A Pillar of Iron: A Novel of Ancient Rome

by Taylor Caldwell

  Catilina had listened intently. He had not known how powerful an instrument this Cicero had possessed in his voice, and how the sound of it struck the walls of the chamber and echoed back from it in thunder. He felt, rather than saw, the press of the people outside the open Senate doors, and it was like an enormous weight against his back. He felt, in fact, the weight of the city he had for so long plotted to destroy to satisfy his own hatreds and lusts. He felt alone as he had not been alone all the days of his life. But he smiled coldly and repudiatingly into the face of Cicero, as one smiles at an insolent inferior who had dared to speak to his lord and master, and contempt shimmered in his blue eyes. He bowed mockingly.

  “I have no advocate, Cicero, for I need none. I have committed no crime and know of no conspiracies. I am no traitor. Produce, therefore, your witnesses before this august body which I reverence.”

  His manner was elegant and amused and aristocratically disdainful. He stood there in his white fur coat and his crimson and gold garments and his jewels. He looked quickly at the faces of his friends among the Senate. Their faces were inscrutable. He looked at Quintus, his comrade-in-arms, armored and helmeted, who stood at Cicero’s right hand, Quintus whose life he had saved. The burly soldier gazed at him, unmoved, like an image of himself. Sunlight poured through the doors and lay in a pool at Catilina’s feet, and the jewels on his boots flashed in rainbows. Now from the multitudes outside came the dimmest but most awful of sounds, a primal muttering, a vast murmur as if arising from a congregation of aroused beasts. All within heard it; they lifted their faces in instinctive uneasiness and appeared to sniff the air with alarm.

  But Catilina was not alarmed nor uneasy now. He, too, had heard that primordial and wordless sound, and he thought, Animals! Swine! Slaves! He was suddenly excited again, and aroused. He thought of the day which was coming for him, when he should have this rabble at the tip of his sword, and this Senate would prostrate itself before him and kiss his feet. He thought of the day, coming soon! when this Cicero, and yes, this Crassus and Caesar, would lie dead in their own blood before him, and he would touch their faces with his boot and roll them from him in repugnance. For he knew now who were his betrayers.

  Disordered and demented though the thoughts of Catilina were, he could yet search, again, the faces of his secret friends in the Senate. When he met their eyes with his own some returned the blue stare gloomily, or shifted their gaze, and some smiled in disquiet. But, he thought, with rising exultation, they are my fellow patricians! Crassus and Caesar and Clodius and Antonius were patricians also; they had betrayed him to this bumbling Cicero, for their own reasons and because they feared him or envied him. But the patricians in the Senate were another matter entirely. They would, at the last, not permit the ruin of one of their own, for in his fall they would feel themselves fallen also.

  Cicero watched the eloquent and direful face before him and knew all the ghastly thoughts that raced like lightning through the blazing eyes. He said to himself: He, not I, is the future of Rome. My day is passing before my vision, but his is just dawning, the day of power in the hands of the furies, the centaurs, the oppressors, the Pan-stricken, the bloodthirsty and overweening and frightful, the tyrants and the unutterably corrupt and deathly. Nevertheless, if only for a little I must delay that day, and write on the walls of Rome the warning for future and as yet unknown nations to read, lest they fall into the very same pit.

  Cicero looked at Caesar and Crassus and their friends. He had thought of calling them as witnesses against this appalling criminal. But they would protect Catilina for fear of being exposed, themselves. They would answer evasively and would look with communicating eyes at the Senators, and all would be lost. At the end they would not abandon a fellow patrician, detestable though they found him. If he wished their support he must not betray them.

  He said to Catilina sternly, “This is not a trial by the Senate, or by me. This is an investigation into your activities against the peace and freedom of Rome, against your manifest treason.”

  Catilina, who had been watching Cicero with the perceptiveness of insanity, understood. He smiled his dark and beautiful smile. “The laws of Rome demand that an accused man be confronted by witnesses. The laws of Rome give me the right not to incriminate myself and to refuse to answer, even during this alleged investigation.” He turned and surveyed the Senate again. “As I am not under arrest, and charged only with vague crimes whose existence I repudiate, there is nothing to hinder me from leaving this Chamber. Lords, I will remain out of deference to your presence and not by overt restraint.

  “I decry the methods of this Cicero, Consul of Rome, who seeks to intimidate and frighten me with loose charges and without witnesses. But I bow to his office if not to the man.”*

  A sense of sick frustration came to Cicero, and he pondered. But he said in his great voice, “You will deny the truth of what all Rome knows, and ask for witnesses whom I will not produce—though I have them—because of the danger in which they, themselves, stand. For many years all Rome has felt you in the dark underworld. All the felons and the fools and the dupes and the disaffected and the ambitious of Rome are your followers, and you have lived with them in the cellars and sewers of our nation and conspired with them how to overthrow all that is Rome. You have conspired my murder with them, for a night in the next week, that you may produce chaos and alarm in the city and so seize power to plunder and fire and subjugate and rule in your total madness. Do you deny this?”

  Catilina turned the ferocity of his gaze upon Antonius. Now he too pondered. He saw the misery and suffering upon the face of Cicero’s colleague. He, alone, might testify against Catilina for he had no crimes which might be revealed to the open sight of Rome. So Catilina said, “I deny this. I do not ask for a witness, for the allegation is absurd.” He smiled languidly.

  “Deny if you will, Catilina. You and I and many others know it to be the truth.”

  Those crowding at the doors of the Senate heard him, and the words ran backward through the multitude like a current in a river.

  Then Cicero raised his voice to its full majesting and compelling cogency:

  “How long, Catilina, will you carry your abuse of our forbearance? How much longer will your reckless temper baffle our restraint? What bounds will you set to this display of your uncontrolled audacity? Have you not been impressed by the nightly guards upon the Palatine, by the watching of the city by sentinels? Are you not affected by the alarm of the people, by the rallying of all loyal citizens, by the convening of this Senate in this safely guarded spot, by the looks and expressions of all assembled here? Do you not perceive that your designs are exposed? Do you not see that your conspiracy is even now fully known and detected by all who are here assembled? What you did last night and the night before, where you were and whom you summoned, and what plans you laid: do you suppose there is one here who does not know? Alas, what degenerate days are these! The Senate is well aware of the facts, the Consul can perceive them all. But the criminal still lives! Lives? Yes, lives; and even comes down arrogantly to this Senate, takes part in these public deliberations, and marks down with ominous glances every single one of us for massacre! And we”—and now Cicero turned his scornfully flashing eyes upon the Senate—“such is our bravery, think we are doing our duty to our country if we merely keep ourselves out of Catilina’s words and bloody deeds!

  “No, Catilina, long before this you should yourself have been led by the Consul’s orders to execution, and on your own head should have been brought down the destruction which you are now devising for us!”

  Catilina had listened to this with arched black brows and an amused and negligent smile. He glanced at the Senate with humor. “What a splendid voice our Cicero, our Chickpea possesses! I am almost convinced, myself, that I am guilty of these vague accusations! I still deplore his methods, lords, and his incontinence of speech, but as a patrician I endure them with contempt.”

  The Senators peeped at each other furtiv
ely. They wanted to smile with Catilina. But what had been revealed to them in the night, and what they knew themselves, had terrified them. Moreover, the mutterings of the multitude, which had been listening with the utmost attention to Cicero, now rose in the winter air outside the Chamber with the sound of a most vehement torrent of anger. Now one could hear isolated but awful shouts: “Death to Catilina, the traitor!”

  Cicero, as if Catilina had not spoken at all, then resumed his first oration against him, pointing out to the Senate that precedent existed for interrogation of suspected criminals and traitors without actual and written accusations and witnesses. The Senate listened without a movement, and with concentrated intensity. “This is an inquiry and an exposure, and not a trial of Catilina, lords. We have passed resolutions of the Senate against such as Catilina, but they remain unpublished documents. They are still a sword in the sheath. They are resolutions, Catilina, which rightly understood require your immediate execution. Yet, you live! You live, not to abandon but to add strength to your effrontery.” Cicero hesitated, and his pale and slender face became dark with despair and increasing bitterness.

  He said to the Senate, “I desire at a moment so critical to the State not to appear careless, but I am even now convicting myself of conduct which is both remiss and wicked, in not demanding immediately that Catilina be seized and executed at once. Even in Italy now a base of operations against the Roman people has been established among the hill passes of Etruria. The number of our foes is increasing day by day. But the leader who directs these foes we see within the walls of Rome, and yes! even within this Senate, plotting every day some fresh device for bringing eternal ruin upon our country!”

  A deep murmur rose from the Senate, and the mingled white and scarlet of their robes stirred in agitation. Catilina smiled, then pursed his lips as if restraining an irrepressible amusement.

  Cicero lifted his hand and pointed it implacably at Catilina, and at that gesture all became silent and still.

  “If then at last, Catilina, I order your arrest and your execution, both of which are within my power, I shall presumably have more reason to fear that all loyal citizens will declare my action too tardy than that a single person will pronounce it too harsh. But this particular step”—and now Cicero gave Crassus and his friends an embittered glare of wrath—“which ought to have been taken long ago, I have certain reasons for not being induced to take at present. You will perish in the end, Catilina, but not until it is certain there will be no one in Rome so shameless, so desperate, so exactly the counterpart of yourself, as not to admit the justice of your execution. Just so long as there is a single man who dares to defend you”—and Cicero again directed his gaze at Crassus and company—“you will live! But you will live as you live now, held at bay by the stanch defenders whom I have stationed everywhere to prevent any possibility of your assailing the State. Many eyes and many ears, moreover, though you perceive them not, will be vigilant as they have been vigilant heretofore, and will keep watch over all your actions.

  “For what are you waiting now, Catilina, if the shades of night can no longer veil your abominable conferences, and if the walls of your private house can no longer contain the phrases of your fellow conspirators? What if everything is being exposed to the light and breaking out of concealment? Abandon your design and sword! You are hemmed in on all sides; clearer than daylight to us are all your plans; and you may proceed to review them.

  “All is known. My watchfulness is much more persevering than your efforts to ruin the State. And now I assert before this august body of the Senate of Rome that on the night before last you went to the Scythemakers’ Street—I will make no mystery of it—you went to the house of M. Laeca, and there you met several of your accomplices in your mad and insane and criminal adventure. Do you dare to deny it?”

  Catilina, for the first time, was visibly struck. His handsome face paled and tightened. He looked at the Senators whom he knew well, one by one. Which had betrayed him?

  Cicero laughed wearily. “What is the meaning of your silence? I will prove my assertions if you deny them. Speak!”

  Dogs! thought Catilina with dazed fury. What pressure did this Chick-pea exert on them that they betrayed me, these cowards who plotted with me? He dared not deny. There would be some among these Senators who would rise with pretended bravery and assert that they had merely been spying upon him for the sake of Rome, and would utter their own truthful accusations. So Catilina controlled himself. He fought for control as a serpent fights to coil himself, and it was visible.

  “Yes,” said Cicero, in a most terrible voice that reached far out into the Forum, “I see here there are present in the Senate itself certain of those who met you there! Merciful gods! Where are we? In what country, in what city are we dwelling? What is the government under which we live? There are here, here among our fellow Senators, lords”—and Cicero’s voice soared like an eagle to the roof of the chamber and sounded outside—“in this deliberative assembly, the most august, the most important in the world, men who are meditating the destruction of us all! The total ruin of this city and in fact of the civilized world! These persons I see before me now and”—he fixed his eyes on the Senate with wrath and burning detestation—“I ask them their opinions on affairs of State daily, and I do not even wound them by a single harsh expression, men who ought to have been put to death with you, Catilina, by the sword!”

  Now, thought Caesar, he has destroyed everything. But an instant later the multitudes cried out with a fearful voice from the farthest reaches, “Death to the traitor Senators! Death! Death to the enemies of Rome!”

  At this all the Senators, guilty or innocent, trembled violently, for they knew the power of an aroused citizenry. Catilina heard the voice of the people of Rome, the voice he despised and loathed, and he too trembled. He had enormous courage; he did not fear death. He feared only that the people would seize him and dismember him, and he considered that a sacrilege upon his sacred person. He looked at Cicero, and saw the face of the Consul, and knew that he alone had the power to restrain the people, and he saw Cicero’s struggle with himself, that he refrain or that he let loose.

  Cicero dropped his hand to his side. His eyes fell to the floor, and his chest heaved as if he were attempting to control his emotions. Stern tears appeared on his cheeks. The muttering of the multitudes was a constant thunder in the background. Finally he looked again on Catilina and the amber glow of his eyes was like flaring embers.

  “Quit Rome at last and soon, Catilina. The city gates are open; depart at once. Take with you all your associates, or take as many as you can. Free the city from the infection of your presence. If I give the word, the city will be convulsed, and there will be no more law or order because of the wrath of the people. That I cannot permit, for the sake of Rome. The innocent will perish with the guilty, for when the people are aroused who can preach restraint to them? There is not a man, Catilina, in Rome, outside your band of desperate conspirators, who does not fear you, not a man who does not hate you. For is there any form of personal immorality which has not stained your family life? Is there any scandal to be incurred by private conduct which has not attached itself to your reputation? Is there any evil passion which has not glared from your eyes, any evil deed which has not soiled your hands, any outrageous vice that has not left its mark upon your whole body? Is there any young man, once fascinated by your seductive wiles, whose violence you have not stimulated and whose lust you have not inflamed?

  “Is it possible that anything can influence a man like you? Is it possible that a man like you will ever reform? Would indeed that heaven might inspire you with such a thought! But no, Catilina, you are not a man to be withheld from baseness by shame, from peril by alarm, or from recklessness by reason. Return to your criminals! What thrills of excitement you will feel! In what pleasures you will revel when you know that in the whole numbers of your followers you will not hear or see a single honest man! You have now a field for the display
of your vaunted power to endure hunger, cold, and deprivation of all the means of life. But you will soon find yourself succumbing!

  “When I defeated your efforts to obtain the Consulship I effected this much: I obliged you to attack Rome from without as an exile rather than persecute her from within as Consul, and I made your criminal schemes more correctly to be described as brigandage than as a civil war—which was your object.”

  To the Senate now he addressed his severe admonishments, and every face, in innocent indignation against Catilina, or in frightened shame, turned upon him. But Crassus and Caesar exchanged quick smiles. Antonius had long sunk into a lethargy of misery, once he had understood the full conspiracy against his country. Clodius had listened with reluctant admiration. And Pompey, for some reason, had watched only Caesar.

  Cicero concluded in a mournful and compelling voice: “Too long already, lords and Senators, have we been environed by the perils of this treasonable conspiracy. But it had chanced that all these crimes, this ancient recklessness and audacity has matured at last and burst in full force upon the year of my Consulship. If then out of the whole gang this single villain only is removed, perhaps we shall think ourselves for a brief period freed from care and alarm. But the real danger will only have been driven under the surface and will continue to infect the veins and vital organs of the State. As men stricken with a dangerous disease, when hot and tossing with fever, often seem at first to be relieved by a draught of cold water, but afterward are much more gravely and severely afflicted, so this disease which has seized the State may be temporarily relieved by the punishment and exile of Catilina! It will return with greater severity!”

  Crassus frowned at Caesar, who shrugged lightly. Antonius murmured, “The gods forbid!” Clodius stared at the white and gold ceiling with an air of detachment. Catilina affected a bored and impatient attitude as if Cicero had outrun his patience with his absurdities. But Cicero looked again at Catilina with all his loathing and detestation, and he cried, “With these ominous words of warning, Catilina, to the true preservation of the State, to the mischief and misfortune of yourself and to the destruction of those attached to you by every sort of crime and treason, get you gone to your unholy and abominable and impotent campaign!”*