A Point of Law (3 page)

“You’re probably right. I’ll just handle him the usual way.” Since a serving magistrate couldn’t be prosecuted, my best tactic would be to stall until after the elections. By the time I stepped down, this pest would have found somebody else to plague.

“Like most ambitious men,” Sallustius said, “he’s poor. He may be amenable to a bribe to drop the charges. Would you like me to sound him out?” How like Sallustius. If I’d shown a liking for his sister, he’d have offered to act as pimp.

“No, I’ll avoid the trouble if I can, but I refuse to buy my way out of a charge of which I’m innocent.”

“I don’t see why not. Innocence rarely exempts a man from the consequences of a false accusation. Counterattack is usually the way to go. Don’t tell me you’ve spent all your money already?”

“Thank you for the news and advice, Sallustius. I’ll deal with this my way.”

I looked around until I spotted Hermes, near Vulcan’s altar, talking me up to a little group of voters. One of the rules was that a candidate could not canvass for votes personally. Instead, our clients and freedmen did it for us. I caught his eye and beckoned.

“You don’t want a drink already, do you?” he asked as he joined me. “It’s going to be a long day.” This insolence was the result of his years as my personal slave. Also, he knew me all too well.

“It’s about to get longer, wretch. Go get my father and any other men of the family who may be standing around and my highest-placed supporters. There’s going to be trouble.”

He grinned. “An attack?” Hermes was an inveterate brawler.

“Not the kind you enjoy. A political offensive from an unexpected quarter.”

“Oh,” he said, downcast. “I’ll find them.”

My mind seethed even as I smiled and shook hands with well-wishers. How serious was this man’s support? How would I counter his charges? How much support could I get behind me? How long could I stall? I was going to need legal advice. For this I would automatically have gone to Cicero, but a sea lay between us that year.

Father limped toward me, his face as grim as a thundercloud. Hortensius Hortalus was with him, as were Metellus Scipio and Creticus and even Cato. Much as I disliked Cato, I was ready to welcome anyone’s support.

“We’ve already heard,” Father said, before I could speak. “How did a worm like Marcus Fulvius set this up without us knowing of it?”

“Because we’ve paid him no notice at all, I don’t doubt,” Hortalus rumbled.

“Whose court was it?” I asked.

“Juventius,” Cato said. He meant Marcus Juventius Laterensis, once a close friend of Clodius.

“Wonderful,” I said. “Even dead, Clodius can cause me trouble.”

“Time is on your side,” Cato said. “With the election coming up, the court will be sitting for only four more days.”

“If Juventius is willing to move fast,” I pointed out, “four days is plenty of time to prosecute me.” I didn’t have to point out that a guilty verdict could prevent me from taking my place among the candidates on election day. Even if I were to be voted in anyway, I could be prevented from assuming office on the new year.

“We have to get your backside planted on that curule chair before the bugger can haul you before a court,” said the eminently practical Creticus.

“Tonight,” Hortalus said, “I’ll go outside the walls and take the
auguries. Perhaps I’ll see a sign that the courts can’t meet for the next few days.”

“You’re known as my father’s closest friend,” I said. “You’ll be denounced before the Senate for falsifying auguries, even if you see a thunderbolt strike a night-soaring eagle.”

“I’ll take Claudius Marcellus with me. Nobody will question his auguries.” He did not refer to the Claudius Marcellus who was one of that year’s consuls, nor to the Claudius Marcellus who was to be one of the next year’s consuls, nor yet to the Claudius Marcellus who was consul the year after that, but rather to yet a fourth Claudius Marcellus, who was the oldest member of the College of Augurs and trusted the way we always trust men who are too old to do much harm.

I looked out over the Forum crowd. No uproar yet. I didn’t really expect one. Scurrilous accusations against candidates were among the more common entertainments of any election. Strolling entertainers and vendors were everywhere, doing a great business as always when the voters thronged the City. I wished that I could consult with Julia, whose political acumen exceeded even that of my own family. But she had gone back home. In any case, it would have been a scandal beyond redemption had I been seen discussing politics with my wife right out in public.

“Here he comes!” It was the excited voice of Sallustius. He was still standing close by, eager to pick up gossip from the Metellan faction.

I followed his pointing finger and saw a commotion within the crowd. In the sea of scalps I detected a motion heading our way, the way a shark’s fin cuts the water. As it got closer, the motion resolved itself into a little knot of men striding along purposefully in our direction. In their lead was a tall, light-haired man who had the look of a Forum warrior—the sort who does all of his fighting in the courts. I recognized some of the men behind him as old followers of Clodius. The others were strangers to me.

“Decius Caecilius Metellus!” the man cried as he reached us.

“That’s me,” Father said. “What do you want?”

For an instant the man was nonplussed. His timing had been upset. “Not you! I meant your son.” He leveled a skinny finger toward me.

“Then why didn’t you say so, you whey-faced buffoon? Until I croak, he’s Decius the Younger.” Our faction whooped and clapped. People began to pack the already crowded area, sensing a good show.

“He’s talking to your whelp, you bald-headed old fart!” shouted one of the man’s flunkies.

Father squinted in the man’s direction. “Who’s that? Oh, I remember you. I had your mother flogged from the City for whoring and spreading disease.” Of course, he had no idea who the man was, but he would never let a trifling detail like that stop him.

I was maintaining a dignified silence, which the light-haired man duly noted.

“Can’t you speak Decius Caecilius Metellus the
Younger?
I accuse you of bribery, corruption, oppression of Roman citizens, and collusion with enemies of Rome during your naval operations on Cyprus!”

“And you would be—?” I inquired.

“I am Marcus Fulvius.” He drew himself to his full height, adopting an orator’s pose.

My mouth dropped open. “Not
the
Marcus Fulvius? The Marcus Fulvius who is renowned in Baiae for public fornication with goats? The Marcus Fulvius who took on an entire auxilia cohort of Libyan perverts until the oil supply ran out? To think Rome has been graced with such a celebrity.” Now the whole Forum was laughing. The man’s face reddened, but he held his ground. He was about to shout something when Cato stepped forward, seized his hand, and turned it palmside up.

“Here’s a hand that never held a sword,” he said with withering scorn, and nobody could pour on the scorn more witheringly than Marcus Porcius Cato. “Listen to me, you small-town nobody. Go put in some time with the legions, distinguish yourself in arms before you
dare come to Rome and accuse a veteran of Gaul and Iberia, the crusher of pirates and exposer of a score of traitors.”

This was making a bit much of my military and court record, but the words were deadly earnest and nobody was laughing now. I doubt that it was affection for me speaking. Cato despised men who came from out of town to make their reputations in Rome.

“Any Roman citizen may bring suit against any other in public court,” Fulvius said. “As you know well, Marcus Porcius.”

Hortensius Hortalus came forward. “That is very true. In fact, it was my impression that you made this very accusation this morning in the extortion court of Marcus Juventius Laterensis. Wherefore do you now, Marcus Fulvius, repeat these charges here in the ancient and sacred gathering place of the comitia, thus bringing disturbance to the grave deliberations of the citizens of Rome as they partake in the most venerable of our Republican institutions, the choosing among candidates for the highest offices?”

This speech would sound stilted and awkward in my mouth, but it was always a joy to hear Hortalus speak. The sonorous vowels of his old-fashioned Latin flowed over the crowd like honey.

Fulvius yanked his hand away from Cato. “I speak forth boldly because I want Rome to know it is a degenerate criminal who demands that the citizens grant him imperium. This man”—Once again he extended the skinny, slightly dirty-nailed finger toward my face, this time shaking with ill-bridled wrath—“laid hands on crucial naval stores, public property, citizens! And sold them for his own profit! He set his slaves to break into the houses of honest Roman citizens, to beat and torture them until they bought their lives with gold! He took great bribes from foreign merchants who trafficked with the very pirates he was sent to suppress.
This
is the man who wants to preside over a court that will try Roman citizens.
This
is the man who would go forth to govern a propraetorian province and command legions, no doubt to plunder our provincials and betray our allies!”

“Wasn’t there something about collusion with enemies of Rome?” I asked.

“Beyond all this,” he said, scarcely pausing for breath, “he consorted with the notorious slut Princess Cleopatra, daughter of the degenerate Ptolemy the Flute Player, that disgusting tyrant of Egypt.”

At this time not one Roman in a thousand had ever heard of Cleopatra, who was barely seventeen years old. But her father, Ptolemy, was a worldwide joke.

“King Ptolemy,” said Metellus Scipio, “has been recognized by the Senate of Rome as the lawful king of Egypt and has been accorded the status of Friend and Ally of the Roman People. Not only do you bring frivolous charges against a blameless servant of the Senate and People, but you slander the daughter of an allied prince. I’ve a mind to haul you into court for it.”

“Everyone knows old Ptolemy bribed half the Senate to get that title!” shouted one of Fulvius’s toadies. It was perfectly true, but hardly to the point.

I held up a hand for silence, and in a few seconds the hubbub calmed. “Marcus Fulvius, you bring serious charges against me, and your slanders are worthless. Bring out your witnesses.”

“You will see them in court.”

“Then why are you yammering at me here?” Of course, I knew perfectly well. The man was an unknown, a nobody. He wanted all of Rome to know his name, and by nightfall it surely would.

“I am here,” Fulvius announced grandly, “to invite every citizen of Rome to witness my prosecution of the mighty Caecilius Metellus, whose loathsome guilt I shall prove through the testimony of Roman citizens wronged. The gods of Rome themselves will call for his exile!” This brought cries of admiration for his eloquence, at which he preened.

Hortalus spoke again. “You’ve learned rhetoric from a good master, Fulvius. That last turn of phrase was from Junius Billienus’s prosecution of Minucius, one hundred and sixty-five years ago”—
Hortalus’s knowledge of the law was truly comprehensive, admired by Cicero himself, but he paused for effect and let fall a telling addendum—“in the consulship of Paullus and Varro.”

Half unconsciously, everyone there made some gesture to ward off evil, making apotropaic hand signs, fishing out phallic amulets, or reciting protective cantrips. Those lucky enough to be standing near an altar or statue of a god kissed their hands and pressed them to the sacred object. This we always do when that ill-starred year is mentioned, for it was in the consulship of Paullus and Varro that Hannibal met the greatest Roman army ever assembled and annihilated it at Cannae.

At that point a pair of lictors, their fasces shouldered, pushed their way through the crowd and stopped in front of me.

“Decius Caecilius Metellus the Younger,” said one of them, “you are summoned to appear before the court of the praetor Marcus Juventius Laterensis at dawn tomorrow.” They looked a bit uncomfortable carrying out this commonplace duty. If I should be elected praetor they might be assigned to me, and they feared I would remember them with disfavor.

“Why wait?” I said. “Let’s go see him now.” I left my spot and began to walk toward the basilica with my whole crowd behind me. I couldn’t accomplish anything at court until my trial began, but I didn’t want to give Fulvius anymore free publicity at my expense.

One of Fulvius’s men, an ugly, scar-faced thug, pushed toward me. “Hey! You can’t—” He got that far when Hermes stepped up to him and punched him in the face. The boy could hit as hard as any professional boxer, and the man went down like a sacrificial ox. My father clouted another over the head with his cane, and the rest fell back before us.

Had something like this occurred just a few years before, there would have been real bloodshed, but Pompey had finally set the city in order, expelled the gangs that had made elections so uproarious, and restored a little of our dignity. In consequence, everybody was bored and ready for a fight.

It was a very short walk to the basilica where Juventius had his court. The lictors had to hold the mob back while we stormed in, interrupting some case he was hearing. Juventius looked up, his face furious.

“I will hear your case tomorrow! Get out of my court!” He was a hard-faced man of no real distinction. Like most, he had done no more than put in the requisite civil and military time and had spent enough on his games as aedile, and so he got his year in the curule chair. Of course, some would say the same of me.

“Tomorrow!” I yelled. “This malicious wretch has had who knows how many months to put his plot together, to rehearse his perjurious witnesses, to bribe and suborn the testimony he needs to prove his false accusations, and I have until
tomorrow
to prepare my case! Citizens!” I smote my breast dramatically and almost choked on my own cloud of chalk dust. “Is this justice?” I was shouting loud enough to be heard outside and sounds of a gratifying agreement came back to me.

“Lictors!” Juventius shouted. “Throw these trespassers out!” Since his lictors were outside trying to hold the crowd back, they were in something of a quandary.