The Dictator (12 page)

A normal man now would have given up. But Clodius wasn’t normal. Though he might pretend to be a pleb, he was still a Claudian—a family who took pride in hounding their enemies to the grave. First he lied and told a meeting of the people that the judgement had actually gone in his favour and called on them to defend “their” shrine. Then, when the consul-designate Marcellinus proposed a motion in the Senate to return to Cicero his three properties—in Rome, Tusculum and Formiae, “with compensation to restore them to their former state”—Clodius tried to talk out the session, and would have succeeded had he not, after three hours on his feet, been howled down by an exasperated Senate. Nor were his tactics entirely without effect. Frightened of antagonising the plebs, and to Cicero’s dismay, the Senate agreed to pay compensation of only two million sesterces to rebuild the house on the Palatine, and just half a million and a quarter of a million respectively for the repairs at Tusculum and Formiae—far below the actual costs.

For the past two years most of Rome’s builders and craftsmen had been employed on Pompey’s immense development of public buildings on the Field of Mars. Grudgingly—because anyone who has ever employed builders learns quickly never to let them out of one’s sight—Pompey agreed to transfer a hundred of his men to Cicero. Work on restoring the Palatine house began at once, and on the first morning of construction Cicero had the great pleasure of swinging an axe at the head of Liberty and smashing it clean off, then crating up the remains and having them delivered to Clodius with his compliments.

I knew Clodius would retaliate, and one morning soon afterwards, when Cicero and I were working on some legal papers in Quintus’s tablinum, we heard what sounded like heavy footsteps clumping across the roof. I went out into the street and was lucky not to be struck on the head by bricks dropping from the sky. Panicking workmen came running round the corner and shouted that a gang of Clodius’s toughs had overrun the site and were demolishing the new walls and hurling the debris down on to Quintus’s house. Just then Cicero and Quintus came out to see what the trouble was, and yet again they had to send a messenger to Milo to request the assistance of his gladiators. It was just as well, for no sooner had the runner gone than there was a series of flashes overhead, and burning brands and lumps of flaming pitch started landing all around us. Fires broke out on the roof. The terrified household had to be evacuated, and everyone, including Cicero and even Terentia, was pressed into service to pass buckets of water, drawn from the street fountains, from hand to hand to try to prevent the house from burning down.

Crassus had a monopoly of the city’s fire services, and fortunately for us, he was at his home on the Palatine. He heard the commotion, came out into the street, saw what was going on, and turned up himself in a shabby tunic and slippers, with one of his teams of fire slaves dragging a water tender equipped with pumps and hoses. But for them the building would have been lost; as it was, the damage caused by the water and smoke rendered the place uninhabitable, and we had to move out while it was repaired. We loaded our luggage into carts and, with night coming on, made our way across the valley to the Quirinal hill, to seek temporary refuge in the house of Atticus, who was still away in Epirus. His narrow, ancient house was fine for an elderly bachelor of fixed and moderate habits; it was less ideal for two families with extensive households and warring spouses. Cicero and Terentia slept in separate parts of the building.

Eight days later, as we were walking along the Via Sacra, we heard an outburst of shouts and the sound of running feet behind us, and turned to see Clodius and a dozen of his henchmen flourishing cudgels and even swords, sprinting to attack us. We had the usual bodyguard of Milo’s men and they hustled us into the doorway of the nearest house. In their panic, Cicero was pushed to the ground and gashed his head and twisted his ankle but otherwise was unharmed. The startled owner of the house in which we sought refuge, Tettius Damio, took us in and gave us a cup of wine, and Cicero talked calmly to him of poetry and philosophy until we were told that our attackers had been driven off and the coast was clear; then he said his thanks and we continued on our way home.

Cicero was in that state of elation that sometimes follows a close brush with death. His appearance, however, was a different matter—limping, with a bloodied forehead and torn and dirty clothes—and the instant Terentia saw him she cried out in shock. Useless for him to protest that it was nothing, that Clodius had been put to flight, and that his descent to such tactics showed how desperate he was becoming: Terentia would not listen. The siege, the fire and now this: she insisted that they all should leave Rome at once.

Cicero replied mildly, “You forget, Terentia: I’ve tried that once, and see where it left us. Our only hope is to stay here and win back our position.”

“And how are you to do that when you can’t even walk in safety down a busy street in broad daylight?”

“I shall find a way.”

“And in the meantime, what lives do the rest of us have?”

“Normal lives!” Cicero suddenly shouted back at her. “We defeat them by leading normal lives! We sleep together as man and wife for a start.”

I glanced away in embarrassment.

Terentia said, “You wish to know why I keep you from my room? Then look!”

And to Cicero’s astonishment and certainly to mine, this most pious of Roman matrons began to unfasten the belt of her dress. She called to her maid to come and help. Turning her back to her husband, she opened her gown and her maid pulled it down all the way from the nape of her neck to the base of her spine, exposing the pale flesh between her thin shoulders, which was savagely criss-crossed by at least a dozen livid red welts.

Cicero stared at the scars, transfixed. “Who did this to you?”

Terentia pulled the dress back up and her maid knelt to fasten her belt.

“Who did this?” repeated Cicero quietly. “Clodius?”

She turned to face him. Her eyes were not wet but dry and full of fire. “Six months ago I went to see his sister, as one woman to another, to plead on your behalf. But Clodia is not a woman: she is a Fury. She told me I was no better than a traitor myself—that my presence defiled her house. She summoned her steward and had him whip me off the premises. She had her louche friends with her. They laughed at my shame.”

“
Your
shame?” cried Cicero. “The only shame is theirs! You should have told me!”

“Told
you
? You, who greeted the whole of Rome before he greeted his own wife?” She spat out the words. “You may stay and die in the city if you wish. I shall take Tullia and Marcus to Tusculum and see what lives we can have there.”

The following morning, she and Pomponia left with the children, and a few days later, amid much mutual shedding of tears, Quintus also departed to buy grain for Pompey in Sardinia. Prowling round the empty house, Cicero was keenly aware of their absence. He told me he felt every blow that Terentia had endured as if it were a lash upon his own back, and he tortured his brain to find some means of avenging her, but he could see no way through, until one day, quite unexpectedly, the glimmer of an opportunity presented itself.

—

It happened that around this time, the distinguished philosopher Dio of Alexandria was murdered in Rome while under the roof of his friend and host, Titus Coponius. The assassination caused a great scandal. Dio had come to Italy supposedly with diplomatic protection, as the head of a delegation of one hundred prominent Egyptians to petition the Senate against the restoration of their exiled pharaoh, Ptolemy XII, nicknamed “the Flute Player.”

Suspicion naturally fell on Ptolemy himself, who was staying with Pompey at his country estate in the Alban hills. The Pharaoh, detested by his people for the taxes he levied, was offering the stupendous reward of six thousand gold talents if Rome would secure his restoration, and the effect of this bribe upon the Senate was as dignified as if a rich man had thrown a few coins into a crowd of starving beggars. In the scramble for the honour of overseeing Ptolemy’s return, three main candidates had emerged: Lentulus Spinther, the outgoing consul, who was due to become governor of Cilicia and therefore would legally command an army on the borders of Egypt; Marcus Crassus, who yearned to possess the same wealth and glory as Pompey and Caesar; and Pompey himself, who feigned disinterest in the commission but behind the scenes was the most active of the three in trying to secure it.

Cicero had no desire to become embroiled in the affair. There was nothing in it for him. He was obliged to support Spinther, in return for Spinther’s efforts to end his exile, and lobbied discreetly behind the scenes on his behalf. But when Pompey asked him to come out and meet the Pharaoh to discuss the death of Dio, he felt unable to turn the summons down.

The last time we had visited the house was almost two years earlier, when Cicero had gone to plead for help in resisting Clodius’s attacks. On that occasion Pompey had pretended to be out to avoid seeing him. The memory of his cowardice still rankled with me, but Cicero refused to dwell on it: “If I do, I shall become bitter, and a man who is bitter hurts no one but himself. We must look to the future.” Now, as we rattled up the long drive to the villa, we passed several groups of olive-skinned men wearing exotic robes and exercising those sinister yellowish prick-eared greyhounds so beloved of the Egyptians.

Ptolemy awaited Cicero with Pompey in the atrium. He was a short, plump, smooth figure, dark-complexioned like his courtiers, and so quietly spoken that one found oneself bending forward to catch what he was saying. He was dressed Roman-style in a toga. Cicero bowed and kissed his hand, and I was invited to do the same. His perfumed fingers were fat and soft like a baby’s, but the nails I noticed with disgust were broken and dirty. Coyly peering around him with her arms clasped across his stomach was his young daughter. She had huge charcoal-black eyes and a painted ruby mouth—an ageless slattern’s mask even at the age of eleven, or so it seems to me now, but perhaps I am being unfair and allowing my memory to be distorted by what was to come, for this was the future Queen Cleopatra, later to cause such mischief.

Once the niceties were out of the way and Cleopatra had departed with her maids, Pompey came to the point: “This killing of Dio is starting to become embarrassing, both to me and to His Majesty. And now to cap it all, a murder charge has been brought by Titus Coponius, Dio’s host when he was killed, and by his brother Gaius. The whole thing is ridiculous, of course, but apparently they are not to be persuaded out of it.”

“Who is the accused?” enquired Cicero.

“Publius Asicius.”

Cicero paused to remember the name. “Isn’t he one of your estate managers?”

“He is. That’s what makes it embarrassing.”

Cicero had the tact not to ask whether Asicius was guilty or not. He considered the matter purely as a lawyer. He said to Ptolemy, “Until this matter blows over, I would strongly advise Your Majesty to remove yourself as far away from Rome as possible.”

“Why?”

“Because if I were the Coponius brothers, the first thing I should do is issue a subpoena summoning you to give evidence.”

“Can they do that?” asked Pompey.

“They can try. To save His Majesty the embarrassment, I would advise him to be miles away when the writ is served—out of Italy, if possible.”

“But what about Asicius?” said Pompey. “If he’s found guilty, that could look very bad for me.”

“I agree.”

“Then he must be acquitted. You’ll take the case, I hope? I’d regard it as a favour.”

This was not what Cicero wanted. But Pompey was insistent, and in the end, as usual, he had no option but to accede. Before we left, Ptolemy, as a token of his thanks, presented Cicero with a small and ancient jade statue of a baboon, which he explained was Hedj-Wer, the god of writing. I expect it was quite valuable, but Cicero couldn’t abide it—“What do I want with their primitive mud gods?” he complained to me afterwards, and he must have thrown it away; I never saw it again.

Asicius, the accused man, came to see us. He was a former legionary commander who had served with Pompey in Spain and the East. He looked eminently capable of murder. He showed Cicero his summons. The charge was that he had visited Coponius’s house early in the morning with a forged letter of introduction. Dio was in the act of opening it when Asicius whipped out a small knife he had concealed in his sleeve and stabbed the elderly philosopher in the neck. The blow had not been immediately fatal. Dio’s cries had brought the household running. According to the writ, Asicius had been recognised before he managed to slash his way out of the house.

Cicero did not enquire about the truth of the matter. He merely advised Asicius that his best chance of acquittal lay in a good alibi. Someone would need to vouch that he was with them at the time of the murder—and the more witnesses he could produce and the less connection they had with Pompey, or indeed Cicero, the better.

Asicius said, “That’s easy enough. I have just the fellow lined up: a man known to be on bad terms both with Pompey and yourself.”

“Who?”

“Your old protégé Caelius Rufus.”

“Rufus? What’s he doing mixed up in this business?”

“Does it matter? He’ll swear I was with him at the hour the old man was killed. And he’s a senator nowadays, don’t forget—his word carries weight.”

I half expected Cicero to tell Asicius to find another advocate, such was his distaste for Rufus. But to my surprise he said, “Very well, tell him to come and see me and we’ll depose him.”

After Asicius had gone, Cicero said, “Surely Rufus is a close friend of Clodius? Doesn’t he live in one of his apartments? In fact, isn’t Clodia his mistress?”

“She certainly used to be.”

“That was what I thought.” The mention of Clodia made him thoughtful. “So what is Rufus doing offering an alibi to an agent of Pompey?”

Later that same day, Rufus came to the house. At twenty-five, he was the youngest member of the Senate, and very active in the law courts. It was odd to see him swaggering through the door wearing the purple-striped toga of a senator. Only nine years before, he had been Cicero’s pupil. But then he had turned on his former mentor, and eventually beaten him in court by prosecuting Cicero’s consular colleague, Hybrida. Cicero could have forgiven him that—he always liked to see a young man on the rise as an advocate—but his friendship with Clodius was a betrayal too far. So he greeted him very icily and pretended to read various documents while Rufus dictated his statement to me. Cicero must have been listening keenly, however, for when Rufus described how he was entertaining Asicius in his house at the time of the killing, and gave as his home address a property on the Esquiline, Cicero suddenly looked up and said, “But don’t you rent a property from Clodius on the Palatine?”