Catilina's Riddle (6 page)

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the stalemate as they try to outdo one another can be spectacular—

literally. The year you came to live with me, Crassus and Pompey shared the consulship, and it was one feast after another, festival upon festival, from their inauguration in Januarius up to their valedictory addresses in December. The citizens grew fat and saw some fine chariot races that year!" "Can any senator run for the consulship?" asked Meto.

"No. There is a prescribed sequence of offices that must be held first. The praetorships, the quaestorships, and so on, all last a year and have their specific functions. A politician goes up the ladder rung by rung, year by year. An electoral defeat means he sits out a whole year, and men in a hurry quickly grow bitter."

"But what keeps a man from holding the same office over and over?"

"No man may hold the same office two years in a row—otherwise the same tiny handful of the most powerful men, like Pompey and Crassus, would be consul over and over. Besides, the consulship itself is yet another stepping-stone. The whole point of attaining the consulship is that it entitles a man to a year as governor of a foreign province. A Roman governor can become fabulously rich by bleeding the locals white with taxes. The whole ugly enterprise is fueled by endless corruption and greed."

"And who votes?"

"Every citizen but me, I suppose, since I gave it up years ago.

Nothing will ever be changed in Rome by voting, because not all votes are equal."

"What do you mean?"

I shook my head. Having been born a slave, Meto had no grounding from infancy in the inherited privileges of citizenship; having been raised in my household, his subsequent education in such technicalities had been sorely neglected, due to my own growing apathy. "The votes of a poor man count less than those of a rich one," I said.

"But how?"

"On election day the citizens gather on the Campus Martius, between the old city walls and the River Tiber. Eligible voters are divided into what are called centuries. But the centuries have nothing to do with the number of voters in them. One century might have a hundred men in it and another might have a thousand. The rich are allotted more centuries than the poor, even though there are fewer rich men than poor ones. Thus, when a rich man votes, his vote counts much more than a poor man's vote.

"Even so, the poor man's vote is often needed, since the candidates all come from the rich or high-born classes and split those centuries among themselves. So common citizens are not neglected; they are wooed, seduced, suborned, and intimidated in all sorts of legal and illegal

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ways, from promises of favoritism, to outright bribery, to gangs set loose in the streets to beat up a rival's supporters. During the campaign the candidates tell pretty lies about themselves and hurl hideous accusations at their rivals, while their supporters cover the city with slanderous graffiti."

" 'Lucius Roscius Otho kisses the buttocks of the brothel keepers!' "

quoted Meto, laughing.

"Yes, one of the more memorable slogans from last year," I agreed glumly. "Yet Otho was elected praetor nonetheless!"

"But what was so unusual about last year's campaign?" asked Meto earnestly. "I remember hearing you rage about it to visitors in your library, but I never really understood."

"Only that it was so dirty and disgusting. And the fact that it was Cicero, of all people, who plunged the tone of the campaign to such depths. And the things that Cicero has done since the election . . . "

I shook my head and started again. "There were three leading candidates: Cicero, Catilina, and Antonius. Antonius is a nonentity, a wastrel and a scoundrel, with no political program at all, only a desperate need to get his hands on a provincial governorship so that he can bleed enough taxes from the unfortunate locals to pay off his debts. There are those who say the same things about Catilina, but no one denies that Catilina has charm to spare and a keen political sense. He comes from ancient patrician stock, but he has no fortune; just the sort of aristocrat who backs radical schemes for redistributing wealth, canceling debts, democratizing public offices and the priesthoods—and the conservative ruling classes do not like to hear
that
sort of talk. Even so, within the old ruling class there are plenty of patricians who have fallen on bad times and are desperate for a way out, and there are plenty of rich men who think they might use a demagogue for their own purposes, and so Catilina was not without substantial backing, despite his radical posturing. Crassus himself, the richest man in Rome, was his chief financial backer. Who knows what Crassus was up to?

"Then there was Cicero. None of his ancestors had ever held elective office before—he was the first of his family to hold public office, what they call a New Man. And no New Man had managed to get himself elected consul in living memory. The aristocracy turned up their noses at him, despising his political canniness, his eloquence, his success with the crowd. Cicero is a glorious upstart, a comet that came from nowhere, and immodest as a peacock. In his own way he must have appeared as much a threat to the order of things as Catilina. And he might have been, had his principles not proved to be so flexible.

"Catilina and Antonius formed an alliance. From early on they were both favored to win. Catilina never ceased to needle the aristocracy with reminders of Cicero's common origins (though Cicero was hardly

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born poor!), but to his own supporters he began talking up the kind of radical schemes that give property owners gray hair and sleepless nights.

The rich were in a quandary—Cicero they could not stomach, but Catilina they truly feared.

"As for Cicero, his campaign was managed by his brother Quintus.

After the election, one day when I had business at his house, Cicero pressed me to look at a series of letters that he had exchanged with Quintus, discussing the progress of the campaign; he was so proud of them that he was actually talking about making them into a pamphlet, a sort of guide to successful electioneering. At the very outset Cicero and his brother decided to stop at nothing to destroy Catilina's character.

Slander is the accepted style in any election campaign, but Cicero set new standards. Some of the accusations were whispered from ear to ear; others were made by Cicero outright in his speeches. In the thick of it I dreaded setting foot in the Forum, knowing I would have to hear Cicero haranguing the crowd. Even when I could avoid the Forum, the graffiti and the gossip were everywhere. If only half of what they said about Catilina is true, the man should have been strangled in his mother's womb."

"What was he accused of?"

"A whole catalogue of crimes. There were the usual accusations of corruption, of course, such as buying votes and bribing election officials; those accusations were probably true, considering the financial backing that Catilina was receiving from Crassus—what good is so much money in an election except for bribes? When Roman voters know a candidate has money, they run to him with their palms up.

"Cicero also dredged up old charges of corruption from the days when Catilina was an administrator in Africa. A few years ago Catilina was tried on those particular charges—and Cicero himself considered defending him! Catilina was found innocent, for what it's worth. Lodging such criminal charges is just another tool that Roman politicians use to embarrass a rival and disqualify him from running for office. Both the charge and the verdict are purely political; any link to truth or justice is purely coincidental.

"Then there were the more serious accusations and innuendoes—

rumors of sexual scandal, incest, murder . . . but perhaps all this talk of politics is beginning to bore you."

"Not at all!" Meto's wide eyes showed I had his full attention.

I cleared my throat. "Very well. They say that back in the terrible days of Sulla the dictator, Catilina served as one of his henchmen, killing Sulla's enemies and bringing in their heads for the bounty. They say he got away with murdering his own brother-in-law that way; Catilina's sister wanted the man killed and Catilina did it in cold blood, then made it legal by listing the man as one of Sulla's enemies."

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"Is it true?"

I shrugged. "Men did terrible things in Sulla's time. Crassus made himself rich by buying up murdered men's estates. When murder is made legal, you see the true capacity of men for wickedness. Perhaps the story about Catilina is true, perhaps not. He was brought to trial for one instance of murder, twenty years after the fact, and found innocent. Who knows? But these were only the first of his alleged murders.

"A few years ago, when he came back from Africa, Catilina took a new wife. They say the woman refused to wed Catilina if there was already an heir in his house, so he murdered his son. As for the young bride, she happens to be the daughter of one of Catilina's former mistresses—there are even those who say she's Catilina's daughter!"

"Incest!" whispered Meto.

"Cicero himself never said that word aloud, he only made the innuendo. And that is only the beginning of the list of Catilina's alleged sexual crimes. They claim he corrupted one of the Vestal Virgins in a great scandal ten years ago; about that I happen to know a little, because I was summoned to investigate the matter in secret. It's the only time I've ever had personal dealings with Catilina, and I found him a puzzlement—utterly charming and utterly suspicious. Cicero likes to remind his listeners of the scandal, but only to a point, since his wife's sister was the Vestal accused of fornicating with Catilina! Oh, in some ways Rome is quite a small town."

"And did they? Catilina and the Vestal?" Meto was positively glowing with interest.

"That I don't know, though I have my suspicions. I'll tell you the full story some other time. At any rate, both Catilina and the Vestal won acquittal—which, as I told you, has little to do with guilt or innocence."

"It sounds as if Catilina has spent most of his career defending himself in court, or else murdering people!"

"And the rest of the time he fornicates, if you believe the stories.

His circle in Rome is said to be utterly dissolute; he charms the bright young men of Rome by pimping for them, and charms rich, aging matrons by guiding the same young men into their bedrooms; they say he occasionally takes the best-looking of the young men and the richest of the matrons for himself. Certainly a contrast to Cicero! Say, do you want to hear a joke about Cicero that was going around during the campaign?"

"Yes."

"Keep in mind this probably came from Catilina. You have to know that Cicero has a daughter who's thirteen, Tullia, and a son who's barely two, Marcus. Well, they say that Cicero hates sex so much that he's tried it only twice in his life. Tullia came of the first time, but he hated it as much as he thought he would. Eleven years later his wife nagged

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him into trying it again, and he agreed, just to be sure that it was as bad as he remembered—and the outcome was Marcus!"

Meto winced.

"Well, I suppose it's a rare boy who laughs at his father's jokes. But you should have heard them laughing in the taverns when they told that one on election day. But after the votes were counted, it was Cicero who laughed."

"Did Catilina just tell jokes about Cicero, or did he try to defend himself against all those accusations?"

"Oddly enough, he didn't try. Perhaps the rumors are true, or true enough that he didn't care to repeat them, even to refute them. And then, Catilina is a patrician, and Cicero is a New Man—I think that Catilina was too haughty to step into the gutter with someone he considers so far beneath him. That's another tactic of Roman politicians, especially from old families—they wrap themselves in their dignity. But Catilina's haughtiness proved a cold garment. On election day Cicero was the clear winner by an overwhelming majority. It was a tremendous personal triumph for a man without ancestry, who created a political career by his own canniness and perseverance. The consulship is a pin-nacle few men attain. Cicero has reached it. This is his glorious year, and no one can say he didn't earn it."

"And Catilina?"

"Trailing far behind Cicero in the votes was Antonius, the nonentity. Catilina was a very close third, but third means nothing in a race for the consulship. In previous years one lawsuit after another kept Catilina from running. When he finally had his chance, Cicero trounced him. This year Catilina is running again. He was said to be heavily in debt when he ran last year. How much further into debt will this race drive him? He must be a desperate man, and if one can believe even a small part of the rumors, a man easily disposed to murder. Not the sort of man I would care to have as a guest under my roof."

"I suppose not," said Meto gravely, "even to return Cicero's favor."

We sat for a while in silence, looking down on the farm. Suddenly Meto made an odd noise and began to shiver. He clutched himself so violently that I was alarmed—but he was only laughing, so uproariously that he rolled off the stump onto the grass, hugging himself.

"What in Hades—"

"Now I get it!" he gasped. "Only twice in his life—and tried it the second time just to make sure it was as bad as he remembered!" He laughed so hard his face turned red.

I rolled my eyes, but couldn't help smiling. The law and society might say that he was almost a man, but it often seemed to me that Meto was still very much a boy.

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C H A P T E R F O U R

inner that night was not a success. Bethesda is not a bad cook, but cooking is among the least of her skills; cooking was certainly not the reason I bought her at the slave market in Alexandria those many years ago. A slave D no longer—when she became pregnant with Diana I manumitted and married her—she was quite skillful in managing the labor of others, and to her I could leave the running of the household with complete confidence . . . except in the matter of the kitchen, where the egos of cooks were always colliding with her own. With Congrio lent to Claudia, Bethesda had taken advantage of the opportunity to exercise full sway in the kitchen.