Caesar's Women Read online

  "They have a large cache of arms somewhere— Quintus Curius does not know the place—and these will be distributed to all the partisans. Twelve separate fires are to be started throughout the city, including one on the Capitol, two on the Palatine, two on the Carinae, and one at either end of the Forum. Certain men are to go to the houses of all the magistrates and kill them."

  "Except for me, dead already."

  "Yes."

  "You'd better go, Fulvia," said Cicero, nodding to his wife. "Vargunteius and Cornelius may arrive a little early, and we don't want them to set eyes on you. Did you bring an escort?"

  "No," she whispered, white-faced again.

  "Then I will send Tiro and four others with you."

  "A pretty plot!" barked Terentia, marching into Cicero's study the moment she had organized the flight of Fulvia Nobilioris.

  "My dear, without you I would have been dead before now."

  "I am well aware of it," Terentia said, sitting down. "I have issued orders to the staff, who will bolt and bar everything the moment Tiro and the others return. Now print a notice I can have put on the front door that you are ill and won't receive."

  Cicero printed obediently, handed it over and let his wife take care of the logistics. What a general of troops she would have made! Nothing forgotten, everything battened down.

  "You will need to see Catulus, Crassus, Hortensius if he's returned from the seaside, Mamercus, and Caesar," she said after all the preparations were finished.

  "Not until this afternoon," said Cicero feebly. "Let's make sure first that I'm out of danger."

  Tiro was posted upstairs in a window which gave a good view of the front door, and was able to report an hour after dawn that Vargunteius and Cornelius had finally gone away, though not until they had tried several times to pick the lock of Cicero's stout front door.

  "Oh, this is disgusting!" the senior consul cried. "I, the senior consul, barred into my own house? Send for all the consulars in Rome, Tiro! Tomorrow I'll have Catilina running."

  Fifteen consulars turned up—Mamercus, Poplicola, Catulus, Torquatus, Crassus, Lucius Cotta, Vatia Isauricus, Curio, Lucullus, Varro Lucullus, Volcatius Tullus, Gaius Marcius Figulus, Glabrio, Lucius Caesar and Gaius Piso. Neither of the consuls-elect nor the urban praetor-elect, Caesar, was invited; Cicero had decided to keep the council of war advisory only.

  "Unfortunately," he said heavily when all the men were accommodated in an atrium too small for comfort— he would have to earn the money somehow to buy a bigger house!—"I can't prevail upon Quintus Curius to testify, and that means I have no solid case. Nor will Fulvia Nobilioris testify, even if the Senate was to agree to hear evidence from a woman."

  "For what it's worth, Cicero, I now believe you," said Catulus. "I don't think you could have conjured up those names out of your imagination."

  "Why, thank you, Quintus Lutatius!" snapped Cicero, eyes flashing. "Your approbation warms my heart, but it doesn't help me decide what to say in the Senate tomorrow!"

  “Concentrate on Catilina and forget the rest of them'' was Crassus's advice. "Pull one of those terrific speeches out of your magic box and aim it at Catilina. What you have to do is push him into quitting Rome. The rest of his gang can stay—but we'll keep a very good eye on them. Chop off the head Catilina would graft on the neck of Rome's strong but headless body."

  "He won't leave if he hasn't already," said Cicero gloomily.

  "He might," said Lucius Cotta, "if we can manage to persuade certain people to avoid his vicinity in the House. I'll undertake to go and see Publius Sulla, and Crassus can see Autronius, he knows him well. They're by far the two biggest fish in the Catilina pool, and I'd be willing to bet that if they were seen to shun him when they enter the House, even those whose names we've heard today would desert him. Self-preservation does tend to undermine loyalty." He got up, grinning. "Shift your arses, fellow consulars! Let's leave Cicero to write his greatest speech."

  That Cicero had labored to telling effect was evident on the morrow, when he convened the Senate in the temple of Jupiter Stator on the corner of the Velia, a site difficult to attack and easy to defend. Guards were ostentatiously posted everywhere outside, and that of course drew a large and curious audience of professional Forum frequenters. Catilina came early, as Lucius Cotta had predicted he would, so the technique of ostracizing him was blatant. Only Lucius Cassius, Gaius Cethegus, the tribune of the plebs-elect Bestia and Marcus Porcius Laeca sat by him, glaring furiously at Publius Sulla and Autronius.

  Then a visible change swept over Catilina. He turned first to Lucius Cassius, whispered in his ear, then whispered to each of the others. All four shook their heads violently, but Catilina prevailed. Silently they got up and left his vicinity.

  Whereupon Cicero launched into his speech, the tale of a meeting at night to plan the fall of Rome, complete with all the names of the men present and the name of the man in whose house the meeting took place. Every so often Cicero demanded that Lucius Sergius Catilina quit Rome, rid the city of his evil presence.

  Only once did Catilina interrupt.

  "Do you want me to go into voluntary exile, Cicero?" he asked loudly because the doors were open and the crowd outside straining to hear every word. "Go on, Cicero, ask the House whether I should go into voluntary exile! If it says I must, then I will!"

  To which Cicero made no answer, just swept on. Go away, leave, quit Rome, that was his theme.

  And after all the uncertainty, it turned out to be easy. As Cicero finished Catilina rose and gathered majesty around him.

  "I'm going, Cicero! I'm quitting Rome! I don't even want to stay here when Rome is being run by a lodger from Arpinum, a resident alien neither Roman nor Latin! You're a Samnite bumpkin, Cicero, a rough peasant from the hills without ancestors or clout! Do you think you have forced me to leave? Well, you haven't! It is Catulus, Mamercus, Cotta, Torquatus! I leave because they have deserted me, not because of anything you say! When a man's peers desert him, he is truly finished. That is why I go." There were confused sounds from outside as Catilina swept through the middle of the Forum frequenters, then silence.

  Senators now got up to shift away from those Cicero had named in his speech, even a brother from a brother— Publius Cethegus had clearly decided to divorce himself from Gaius as well as from the conspiracy.

  "I hope you're happy, Marcus Tullius," said Caesar.

  It was a victory, of course it was a victory, and yet it seemed to fizzle, even after Cicero addressed the Forum crowd from the rostra the next day. Apparently stung by Catilina's concluding remarks, Catulus got up when the House met two days after that and read out a letter from Catilina which protested his innocence and consigned his wife, Aurelia Orestilla, to the care and custody of Catulus himself. Rumors began to circulate that Catilina was indeed going into voluntary exile, and had headed out of Rome on the Via Aurelia (the right direction) with only three companions of no note, including his childhood friend Tongilius. This completed the backlash; men now began to swing from believing Catilina guilty to thinking him victimized.

  Life might have become steadily more intolerable for Cicero had it not been for independent news from Etruria only a few days later. Catilina had not proceeded into exile in Massilia; instead he had donned the toga praetexta and insignia of a consul, clad twelve men in scarlet tunics and given them fasces complete with the axes. He had been seen in Arretium with a sympathizer, Gaius Flaminius of that decayed patrician family, and he now sported a silver eagle he declared was the original one Gaius Marius had given to his legions. Always Marius's chief source of strength, Etruria was rallying to that eagle.

  That of course terminated the disapproval of consulars like Catulus and Mamercus (Hortensius it seemed had decided that gout at Misenum was preferable to a headache in Rome, but the gout of Antonius Hybrida at Cumae was rapidly becoming an unseemly excuse for staying away from Rome and his duty as junior consul).

  However, some of the senatorial smaller fry were
still of the opinion that events had been Cicero's doing all along, that it was actually Cicero's tireless persecution had pushed Catilina over the edge. Among these was the younger brother of Celer, Metellus Nepos, soon to assume office as tribune of the plebs. Cato, who would also be a tribune of the plebs, commended Cicero—which only made Nepos scream louder, because he loathed Cato.

  "Oh, when was an insurrection ever such a contentious and tenuous affair?" cried Cicero to Terentia. "At least Lepidus declared himself! Patricians, patricians! They can do no wrong! Here am I with a pack of villains on my hands and no way to convict them of tinkering with the water adjutages, let alone treason!"

  "Cheer up, husband," said Terentia, who apparently enjoyed seeing Cicero grimmer than she usually was herself. “It has begun to happen, and it will go on happening, you just wait and see. Soon all the doubters from Metellus Nepos to Caesar will have to admit that you are right."

  "Caesar could have helped me more than he has," said Cicero, very disgruntled.

  "He did send Quintus Arrius," said Terentia, who approved of Caesar these days because her half sister, Fabia the Vestal, was full of praise for the new Pontifex Maximus.

  "But he doesn't back me in the House, he keeps picking on me for the way I interpret the Senatus Consultum Ultimum. It seems to me he still thinks Catilina has been wronged."

  "Catulus thinks that too, yet there's no love lost between Catulus and Caesar," said Terentia.

  Two days later word came to Rome that Catilina and Manlius had finally joined forces, and that they had two full legions of good experienced troops plus some thousands more still in training. Faesulae hadn't crumbled, which meant its arsenal was intact, nor had any of the other major towns in Etruria consented to donating the contents of their arsenals to Catilina's cause. An indication that much of Etruria had no faith in Catilina.

  The Popular Assembly ratified a senatorial decree and declared both Catilina and Manlius public enemies; this meant they were stripped of their citizenship and its perquisites, including trial for treason if they were apprehended. Gaius Antonius Hybrida having finally returned to Rome—gouty toe and all—Cicero promptly instructed him to take charge of the troops recruited in Capua and Picenum—all veterans of earlier wars—and march to oppose Catilina and Manlius outside Faesulae. Just in case the gouty toe continued to be a handicap, the senior consul had the forethought to give Hybrida an excellent second-in-command, the vir militaris Marcus Petreius. Cicero himself took responsibility for organizing the defenses of the city of Rome, and began now to dole out those armaments—though not to people he or Atticus or Crassus or Catulus (now thoroughly converted) deemed suspect. What Catilina was currently plotting no one knew, though Manlius sent a letter to the triumphator Rex, still in the field in Umbria; it came as a surprise that Manlius would write so, but it could change nothing.

  At which point, with Rome poised to repel an attack from the north, and Pompeius Rufus in Capua and Metellus Little Goat in Apulia ready to deal with anything in the south from a force of gladiators to a slave uprising, Cato chose to upset Cicero's stratagems and imperil the city's ability to cope after the coming changeover of consuls. November was drawing to an end when Cato got up in the House and announced that he would institute proceedings against the junior consul-elect, Lucius Licinius Murena, for gaining office through bribery. As tribune of the plebs-elect, he shouted, he felt he could not spare the time to run a criminal trial himself, so the defeated candidate Servius Sulpicius Rufus would prosecute, with his son (barely a man) as second prosecutor, and the patrician Gaius Postumius as third. The trial would take place in the Bribery Court, as the prosecutors were all patrician and therefore could not use Cato and the Plebeian Assembly.

  "Marcus Porcius Cato, you can't!" cried Cicero, aghast, and leaping to his feet. "The guilt or innocence of Lucius Murena is beside the point! We have rebellion on our heads! That means we cannot afford to enter the New Year minus one of the new consuls! If you intended to do this, why now, why so late in the year?"

  "A man's duty is his duty," said Cato, unmoved. "The evidence has only just come to light, and I vowed months ago in this House that if it came to my attention that a consular candidate had bribed, I would personally make sure he was charged and prosecuted. It makes no difference to me what Rome's situation is at the New Year! Bribery is bribery. It must be eradicated at any cost."

  "The cost is likely to be the fall of Rome! Postpone it!"

  "Never!" yelled Cato. "I am not your or anyone else's puppet on strings! I see my duty and I do it!"

  "No doubt you'll be doing your duty and arraigning some poor wretch while Rome sinks beneath the Tuscan Sea!"

  "Until the moment the Tuscan Sea drowns me!"

  "May the gods preserve us from any more like you, Cato!"

  "Rome would be a better place if there were more like me!"

  "Any more like you and Rome wouldn't work!" Cicero shouted, arms raised, hands clawing at the sky. “When wheels are so clean they squeak, Marcus Porcius Cato, they also seize up! Things run a great deal better with a little dirty grease!"

  "And isn't that the truth," said Caesar, grinning.

  "Postpone it, Cato," said Crassus wearily.

  "The matter is now entirely out of my hands," said Cato smugly. "Servius Sulpicius is determined."

  "And to think I once thought well of Servius Sulpicius!" said Cicero to Terentia that evening.

  "Oh, Cato put him up to it, husband, nothing surer."

  “What does Cato want? To see Rome fall all because justice must be done forthwith? Can't he see the danger in having only one consul take office on New Year's Day—and a consul as sick as Silanus into the bargain?" Cicero smacked his hands together in anguish. “I am beginning to think that one hundred Catilinas do not represent the threat to Rome that one Cato does!"

  "Well, then you'll just have to see that Sulpicius doesn't convict Murena," said Terentia, ever practical. “Defend Murena yourself, Cicero, and get Hortensius and Crassus to back you."

  "Consuls in office do not normally defend consuls-elect."

  "Then create a precedent. You're good at that. It's also lucky for you, I've noticed it before."

  "Hortensius is still in Misenum with his big toe padded."

  "Then get him back, if you have to kidnap him."

  "And get the case over and done with. You're quite right, Terentia. Valerius Flaccus is iudex in the Bribery Court—a patrician, so we'll just have to hope that he has the sense to see my side rather than Servius Sulpicius's."

  "He will," said Terentia, grinning savagely. "It isn't Sulpicius he'll blame. It's Cato, and no patrician really esteems Cato unless he thinks himself cheated out of the consulship, like Servius Sulpicius."

  A hopeful but cunning gleam entered Cicero's eyes. “I wonder if Murena would be so grateful when I get him off that he'd give me a splendid new house?"

  "Don't you dare, Cicero! You need Murena, not the other way around. Wait for someone considerably more desperate before you demand fees of that kind."

  So Cicero refrained from hinting to Murena that he needed a new house, and defended the consul-elect for no greater reward than a nice little painting by a minor Greek of two centuries ago. Grumbling and moaning, Hortensius was dragged back from Misenum, and Crassus entered the fray with all his thoroughness and patience. They were a triumvirate of defense counsels too formidable for the chagrined Servius Sulpicius Rufus, and managed to get Murena acquitted without needing to bribe the jury—never a consideration, with Cato standing there watching every move.

  What else could possibly happen after that? wondered Cicero as he trotted home from the Forum to see whether Murena had sent the painting round yet. What a good speech he had given! The last speech, of course, before the jury gave its verdict. One of Cicero's greatest assets was his ability to change the tenor of his address after he had gauged the mood of the jury—men he mostly knew well, naturally. Luckily Murena's jury consisted of fellows who loved wit and loved
to laugh. Therefore he had couched his speech humorously, got huge fun out of deriding Cato's adherence to the (generally unpopular) Stoic philosophy founded by that awful old Greek nuisance, Zeno. The jury were absolutely thrilled, adored every word of it, every nuance—and especially his brilliant impersonation of Cato, from voice to stance to hand aping Cato's gigantic nose. As for when he managed to wriggle out of his tunic—the entire panel had fallen on the ground in mirth.

  "What a comedian we have for senior consul!" said Cato loudly after the verdict came in ABSOLVO. Which only made the jury laugh more, and deem Cato a bad loser.

  “Reminds me of the story I heard about Cato in Syria after his brother Caepio died," said Atticus over dinner that afternoon.

  "What story?" asked Cicero dutifully; he really wasn't at all interested in hearing anything about Cato, but he had cause to be grateful to Atticus, foreman of the jury.

  “Well, he was walking down the road like a beggar, three slaves plus Munatius Rufus and Athenodorus Cordylion, when the gates of Antioch loomed in the distance. And outside the city he saw a huge crowd approaching, cheering. 'See how my fame goes ahead of me?' he asked Munatius Rufus and Athenodorus Cordylion. 'The whole of Antioch has come out to do me homage because I am such a perfect example of what every Roman should be— humble, frugal, a credit to the mos maiorum’” Munatius Rufus—he told me the story when we ran into each other in Athens—said he rather doubted this, but old Athenodorus Cordylion believed every word, started bowing and scraping to Cato. Then the crowd arrived, hands full of garlands, maidens strewing rose petals. The ethnarch spoke: 'And which of you is the great Demetrius, freed-man of the glorious Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus?' he asked. Whereupon Munatius Rufus and the three slaves fell on the road laughing, and even Athenodorus Cordylion found Cato's face so funny he joined in. But Cato was livid! Couldn't see the funny side of it at all, especially since Magnus's freedman Demetrius was such a perfumed ponce!"

  It was a good story, and Cicero laughed sincerely.