All of this required money, and although Cicero’s legal practice was now bringing in some income-not in the form of direct payments, of course, which were forbidden, but in gifts and legacies from grateful clients-he had nothing like the amount of ready cash necessary to mount a proper prosecution. Most ambitious young men in his position would have gone to see Crassus, who always gave loans to rising politicians on generous terms. But just as Crassus liked to show that he rewarded support, so he also took care to let people see how he punished opposition. Ever since Cicero had declined to join his camp, he had gone out of his way to demonstrate his enmity. He cut him dead in public. He poor-mouthed him behind his back. Perhaps if Cicero had groveled sufficiently, Crassus would have condescended to change his mind: his principles were infinitely malleable. But, as I have already said, the two men found it difficult even to stand within ten feet of each other.
So Cicero had no choice but to approach Terentia, and a painful scene ensued. I became involved only because Cicero, in a rather cowardly way, at first dispatched me to see her business manager, Philotimus, to inquire how difficult it would be to raise one hundred thousand from her estate. With characteristic malevolence, Philotimus immediately reported my approach to his mistress, who stormed down to find me in Cicero’s study and demanded to know how I dared poke my nose into her affairs. Cicero came in while this was happening and was obliged to explain why he needed the money.
“And how is this sum to be repaid?” demanded Terentia.
“From the fine levied on Verres once he is found guilty,” replied her husband.
“And you are sure he will be found guilty?”
“Of course.”
“Why? What is your case? Let me hear it.” And with that she sat down in his chair and folded her arms. Cicero hesitated, but knowing his wife and seeing she was not to be dissuaded, told me to open the strongbox and fetch out the Sicilians’ evidence. He took her through it, piece by piece, and at the end of it, she regarded him with unfeigned dismay. “But that is not enough, Cicero! You have wagered everything on that? Do you really think a jury of senators will convict one of their own because he has rescued some important statues from provincial obscurity and brought them back to Rome-where they properly belong?”
“You may be right, my dear,” conceded Cicero. “That is why I need to go to Sicily.”
Terentia regarded her husband-arguably the greatest orator and the cleverest senator in Rome at that time-with the kind of look a matron might reserve for a child who has made a puddle on the drawing-room floor. She would have said something, I am sure, but she noticed I was still there and thought the better of it. Silently she rose and left the study.
The following day, Philotimus sought me out and handed me a small money chest containing ten thousand in cash, with authorization to draw a further forty thousand as necessary.
“Exactly half of what I asked for,” said Cicero when I took it in to him. “That is a shrewd businesswoman’s assessment of my chances, Tiro-and who is to say she is wrong?”
Roll VII
WE LEFT ROME ON the Ides of January, on the last day of the Festival of the Nymphs, Cicero riding in a covered wagon so that he could continue to work-although I found it a torment trying even to read, let alone write, in that rattling, lurching carruca. It was a miserable journey, freezing cold, with snow flurries across the higher ground. By this time most of the crosses bearing the crucified rebel slaves had been removed from the Appian Way. But some still stood as a warning, stark against the whitened landscape, with a few rotted fragments of bodies attached. Gazing at them, I felt as if Crassus’s long arm had reached out after me from Rome and once again pinched my cheek.
Because we had departed in such a hurry, it had proved impossible to arrange places to stay all along our route, and on three or four nights when no inns were available we were reduced to sleeping by the roadside. I lay with the other slaves, huddled around the campfire, while Cicero, Lucius, and young Frugi slept in the wagon. In the mountains I would wake at dawn to find my clothes starched with ice. When at last we reached the coast at Velia, Cicero decided it would be quicker to board a ship and hug the coast-this, despite the risk of winter storms and pirates, and his own marked aversion to traveling by boat, for he had been warned by a Sibyl that his death would somehow be connected with the sea.
Velia was a health resort, with a well-known temple to Apollo Oulius, then a fashionable god of healing. But it was shuttered now and out of season, and as we made our way down to the harbor-front, where the gray sea battered the wharf, Cicero remarked that he had seldom seen a less enticing holiday spot. In the port, aside from the usual collection of fishing boats, was moored one huge vessel, a cargo ship the size of a trireme, and while we were negotiating our journey with the local sailors, Cicero asked to whom it belonged. It was, we were told, a gift from the citizens of the Sicilian port of Messana to their former governor Gaius Verres, and had been moored here for a month.
There was something infinitely sinister about that great ship, sitting low in the water, fully crewed and ready to move at a moment’s warning. Our appearance in the deserted harbor had clearly already been registered and was causing something of a panic. As Cicero led us cautiously toward it, three short blasts sounded on a trumpet, and the ship’s hull sprouted oars, like some immense water beetle, and edged away from the quayside. It moved a short distance out to sea and dropped anchor. As the vessel turned into the wind, the lanterns at its prow and stern danced bright yellow in the gloomy afternoon, and figures deployed along its heaving decks. Cicero debated with Lucius and young Frugi what to do. In theory, his warrant from the extortion court gave him authority to board and search any vessel he suspected of connection with the case. In truth, we lacked the resources, and by the time reinforcements could be summoned, the ship would be long gone. What it showed beyond doubt was that Verres’s crimes were on a scale far more vast than anything Cicero had imagined. He decided we should press on south at redoubled speed.
I guess it must be 120 miles from Velia down to Vibo, running straight along the shinbone to the toe of Italy. But with a favorable wind and strong rowing we did it in just two days. We kept always within sight of the shore, and put in for one night on the sandy beach, where we cut down a thicket of myrtle to make a campfire and used our oars and sail for a tent. From Vibo we took the coast road to Regium, and here we chartered a second boat to sail across the narrow straits to Sicily. We set off on a misty early morning in a saturating drizzle. The distant island appeared on the horizon as a dreary black hump. Unfortunately there was only one place to make for, especially in midwinter, and that was Verres’s stronghold of Messana. Throughout all his three years as governor, he had bought the loyalty of its inhabitants by exempting them from taxes, and alone of the towns on the island, it had refused to offer Cicero any cooperation. We steered toward its lighthouse, and as we drew closer realized that what we had perceived as a large mast at the entrance to the harbor was not part of a ship at all, but a cross, facing directly across the straits to the mainland.
“That is new,” said Cicero, frowning as he wiped the rain from his eyes. “This was never a place of execution in our day.”
We had no option but to sail straight past it, and the sight fell across our waterlogged spirits like a shadow.
Despite the general hostility of the people of Messana toward the special prosecutor, two citizens-Basiliscus and Percennius-had bravely agreed to offer him hospitality, and were waiting on the quayside to greet us. The moment he stepped ashore, Cicero queried them about the cross, but they begged to be excused from answering until they had transported us away from the wharf. Only when we were in the compound of Basiliscus’s house did they feel it safe to tell the story. Verres had spent his last days as governor living full-time in Messana, supervising the loading of his loot aboard the treasure ship which the grateful town had built for him. There had been a festival in his honor about a month ago, and almost as part of the entertainment, a Roman citizen had been dragged from the prison, stripped naked in the Forum, publicly flogged, and finally crucified.