“You will not find him here.”
“I shall be the judge of that.”
“And who are you?”
“Timarchides, freedman of Verres, and I shall not be kept talking while he escapes. You,” he said, turning to the nearest of his men, “secure the front. You two take the back. The rest of you come with me. We shall start with your study, senator, if you have no objection.”
Very soon the house was filled with the sounds of the search-boots on marble tile and wooden board, the screams of the female slaves, harsh male voices, the occasional crash as something was knocked and broken. Timarchides worked his way through the study upending document cases, watched by Cicero from the door.
“He is hardly likely to be in one of those,” said Cicero. “He is not a dwarf.”
Finding nothing in the study, they moved on up the stairs to the senator’s spartan bedroom and dressing room. “Be assured, Timarchides,” said Cicero, still keeping his cool, but obviously with greater difficulty as he watched his bed being overturned, “that you and your master will be repaid for this, one hundredfold.”
“Your wife,” said Timarchides. “Where does she sleep?”
“Ah,” said Cicero quietly, “now I really would not do that, if I were you.”
But Timarchides had his blood up. He had come a long way, was finding nothing, and Cicero ’s manner was chafing on his nerves. He ran along the passage, followed by three of his men, shouted “Sthenius! We know you’re in there!” and threw open the door of Terentia’s bedroom. The screech that followed and the sharp crack of her hand across the invader’s face rang through the house. Then came a volley of colorful abuse, delivered in such an imperious voice, and at such a volume, that Terentia’s distant ancestor, who had commanded the Roman line against Hannibal at Cannae a century and a half before, must surely have sat bolt upright in his tomb. “She fell on that wretched freedman,” Cicero used to say afterwards, “like a tigress out of a tree. I almost felt sorry for the fellow.”
Timarchides must have realized his mission had failed and decided to cut his losses, for in short order he and his ruffians were retreating down the stairs, followed by Terentia, with little Tullia hiding behind her skirts and occasionally brandishing her tiny fists in imitation of her mother. We heard Timarchides calling to his men, heard a running of feet and the slam of the door, and after that the old house was silent except for the distant wailing of one of the maids.
“And this,” said Terentia, taking a deep breath and rounding on Cicero, her cheeks flushed, her narrow bosom rising and falling rapidly, “
“I am afraid it is, my darling,” he said sadly. “They are determined to scare me off.”
“Well, you must not let them, Cicero.” She put her hands on either side of his head and gripped it tight-a gesture not at all of tenderness but of passion-and glared furiously into his eyes. “You must
The ten tribunes were on the bench. The hall was full. Palicanus rose and read the motion,
and Cicero stepped up to the tribunal, his face clenched white with nerves. Quite often he was sick before a major speech, as he had been on this occasion, pausing at the door to vomit into the gutter. The first part of his oration was more or less the same as the one he had given in the Senate, except that now he could call his client to the front and gesture to him as need arose to stir the pity of the judges. And certainly a more perfect illustration of a dejected victim was never paraded before a Roman court than Sthenius on that day. But Cicero ’s peroration was entirely new, not at all like his normal forensic oratory, and marked a decisive shift in his political position. By the time he reached it, his nerves were gone and his delivery was on fire.
“There is an old saying, gentlemen, among the merchants in the Macellum, that a fish rots from the head down, and if there is something rotten in Rome today-and who can doubt that there is?-I tell you plainly that it has started in the head. It has started at the top. It has started in the Senate.” Loud cheers and stamping of feet. “And there is only one thing to do with a stinking, rotten fish head, those merchants will tell you, and that is to cut it off-cut it off and throw it out!” Renewed cheers. “But it will require quite a knife to sever this head, for it is an aristocratic head, and we all know what they are like!” Laughter. “It is a head swollen with the poison of corruption and bloated with pride and arrogance. And it will need a strong hand to wield that knife, and it will need a steady nerve, besides, because they have necks of brass, these aristocrats, I tell you: brassnecks, all of them!” Laughter. “But that man will come. He is not far away. Your powers will be restored, I promise you, however hard the struggle.” A few brighter sparks started shouting out Pompey’s name. Cicero held up his hand, three fingers outstretched. “To you now falls the great test of being worthy of this fight. Show courage, gentlemen. Make a start today. Strike a blow against tyranny. Free my client. And then free Rome!”
Later, Cicero was so embarrassed by the rabble-rousing nature of this speech, he asked me to destroy the only copy, so I must confess I am writing here from memory. But I recollect it very clearly-the force of his words, the passion of his delivery, the excitement of the crowd as he whipped them up, the wink he exchanged with Palicanus as he left the tribunal, and Terentia not moving a muscle, simply staring straight ahead as the common people around her erupted in applause. Timarchides, who had been standing at the back, slipped out before the ovation ended, no doubt to ride at full gallop to Sicily and report to his master what had happened-for the motion, I need hardly add, was passed by ten votes to nil, and Sthenius, as long as he stayed in Rome, was safe.
Roll IV
ANOTHER OF CICERO’S maxims was that if you must do something unpopular, you might as well do it wholeheartedly, for in politics there is no credit to be won by timidity. Thus, although he had never previously expressed an opinion about Pompey or the tribunes, neither cause now had a more devoted adherent. And the Pompeians were delighted to welcome such a brilliant recruit to their ranks.
That winter was long and cold in the city, and for no one, I suspect, more than Terentia. Her personal code of honor required her to support her husband against the enemies who had invaded her home. But having sat among the smelly poor, and listened to Cicero haranguing her own class, she now found her drawing room and dining room invaded at all hours by his new political cronies: men from the uncouth north, who spoke with ugly accents and who liked to put their feet up on her furniture and plot late into the night. Palicanus was the chief of these, and on his second visit to the house in January he brought with him one of the new praetors, Lucius Afranius, a fellow senator from Pompey’s homeland of Picenum. Cicero went out of his way to be charming, and in earlier years, Terentia, too, would have felt it an honor to have a praetor in her house. But Afranius had no decent family or breeding of any sort. He actually had the nerve to ask her if she liked dancing, and, when she drew back in horror, declared that personally he loved nothing more. He pulled up his toga and showed her his legs and demanded to know if she had ever seen a finer pair of calves.
These men were Pompey’s representatives in Rome and they carried with them something of the smell and manners of the army camp. They were blunt to the point of brutality-but then, perhaps they had to be, given what they were planning. Palicanus’s daughter, Lollia-a blowsy young piece, very much not to Terentia’s taste-occasionally joined the menfolk, for she was married to Aulus Gabinius, another of Pompey’s Picenean lieutenants, currently serving with the general in Spain. Gabinius was a link with the legionary commanders, who in turn provided intelligence on the loyalty of the centuries-an important consideration, for, as Afranius put it, there was no point in bringing the army to Rome to restore the powers of the tribunes, only to find that the legions would happily go over to the aristocrats if they were offered a big enough bribe.
At the end of January, Gabinius sent word that the final rebel strongholds of Uxama and Calagurris had been taken, and that Pompey was ready to march his legions home. Cicero had been active among the
for weeks, drawing senators aside as they waited for debaes, convincing them that the rebel slaves in the Italian north posed a gathering threat to their businesses and trade. He had lobbied well. When the issue came up for discussion in the Senate, despite the intense opposition of the aristocrats and the supporters of Crassus, the house voted narrowly to let Pompey keep his Spanish army intact and bring it back to the mother country to crush Spartacus’s northern recruits. From that point on, the consulship was as good as his, and on the day the motion passed, Cicero came home smiling. True, he had been snubbed by the aristocrats, who now loathed him more than any other man in Rome, and the presiding consul, the super-snobbish Publius Cornelius Lentulus Sura, had refused to recognize him when he tried to speak. But what did that matter? He was in the inner circle of Pompey the Great, and, as every fool knows, the quickest way to get ahead in politics is to get yourself close to the man at the top.
Throughout these busy months, I am ashamed to say, we neglected Sthenius of Thermae. He would often turn up in the mornings and hang around the senator for the entire day in the hope of securing an interview. He was still living in Terentia’s squalid tenement block. He had little money. He was unable to venture beyond the walls of the city, as his immunity ended at the boundaries of Rome. He had not shaved his beard nor cut his hair, nor, by the smell of him, changed his clothes since October. He reeked, not of madness exactly, but of obsession, forever producing small scraps of paper, which he would fumble with and drop in the street.
Cicero kept making excuses not to see him. Doubtless he felt he had discharged his obligation. But that was not the sole explanation. The truth is that politics is a country idiot, and capable of concentrating on only one thing at a time, and poor Sthenius had become simply yesterday’s topic. All anyone could talk about now was the coming confrontation between Crassus and Pompey; the plight of the Sicilian was a bore.
In the late spring, Crassus had finally defeated the main force of Spartacus’s rebels in the heel of Italy, killing Spartacus and taking six thousand prisoners. He had started marching toward Rome. Very soon afterwards, Pompey crossed the Alps and wiped out the slave rebellion in the north. He sent a letter to the consuls which was read out in the Senate, giving only the faintest credit to Crassus for his achievement, instead proclaiming that it was really he who had finished off the slave war “utterly and entirely.” The signal to his supporters could not have been clearer: only one general would be triumphing that year, and it would not be Marcus Crassus. Finally, lest there be any remaining doubt, at the end of his dispatch Pompey announced that he, too, was moving on Rome. Little wonder that amid these stirring historical events, Sthenius was forgotten.
Sometime in May, it must have been, or possibly early June-I cannot find the exact date-a messenger arrived at Cicero ’s house bearing a letter. With some reluctance the man let me take it, but refused to leave the premises until he had received a reply: those, he said, were his orders. Although he was wearing civilian clothes, I could tell he was in the army. I carried the message into the study and watched Cicero ’s expression darken as he read it. He handed it to me, and when I saw the opening-“From Marcus Licinius Crassus, Imperator, to Marcus Tullius Cicero: Greetings”-I understood the reason for his frown. Not that there was anything threatening in the letter. It was simply an invitation to meet the victorious general the next morning on the road to Rome, close to the town of Lanuvium, at the eighteenth milestone.
“Can I refuse?” asked Cicero, but then he answered his own question. “No, I can’t. That would be interpreted as a mortal insult.”
“Presumably he is going to ask for your support.”
“Really?” said Cicero sarcastically. “What makes you think that?”
“Could you not offer him some limited encouragement, as long as it does not clash with your undertakings to Pompey?”
“No. That is the trouble. Pompey has made that very clear. He expects absolute loyalty. So Crassus will pose the question: Are you for me or against me? and then I shall face the politician’s nightmare: the requirement to give a straight answer.” He sighed. “But we shall have to go of course.”
We left soon after dawn the following morning, in a two-wheeled open carriage, with Cicero ’s valet doubling as coachman for the occasion. It was the most perfect time of day at the most perfect time of year, already hot enough for people to be bathing in the public pool beside the Capena Gate, but cool enough for the air to be refreshing. There was none of the usual dust thrown up from the road. The leaves of the olive trees were a glossy, fresh green. Even the tombs that line the Appian Way so thickly along that particular stretch just beyond the wall gleamed bright and cheerful in the first hour of the sun. Normally Cicero liked to draw my attention to some particular monument and give me a lecture on it-the statue of Scipio Africanus, perhaps, or the tomb of Horatia, murdered by her brother for displaying excessive grief at the death of her lover. But on this morning his usual good spirits had deserted him. He was too preoccupied with Crassus.
“Half of Rome belongs to him-these tombs as well, I should not wonder. You could house an entire family in one of these! Why not? Crassus would! Have you ever seen him in operation? Let us say he hears there is a fire raging and spreading through a particular neighborhood: he sends a team of slaves around all the apartments, offering to buy out the owners for next to nothing. When the poor fellows have agreed, he sends another team equipped with water carts to put the fires out! That is just one of his tricks. Do you know what Sicinnius calls him-always bearing in mind, by the way, that Sicinnius is afraid of no one? He calls Crassus ‘the most dangerous bull in the herd.’”
His chin sank onto his chest and that was all he said until we had passed the eighth milestone and were deep into open country, not far from Bovillae. That was when he drew my attention to something odd: military pickets guarding what looked like small timber yards. We had already passed four or five, spaced out at regular half-mile intervals, and the farther down the road we went, the greater the activity seemed-hammering, sawing, digging. It was Cicero who eventually supplied the answer. The legionnaires were making crosses. Soon afterwards, we encountered a column of Crassus’s infantry tramping toward us, heading for Rome, and we had to pull over to the far side of the road to let them pass. Behind the legionnaires came a stumbling procession of prisoners, hundreds of them, vanquished rebel slaves, their arms pinioned behind their backs-a terrible, emaciated, gray army of ghosts, heading for a fate which we had seen being prepared for them, but of which they were presumably ignorant. Our driver muttered a spell to ward off evil and flicked his whip over the flanks of the horses, and we jolted forward. A mile or so later, the killing started, in little huddles off on either side of the road, where the prisoners were being nailed to the crosses. I try not to remember it, but it comes back to me occasionally in my dreams, especially, for some reason, the crosses with their impaled and shrieking victims being pulled upright by soldiers heaving on ropes, each wooden upright dropping with a thud into the deep hole that had been dug for it. That I remember, and also the moment when we passed over the crest of a hill and saw a long avenue of crosses running straight ahead for mile after mile, shimmering in the mid-morning heat, the air seeming to tremble with the moans of the dying, the buzz of the flies, the screams of the circling crows.