Pompey nodded, as if he could not have put the issue better himself, and at the end of the session he made an elaborate show of congratulating Cicero on his staunch defence of the constitution. But Cicero was not fooled. He saw exactly what Pompey was up to.
That night, Milo came to visit him for a council of war. Also present was Caelius Rufus, now a tribune and a long-term supporter and close friend of Milo. From down in the valley came the sound of scuffling, of dogs barking and occasional shouts and cries. A group of men carrying flaming torches ran across the Forum. But most citizens were too afraid to venture out and stayed in their houses behind barred doors. Milo seemed to think he had the election in the bag. After all, he had rid the state of Clodius, for which most decent people were grateful, and the burning-down of the Senate house and the violence in the streets had appalled the majority of voters.
Cicero said, ‘I agree that if there were a ballot tomorrow, Milo, you would probably win it. But there is not going to be a ballot. Pompey will see to that.’
‘How can he?’
‘He’ll use the campaign as a cover to manufacture an atmosphere of hysteria so that the Senate and the people will be forced to turn to him to abort the elections.’
Rufus said, ‘He’s bluffing. He doesn’t have the power.’
‘Oh, he has the power, and he knows it. All he has to do is sit tight and wait for things to come to him.’
Milo and Rufus both dismissed Cicero’s fears as the nervousness of an old man, and the next day resumed campaigning with fresh energy. But Cicero was right: the mood in Rome was too jittery for normal electioneering and Milo walked straight into Pompey’s trap. One morning soon after their meeting Cicero received an urgent summons to see Pompey. He found the great man’s house ringed with soldiers and Pompey himself in an elevated part of the garden with double his normal bodyguard. Seated in the portico with him was a man Pompey introduced as Licinius, the owner of an eating house near the Circus Maximus. Pompey ordered Licinius to repeat his tale to Cicero, and Licinius duly described how he had overheard a group of Milo’s gladiators plotting at his counter to murder Pompey, and how, when they realised he was listening, they had tried to silence him by stabbing him: as proof he showed Cicero a minor flesh wound just beneath his ribs.
Of course, as Cicero said to me afterwards, the whole story was absurd. ‘For a start, whoever heard of such feeble gladiators? If that kind of man wishes to silence you, you are silenced.’ But it didn’t matter. The eating-house plot, as it became known, joined all the other rumours now circulating about Milo – that he had turned his house into an arsenal filled with swords, shields and javelins; that he had stocks of brands hidden throughout the city in order to burn it down; that he had shipped arms along the Tiber to his villa at Ocriculum; that the assassins who had murdered Clodius would be turned loose on his opponents in the election …
The next time the Senate met, no less a figure than Marcus Bibulus, Caesar’s former consular colleague and passionate lifelong enemy, rose to propose that Pompey should hold office by emergency decree as sole consul. This was remarkable enough; what no one had anticipated was the reaction of Cato. A hush fell over the chamber as he got to his feet. ‘I would not have proposed this motion myself,’ he said, ‘but seeing as it has been laid before us, I propose we accept it as a sensible compromise. Some government is better than no government; a sole consulship is better than a dictatorship; and Pompey is more likely to rule wisely than anyone else.’
Coming from Cato, this was almost unbelievable – he had used the word ‘compromise’ for the first time in his life – and no one looked more stunned than Pompey. Afterwards, so the story went, he invited Cato back to his house to thank him personally and to ask him in future to be his private adviser in all matters of state. ‘You have no need to thank me,’ replied Cato, ‘for I only did what I believed to be in the best interests of the republic. If you wish to talk to me alone I shall certainly be at your disposal. But I shall say nothing to you in private that I wouldn’t say anywhere else, and I shall never hold my tongue in public to please you.’
Cicero observed their new closeness with deep foreboding. ‘Why do you think men like Cato and Bibulus have suddenly thrown in their lot with Pompey? Do you imagine they believe all this nonsense about a plot to murder him? Do you think they’ve suddenly changed their minds about him? Not at all! They’ve given him sole authority because they see him as their best hope of checking the ambitions of Caesar. I’m sure Pompey recognises this and believes he can control them. But he’s wrong. Don’t forget I know him. His vanity is his weakness. They will flatter him and load him down with powers and honours, and he won’t even notice what they’re doing, until one day it will be too late – they will have set him on a collision course with Caesar. And then we shall have war.’
Cicero went straight from the Senate meeting to find Milo, and told him in blunt terms that he must now abandon his campaign for the consulship. ‘If you send a message to Pompey before nightfall and announce that you are withdrawing your candidacy in the interests of national unity, you might just head off a prosecution. If you don’t, you’re finished.’
‘And if I am prosecuted,’ responded Milo slyly, ‘will you defend me?’
I had expected Cicero to say it was impossible. Instead he sighed and ran his hand through his hair. ‘Listen to me, Milo – listen carefully. When I was at the lowest point of my life, six years ago in Thessalonica, you were the only one who offered me hope. Therefore you can rest assured, whatever happens I shan’t turn my back on you now. But for pity’s sake, don’t let it come to that. Write to Pompey today.’
Milo promised to think about it, although naturally he did not withdraw. The vaulting ambition that had carried him, in a mere half-dozen years, from ownership of a gladiator school to the brink of the consulship, was hardly likely at this late stage to be bridled by caution and good sense. Besides, his campaign debts were so enormous (some said the amount he owed was seventy million sesterces) that he was facing exile whatever he did; he gained nothing by giving up now. So he continued with his canvass and Pompey moved ruthlessly to destroy him by setting up an inquiry into the events of the eighteenth and nineteenth of January – including the murder of Clodius, the burning of the Senate house and the attack on the home of Lepidus – under the chairmanship of Domitius Ahenobarbus. The slaves of Milo and Clodius were put to the torture to ascertain the facts, and I feared that some poor wretch, in his desperation, might remember my presence at the scene, which would have been embarrassing to Cicero. But I seem to have been blessed with the sort of personality that nobody notices – the reason perhaps why I have survived to write this account – and nobody mentioned me.
The inquiry led to Milo’s trial for murder at the beginning of April and Cicero was required to honour his pledge to defend him. It was the only time I ever saw him prostrated by nerves. Pompey had filled the centre of the city with soldiers to guarantee order. But the effect was the opposite of reassuring. They blockaded every approach to the Forum and guarded the main public buildings. All the shops were closed. An atmosphere of tension and dread lay over the city. Pompey himself came to watch proceedings and took a seat high up on the steps of the Temple of Saturn, surrounded by troops. Yet despite the show of force, the vast pro-Clodian crowd was allowed to intimidate the court. They jeered both Milo and Cicero whenever they tried to speak and made it difficult for the defence to be heard. All outrage and emotion was on their side – the brutality of the crime, the spectacle of the weeping widow and her fatherless children, and above all perhaps that curious retrospective sanctity that settles over the reputation of any politician, however worthless, if his career is cut off in its prime.