Catilina's Riddle (32 page)

"All right, all right, far be it from me to stand up for Catilina. But you seem to have just as low an opinion of Caesar—"

"Who is just as much in debt! No wonder they both suck up to the famous millionaire. Catilina and Caesar are like twin babies hanging off Crassus's teats. Ha! Like Romulus and Remus suckling the she-wolf!"

The speaker made obscene popping noises with his lips. This last elicited equal parts of laughter and hissing from the crowd, who were either amused or offended by such blasphemy.

"Very well, citizen, you insult Catilina, you insult Caesar and Crassus—I suppose you cling to Pompey."

"I have no use for Pompey either. They're all wild horses trying to break from the chariot. They're in a race with each other, and they care nothing at all for the common good."

"And Cicero does?" sneered the orator.

"Yes, Cicero does. Catilina, Caesar, Crassus, Pompey—every one of them would make himself dictator if he could, and cut off the heads of the rest. You can't say that about a man like Cicero. He's spoken against tyranny since the dictatorship of Sulla, when it took a brave man to do so. A mouthpiece, you call him—very well, that's what a consul should be, speaking out for those in the Senate whose families made the Republic what it is and have been running it ever since the kings were thrown down. We don't need rule by the mob, or rule by dictators, but the steady, slow, sure rule of those who know best."

This last set off a round of jeering from some newcomers who had just arrived in the crowd, and the debate degenerated into a shouting match. Fortunately, the agitation in the crowd provided an opening, and we were able to press on. A moment later Meto drew beside me with an earnest look on his face.

"Papa, I couldn't follow their argument at all!"

"I could, but only barely. Land reform! The populists all promise it, but they can't make it come true. The Optimates turn it into a dirty word."

"What was the Rullan bill they were talking about?"

"Something that was proposed earlier this year. I remember our neighbor Claudia railing against it. I really don't know the details," I admitted.

Rufus turned toward us. "One of Caesar's ideas, in conjunction with Crassus, and typically brilliant. The problem: how to find land for those who need it here in Italy. The solution: sell public lands we've conquered

- 184 -

in distant countries and set aside those proceeds to buy land in Italy on which to settle the poor in agricultural colonies. Not a wholesale confiscation and redistribution of land from rich to poor, as Catilina proposes, but the expenditure of public funds to effect a fair reapportionment."

"Why did the man bring up Egypt?" said Meto.

"The foreign lands to be sold include those in Egypt, which the late Alexander II bequeathed to Rome. The Rullan law proposed setting up a special commission of ten men who would oversee the project, including its administration in Egypt—"

"And Caesar would have been one of the commissioners," said Mummius dryly, joining the discussion. "He'd have picked Egypt like a fig from a tree."

"If you like," Rufus conceded. "Crassus would have been on the commission as well, since his support was vital. With Egypt under their sway, they'd have had a bastion against Pompey's power in the East, you see. You'd have thought the Optimates would like that, since they fear Pompey, too. But as long as Pompey is away from Rome and campaigning in the East, the Optimates fear Caesar and Crassus more."

"Not to mention Catilina and the mob," I said.

"Yes, but Catilina intentionally distanced himself from the Rullan bill. Too mild for him; to have been seen as a force behind it would have compromised his radical reputation. Nor would his support have been an asset to the bill; his enthusiasm would have further alarmed the Optimates, who were already suspicious of the idea."

"Even so, I imagine Catilina would have accepted an appointment as one of the new land commissioners, along with Caesar and Crassus."

Rufus smiled wryly. "Your grasp of politics is more subtle than you let on, Gordianus."

"But the bill was defeated," said Meto.

"Yes. The Optimates saw it as merely a tool for Caesar and Crassus, and yes, perhaps Catilina, to increase their power, and any talk of land reform immediately sets them on edge. They always pretend to support the idea in the abstract, but no concrete proposal ever satisfies them.

Cicero became their spokesman, as he has been since they rallied to support him for the consulship. But he didn't limit himself to debating the matter in the Senate. He came here, to the Forum, and brought the issue directly to the people."

"But it's the sort of bill the people like, isn't it? That's why they call Caesar a populist, isn't it?" asked Meto. "Why would Cicero debate against the bill before the very people it's meant to help?"

"Because Cicero could talk a condemned man into chopping off his own head," said Rufus. "He knows how to make a speech; he knows what arguments will impress the mob. First, he said that the law was

- 185 -

directed against Pompey, even though Pompey was specifically excluded from the investigations that were to be made into the acquisitions of other generals abroad. The people don't like it when they hear that something will hurt Pompey. Pompey is the darling of the mob; successful generals always are. To denigrate Pompey is to denigrate the people of Rome, to call Pompey into question is to insult Rome's favorite son, et cetera, et cetera. Then Cicero took aim at the commission itself, saying it would become a little court of ten despots. They would embezzle the funds they raised, robbing the Roman people of their own wealth; they would punish their enemies by forcing them to sell their lands, which would be almost as wicked as the proscriptions and confiscations that Sulla carried out; they would forcibly move the contented urban poor onto barren tracts of land where they would starve. Well, you know how persuasive Cicero can be, especially when it comes to convincing people to work against their own interests.
I
do believe he could convince a beggar that a rock is better than a coin because it weighs more, and an empty stomach is better than a full one because it causes no indigestion."

"But Rullus must have defended the law," said Meto.

"Yes, and Rullus was pounded into dust—rhetorically speaking.

Caesar and Crassus each wet a finger, held it in the wind, and decided to keep quiet, though in debate either one is a match for Cicero, at least to my ear. The time was simply not right, and the law was dropped.

Soon people got distracted by other matters, like the incident in the theater, and Catilina's new campaign for consul."

"You say the time was not right for such reform," I said. "In Rome, and with the Optimates in control of the Senate, when is it ever the right time for change?"

"Nunquam,"
said Rufus, smiling ruefully:
never.

Our destination was the summit of the Capitoline Hill, where Rufus would perform his augury. We at last managed to cross the densely crowded area in front of the Rostra and came to the wide, paved path that ascends in winding stages to the summit of the Capitoline. Here we had to pause again, for a large group of men was descending the path, so many in number that they blocked any opportunity to ascend. As the group drew nearer, Rufus's face brightened. His eyes were better than mine, for he had already made out the faces of the two men who walked side by side at the head of their respective retinues. One was dressed in a senatorial toga, white bordered with purple; the other wore a toga with the much broader purple border of the Pontifex Maximus.

They smiled in return when they recognized Rufus, and nodded to

- 186 -

Marcus Mummius. For the moment Meto and myself and the rest were invisible to them. Those who wear purple acknowledge one another first; others come later.

"Rufus!" said the Pontifex Maximus.

"Caesar!" said Rufus, bowing his head. He made the same gesture of obeisance to the white-bearded augur who stood beside the Pontifex Maximus, dressed like Rufus in a trabea with saffron stripes. Within their college a younger augur always defers to an elder.

I took a close look at the face of our Pontifex Maximus. Not yet forty, Gaius Julius Caesar had already established himself as a force to be reckoned with in the Republic. His patrician heritage was impeccable; his family ties to the dictator Sulla's old enemy Marius, once a death sentence, had become a part of his credentials as a leader of the populist movement. If Cicero was the master of rhetoric, able to get what he wanted by the sheer force of argument, Caesar was said to be the master of pure politics, a genius at comprehending the multitudinous and often obscure strands of the ages-old web that bound together the state and the priesthoods. He understood the most arcane and cumbersome rules of procedure within the Senate, and could invoke them at the most unexpected moments to the consternation of his enemies; he knew the intricate workings of the ever-growing bureaucracy that carried out (or as often confounded) the will of the Senate and the people; as Pontifex Maximus he oversaw the maze of religious offices and brotherhoods that interpreted omens and sacred texts and thus exercised power over the Senate, the army, and commerce by allowing or not allowing these institutions to function on a given day.

Caesar was not a handsome man, but in no sense was he plain. His narrow face was striking, but beauty did not figure into it. It was the vitality of his eyes that impressed, along with the patrician austerity of his high cheekbones and forehead, and the drawn tension of his thin lips, that seemed perpetually to smile at some ironic jest. His erect carriage and steady gait marked him as a man in absolute control of his every movement, fully conscious of his own fluid grace and quietly pleased with the image he presented to the world. I have met only a handful of men (and some women) with such a way about them, and they have all been either wealthy, eminently well-educated patricians, or else slaves who possess the natural charm of the unlearned along with the remarkable beauty that sweeps every other consideration before it. We mortals in the middle can never hope to possess the perfect grace of these god-blessed others higher and lower than ourselves. It comes from power, I suppose, political or sexual—not simply possessing it, but instinctively knowing how to use it, and having the capacity to enjoy using it. Catilina had a measure of that grace, but in him it was mixed with something

- 187 -

else, an imperfection of some sort that made him all the more fascinating.

In Caesar, that grace was undiluted. He seemed to me to be power personified, and thus he projected (like the beautiful) the illusion of being indestructible and immortal. Rend his mortal vessel with wounds, cut him open to show the blood and bones within, slice his head from his shoulders—still, it seemed, his lips would wear that same effortless smile. Somehow I had glimpsed his companion from the corner of my eye, or perhaps had recognized his gait from a distance, for I knew that the man was Marcus Licinius Crassus before I reluctantly set my eyes on him.

There were few men whom I less desired to meet by chance on this of all days. As Rufus turned to greet him, Crassus's restless gaze fell on me.

He knew me in an instant, though it had been almost nine years since the affair at Baiae. Things there had not gone as he had wished, thanks to me, and Crassus was a man accustomed to having his own way in everything to do with lesser men; from the glint in his eye I saw that the memory still rankled. Catilina had indicated that Crassus respected me in a begrudging way, but if so, he was good at concealing it. His eyes had a cold gleam without a trace of humor.

He had grown noticeably older since I had last seen him so close—

older and richer and more powerful, his ambitions held in check only by the conflicting ambitions of men as shrewd and ruthless as himself.

His hair was half-gray and his face was too stern to be handsome. His countenance displayed a perpetual discontent; he was a man who could never succeed enough for his own satisfaction. "Crassus, Crassus, rich as Croesus," went the popular ditty, comparing him to the miser of legend, but to me he was Sisyphus, forever rolling the boulder uphill, watching it tumble down and beginning again, achieving wealth and influence far beyond the measure of other men but never achieving enough to earn his rest. He had been vying for power with Pompey for years; with Caesar he seemed to be on excellent terms, at the moment at least.

"We've just come down from the Arx," said Caesar, meaning the northern summit of the Capitoline Hill. Like the acropolis in Athens, the Arx was the high place chosen by Rome's founders on which to build their citadel and their most sacred temples. From the Arx a man can see all Rome below, and can in turn be seen unobstructed by the gods.

"We've been taking the auspices for today's convocation of the Senate.

A pity that you weren't available to perform the augury, Rufus."

"Today I perform a private augury," said Rufus, indicating those of us behind him with the slightest tilt of his head. "I take it that the auspices for the Senate were favorable, as you wished?"

"They were indeed," said Caesar. The ironic smile seemed to say

- 188 -

that the auspices could hardly have been otherwise. "A hawk flew up from the west, and then dipped toward the north. The augur Festus assures us this presages a good day for the Senate to convene."

"For myself," said Crassus dryly, "I thought it more significant that a crow flew over the Senate House, cackling and complaining but going in circles, as if he were not going to have his way no matter how much he squawked. That crow reminded me of someone—could it be Cicero?

But then I'm not privy to the secret knowledge of the augurs and am hardly qualified to make an interpretation." His smile did little to soften his sarcasm.

Rufus ignored this veiled insult to his profession. "Will things go well in the debate today?" he asked Caesar.

"Oh, yes," Caesar said with a sigh. "Cicero hasn't the votes to censure Catilina, and he certainly hasn't the support he needs to postpone the elections again. It's not what happens today, but what the voters will do tomorrow that's worrisome. We shall see. But what's this you're up to, a young man's coming of age?" He smiled and nodded amiably in our direction, but did not press for an introduction. "Speaking of Cicero, if you're on your way up to the Arx, you'll pass both of our esteemed consuls on their way down." He glanced over his shoulder. "Cicero should be right behind us; he was eager enough to have the auspices done with so that he could convene the Senate. The debate will begin at any moment.