Rubicon: The Triumph and Tragedy of the Roman Republic (31 page)

Caesar’s departure did nothing to dim the obsession with the scandal. The continuing hysteria that surrounded Clodius’ stunt submerged even the news of Pompey’s arrival. This, contrary to most people’s fears, passed off without any great alarms. Rather than marching on Rome, the returning proconsul dismissed his army, then headed for the capital ‘unarmed, with no one to escort him save a few intimate friends, for all the world as though he were returning from a holiday abroad’.
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Pompey’s shows of simplicity were always ostentatious. The crowds who lined the route of his progress duly cheered themselves hoarse. His rivals back in Rome, however, were less easily impressed. Now that they no longer needed to fear Pompey they could concentrate on the far more pleasurable activity of cutting him down to size. To everyone’s delight, his first public speech was a flop. Pompey’s blend of pomposity and false modesty presented his enemies with an irresistible target. When he complacently commended the Senate for suppressing Catiline, Crassus was immediately up on his feet, praising Cicero to the skies, lauding him in ludicrously exaggerated terms, claiming that he never looked at his wife or home without thanking Cicero for their continued existence. Cicero himself, completely failing to recognise the irony, was thrilled. He had always idolised Pompey, and to be praised like this in the great man’s presence was heaven. Yet even he had to acknowledge that his hero, listening to Crassus’ speech, had appeared a little ‘peeved’.
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This was hardly surprising. Pompey had recently been hearing a good deal from Cicero. The previous year, while he had still been in
Greece, a huge letter had thudded on to his reading desk, a book-length self-promotion in which the former consul had presumed to compare his achievements to those of the new Alexander. Pompey’s response had been withering. For Cicero, whose conceit still veiled gnawing insecurities, the cold dismissal by his hero had been deeply hurtful. He consoled himself with the thought that Pompey was jealous, but the rebuff had wounded not merely his vanity, but his entire vision of the future of Rome. As was so often the case with Cicero, the two went hand in hand. Yes, it was he who had saved the Republic, but, as he modestly acknowledged, he could never have done it without the support of his fellow citizens. The year of his consulship had been their, as well as his, finest hour. Surely this sense of common purpose could be maintained? What was a republic, after all, if not a partnership of interest and justice? Naturally, Cicero himself, as ‘the saviour of his country’, would have to remain at the helm, but he graciously accepted that other leading figures, Pompey especially, would also have their parts to play. All citizens – senators, equestrians and poor alike – would live in harmony. Self-interest would be subordinated to the interests of Rome.

As a manifesto, of course, this was a vision of cloud-cuckoo-land. It was hardly as though Cicero himself had been immune to ambition. Liberty – and the opportunity for an outsider to win the consulship – would be stifled by a society in which everyone knew his place. It was a paradox that was to torture Cicero all his life. His blueprint for the future, however impractical, was the product of much agonised reflection. Cicero was proud to consider himself the heir of the Republic’s noblest traditions. Chief among these was the age-old balance between ambition and duty. Should this be upset, then criminals might start to hack their way to the top, and tyrants to emerge. Catiline had been foiled – but he was bound to have successors. It was essential that they too be destroyed. After all, what hope was there for the Republic if the great were not the good?

The passion with which Cicero held such opinions did not encourage him to look indulgently on Clodius’ prank. Surely only a Catiline in the making could have committed such a shocking offence? Adding to Cicero’s mounting excitement was his sense that, just as it had done in the glory days of his consulship, the Senate was closing ranks. Despite the fact that there was no law against gatecrashing the goddess’s rites, a powerful groundswell of opinion was starting to move in favour of declaring it a crime. A vote was taken. It was agreed that Clodius should be brought to trial. The size of the majority reflected not only genuine outrage, but, as ever in Rome, the venom of personal hatreds. Clodius did not lack for enemies. Chief among those, of course, was Lucullus. It took a special occasion to drag him from his fish-ponds. One of these had been his triumph, back in 63, which Cicero, as consul, had finally succeeded in authorising. Lucullus had used the event as an opportunity for point-scoring. His accounts had been carried on huge billboards through the streets, stating precisely how much he had paid his soldiers – the princely sum of nine hundred and fifty drachmas each. Clearly, the dagger-blow of the mutiny had not ceased to ache. Now, two years later, Lucullus eagerly re-emerged. He could smell Clodius’ blood. Preparing for the trial, he rehearsed all his old resentments: the mutiny, the incest of his wife. He also persuaded Hortensius to bestir himself and lead the prosecution. A formidable array of witnesses began to be assembled. Notable among these was Aurelia. Whatever the qualms of her son, she was more than willing to confirm that, yes, she had seen Clodius in her house on the fateful night.

But Clodius had powerful friends of his own. Leading his defence was one of the most illustrious figures in the Senate, a former consul no less, Gaius Scribonius Curio. Following standard procedure, Curio had no sooner accepted the case than he set about manufacturing an alibi for his client. An equestrian was found who
was prepared to testify that Clodius had spent the day of the Good Goddess’s rites with him, ninety miles away from the scene of the supposed crime. It was now up to Hortensius to trump this evidence. It did not take him long. A witness was found for the prosecution, and a most impressive one too. It turned out that on the day of the festival of the Good Goddess Cicero had been with Clodius, not ninety miles away, but in the heart of Rome.

Would he testify to this effect, however? For all Cicero’s horror at Clodius’ alleged behaviour, it was still an agonising decision. There had been no history of enmity between the two men. During Cicero’s consulship Clodius had even served as one of his bodyguards. More than that, they were now neighbours. Cicero had recently gone up in the world – literally so. Following his consulship he had bought a splendid house on the Palatine, mortgaging himself to the hilt in order to do so, but feeling that his new status more than justified the expense. He was, after all, the saviour of the Republic. From the portico of his poplar-shaded mansion he could now look down at the Forum, the most exclusive view in the world. The neighbours included not only Clodius, but his glamorous sister. Cicero was proud of his intimacy with Rome’s haughtiest family, so much so, in fact, that his wife accused Clodia of angling to seduce him.

According to gossip, Cicero was nagged so relentlessly about this that he decided to testify against Clodius merely to win some peace. His wife should have saved her breath. In the final reckoning an opportunity to line up with the cream of the senatorial elite was simply too tempting for Cicero to resist. His appearance duly caused a sensation. As he stepped forward to give his evidence the baying of Clodius’ supporters rose in a crescendo. Gangs imported from the slums had been milling around the Forum for weeks, intimidating Clodius’ enemies, marshalled by the son of Clodius’ advocate, a young man dismissed by Cicero as ‘Curio’s little daughter’,
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but a
reckless, dangerous opponent all the same. On this occasion, however, his tactics backfired. Nothing served to bolster Cicero’s courage more than the feeling that he was the star of a show. As the jurors rallied to form a human shield around him, he gave his evidence in a clear, unshaken voice. The next day a crowd gathered outside his house to roar their approval. Clodius’ conviction appeared to have been sealed. The jurors asked for bodyguards in turn.

But stalwart in defence of Cicero though they had been, they were to acquit themselves less impressively when over the next couple of days a mysterious slave began knocking at their doors. Offers of cash were dangled before them, and the favours of women or upper-class boys as they preferred. The flagrancy of this approach reaped a decisive reward. Clodius was acquitted by thirty-one votes to twenty-five. His enemies exploded with fury. Catulus, meeting one of the jurors, asked him sulphurously, ‘Was this why you wanted a bodyguard, then? To make sure that your bribes would be safely guarded?’
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For all the grandees – Lucullus especially – Clodius’ acquittal was a bitter blow. For Cicero, however, it was a disaster. Lacking the resources of a Catulus or Hortensius, he now found himself confronted by an enemy whom even Caesar had been reluctant to provoke. In the weeks following the trial he did not help matters by baiting Clodius in the Senate with a succession of ill-considered sallies. What had originally been an animosity typical of many relationships in Rome now rapidly began to spiral into a full-blown blood-feud. Clodius may not have been Cicero’s equal as a wit, but in the nursing of vendettas he was soon to prove himself without peer.

To Cicero himself, personal catastrophe was always a crisis for the whole of Rome. On other occasions, however, he would have acknowledged that the savagery of political life was the index of its
liberty. Fortunes rose, fortunes fell; alliances were forged, alliances fell apart. These were the rhythms of a free republic. The fact that the gloss of his consulship was rapidly vanishing may have been upsetting to Cicero, but it was a source of quiet satisfaction to most of his colleagues. Achievement in Rome was valued, but excessive greatness was feared. Many could share in power, but no one man could rule supreme. Only Sulla had done that – and he had soon retired.

What reason was there to think that this would ever change?

On 28 September 61
BC
Pompey the Great rode for the third time in a triumph through Rome. Even by his own standards it was a show of unparalleled magnificence. At its heart, naturally, was the conquering hero himself. For the benefit of spectators who did not have grandstand views, a huge portrait bust was carried in the procession, fashioned entirely out of pearls. Its predominant feature was an immaculate quiff. This was the same hairstyle Pompey had displayed in his first triumph, eighteen years previously. The role of boy wonder had proved a hard one to let slip. So sensitive was Pompey about his age that he had even arranged for his triumph to start on the day before his birthday – his forty-fifth. Not that this was a detail he chose to broadcast. Sporting the cloak as well as the quiff of Alexander, he had no wish to appear as mutton dressed as lamb. Alexander had famously died young, at the age of thirty-two. Pompey had already spent a whole decade being thirty-four.

Only with a career of short cuts behind him could a Roman have suffered a mid-life crisis of this nature. Most of Pompey’s countrymen yearned for their forties. Middle age was the prime of a
citizen’s life, and for the upper classes a time when they could at last run for the consulship. To the Romans, the cult of youth appeared unsettling and foreign, a delusion to which kings in particular were prone. Greek potentates were forever attempting to hold back the years, whether by preserving their youth in images of marble or by raising pompous monuments to themselves. A Roman was expected to know better. After all, what was the lifeblood of the Republic if not the onward passage of time? Each year magistrate gave way to magistrate, and the man who relived his term of office excessively, as Cicero did, became a figure of ridicule. As water was used to dilute wine, so time was relied upon to dissipate the headiness of glory. The Romans, precisely because they had a deeper thirst for honour than any other people in the world, were the more alert to its perils. The sweeter it tasted, the greater the risk of intoxication. The limit of a magistracy was set at a year, but of a triumph at one or two days. The procession ended, the feast consumed, the trophies hung in the temples of the gods, all that was left behind was litter in the streets. For the Romans, the truest monuments to glory were fashioned not of marble but of memories. Spectacle, if it were not to be an insufferable affront to civic values, had to be fleeting, ephemeral, just like the authority of the magistrate who sponsored it. Forbidden great architecture, the Romans made an art form out of festival instead.

Never did their city appear more like the capital of an empire than when its shabbiness was transformed into a realm of fantasy. Whole theatres might be raised, adorned with marble columns, their floors made of glass or gilded floorboards, filled with bronze statues and dazzling
trompe l’oeils
– and yet the theatres themselves were merely sets. Thrown up to stage a festival, they would be torn down brutally the moment it had finished. Only once, back in 154, had the censors licensed the construction of a permanent theatre, but even as it was nearing completion, prominent at the base of the
Palatine, opinion in the Senate had hardened against it and it had been dismantled, block by block. The result, still apparent nearly a century later, was a powerful incongruity: Rome, mistress of the world, lacked what even the most provincial towns in Italy possessed: a theatre built of stone.

To many citizens, this remained a source of pride, an emphatic demonstration of republican virtue and a guarantee of that ‘peculiar manliness which has always distinguished the Roman people’.
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To others, it was an embarrassment. Pompey, for instance, swaggering his way around the East, had resented being upstaged by the splendours of Greek architecture, regarding it as an affront to his own prestige and that of Rome. Having looted everything from wine-coolers to balsam trees for his triumph, he had rounded off his pilfering by having sketches drawn of the great theatre of Mitylene, planning to build a copy of it, ‘only larger and more magnificent’.
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Even as the debris from his triumph was being swept up, Pompey’s labourers were moving in on the Campus Martius. Flat, empty and close to the Forum, nothing more tempting to a developer could have been imagined – and Pompey had never been good at resisting temptation. The monumentalism of his plans was obvious from the start. He claimed, disingenuously, that he was building a temple to Venus and that the seats were designed as steps leading upwards to the shrine, but nobody was fooled. Once again, as had happened throughout Pompey’s career, precedent was being trampled with cavalier abandon. Not that Pompey himself was remotely bothered. The money being spent was his own, after all. What else should he spend his fortune on if not a gift to the Roman people?