And with that it was over. For a moment Cicero stood there – one hand stretched towards the jury, the other towards Rufus – and there was silence. Then some great subterranean force seemed to rise from beneath the Forum, and an instant later the air began to tremble as several thousand pairs of feet stamped the ground and the crowd roared their approval. Someone started pointing repeatedly at Clodia and shouting, ‘Whore! Whore! Whore!’ and very quickly the chant was taken up all around us, the arms flashing out again and again: ‘Whore! Whore! Whore!’
Clodia looked out blank-faced with incredulity across this sea of hatred. She didn’t seem to notice that her brother had moved across the court and was standing beside her. But then he grasped her elbow and that seemed to jolt her out of her reverie. She glanced up at him, and finally, after some gentle coaxing, she allowed herself to be led off the platform and out of sight and into an obscurity from which it is fair to say she never again emerged as long as she lived.
Thus did Cicero exact his revenge on Clodia and reclaim his place as the dominant voice in Rome. It is hardly necessary to add that Rufus was acquitted and that Clodius’s loathing of Cicero was redoubled. ‘One day,’ he hissed, ‘you will hear a sound behind you, and when you turn, I shall be there, I promise you.’ Cicero laughed at the crudeness of the threat, knowing he was too popular for Clodius to dare to attack him – at least for now. As for Terentia, although she deplored the vulgarity of Cicero’s jokes and was appalled by the rudeness of the mob, nevertheless she was pleased by the utter social annihilation of her enemy, and as she and Cicero walked home, she took his arm – the first time I had witnessed such a public gesture of affection for years.
The following day, when Cicero went down the hill to attend a meeting of the Senate, he was mobbed both by the ordinary people and by the scores of senators waiting outside the chamber for the session to begin. As he received the congratulations of his peers, he looked exactly as he had done in his days of power, and I could see that he was quite intoxicated by his reception. As it happened, this was the Senate’s final meeting before it rose for its annual vacation, and there was a febrile mood in the air. After the haruspices had ruled the heavens propitious, and just as the senators started to file in for the start of the debate, Cicero beckoned me over and pointed on the order paper to the main subject to be discussed that day: the grant of forty million sesterces from the treasury to Pompey, to finance his grain purchases.
‘This could be interesting.’ He nodded to the figure of Crassus, just then stalking in to the chamber, wearing a grim expression. ‘I had a word with him about it yesterday. First Egypt, now this – he’s in a rage at Pompey’s megalomania. The thieves are at one another’s throats, Tiro: there could be an opportunity for mischief here.’
‘Be careful,’ I warned him.
‘Oh dear, yes: “Be careful!”’ he mocked, and tapped me on the head with the rolled-up order paper. ‘Well, I have a little power after yesterday, and you know what I always say: power is for using.’
With that he went off cheerfully into the Senate building.
I had not been intending to stay for the session, having much work to do in preparing Cicero’s speech of the previous day for publication. But now I changed my mind and went and stood at the doorway. The presiding consul was Cornelius Lentulus Marcellinus, a patriotic aristocrat of the old sort – hostile to Clodius, supportive of Cicero and suspicious of Pompey. He made sure to call a series of speakers who all denounced the granting of such a huge sum to Pompey. As one pointed out, there was no money available in any case, every spare copper being swallowed up implementing Caesar’s law that gave the Campanian lands to Pompey’s veterans and the urban poor. The house grew rowdy. Pompey’s supporters heckled his opponents. His opponents shouted back. (Pompey himself was not allowed to be present, as the grain commission conveyed imperium – a power that barred its holders from entering the Senate.) Crassus looked gratified with the way things were going. Finally, Cicero indicated that he wished to speak, and the house became quiet as senators leaned forwards to hear what he had to say.
‘Honourable members,’ he said, ‘will recall that it was on my proposal that Pompey was given this grain commission in the first place, so I am hardly going to oppose it now. We cannot order a man to do a job one day, and then deny him the means with which to accomplish it the next.’ Pompey’s supporters murmured loud assent. Cicero held up his hand. ‘However, as has been eloquently pointed out, our resources are finite. The treasury cannot pay for everything. We cannot be expected to buy grain all over the world to feed our citizens for nothing and at the same time give free farms to soldiers and plebs. When Caesar passed his law, even he, with all his great powers of foresight, can hardly have imagined that a day was coming – and coming very soon – when veterans and the urban poor would have no need of farms to grow grain, because the grain would simply be given to them for nothing.’
‘Oh!’ shouted the benches of the aristocrats in delight. ‘Oh! Oh!’ And they pointed at Crassus, who, along with Pompey and Caesar, was one of the architects of the land laws. Crassus was staring hard at Cicero, although his face was impassive and it was impossible to tell what he was thinking.
‘Would it not be prudent,’ continued Cicero, ‘in the light of changing circumstances, for this noble house to look again at the legislation passed during the consulship of Caesar? Now is obviously not the right occasion to discuss it fully, complex as the question is, and conscious as I am that the house is eager to rise for the recess. I would therefore propose that the issue be placed on the order paper at the first available opportunity when we reconvene.’
‘I second that!’ shouted Domitius Ahenobarbus, a patrician who was married to Cato’s sister, and who hated Caesar so much he had recently called for him to be stripped of his command in Gaul.
Several dozen other aristocrats also jumped up clamouring to add their support. Pompey’s men seemed too confused to react: after all, the main thrust of Cicero’s speech had seemed to be in support of their chief. It was indeed a tidy piece of mischief that Cicero had wrought, and when he sat down and glanced along the aisle in my direction, I almost fancy he winked at me. The consul held a whispered conference with his scribes and then announced that in view of the obvious support for Cicero’s motion, the issue would be debated on the Ides of May. With that the house was adjourned and the senators started moving towards the exit – none quicker than Crassus, who almost knocked me flying in his eagerness to get away.
Cicero, too, was determined to have a holiday, feeling he deserved one after seven months of non-stop strain and labour, and he had in mind the ideal destination. A wealthy tax farmer for whom he had done much legal work had lately died, leaving Cicero some property in his will – a small villa on the Bay of Naples, at Cumae, between the sea and the Lucrine Lake. (In those days, I should add, it was illegal to accept direct payment for one’s services as an advocate, but permissible to receive legacies; the rule was not always strictly observed.) Cicero had never seen the place but had heard that it enjoyed one of the loveliest aspects in the region. He proposed to Terentia that they should travel to inspect it together, and she agreed, although when she discovered I was to be included in the party, she plunged into another of her sulks.
‘I know how it will be,’ I overheard her complaining to Cicero. ‘I shall be left alone all day while you are closeted with your official wife!’