John Roberts - The Tribune's curse

“The honor is mine. I can see how busy you must be.”

“I am at the disposal of the citizens at all times,” he said. “However, I think they will grant us a few minutes’ leave.” He went to the doorway and held up his hands. “My friends, fellow citizens, I must confer with the distinguished senator Metellus for a brief time. I promise that I will hear all your petitions.” With sounds of disappointment, people backed away from the door, leaving us alone beside the pool of the compluvium .

Not that we were precisely alone. There remained behind a dozen or so friends of Ateius, most of them, like himself, of the equestrian order. They were all prosperous-looking men, as indeed was to be expected, a sizable fortune being the only real qualification for enrollment in that order. Ateius provided introductions.

“Private and formal meals are all but out of the question for a tribune,” Ateius said, “but if you aren’t finicky, I keep a simple buffet here.” He led me to a long table heaped with food.

“This is more than adequate,” I assured him, generously. Indeed, it was food of the plainest sort: bread and cheeses and fresh fruit, but that was to be expected. He couldn’t rightly refuse food to his callers, and that mob would bankrupt him quickly if he laid on the delicacies. And for a man who had been living for months at a time on army rations when he could get them, there was nothing wrong with plain food. I heaped a plate and set it on a small table, and Ateius took a chair opposite me. The other men stood around attentively, far enough away to give us a sort of privacy, near enough so that Ateius could summon them without raising his voice. There is an art to this sort of attendance, although Romans have never mastered it the way they have in Eastern courts.

While we ate, we spoke of this and that, nothing serious. He bemoaned the travails of the tribuneship; I bewailed the forthcoming burdens of the aedileship; we both savored our own importance. Then, when we were finished eating, he got down to it.

“It’s good to have you among us, Senator Metellus. The rest of your family have been maddeningly noncommittal.”

It occurred to me that I had missed something important. “I beg your pardon? Whom have I joined?”

He smiled. “No need to be coy. By now everybody knows that you’ve turned down Crassus’s offer to assume your debts, and did it at some personal danger, too. We admire that.”

“ ‘We’?”

He waved a hand at the men around him. “The anti-Crassus faction. The men who know that the man is about to bring disaster upon us.”

This was tricky. In the politics of the Republic, one never admitted to belonging to a factio . You, public-spirited statesman that you were, thought of nothing but the good of the State. On the contrary, it was your opponents, your enemies, whom you accused of belonging to factiones . Unlike you, they were self-seeking curs without honor or dignity.

It was all claptrap, of course. Everyone belonged to one factio , and many belonged to several. It was never formal or codified, like being a supporter of one of the racing companies in the Circus, where we Metelli had been Reds for centuries. In fact, it was from the Circus that we got the word factio .

At this time there were two major parties to which everyone subscribed to one extent or other. There were the Optimates: the “Good Men”, i.e., the wellborn, and the Populares: the “Men of the People”, i.e., all the rest. We Metelli were Optimates. So was Cicero. Clodius and Caesar were leaders of the Populares despite the fact that they were born patricians. Clodius was a Claudius and had changed his name when, with Caesar’s collusion and over the objections of Cato and Cicero, he had been transferred to the plebs. He had taken this drastic step so that he could stand for the tribuneship, an office from which patricians were barred. Stripped of their powers by Sulla, the tribunes had gradually been regaining them in the twenty-four years since the Dictator’s death, and now the tribuneship was in many ways the most powerful office in Rome.

Within these two major groupings were many smaller factiones representing more limited interests. I had the feeling that I was in the midst of one of these.

“Perhaps you had better elucidate, Tribune,” I said. “It is true that I declined a loan from Crassus because I have no wish to become his lackey. I had no motive other than retaining my own political, not to mention economic, independence.” This was not precisely true, but I did not feel that I owed this odd tribune any more.

“Oh, I quite understand that,” he said. His tone said, on the contrary, that he knew a pack of lies when he heard one. “But you know that his proposed war is a disgrace.”

“And yet,” Silvius said in a well-rehearsed interruption, “the senator voted in favor of Crassus’s command.”

“As you all know perfectly well,” I said, “the Senate voted no war. Crassus is to take over the Syrian promagistracy from Aulus Gabinius. What he does with his soldiers once he’s there is up to him. It’s a disgrace that the government has so little control over how our generals employ their troops, but that is the constitution as we have received it. As usual, I voted with my family on this. The Senate only ratified the law passed by your fellow tribune, Caius Trebonius. Blame him.”

“Oh, I do, Senator, I do!” Ateius all but hissed, his fingers working reflexively as if on a dagger grip. Obviously, Ateius and Trebonius shared one of those Milo-Clodius relationships: each would happily drink the other’s blood.

“Senator,” Silvius said, “we must stop Crassus before he wrecks the Republic. Many, many Romans of all classes and all factiones agree with us in this. We have made it our business to appeal to all men of influence whom we know oppose Crassus to join us in this. We hope to number you as one among us.”

“Gentlemen,” I said, spreading my palms in an appeal to reason, “it is too late. There is nothing to be done. Whatever underhanded means were employed to secure him this command, the Senate and People have spoken. He has the backing of Caesar and Pompey. The Plebeian and Centuriate Assemblies have voted to pass the Trebonian Law, and the Senate has ratified it. The damage is done. There is no constitutional means to stop him.”

“Then,” Ateius said, his eyes glowing in a fashion not quite sane, “we may have to appeal to powers beyond the constitutional.”

“I beg your pardon?” I said. “Admittedly, I am just back from Gaul after a long absence, but surely I would have been informed if our government had been set aside by, say, a Dictatorship or invading Libyans.”

“I do not joke, Senator!” Ateius snapped. Clearly, here was a man of limited jocularity.

“Then what do you mean?”

“The Republic,” he began, “has for many centuries rested upon a tripartite foundation. First,” here he held up a knobby-knuckled finger, “there is the body politic-the Senate and People. Second,” he raised a finger no comelier beside the first, “there is the constitution-our body of laws and practices, rigid in place but always changeable after due deliberation. Third,” finger number three, somewhat shorter than the other two, and decorated by a ring in the form of a snake swallowing its tail, a tiny emerald for an eye, “the will of the gods.”

I tried to think of other factors, but came up with none. “I suppose that about sums it up.”

“As you just said, the possibilities of the first two have been exhausted short of violence. That leaves the third.” He seemed quite pleased with himself for a man who was making no sense.

“The gods? I am sure that in this matter, as in all others, they were consulted, the proper sacrifices were made, prayers were offered, the auguries were taken, and so forth. But we all know that it is quite rare for the Olympians to take a direct hand in the affairs of Rome. At most they send us signs that we ignore at our peril.”