those laws, a rebel and not a citizen any longer. He was inciting them to murder me! Failing that, he would see me exiled, along with all my supporters. Take your vermin and go, he said. Rid Rome of your pestilence and leave us in peace. Over and over, he made it clear that my choice was to flee the city or be murdered.

  'Of course he couldn't resist repeating the most vicious and painful lies about me one more time, to my face and before all my colleagues. Again, the sneering allusions to my sexual depravity; again, the horrible insinuation that I killed my son. He intended to provoke me, to make me lose my head. I hate to admit that he succeeded. I began by calmly denying every charge he made, and ended by shouting at the top of my lungs — shouting to be heard above the jeering of my colleagues.

  ‘When Cicero insinuated that all his enemies should be herded into a segregated camp, I could stand no more. "Let every man's political views be written on his brow for all to see!" said Cicero. "Why?" I said. "Will it make it easier for you to choose which heads to lop off?"'

  'At that, the inside of the chamber roared like the ocean in a storm But Cicero has trained his voice to carry above any noise that man or nature can contrive. "The time for punishment has come," he shouted. "The enemies of Jupiter, in whose temple we convene, will be rounded up and laid to sacrifice on his altar. We shall set them aflame, dead or alive — dead or alive!"

  "There was such an uproar I was afraid for my life. I rose from my seat, put on the most brazen face I could manage, and strode towards the doors. "I am surrounded by foes," I shouted. "I am hounded to desperation. But I tell you this: if you raise a fire to consume me, I will put it out — not with water, but with demolition!" '

  His voice was shaking with emotion. His eyes glittered. I had never seen him so stripped of his composure. Tongilius knelt beside him and laid a hand on his shoulder. We were silent for a long time. The flame needed to be rekindled, but no one moved.

  At last I spoke. 'Are you telling me, Catilina, that you are completely innocent of conspiracy? That your secretive comings and goings, your alliance with all the discontents of the city, your military link with Manlius — that these things exist only in Cicero's feverish imaginings? Are you telling me that you have no intention of bringing down the state?'

  His eyes reflected the firelight but somehow seemed to sparkle from within. 'I claim no false innocence. But I do say that my enemies have manipulated me into a position where no other option is open to me. I have always worked within the political system of the Roman state. I have suffered the indignities of spurious trials, I have made endless compromises with men like Caesar and Crassus; I have submitted myself to electoral campaigns of ferocious ugliness. Twice I have run for consul; twice the Optimates have engineered my defeat. No one can say that I looked to violent action until no legitimate recourse remained. The Republic is a shambles, a tottering pile of bricks about to fall, with the Optimates standing jealously on top. Who will bring it down? Who will pick up the pieces and refashion it to their choosing? Why should it not be me, and why should I not use whatever tools are called for?

  'Yes, for some time I have contemplated the possibility of violence, but to say that I have a plot afoot is absurd. I have met in secret with friends; I have consulted with Manlius about the readiness and loyalty of his troops. Call it conspiracy if you want, but so far it has remained a vague expression of a shared will for creating a change, with no consensus about how to do it. Manlius is eager to use his veterans. Lentulus favours inciting slaves to revolt, an insanity I utterly reject. Cethegus, always hotheaded, would resort to burning Rome.' He shook his head. 'Do you know what my dream is? I think of those ancient revolts of the plebeians, when to claim their rights they banded together and simply walked out of Rome, leaving the patricians to cope for themselves and ultimately to seek compromise. If I could draw all the discontented to me — the poor, the indebted, the powerless — and bring the Optimates to their knees without shedding a drop of blood, I would do it. But that is only a sentimental folly; the Optimates will never give up a shred of their power. The leaders of a peaceful withdrawal would be massacred and their followers enslaved.

  'It's Cicero who has forced matters to a crisis. Where there was no evidence of a plot, he invented evidence. Where my colleagues and I have procrastinated, he has forced us to take a stand. He has set the stakes; he must die, or we must die, and there can be no middle ground. He provokes a premature conflict, for his own purposes. He thinks that if he can destroy us now, during his term as consul, he will have achieved true greatness; the people will love him, the Optimates will kiss his feet, he will be the saviour of Rome.

  ‘Yet even now I waver. From his speech, from his repeated demands that I go into exile, I wonder if Cicero would be satisfied with that. Would that sate his appetite for exercising power? Would that be a great enough achievement for the New Man from Arpinum, to have saved Rome from a conspiracy that never existed and to have driven a dangerous rebel into exile before he ever had a chance to rebel!'

  'Will you go into exile, then?' said Meto, drawing closer to the fire. 'Or will you take up arms?'

  'Exile…' said Catilina, not as an answer but as if he were testing the quality of the word. 'Before I left Rome, I dispatched letters to several men of rank — former consuls, patricians, magistrates. I told them that I was leaving for Massilia, on the southern coast of Gaul — not as a guilty man fleeing justice, but as a lover of peace eager to avoid civil strife and no longer able to defend myself against persecution and trumped-up charges. I could go to Massilia — if they allow it, if they don't block the passes to Gaul. To take up arms — I'm not ready, I'm still uncertain. Cicero has pressed the crisis to his own advantage; he has made a fugitive of me against my will. He wants me to take desperate action, and in doing so, stumble.'

  'And what of your wife?' I said.

  He turned his face so that the fire no longer lit it. 'Aurelia and her daughter I commended to the care of Quintus Catulus. He is one of the staunchest of the Optimates, but an honest man. She'll be safe with him, whatever happens; he will not harm her, and no one could ever accuse him of colluding with me.'

  The storm grew worse. The wind howled outside the mine like a screaming chorus of lemures. Thunderbolts pounded the mountain and made it shudder like the belly of a drum. Water poured down the steep slopes in great sheets, carrying uprooted trees and rocky debris. Bethesda would be mad with worry, I thought, and felt a pang of dread. In such a storm, even the clogged pursuers of Catilina might have turned back. What if they had sought shelter in my home and found me gone? Spinning out the consequences of such thoughts kept me far from sleep.

  The hours passed uneasily. Catilina's men took turns trying to sleep, wrapping themselves in the blankets I had brought and pressing against one another for warmth. The watch at the entrance grew lax; not even a Titan would have dared to scale the mountain and attack us on such a night. Catilina sat against a stone wall. Tongilius lay curled on his side, clutching a blanket, his head on Catilina's lap. Catilina's face was in shadow, but I could see that his eyes remained open; now and again they caught the nicker of the names.

  Meto dozed, but at one point he opened his eyes and was wide awake. He stared at something set atop a rock against one of the walls. The cloth in which it was wrapped had come loose, exposing a glint of silver.

  'What is that?' he whispered, rising to a crouch and stepping towards it with an odd look on his face.

  Catilina slowly turned his head. "The eagle of Marius,' he said in a low voice.

  I peered at it through the gloom. It was an eagle with its beak held high and its wings spread. But for the glimmer of silver, it might have been a real bird, frozen in glory. Meto reached towards it, almost but not quite touching it with his fingertips.

  'Marius carried it in his campaign against the Cimbri, when you and I were boys, Gordianus.'


  'It's absurdly heavy,' murmured Tongilius sleepily. 'I know; I carried it up the mountain.'

  Catilina ruffled the youth's hair and then gently stroked it. 'If it should come to battle, I intend to carry it atop a pole as my standard. An extraordinary object, is it not?'

  'How did you ever come to possess it?'

  'That is a long story.'

  "The storm rages; we have all night.'

  'Suffice to say that it came to me through Sulla, during the proscriptions. It has a bloody history. Cicero told the Senate that I keep it in my house as some sort of shrine, bowing down to worship it before commencing with my murders. He tarnishes even pure silver with his acid tongue.'

  'An eagle,' said Meto, turning his face towards me so that the firelight reflected from the silver lit his face like a strange mask.

  'Yes,' I murmured, suddenly sleepy. 'But an eagle, Papa — don't you see?' 'Yes, an eagle,' I said, closing my eyes.

  XXXIV

  The storm abruptly lifted to reveal a sky littered with clouds shredded like torn pennants, Lit from beneath with a pale orange glow by the first rays of dawn. Catilina's men roused themselves, gathered up their things, and helped one another scale the wall that blocked off the mine. The only evidence left behind of their stay were some bread crumbs and apple cores, scattered pieces of charcoal and the tangy smell of a wood fire.

  The path was littered with small rock slides and broken branches, but these were minor impediments. A greater handicap for me was the aching in my legs. After climbing the mountain, my knees had turned to rusty hinges and my shins to splintered wood. When I was a boy, my father told me that it was a joke of the gods that going downhill was more painful than going uphill. I had not understood him then. Now, looking at the younger men around me who had ridden from Rome, had had a desultory sleep in a dank mine, and were now tramping down the path with smiles on their faces, I understood him only too well. Each step sent a little thunderbolt quivering through my knees.