For a moment or two nobody spoke.
'When?' asked Cicero quietly.
'Directly after Saturnalia.'
'You're not thinking of going,' said Quintus with a nasty edge to his voice, 'you've already made up your mind. You're telling us.'
Cicero said, 'Why do you want to go now?'
Atticus played around with the stem of his glass. 'I came back to Rome two years ago to help you win the election. I've stayed ever since to support you. But now things seem to have settled down, I don't think you need me any more.'
'I most certainly do,' insisted Cicero.
'Besides, I have business interests over there I have to attend to.'
'Ah,' said Quintus into his glass, ' business interests. Now we get to the bottom of it.'
'What do you mean by that?' asked Atticus.
'Nothing.'
'No, please say what's on your mind.'
'Leave it, Quintus,' warned Cicero.
'Only this,' said Quintus. 'That somehow Marcus and I seem to run all the dangers of public life, and shoulder all the hard work, while you are free to flit between your estates and attend to your business interests at will. You prosper through your connection with us, yet we seem permanently short of money. That's all.'
'Nothing.'
'No, please say what's on your mind.'
'Leave it, Quintus,' warned Cicero.
'Only this,' said Quintus. 'That somehow Marcus and I seem to run all the dangers of public life, and shoulder all the hard work, while you are free to flit between your estates and attend to your business interests at will. You prosper through your connection with us, yet we seem permanently short of money. That's all.'
'But you enjoy the rewards of a public career. You have fame and power and will be remembered by history, whereas I am a nobody.'
'A nobody! A nobody who knows everybody!' Quintus took another drink. 'I don't suppose there's any chance of you taking your sister back with you to Epirus, is there?'
'Quintus!' cried Cicero. 'If your marriage is unhappy,' said Atticus mildly, 'then I am sorry for you. But that is hardly my fault.'
'And there we are again,' said Quintus. 'You've even managed to avoid marriage. I swear this fellow has the secret of life! Why don't you bear your share of domestic suffering like the rest of us?'
'That's enough,' said Cicero, getting to his feet. 'We should leave you, Atticus, before any more words are uttered that aren't really meant. Quintus?' He held out his hand to his brother, who scowled and looked away. 'Quintus!' he repeated angrily, and thrust out his hand again. Quintus turned reluctantly and glanced up at him, and just for an instant I saw such a flash of hatred in his eyes it made me catch my breath. But then he threw aside his napkin and stood. He swayed a little and almost fell back on to the table, but I grabbed his arm and he recovered his balance. He lurched out of the library and we followed him into the atrium.
Cicero had ordered a litter to take us home, but now he insisted that Quintus have it. 'You ride home, brother. We shall walk.' We helped him into the chair, and Cicero told the bearers to carry him to our old house on the Esquiline, next to the Temple of Tellus, into which Quintus had moved when Cicero moved out. Quintus was asleep even before the litter set off. As we watched him go, I reflected that it was no easy matter being the younger brother of a genius, and that all the choices in Quintus's life his career, his home, even his wife had been made in accordance with the demands of his brilliant, ambitious sibling, who could always talk him into anything.
'He means no harm,' said Cicero to Atticus. 'He's worried about the future, that's all. Once the senate has decided which provinces are to be put into this year's ballot and he knows where he's going, he'll be happier.'
'I'm sure you're right. But I fear he believes at least some of what he says. I hope he doesn't speak for you as well.'
'My dearest friend, I am perfectly aware that our relationship has cost you far more than you have ever profited from it. We have simply chosen to tread different paths, that's all. I have sought public office while you have yearned for honourable independence, and who's to say which of us is right? But in every quality that really matters I put you second to no man, myself included. There now are we clear?'
'We are clear.'
'And you will come and see me before you leave, and write to me often afterwards?'
'I shall.'
With that Cicero kissed him on the cheek and the two friends parted, Atticus retreating into his beautiful house with its books and treasures, while the former consul trudged down the hill towards the forum with his guards. On this question of the good life and how to lead it purely theoretical in my own case, of course my sympathies were all with Atticus. It seemed to me at the time and still does now, only even more so an act of madness for a man to pursue power when he could be sitting in the sunshine and reading a book. But then, even if I had been born into freedom, I know I would not have possessed that overweening force of ambition without which no city is created, no city destroyed.
As chance would have it, our route home took us past the scenes of all Cicero's triumphs, and he fell very quiet as we walked, no doubt pondering his conversation with Atticus. We passed the locked and deserted senate house, where he had made such memorable speeches; the curving wall of the rostra, surmounted by its multitude of heroic statues, from which he had addressed the Roman people in their thousands; and finally the Temple of Castor, where he had presented his case to the extortion court in the long legal battle against Verres that had launched his career. The great public buildings and monuments, so quiet and massive in the darkness, nevertheless seemed to me that night as sub stantial as air. We heard voices in the distance, and occasional scuffling noises closer by, but it was only rats in the heaps of rubbish.
We left the forum, and ahead of us were the myriad lights of the Palatine, tracing the shape of the hill the yellow flickering of the torches and braziers on the terraces, the dim pinpricks of the candles and lamps in the windows amid the trees. Suddenly Cicero halted. 'Isn't that our house?' he asked, pointing to a long cluster of lights. I followed his outstretched arm and replied that I thought it was. 'But that's very odd,' he said. 'Most of the rooms seem to be lit. It looks as though Terentia is home.'
We set off quickly up the hill. 'If Terentia has left the ceremony early,' said Cicero breathlessly over his shoulder, 'it won't be of her own volition. Something must have happened.' He almost ran along the street towards the house and hammered on the door. Inside, we found Terentia standing in the atrium surrounded by a cluster of maids and womenfolk, who seemed to twitter and scatter like birds at Cicero's approach. Once again she was wearing a cloak fastened tightly at the throat to conceal her sacred robes. 'Terentia?' he demanded, advancing towards her. 'What's wrong? Are you all right?'
'I am well enough,' she replied, her voice cold and trembling with rage. 'It is Rome that is sick!'
That so much harm could flow from so farcical an episode will doubtless strike future generations as absurd. In truth, it seemed absurd at the time: fits of public morality generally do. But human life is bizarre and unpredictable. Some joker cracks an egg, and from it hatches tragedy.
The basic facts were simple. Terentia recounted them to Cicero that night, and the story was never seriously challenged. She had arrived at Caesar's residence to be greeted by Pompeia's maid, Abra a girl of notoriously easy virtue, as befitted the character of her mistress, and of her master too, for that matter, although he of course was not on the premises at the time. Abra showed Terentia into the main part of the house, where Pompeia, the hostess for the evening, and the Vestal Virgins were already waiting, along with Caesar's mother, Aurelia. Within the hour, most of the senior wives of Rome were congregated in this spot and the ritual began. What exactly they were doing, Terentia would not say, only that most of the house was in darkness when suddenly they were interrupted by screams. They ran to discover the source and immediately came across one of Aurelia's freed-women having a fit of hysterics. Between sobs she cried out that there was an intruder in the house. She had approached what she thought was a female musician, only to discover that the girl was actually a man in disguise! It was at this point that Terentia realised that Pompeia had disappeared.
Aurelia at once took charge of the situation and ordered that all the holy things be covered and that the doors be locked and watched. Then she and some of the braver females, including Terentia, began a thorough search of the huge house. In due course, in Pompeia's bedroom, they found a veiled figure dressed in women's clothes, clutching a lyre and trying to hide behind a curtain. They chased him down the stairs and into the dining room, where he fell over a couch and his veil was snatched away. Nearly everyone recognised him. He had shaved off his small beard and had put on rouge, black eye make-up and lipstick, but that was hardly sufficent to disguise the well-known pretty-boy features of Publius Clodius Pulcher 'Your friend Clodius,' as Terentia bitterly described him to Cicero.
Clodius, who was plainly drunk, realising he was discovered, then jumped on to the dining table, pulled up his gown, exposing himself to all the assembled company, including the Vestal Virgins, and finally, while his audience was shrieking and swooning, ran out of the room and managed to escape from the house via a kitchen window. Only now did Pompeia appear, with Abra, whereupon Aurelia accused her daughter-in-law and her maid of collusion in this sacrilege. Both denied it tearfully, but the senior Vestal Virgin announced that their protests did not matter: a desecration had occurred, the sacred rites would have to be abandoned, and the devotees must all disperse to their homes at once.