By such desperate measures did Pompey impose himself and his authority back upon a city in which for months he had been kept under virtual house arrest. Yet the Senate, as well as the streets, had to be bent to his will, and Clodius, the arrogant, impossible Clodius, given a taste of his own medicine. The obvious means for achieving that was even then wringing his hands in high-flown misery across the Adriatic. Pompey, having refused to exert himself to save Cicero the year before, now began touring Italy, drumming up support for the exile’s return. Clients in the countryside and provincial towns were ordered to Rome. All through the summer of 57 they flooded into the capital. Meanwhile, Caesar, far away in Gaul, had been persuaded to give his reluctant approval to Cicero’s recall, and a vote in the Senate also backed it, by 416 to 1. The dissenting voice had, inevitably, belonged to Clodius. In August the long-awaited public vote was finally held in the Campus Martius. Clodius, attempting to disrupt it, was seen off with contemptuous ease by Milo, whose gangs stood on guard all day by the Ovile. So confident was Cicero of the result that he had already set sail for Italy as the vote was being held, and he was brought the news of his official recall as he waited in Brundisium. His progress from then on, with Tullia, his adored and much-missed daughter by his side, was like a dream come true. Cheering supporters lined the Appian Way. As he approached Rome the crowds streamed out to greet him. Applause followed him wherever he went. ‘I did not simply return home,’ he observed modestly, ‘but ascended to the sky.’24
But not even Cicero was conceited enough to doubt that the real triumph had been Pompey’s. More than ever, the orator’s old, familiar boasting had a shrillness bred of fear. Every Roman found it an agony to owe another man a favour, and Cicero now owed Pompey and Caesar his career. Hence his gushing in the Senate House. As well as leading the praise for Caesar’s conquests, he found himself proposing that Rome’s entire corn supply be put into Pompey’s hands. The motion was passed, but only once Clodius, with hateful logic, had pointed out to the Senate House its precise implications: Pompey would be able to bribe the starving slums with bread, while Cicero, the self-proclaimed scourge of demagoguery, now stood revealed as its agent. The bare-faced effrontery of these accusations did not make them any less true. Cicero duly spluttered and squirmed.
The exchange in the Senate House had served notice that Clodius felt not remotely chastened by his enemy’s return. When Cicero succeeded in persuading Rome’s priests that his mansion on the Palatine could be restored to him without offence to the goddess Liberty, Clodius resorted to naked terrorism. Cicero’s workmen were driven from the building-site; his brother’s house was set on fire; Cicero himself was assaulted on the via Sacra. At the same time the street fighting between Clodius and Milo reached a new pitch of violence, and the two gang leaders, each openly threatening to murder the other, also attempted to pursue each other through the courts. Once again, Milo indicted Clodius on a charge of using violence, and once again, by pulling strings in the Senate, Clodius wriggled free. In February 56, with a hypocrisy remarkable by even his standards, Clodius brought an identical charge against Milo. Cicero and Pompey, rallying to their man’s cause, prepared to speak in Milo’s defence. The spectacle of his three deadliest enemies lined up against him threw Clodius into a frenzy. As Pompey rose to speak the Forum seethed with catcalls and jeers. Clodius, from the prosecutor’s bench, began cheering on his gangs. As he had done before, he stood and tugged on his toga, giving cues to his supporters as they chanted abuse. Soon they were spitting at Milo’s strongarms, then throwing fists and stones. Milo’s gangs fought back. Clodius himself was dragged off the rostra, and a full-scale battle broke out. Amid the pandemonium, the trial itself was abandoned.
Pompey, shaken and bruised, retired from the Forum pale with fury. He was in no doubt who the mastermind behind the riot had been – and it was not Clodius. For three years Pompey had been in a syndicate with Crassus, and still he was quick to blame his old nemesis for every debacle. On this occasion, however, his suspicions appeared well founded. Ever since autumn 57, and his appointment as Rome’s grain commissar, Pompey had been angling for another Eastern command. So too had Crassus. Until the riot, mutual self-interest had kept their rivalry in the shadows, but Clodius, typically, had ripped aside the veil. ‘Who’s after a trip east?’ he had bellowed to his gangs. ‘Pompey!’ the gangs had thundered back in reply. ‘Who do we all want to go instead?’ The answer had been deafening, and calculated to give Pompey apoplexy: ‘Crassus!’25 A few days later Pompey told Cicero that he blamed his partner in the triumvirate for the riot, for Clodius, for everything. He then confided, just for good measure, that Crassus was plotting to have him killed.
The news spread like wildfire. The triumvirate was finished. That much, at least, seemed clear to everyone. If anyone did express surprise, it was only that the syndicate had lasted so long. After all, as surely as the seasons passed, so too did the grip of great men upon power. In that spring of 56 BC the thaw seemed general throughout the Republic. Old enemies of the triumvirate – Bibulus, Curio – began to stir, stretch their limbs, wake from hibernation. In the Senate the riot in the Forum was officially condemned as ‘contrary to the interests of the Republic’,26 and the responsibility for it pinned not on Clodius but on Pompey. This insult to his honour needled the great man into another vast explosion of temper, and, inevitably, he blamed Crassus. But although this may briefly have served to cheer him up, the evidence of his unpopularity with the entire Senate was now too glaring to be ignored. All his dearest ambitions – to bask in the praise and respect of his peers, to lead a brilliant second command to the East – stood revealed as hopeless fantasies. For Pompey the Great, it appeared, the glory days were over. As his fury subsided he plunged into a massive sulk.
The scent of his failure hung like carrion-perfume over Rome. In the Senate scavengers whined and snarled with excitement. With Pompey wallowing helplessly in the shallows, attention next turned to the prospects for beaching a second big beast. Caesar’s enemies knew that there would never be a better opportunity to finish him off. Three years they had been waiting – and now, at last, one of them moved in for the kill.
Courage came easily to Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus. In his case it was indistinguishable from an arrogance so pronounced as to verge on stupidity. Obscenely rich, obscenely well bred, he was a man described by Cicero, who was sensitive to such things, as having been born a consul-designate. In that spring of 56, Domitius prepared to claim his birthright. A brother-in-law of Cato, a blood-enemy of Pompey, who had executed Domitius’ brother in the dark days of the civil war, there could be no doubting where his loyalties would lie. In announcing that he would stand for the consulship, he openly declared that, if elected, he would have Caesar’s command declared invalid. As a replacement, naturally, he proposed himself. Transalpine Gaul had been conquered by his grandfather and he regarded it as his by hereditary right. At his back the establishment bayed its approval. First Pompey; now Caesar – surely the over-reachers, the would-be tyrants, were doomed?
Four and a half centuries of the Republic’s history said that they were. Tradition was stronger than any triumvirate. One man slipped, another took his place. This was how it had always been. Let Pompey, Caesar and their successors be eclipsed. Whatever happened, the Republic would endure.