This sounds exaggerated, but Cicero should have known what he was talking about, for he was brought in as mediator and persuaded Curio’s father to pay off his son’s debts. Antony was barred from the house and for a while latched himself on to Clodius. Their relationship did not last, perhaps because Antony had an affair with Clodius’s wife, Fulvia, whom he was later to marry. Also he grew uneasy with Clodius’s extremist politics and the opposition they were arousing. Deciding it was time for a fresh start, he went to Greece for military training and to study public speaking.
In fact, although Cicero deeply disapproved of such goings-on, he knew many of the younger generation quite well. For a time he was friendly with Clodius, who had been a member of his consular bodyguard, until Terentia began to worry that he was attracted to Clodia. (It is hard to imagine a more implausible romance.) He became very fond of the brilliant but volatile Caelius, whom he first met in 66, when he took him on as an informal pupil to study public speaking. Caelius became a sharp-eyed observer of the Roman scene, delighted in gossip and had an excellent sense of humor; ten years on he kept Cicero, who would forgive a lot for a good joke, up-to-date on the latest events in the city when the reluctant elder statesman was in Asia Minor on a foreign posting.
Catullus knew Cicero too and respected him enough to write him a charming poem:
Silver-tongued among the sons of Rome,
the dead, the living and the yet unborn,
Catullus, least of poets, sends
Marcus Tullius his warmest thanks:
—as much the least of poets
as he a prince of lawyers.
It seems odd that Cicero was on such good terms with people whose behavior he found morally objectionable. The fact is that he liked young men and, as he grew older, took much pleasure in bringing them on, developing their talents and promoting their careers. He enjoyed the liveliness of their company. Caelius was the first in a succession of youthful friends—the last and trickiest of whom was to be Caesar’s adopted son, the young Octavian, later the Emperor Augustus.
None of this is to suggest that Cicero was homosexual. He explicitly disapproved of same-sex relationships. In an age when politicians hurled every conceivable accusation of sexual malpractice against their opponents, this charge was very seldom laid at his door. Apart from the probably abusive suggestion that he lost his virginity to an older classmate in his youth, the only direct piece of evidence on the matter is a flirtatiously erotic ode he penned to a young slave of his, Tiro. But this is best seen as a playful imitation of Greek love poetry.
The Senate was uncertain how to handle the Good Goddess scandal. A trial would only cause trouble and might ignite the populares, but it seemed that there was no alternative. A bill to set up a special tribunal was agreed on by the Senate and the proposal was then considered by the People. Cicero was there and described the scene: “When the day came for the bill to be put to the assembly under the terms of the Senatorial decree, there was a flocking together of our goateed young bloods, the whole Catilinarian gang with little Miss Curio at their head, to plead for its rejection. Clodius’s roughs had taken possession of the gangways.” It seems to have been impossible to take a vote and the matter went back to the Senate. Eventually, in July 61, a court was established, but on terms favorable to Clodius. Crassus, Catilina’s shadowy financier, happy as ever to make trouble for the Senate, came forward with funds to bribe the jurors.
Clodius pleaded that he could not have been the intruder, for he had been out of Rome at the Etruscan town of Interamna (where he wielded considerable political influence and, according to Cicero, employed gangs to harass the countryside). Terentia, still irritated by the visits she believed her husband to be paying Clodia, goaded Cicero to take the witness stand and break Clodius’s alibi by reporting that he had seen him in Rome on the day in question. The trial started well, the jury asked for a guard (which suggested honesty), and it looked as if it was an open-and-shut case. But then Crassus’s cash began to do its work.
Cicero reported to Atticus:
Inside a couple of days, with a single slave (an ex-gladiator at that) for go-between, [Crassus] settled the whole business—called them to his house, made promises, backed bills or paid cash down. On top of that (it’s really too shocking!), some jurors actually received a bonus in the form of assignations with certain ladies or introductions to youths of noble families. Yet even so, with the [optimates] making themselves very scarce, 25 jurors had the courage to take the risk, no small one, preferring to sacrifice their lives rather than the whole community. AS for the other 31, they were more worried about their empty purses than their empty reputations.
Clodius was acquitted, but he was a vindictive man and made up his mind to punish Cicero for having testified against him. For a while, though, nothing happened and Cicero could not help amusing himself at his expense. He liked to call him Pretty-Boy (making a play on his cognomen Pulcher, the Latin word for “beautiful”). There were a number of barbed exchanges at Senate meetings and elsewhere over the next year or so.
“You bought a mansion,” Clodius sneered.
“One might think he was saying I had bought a jury,” Cicero riposted.
On another occasion, the two men happened to be taking a candidate for political office down to the Forum together and entered into conversation. Clodius asked if Cicero was in the habit of giving Sicilians who were in his clientela seats at gladiatorial shows. Cicero said he was not.
“Ah,” replied Clodius. “But I’m a new patron of theirs and I’m going to institute the practice. But my sister, with all that free space at her disposal as an ex-Consul’s wife, only gives me one wretched foot.”
Unable to resist referring to the gossip about their relationship, Cicero remarked: “Oh, don’t grumble about one foot in your sister’s case. You can always hoist the other.”
This kind of jibe was not overlooked. AS SO often in his career, Cicero let his sense of humor do serious damage to his prospects.
Sometime towards the end of 62 or perhaps in early 61, Pompey returned to Italy after nearly six years of campaigning. He had swept the seas clear of pirates, the war against Mithridates, King of Pontus, had been won, and Syria from the Euphrates to the frontiers of Egypt had been annexed to the Empire. Trade with Asia Minor could now resume and money flooded back into Rome.
Pompey was an able rather than a great general, but he was an administrator of the first order. The campaign against Mithridates had been long and hard fought, for the king was a wily foe. Hostilities opened after he invaded Bithynia, a new Roman province, thirteen years previously. When Pompey arrived to take over command of the Roman forces in the east from his able predecessor, Lucullus, he found that final victory was close at hand. The groundwork had been done for him and he had only to stamp out the final flames of resistance. Pompey persuaded the King of Parthia to invade Armenia, which was ruled by an ally of Mithridates, while he himself marched into the enemy’s homeland, Pontus. With overwhelming superiority of numbers, the Romans won a crushing victory.
The indomitable old king tried to keep going, seized the territories of a treacherous son, raised fresh troops and meditated an invasion of Italy. But his much put-upon subjects had had enough and revolts ensued. The great game was finally over. Holed up inside a remote citadel, Mithridates tried to poison himself, without success thanks to the physical immunity he had laboriously built up, and was forced to get a slave to stab him.