‘Why?’
‘Because if I were the Coponius brothers, the first thing I should do is issue a subpoena summoning you to give evidence.’
‘Can they do that?’ asked Pompey.
‘They can try. To save His Majesty the embarrassment, I would advise him to be miles away when the writ is served – out of Italy, if possible.’
‘But what about Asicius?’ said Pompey. ‘If he’s found guilty, that could look very bad for me.’
‘I agree.’
‘Then he must be acquitted. You’ll take the case, I hope? I’d regard it as a favour.’
This was not what Cicero wanted. But Pompey was insistent, and in the end, as usual, he had no option but to accede. Before we left, Ptolemy, as a token of his thanks, presented Cicero with a small and ancient jade statue of a baboon, which he explained was Hedj-Wer, the god of writing. I expect it was quite valuable, but Cicero couldn’t abide it – ‘What do I want with their primitive mud gods?’ he complained to me afterwards, and he must have thrown it away; I never saw it again.
Asicius, the accused man, came to see us. He was a former legionary commander who had served with Pompey in Spain and the East. He looked eminently capable of murder. He showed Cicero his summons. The charge was that he had visited Coponius’s house early in the morning with a forged letter of introduction. Dio was in the act of opening it when Asicius whipped out a small knife he had concealed in his sleeve and stabbed the elderly philosopher in the neck. The blow had not been immediately fatal. Dio’s cries had brought the household running. According to the writ, Asicius had been recognised before he managed to slash his way out of the house.
Cicero did not enquire about the truth of the matter. He merely advised Asicius that his best chance of acquittal lay in a good alibi. Someone would need to vouch that he was with them at the time of the murder – and the more witnesses he could produce and the less connection they had with Pompey, or indeed Cicero, the better.
Asicius said, ‘That’s easy enough. I have just the fellow lined up: a man known to be on bad terms both with Pompey and yourself.’
‘Who?’
‘Your old protege Caelius Rufus.’
‘Rufus? What’s he doing mixed up in this business?’
‘Does it matter? He’ll swear I was with him at the hour the old man was killed. And he’s a senator nowadays, don’t forget – his word carries weight.’
I half expected Cicero to tell Asicius to find another advocate, such was his distaste for Rufus. But to my surprise he said, ‘Very well, tell him to come and see me and we’ll depose him.’
After Asicius had gone, Cicero said, ‘Surely Rufus is a close friend of Clodius? Doesn’t he live in one of his apartments? In fact, isn’t Clodia his mistress?’
‘She certainly used to be.’
‘That was what I thought.’ The mention of Clodia made him thoughtful. ‘So what is Rufus doing offering an alibi to an agent of Pompey?’
Later that same day, Rufus came to the house. At twenty-five, he was the youngest member of the Senate, and very active in the law courts. It was odd to see him swaggering through the door wearing the purple-striped toga of a senator. Only nine years before, he had been Cicero’s pupil. But then he had turned on his former mentor, and eventually beaten him in court by prosecuting Cicero’s consular colleague, Hybrida. Cicero could have forgiven him that – he always liked to see a young man on the rise as an advocate – but his friendship with Clodius was a betrayal too far. So he greeted him very icily and pretended to read various documents while Rufus dictated his statement to me. Cicero must have been listening keenly, however, for when Rufus described how he was entertaining Asicius in his house at the time of the killing, and gave as his home address a property on the Esquiline, Cicero suddenly looked up and said, ‘But don’t you rent a property from Clodius on the Palatine?’
‘I’ve moved,’ replied Rufus casually, but there was something too offhand in his tone, and Cicero detected it at once.
He pointed his finger at him and said, ‘You’ve quarrelled.’
‘Not at all.’
‘You’ve quarrelled with that devil and his sister from hell. That’s why you’re doing this favour for Pompey. You always were the most hopeless liar, Rufus. I see through you as clearly as if you were made of water.’
Rufus laughed. He had great charm: he was said to be the most handsome young man in Rome. ‘You seem to forget, I don’t live in your house any more, Marcus Tullius. I don’t have to give an account of my friendships to you.’ He swung himself easily on to his feet. He was also very tall. ‘Now I’ve given your client his alibi, as was requested, and our business here is done.’
‘Our business will be done when I say it is,’ Cicero called after him cheerfully. He did not bother to rise. I showed Rufus out, and when I returned, he was still smiling. ‘This is what I’ve been waiting for, Tiro. I can feel it. He’s fallen out with those two monsters, and if that’s the case, they won’t rest until they’ve destroyed him. We need to ask around town. Discreetly. Spread some money around if we have to. But we must find out why he’s left that house!’
The trial of Asicius ended the day it began. The case boiled down to the word of a few household slaves against that of a senator, and on hearing Rufus’s affidavit, the praetor directed the jury to acquit. This was the first of many legal victories for Cicero following his return, and he was soon in high demand, appearing in the Forum most days, just as in his prime.
Throughout this time the violence in Rome worsened. On some days the courts could not sit because of the risks to public safety. A few days after setting upon Cicero in the Via Sacra, Clodius and his followers attacked the house of Milo and attempted to burn it down. Milo’s gladiators drove them off and retaliated by occupying the voting pens on the Field of Mars in a vain attempt to prevent Clodius’s election as aedile.
Cicero sensed opportunity in the chaos. One of the new tribunes, Cannius Gallus, laid a bill before the people demanding that Pompey alone should be entrusted with restoring Ptolemy to the throne of Egypt. The bill so incensed Crassus that he actually paid Clodius to organise a popular campaign against Pompey. And when Clodius eventually won the aedileship, he used his powers as a magistrate to summon Pompey to give evidence in an action he brought against Milo.
The hearing took place in the Forum in front of many thousands. I watched it with Cicero. Pompey mounted the rostra, but had hardly uttered more than a few sentences when Clodius’s supporters started to drown him out with catcalls and slow handclaps. There was a kind of heroism in the way that Pompey simply put his shoulders down and went on reading out his text, even though no one could hear him. This must have gone on for an hour or more, and then Clodius, who was standing a few feet along the rostra, started really working up the crowd against him.
‘Who’s starving the people to death?’ he shouted.
‘Pompey!’ roared his followers.
‘Who wants to go to Alexandria?’
‘Pompey!’
‘Whom do you want to go?’
‘Crassus!’
Pompey looked as if he had been struck by lightning. Never had he been insulted in such a way. The crowd started heaving like a stormy sea, one side pushing against the other, with little eddies of scuffles breaking out here and there, and suddenly from the back, ladders appeared and were passed rapidly over our heads to the front, where they were thrown up against the rostra and a group of ruffians began scaling it – Milo’s ruffians, it transpired, for the moment they reached the platform they charged at Clodius and hurled him off it, a good twelve feet down on to the spectators. There were cheers and screams. I didn’t see what happened after that, as Cicero’s attendants hustled us out of the Forum and away from danger, but we learned later that Clodius had escaped unharmed.