And so it would soon dramatically prove.
Scandal
Early every December women from the noblest families in the Republic would gather to celebrate the mysterious rites of the Good Goddess. The festival was strictly off limits to men. Even their statues had to be veiled for the occasion. Such secrecy fuelled any number of prurient male fantasies. Every citizen knew that women were depraved and promiscuous by nature. Surely a festival from which men were banned had to be a scene of lubricious abandon? Not that any male had ever dared take a peek to confirm this thrilling suspicion. It was one of the idiosyncrasies of Roman religion that even those who sniggered at it also tended to regard it with awe. Men, just as much as women, honoured the Good Goddess. She was one of the divine protectors of Rome. Clearly, should her rites be profaned, the sacrilege might threaten the security of all.
In the winter of 62 BC the matrons had particular reason to pray for the Good Goddess’s favour. Catiline was dead, but fears and rumours still gusted through the Forum. After a leisurely saunter on the tourist trail around Greece, Pompey had finally arrived on the Adriatic coast. It was said that he would be crossing to Italy before the end of the month. What would it be like for other ambitious noblemen, having to live like pygmies in the shadow of Pompey the Great? It was a question of particular concern to the two women who presided over the rites of the Good Goddess: Aurelia, Caesar’s mother, and Pompeia, his wife. The pontifex maximus himself, although he had provided his mansion for the occasion, was naturally not present. Along with every other male in his household, free and slave alike, Caesar had withdrawn for the night.
The mansion began to fill with incense, music and great ladies. Now, for a few brief hours, it was the city’s women who held the safety of Rome in their hands. There was no longer any call for them to skulk in the shadows, afraid of prying eyes. Yet one of Aurelia’s maids, looking for some music, observed a flute-girl who was doing exactly that. She approached her; the flute-girl shrank away. When the maid demanded to know who she was, the flute-girl shook her head, then mumbled Pompeia’s name. The maid shrieked. Dressed in a long-sleeved tunic and breastband the stranger might have been, but the voice had been unmistakably male. Uproar ensued. Aurelia, frantically covering up the sacred statues of the goddess, suspended the rites. The other women went in search of the impious intruder. They finally found him, hidden in the room of one of Pompeia’s maids. Off came the veil of the bogus flute-girl to reveal … Clodius.
Such at least was the story that immediately swept like wildfire around Rome. Gossip convulsed the city. Friends and enemies of Clodius alike huddled to swap the salacious details. If sporting a goatee or touching the head with a finger could be considered marks of effeminacy, then Clodius, by dressing up in women’s clothes and gatecrashing a sacred ritual, had clearly taken offensiveness to a whole new level. Overnight he became the toast of every loose-belted dandy and the bogey of every conservative in Rome. Caught in the middle, deeply embarrassed by the affair, was Caesar. Naturally, he had to affect outrage. Not only had Clodius violated the pontifical house, but it was also rumoured that he had been planning to violate Pompeia herself. Cuckolded Roman husbands had been known to set their slaves on adulterers, to beat them, rape them, even castrate them; at the very least Caesar would have been justified in dragging Clodius through the courts. But the pontifex had an image problem: despite his elevated religious status, he remained a topic of fevered gossip himself, the rake who had been labelled ‘a man for every woman, and a woman for every man’.28 For Caesar to adopt the tone of the moral majority might open him to even greater ridicule, quite apart from making an enemy of Clodius and alienating the fast set who were his natural supporters. After all, he was planning to run for the consulship within a couple of years. Clodius was far too well connected, and capricious, to risk offending. In the end Caesar resolved his dilemma by divorcing Pompeia, but refusing to say why: ‘Caesar’s wife must be above suspicion’29 was his single, Delphic comment. Then, before anyone could press him further, he slipped away to Spain, where he was due to serve as governor. It was a measure of his eagerness to be away from Rome that he arrived in his new province before the Senate had even had time to confirm his appointment.
Caesar’s departure did nothing to dim the obsession with the scandal. The continuing hysteria that surrounded Clodius’ stunt submerged even the news of Pompey’s arrival. This, contrary to most people’s fears, passed off without any great alarms. Rather than marching on Rome, the returning proconsul dismissed his army, then headed for the capital ‘unarmed, with no one to escort him save a few intimate friends, for all the world as though he were returning from a holiday abroad’.30 Pompey’s shows of simplicity were always ostentatious. The crowds who lined the route of his progress duly cheered themselves hoarse. His rivals back in Rome, however, were less easily impressed. Now that they no longer needed to fear Pompey they could concentrate on the far more pleasurable activity of cutting him down to size. To everyone’s delight, his first public speech was a flop. Pompey’s blend of pomposity and false modesty presented his enemies with an irresistible target. When he complacently commended the Senate for suppressing Catiline, Crassus was immediately up on his feet, praising Cicero to the skies, lauding him in ludicrously exaggerated terms, claiming that he never looked at his wife or home without thanking Cicero for their continued existence. Cicero himself, completely failing to recognise the irony, was thrilled. He had always idolised Pompey, and to be praised like this in the great man’s presence was heaven. Yet even he had to acknowledge that his hero, listening to Crassus’ speech, had appeared a little ‘peeved’.31
This was hardly surprising. Pompey had recently been hearing a good deal from Cicero. The previous year, while he had still been in Greece, a huge letter had thudded on to his reading desk, a book-length self-promotion in which the former consul had presumed to compare his achievements to those of the new Alexander. Pompey’s response had been withering. For Cicero, whose conceit still veiled gnawing insecurities, the cold dismissal by his hero had been deeply hurtful. He consoled himself with the thought that Pompey was jealous, but the rebuff had wounded not merely his vanity, but his entire vision of the future of Rome. As was so often the case with Cicero, the two went hand in hand. Yes, it was he who had saved the Republic, but, as he modestly acknowledged, he could never have done it without the support of his fellow citizens. The year of his consulship had been their, as well as his, finest hour. Surely this sense of common purpose could be maintained? What was a republic, after all, if not a partnership of interest and justice? Naturally, Cicero himself, as ‘the saviour of his country’, would have to remain at the helm, but he graciously accepted that other leading figures, Pompey especially, would also have their parts to play. All citizens – senators, equestrians and poor alike – would live in harmony. Self-interest would be subordinated to the interests of Rome.
As a manifesto, of course, this was a vision of cloud-cuckoo-land. It was hardly as though Cicero himself had been immune to ambition. Liberty – and the opportunity for an outsider to win the consulship – would be stifled by a society in which everyone knew his place. It was a paradox that was to torture Cicero all his life. His blueprint for the future, however impractical, was the product of much agonised reflection. Cicero was proud to consider himself the heir of the Republic’s noblest traditions. Chief among these was the age-old balance between ambition and duty. Should this be upset, then criminals might start to hack their way to the top, and tyrants to emerge. Catiline had been foiled – but he was bound to have successors. It was essential that they too be destroyed. After all, what hope was there for the Republic if the great were not the good?