Cicero (17 page)

Cicero was particularly uneasy about Catilina. At one point he thought of taking on his defense against the impending extortion charges in return for cooperation over his candidacy. “We have the jury we want,”
he told Atticus sardonically, “with the full cooperation of the prosecution. If he is acquitted, I hope he will be more inclined to work with me in the campaign.” This is one of the very few occasions when we see Cicero on record as willing to aid and abet corruption, a sign of his desperation to win. In the end, though, he gave up the idea and Catilina proceeded to secure a rigged acquittal without Cicero's help.

Cicero's other main rival, Antonius, was a much more malleable character. He had little aptitude for leadership in any direction, good or bad; Quintus said that “he was frightened of his own shadow.” However, he was happy enough to give additional support to someone who took the lead, a quality Cicero was to make the most of later.

Cicero decided to play to his own strength: he would use his skills as a public speaker to blacken his opponents. This would be a safer tactic than setting out policies which would be bound to offend the People whose votes he needed or the Senate on whose patronage he depended. He delivered a ferocious speech against Catilina and Antonius, citing the possibly nonexistent conspiracy of the previous year and attacking their political and private records. Both men had dirtied their hands during the proscription. Of Catilina, Cicero asked: “Can any man be a friend of someone who has murdered so many citizens?” He continued in that rip-roaring vein. “He has fouled himself in all manner of vice and crime. He is soaked in the blood of those he has impiously slaughtered. He has robbed the provincials. He has violated the laws and the courts.” He categorized
Antonius as “this ruffian in Sulla's army, this cut-throat at the entrance to Rome.” He also dropped some dark hints about their secret backers. “I assert, gentlemen, that last night Catilina and Antonius, with their attendants, met at the house of a certain nobleman well known to investigations of extravagance.”
He had to mean either Crassus or Caesar, one of whom had the money and the other the flair for spending it.

Cicero claimed that a new plot was brewing and there is evidence that something sinister was afoot. Before the Consular election, which took place in June, Catilina called a meeting of friends and dissidents. A list of those present survives: it includes the rejected Consular candidates of 65; Lucius Cassius Longinus, brother of the Cassius who would conspire against Caesar many years later; an old blue-blooded reprobate, P. Cornelius Lentulus Sura, who had already been Consul but, like Antonius, had been expelled from the Senate and was running for Praetorship in 63 in order to gain reentry. A man of no great note was also present, a certain Quintus Curius, who had been expelled from the Senate in 70. His importance was to lie in the fact that he had a talkative mistress named Fulvia. Members of the local nobility from the Italian colonies and municipalities visited Rome in order to attend the gathering. Finally, according to one first-century account, Crassus or Caesar was involved. If true, they were playing for very high stakes. By now they must have been questioning Catilina's political judgment: the charge is best seen as guesswork by hostile contemporaries.

In the event, Cicero won the election by a wide margin, heading the vote in all the wards. Admittedly, he had been lucky in his rivals, but he had succeeded without bribery or violence. For a New Man to win the Consulship was a remarkable accomplishment. In less than twenty years, Cicero had risen from being a little-known lawyer from the provinces to being joint head of state of the greatest empire in the known world. His triumphs in the law courts and his successful ascent up the honors ladder were due to his own abilities and native talent.

The election was a great day for Terentia as well as her husband. She had taken a risk when she married the newcomer from Arpinum, but now it seemed she or her relatives had chosen well and she joined the band of powerful matriarchs who exercised considerable influence behind the scenes. The record of the Consulship suggests that this strong-willed
woman showed little hesitation in offering her husband political advice and support.

Cicero had lived through terrible times and his fundamental aim was to make sure that they never returned. He stood for the rule of law and the maintenance of a constitution in which all social groups could play a part, but where the Senate took the lead according to ancestral tradition. His colleague was the feeble Antonius, with whom he struck an astute deal. Cicero, not wanting the usual governorship that followed a Consulship, agreed to give up the rich province he had been allocated, Macedonia, and pass it to Antonius. This would enable Antonius to recoup his debts (or more precisely, his election “expenses”) by the normal techniques of extortion. In return he would give Cicero a free hand during their Consular year and withdraw his support from Catilina, from whom trouble could be expected. This meant in effect that Cicero would be sole Consul.

Catilina was enraged by his defeat. Some time during the following months, Crassus and Caesar reviewed their options; they concluded that Catilina might become dangerously unreliable after this disappointment and began to scale down their support. They would have been reassured by Catilina's decision to be patient and stand again for Consulship in 63. But if he could not win the first time around, would he be likely to do so a second time, with the Senatorial cause now in the capable hands of Cicero? Probably not. In future he would not be able to rely on their backing.

When Cicero entered office on January 1, 63
BC
, the economic situation was bleak. Although the signs were that Pompey would defeat the King of Pontus, reopen the trade routes, set up the tax farmers in business again and come home loaded with booty, that still lay in the future. Victory was in sight, but for the time being Italy was suffering.

One consequence was that levels of unemployment in Rome were high. This was serious, for in the absence of a police force or any security services, it was easy for mob rule to flourish. So far as poor free-born citizens were concerned, life was precarious and many survived on jobs in the building trade or at the docks. Freedmen usually had the backing of their former owners and a wider range of specialist skills at their disposal; they probably dominated the retail trade and small-scale industrial enterprises. Both groups were suffering under the recession.

Meanwhile the endemic crisis of the countryside worsened. The south of Italy was still suffering from the after-effects of the Slave War. Also, many of Sulla's veterans had been settled in Etruria fifteen years previously, within striking distance of the capital: they had either been allocated poor-quality agricultural land or turned out to be unlucky farmers. Either way they were in trouble, and of a mind to make their unhappiness known.

The rich were in some difficulty too. When the recession hit them, their finances were already strained by various forms of conspicuous expenditure—in particular, the fashion for building
horti
, large and expensive villas with gardens outside the city, or holiday homes on the coast at resorts like Baiae. The costs of public life were high, with increasing pressure on candidates to spend a fortune in bribes or on theatrical shows and gladiatorial games. Some great families were running the shameful risk of insolvency.

The
populares
immediately threw down a challenge to the new regime. In January 63 a Tribune tabled the first land-reform bill for years. It was generally thought that, once again, Crassus and Caesar were behind the move. This presented Cicero with a ticklish problem. He was indebted to the
optimates
, who were as hostile to the redistribution of state land as their fathers and grandfathers had been, and indeed shared their conservative instincts. But if he could, Cicero wanted to be a Consul for all, believing that Rome would not have a future without what he called the
concordia ordinum
, the “concord of the classes.”

On the face of it, the bill's contents were sensible and moderate. Colonies were to be established by selling public land in Italy and the provinces and by buying additional privately owned land on a voluntary basis. Nevertheless, Cicero opposed the legislation both in the Senate and at the General Assembly, thus opening his Consulship on a negative note.

The proposed law was probably less contentious than the means of implementing it—a powerful commission with ten members and a life of five years. This was too much for a political culture that disapproved of power being handed for a substantial period of time to any individual or group. Cicero derisively nicknamed the commissioners the “ten kings.” It is not entirely clear what ensued, but in all likelihood the bill never came to the vote at the General Assembly.

Crassus and Caesar were probably not too put out by this setback. They had made some gains. The debate had cast doubt on the sincerity of Cicero's promise to be a Consul for all. It had also inserted a wedge between him and Pompey, who would soon have an army to resettle.

Meanwhile, Cicero maintained his oratorical predominance in the courts. He successfully defended a former Consul on a charge of extortion, a case in which Caesar gave evidence for the prosecution.

Caesar and his friends now staged a remarkable coup, a real-life agitprop drama with an unfriendly lesson for the Senate. Titus Labienus, a member of Caesar's circle and later one of his most able military commanders, unexpectedly indicted an elderly and inconspicuous Senator, Caius Rabirius, on a charge of high treason for a murder committed thirty-six years previously, when Saturninus had surrendered to Marius, then Consul, and been locked up with his followers in the Senate House. According to Labienus, Rabirius was one of the young men who had climbed on the roof and killed Saturninus with a rain of tiles.

This was no ordinary prosecution. The old man was to be tried under an archaic and brutal procedure called
perduellio
. The punishment, if he was found guilty, was scourging and crucifixion. A court was appointed according to the antiquated rules and Caesar and his cousin cleverly managed to get themselves chosen as its two judges. An execution post was erected in the Field of Mars in anticipation of a conviction.

What was the point of this bizarre rigmarole? Apparently the identity of Saturninus's killer had long been known: a slave who had won his freedom as a reward. What Labienus and, behind him, Caesar wanted to do was deliver a political warning. In times of crisis the Senate had the authority to call a state of emergency, through a special decree known as the Final Act (
senatusconsultum ultimum
). Its terms were broadly drawn: “The Consuls should see to it that the state comes to no harm.” This, some said, allowed the Consuls to override a Roman citizen's basic rights not to be executed without trial. According to this view, Saturninus's death had been legal because the Senate had passed the Final Act—despite the fact that he had been no ordinary citizen but a Tribune whose person was meant to be inviolable.
Populares
never accepted this interpretation of the law and argued that nothing could cancel a fundamental civic liberty. Legally they
appear to have been correct; the power under the Final Act to condemn citizens to death without due process had only become accepted through time and custom.

The reason for the timing of the attack on Rabirius is obscure. In general terms, it was in the interest of the
populares
continually to find ways of seizing the initiative from the
optimates
. This was especially the case now that the Senate, in Cicero's capable hands, looked as if it would recover lost ground. Rabirius's trial may then have simply been an episode in the ongoing campaign against the forces of conservatism. But there is another possibility. Caesar knew that Catilina had not yet run his full political course. If rejection at the polls drove him to act illegally, as appeared not unlikely, he might need protection from an extreme interpretation of the Final Act. In this case, the affair shows Caesar at his most prescient and most loyal.

Unsurprisingly, the judges found Rabirius guilty and passed a sentence of death. A
S
expected, he appealed to the People against the verdict. Hortensius spoke on Rabirius's behalf, arguing that he did not in fact commit the crime. He was followed by Cicero, who spent little time on the facts of the case. This was a political show trial and he went straight to the constitutional point. “What I assert with all the emphasis at my command, what I proclaim, what I publish to the world is identical with the stated opinions of the prosecutor [Caesar or Labienus]. No king remains, no tribe, no nation who can cause you any alarm. No external or foreign threat can infiltrate our Republic. If you wish Rome to live forever and our empire to be without end, if you wish that our glory never fade, we must be on our guard against our own passions, against men of violence, against the enemy within, against domestic plots. But against these evils your forefathers left you a great protection [in the Final Act]. Cherish this pronouncement.”

A vote on the appeal never took place and sources disagree about which way it looked as if it would go. After fruitlessly remonstrating with the judges, a Praetor, Quintus Caecilius Metellus Celer, used one of Rome's many obstructive constitutional devices to halt the proceedings. He ran up to the fort on top of the Janiculan Hill on the other side of the Tiber and pulled down the military flag flying there. In the city's early history this flag was raised during assembly meetings; if lowered, it warned of
an enemy attack and led automatically to the immediate suspension of public business. The rule was still in force and so the assembly dispersed.

How serious had Caesar been? It is hard to say. It may be that the trial was a neat and painless way of twisting the Senate's tail. If that were so, Caesar had presumably prompted Metellus Celer to abort the project before the old man was crucified. On the other hand, it is possible that Caesar really did want a guilty verdict and, one must suppose, an execution. Either way, he had made his point and he did not attempt to reconvene the court.