Pompey waved at the crowd for quiet, then began speaking in his parade-ground voice. “People of Rome, the leaders of the Senate have graciously conveyed to me the offer of a triumph, and I am pleased to accept it. They have also told me that I will be allowed to stand as a candidate for the consulship, and I am pleased to accept that as well. The only thing that pleases me more is that my old friend Marcus Licinus Crassus will be my colleague.” He concluded by promising that the following year he would hold a great festival of games, dedicated to Hercules, in honor of his victories in Spain.
Well, these were fine words, no doubt, but he said them all too quickly, forgetting to leave the necessary pause after every sentence, which meant those few who had managed to hear his words had no opportunity to repeat them to those behind who had not. I doubt if more than a few hundred out of that vast assembly knew what he was saying, but they cheered in any case, and they cheered even more when Crassus immediately, and cunningly, upstaged him.
“I hereby dedicate,” he said, in the booming voice of a trained orator, “at the same time as Pompey’s games-on the same day as Pompey’s games-one tenth of my fortune-one tenth of my entire fortune-to providing free food to the people of Rome-free food for every one of you, for three months-and a great banquet in the streets-a banquet for every citizen-a banquet in honor of Hercules!”
The crowd went into fresh ecstasies. “The villain,” said Cicero admiringly. “A tenth of his fortune is a bribe of twenty million! But cheap at the price. See how he turns a weak position into a strong one? I bet you were not expecting that,” he called out to Palicanus, who was struggling toward us from the tribunal. “He has made himself look Pompey’s equal. You should never have allowed him a platform.”
“Come and meet the imperator,” urged Palicanus. “He wants to thank you in person.” I could see Cicero was of two minds, but Palicanus tugged at his sleeve, and I suppose he thought he ought to try to salvage something from the day.
“Is he going to make a speech?” shouted Cicero as we followed Palicanus toward the tribunal.
“He does not really make speeches,” replied Palicanus over his shoulder. “Not yet, anyway.”
“That is a mistake. They will expect him to say something.”
“Well, they will just have to be disappointed.”
“What a waste,” Cicero muttered to me in disgust. “What I would not give to have an audience such as this! How often do you see so many voters in one place?”
But Pompey had little experience in public oratory, and besides he was accustomed to commanding men, not pandering to them. With a final wave to the crowd he clambered down from the platform. Crassus followed suit, and the applause slowly died away. There was a palpable sense of anticlimax, as people stood around, wondering what they should do next. “What a waste,” repeated Cicero. “I would have given them a show.”
Behind the tribunal was a small, enclosed area, where it was the custom for the magistrates to wait before going up to officiate on election day. Palicanus conducted us into it, past the guards, and here, a moment or two later, Pompey himself appeared. A young black slave handed him a cloth, and he dabbed at his sweating face and wiped the back of his neck. A dozen senators waited to greet him, and Palicanus thrust Cicero into the middle of the line, then drew back with Quintus, Lucius, and me to watch. Pompey was moving down the queue, shaking hands with each of the senators in turn, Afranius at his back to tell him who was who. “Good to meet you,” said Pompey. “Good to meet you. Good to meet you.” As he came closer I had a better opportunity to study him. He had a noble face, no question of it, but there was also a disagreeable vanity in those fleshy features, and his grand, distracted manner only emphasized his obvious boredom at meeting all these tedious civilians. He reached Cicero very quickly.
“This is Marcus Cicero, Imperator,” said Afranius.
“Good to meet you.”
He was about to move on, but Afranius took his elbow and whispered, “Cicero is considered one of the city’s foremost advocates, and was very useful to us in the Senate.”
“Was he? Well, then-keep up the good work.”
“I shall,” said Cicero quickly, “for I hope next year to be aedile.”
“Aedile?” Pompey scoffed at the very idea. “No, no, I do not think aedile. I have other plans in that direction. But I’m sure we can always find a use for a clever lawyer.”
And with that he really did move on-“Good to meet you…Good to meet you…”-leaving Cicero staring straight ahead and swallowing hard.
Roll V
THAT NIGHT, for the first and last time in all my years in his service, Cicero drank too much. I could hear him arguing over dinner with Terentia-not one of their normal, witty, icily courteous disputes, but a row which echoed throughout the small house, as she berated him for his stupidity in ever trusting such a dishonorable gang: Piceneans, all of them, not even proper Romans! “But then of course, you are not a proper Roman, either”-a dig at Cicero’s lowly provincial origins which invariably got under his skin. Ominously, I did not hear what he said back to her-it was delivered in such a quiet, malevolent tone-but whatever it was, it must have been devastating, for Terentia, who was not a woman easily shaken, ran from the dining room in tears and disappeared upstairs.
I thought it best to leave him well alone. But an hour later I heard a crash, and when I went in Cicero was on his feet and swaying slightly, staring at a broken plate. The front of his tunic was stained with wine. “I really do not feel well,” he said.
I got him up to his room by hooking his arm over my shoulder-not an easy procedure, as he was heavier than I-laid him on his bed, and unlaced his shoes. “Divorce,” he muttered into his pillow, “that is the answer, Tiro-divorce, and if I have to leave the Senate because I can’t afford it-well, so what? Nobody would miss me. Just another ‘new man’ who came to nothing. Oh, dear, Tiro!” I managed to get his chamber pot in front of him just before he was sick. Head down, he addressed his own vomit. “We shall go to Athens, my dear fellow, and live with Atticus and study philosophy and no one here will miss us-” these last few words ran together into a self-pitying burble of slurred syllables which no shorthand symbol of mine could ever have reconstructed. I set the pot beside him and blew out the lamp. He was snoring even before I reached the door, but I confess I went to bed that night with a troubled heart.
And yet, the next morning, I was woken at exactly the usual predawn hour by the sound of him going through his exercises-a little more slowly than usual, perhaps, but then it was awfully early, for this was the height of summer, and he can hardly have had more than a few hours’ sleep. Such was the nature of the man. Failure was the fuel of his ambition. Each time he suffered a humiliation-be it as an advocate in his early days when his constitution failed him, or on his return from Sicily, or now, with Pompey’s offhand treatment-the fire in him was temporarily banked, but only that it might flare up again even more fiercely. “It is perseverance,” he used to say, “and not genius that takes a man to the top. Rome is full of unrecognized geniuses. Only perseverance enables you to move forward in the world.” I heard him preparing for another day of struggle in the Roman Forum and felt the old, familiar rhythm of the house reassert itself.
I dressed. I lit the lamps. I told the porter to open the front door. I checked the callers. Then I went into Cicero’s study and gave him his list of clients. No mention was ever made, either then or in the future, of what had happened the previous night, and I suspect this helped draw us even closer. To be sure, he looked a little green, and he had to screw up his eyes to focus on the names, but otherwise he was entirely normal. “Sthenius!” he groaned, when he saw who was waiting, as usual, in the tablinum. “May the gods have mercy upon us!”
“He is not alone,” I warned him. “He has brought two more Sicilians with him.”
“You mean to say he is multiplying?” He coughed to clear his throat. “Right. Let us have him in first and get rid of him once and for all.”
As in some curious recurring dream from which one cannot wake, I found myself yet again conducting Sthenius of Thermae into Cicero’s presence. His companions he introduced as Heraclius of Syracuse and Epicrates of Bidis. Both were old men, dressed, like Sthenius, in the dark garb of mourning, with uncut hair and beards.