Catilina's Riddle (31 page)

'Bethesda, when I was young and beginning to make my way in the world pursuing the work that my father did, there was one thing he made me promise that I would never do—use my skills to capture runaway slaves.

It was an easy promise for me to make, and I've never broken it, for I

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have no appetite for such work. Over the years I added another promise to myself—that
I
would not become a spy for the state, or ever become a dictator's secret policeman if the Republic should fall prey to another Sulla, Jupiter forbid.

"There are times when I have done things of which I'm not particularly proud, and times when distinguishing right from wrong has confounded me—thus did the gods make this world, of multiple uncertainties and questions without answers. But I've always been able to sleep at night and to look at myself in a mirror without shame. Now I find myself compelled to be a spy, or at least to consort with spies, and I'm not even certain for whom I'm working. Am I the agent of Cicero and the Optimates, which is to say the state? Or am I the unwitting tool of Catilina, who would surely make himself a dictator if he could, for how else can he bring about the changes he promises his disinherited and disenfranchised followers? In the end, I tell myself, I don't care so long as my family is left in peace—and my own cynicism distresses me! Am I wise, or merely apathetic—or a coward?"

Bethesda looked at me steadily and squeezed my hand. "You are not a coward."

"Ah, but I don't hear you reassuring me that I'm wise!"

She cooled a bit and slid her hand from mine. She rested her chin on her knuckles and gazed out at the street. She spoke in a tone that was at once detached and determined and that allowed no contradiction.

"In your own heart you know what I know: that something terrible looms over us. I'm a woman, what can I do? Meto is barely a man. Eco, too, is very young and has his own life here in the city. It is up to you, husband. All up to you."

I blinked and sighed, and wondered: was this woman ever really my slave?

The litters deposited us at the eastern end of the Forum, not far from the Senian Baths. By custom, the women stayed behind to await our return. Meto set foot upon the Sacred Way wearing a happy smile along with his toga. Whatever he had been talking about with Rufus, it must have been on happier topics than my conversation with Bethesda.

Led by Rufus in his augur's vestments, our little party made its way through the very heart of Rome. Amid the throngs of vendors, voters, politicians, and vagrants, we passed the House of the Pontifex Maximus, where young Caesar now held office, and the adjoining House of the Vestal Virgins, the scene of Catilina's indiscretion ten years before. We passed the Temple of Vesta, where the sacred fire burns eternally in the hearth of the goddess, and the Temple of Castor and Pollux, where the

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scales and measures of the state are kept. We passed the tribunal of the commissioners, where justice had been served in the case of Asuvius and the forged will—my first adventure with Lucius Claudius. We came to the Rostra, the orator's platform decorated with the beaks of ships captured in war, from which politicians harangue the masses, and advocates argue their cases before the courts of law. Here young Cicero had pleaded the case that established his career, defending Sextus Roscius from the charge of parricide; I served as his investigator. At that time, a great equestrian statue of the dictator Sulla dominated the square, but no longer; the Senate had ordered it removed only a few years ago. Behind the Rostra stood the Senate House, where today Cicero, as consul of Rome, would be arguing for another postponement of the consular election, and Catilina would be defending himself from charges of disrupting the state.

The square was thronged with people. A politician was speaking from the Rostra to an audience of voters—one of the Optimates' candidates for consul, to judge from his rhetoric, though I couldn't tell whether it was Murena or Silanus—but there were plenty of other speakers all around to vie for the voters' ears. Wherever a flight of steps or a wall allowed a man to stand and be seen above the crowd, there appeared to be a politician addressing anyone within hearing. In places the dis-course seemed to Be more a debate than an address, with members of the crowd shouting questions or accusations at the speaker or even booing him from his platform. Within the crowd, insults were hurled, men were spat upon, and scuffles erupted here and there. Rome on the eve of an election!

Obviously, the larger a speaker's retinue, the greater his security and the more effective his rhetoric, and so each politician was surrounded by as many of his supporters as he could muster, not to mention freedmen, slaves, and bodyguards. The square had the appearance of warring factions intermingling for no discernible reason, except to cheer for their own favorite and jeer at the others. The threat of violence hung heavy in the air; I thought of a seething pot on the verge of boiling.

With Rufus at its head, our retinue commanded respect. His saffron-striped trabea was immediately recognizable; men parted and made way for the augur. Many in the crowd knew him by name, and hailed him cheerfully; his youth and charm, unusual for an augur, no doubt con-tributed to his popularity. Mummius, too, cut a familiar and popular figure with the crowd; people still remembered his role in putting down the Spartacan slave revolt, and his more recent service with Pompey earned him even more respect.

Meto was not ignored. The purpose of our retinue was evident at a glance to many in the crowd—an augur, father, son, and followers headed for the Capitoline—and there were spontaneous outbursts of

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applause for the young man taking his first walk as an adult through the Forum. Meto, smiling happily, eyes wide, seemed dazzled. I was not even sure if he realized that the bursts of applause were for him.

The press of bodies was so dense that several times we had to stop and wait for an opening before proceeding. All around, from one end of the Forum to the other, I caught snatches of heated conversations.

Near the Temple of Castor and Pollux two men were discussing an incident in the theater. The mention of Cicero caught my ear.

"—and the speech he made afterward was the best he's ever made!"

said the first man.

"Absurd!" countered the second. "It was the low point of his career.

Cicero should have resigned in disgrace! Defending such an unfair and un-Roman practice! Once upon a time the theater was the one place where Romans were truly equal. When I was a boy, the rich and poor all sat shoulder to shoulder. We booed the villains and laughed at the clowns and lusted after the young lovers as a single body."

"Everyone equal in the theater? The first four rows have always been for senators."

"Because being in the Senate is a mark of achievement and distinguished ancestry. But why should there be special seats for certain people just because they have money? They're common folk, the same as I am.

We should all sit together, like family, instead of splitting ourselves up between rich and poor. What, do I smell too strong from honest sweat for a perfumed merchant to sit next to me? Otho's law is a scandal, it's bad for Rome, and for Cicero to defend it—"

"Otho's law makes perfect sense, as you would know if you had really listened to Cicero's speech."

"I'd rather listen to an actor reciting Plautus—and from the best seats in the theater, if I make the effort to show up early enough to get them, rather than being shooed away because I don't happen to be of the rich equestrian class, like Cicero's family! Why should I have to sit behind some fat-headed equestrian who blocks my view?"

"Obviously you'd rather spit venom than deal in cogent argument."

"Very well, dismiss me because I never had schooling in rhetoric!

Perhaps a fist in your nose would be more convincing?"

Fortunately, an opening in the throng allowed us to pass at that moment. I leaned toward Rufus. "What is all this scandal about an incident in the theater? You mentioned it before."

"You haven't heard about it?"

"No."

He rolled his eyes. "It's been the talk of the city for months. It never stops! The easiest way to pick an argument in Rome! You know how it goes sometimes—a simple little incident suddenly attracts everyone's attention, ignites a controversy and becomes the rallying point for

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issues far greater than anything inherent in the incident itself. Well, a few years ago Lucius Roscius Otho was tribune and passed a bill reserving fourteen rows of seats in the theater for the wealthy equestrians."

"Yes, I remember."

"It seemed a liberal measure at the time, at least within the Senate.

There have always been at least four rows reserved for senators; therefore, Otho argued, why not reserve some rows for equestrians? The moneyed set who can't get into the Senate were very pleased, and they've been financing Otho's political career ever since. This year he's serving a term as praetor, and as such he's made sure that his seating law has been scrupulously enforced at all the public festivals. Well, it was in the month of Aprilis, at the very start of the theater season during the Megalesian Games, at a performance of 'The Girl from Andros,' when Otho himself appeared in the audience. A bunch of young rowdies at the back of the theater began to boo and hiss, saying they wanted better seats, and why couldn't they sit in some empty seats up in the equestrian rows? They shouted epithets at Otho. In response a contingent in the equestrian section began to applaud Otho. This was taken as an insult by the rowdies, who saw the equestrians' applause as a way of thanking Otho for not forcing them to sit with such trash. More hissing, more cheering, and soon there were threats and spitballs being hurled. The crowd was on the verge of a riot.

"Almost immediately, word of the incident got to Cicero in his house on the Palatine—Cicero's eyes and ears are everywhere, and nothing important happens in the city that he doesn't know about at once.

A short while later the consul himself appeared at the theater, with an armed bodyguard. He summoned everyone in the place to the Temple of Bellona and delivered a splendid speech that ended with the whole crowd cheering Otho and returning to their seats to watch the play without further interruption."

"What did Cicero say?"

"I wasn't there to hear it myself, but I'm sure that Cicero's secretary Tiro transcribed a copy, if you care to read it. Cicero cannot open his mouth without Tiro's scribbling every utterance, as if his master were an oracle. You know that Cicero can be quite convincing when he defends privilege and order. I believe he dwelled upon Otho's honorable service to the state, and scolded those who would be so crude as to hiss and boo an upstanding Roman magistrate. Then he defended extending privileges to the equestrians; not hard for him to do—he comes from the equestrian class himself, of course," said Rufus, with a patrician's disdainful lift of the eyebrow. "It's my theory that the more hot-blooded members of the crowd simply got bored and ran off to expend their energies elsewhere, while the more sedate audience members sheepishly returned to enjoy the comedy. Cicero counted the affair as a personal triumph."

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"From the argument we just overheard, there must be those who disagree."

"The controversy rages on and on. It's always little things that prick at people. Catilina has picked it up as a campaign issue, naturally. Catilina is always ready to be the champion of the discontented."

A little later I overheard another argument, this one between an orator on a makeshift wooden pedestal and a citizen who refused to let him deliver his speech, engaging him in a heated debate instead.

"The Rullan land reform would have changed everything for the better!" insisted the orator.

"Nonsense!" shouted the citizen. "It was one of the most poorly thought-out pieces of legislation ever proposed, and Cicero was right to speak out against it."

"Cicero is nothing more than a mouthpiece for the Optimates."

"And why not? It's up to the Best People to speak out against these mad schemes put forward by Caesar simply to curry favor with the mob—

and to get his hands on Egypt, into the deal."

"It was Rullus who proposed the law, not Caesar."

"Rullus opens his mouth and Caesar's words come out."

"Very well, then, we agree that the argument was not Rullus against Cicero, but Caesar against the Optimates," said the orator.

"Exactly!"

"And you must also agree that if the Rullan bill had become law, there could have been redistribution of land to the people who need it without recourse to violence or unfair confiscation."

"Absurd! It would never have worked. Who in Rome wants to head out for the countryside and become a farmer, anyway, when here in the city there's the circus and the festivals and the free grain dole?"

"It's attitudes like that that are ruining the Republic."

"It's Romans who are ruining the Republic, because they've grown soft and lazy. That's why we need the Optimates to keep their hands on the tiller."

"Their hands in the till, you mean. Better to have the hands of the common man on a plow."

"Ridiculous—look at the mess up in Etruria with Sulla's veterans.

Not one in ten of them turned out to be a decent farmer. Now they're all bankrupt and looking to that demagogue Catilina to bail them out, with fire and sword if he has to."

"So you don't want land reform, you don't like Catilina—"

"I despise him! He and his circle of pampered, well-born, irre-sponsible dilettantes. They've had their chance to lead decent lives and they've wasted themselves instead—going hopelessly into debt to more responsible and upright citizens. This whole radical scheme of his to forgive debts is no favor to the masses—it's a way to get himself and his

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friends off the hook, and to plunder the property of those who deserve to keep what they and their ancestors have accumulated. If schemers like Catilina end up powerless and impoverished, it's no more than they deserve. And if the voters of Rome have no more sense than to go along with their crazy ideas—"