John Roberts - The Tribune's curse

In the fore of the crowd, I saw Clodius, dressed in his work-ingman’s tunic. He was a few steps ahead of the mob and running for all he was worth, not escaping them, but leading.

“Let that man through!” Pompey ordered the lictors, “but no other who is not of senatorial rank.”

From behind us, more senators quietly came from the depths of the basilica. They were the braver members of the order, who had been watching from hiding places around the Forum, waiting for a signal to assemble. To my relief I saw Cicero, along with Cato, Balbus, and some others. With so much courage and prestige present, we might just pull it off. I scanned the crowd, and saw that Milo’s thugs had taken up a position well to the fore, ready to turn and hold off the mob on their master’s order. In fact, the whole section of the mob nearest the steps were his adherents and Clodius’s. I felt a sort of perverse pride in the sight. Romans can even organize a bloodthirsty mob. Let the barbarians match that, if they can.

Clodius rushed up the steps, his face in a wild grimace, gesturing madly with his arms, waving them and shaking his fists as if he were berating Pompey just short of physical attack. But these were broad actor’s gestures for the delectation of the mob behind him. His words were those of a sane, calculating man.

“Pompey! You’re the only man in Rome this night who can quiet this crowd. I’ve done my best, but even I have never seen them like this! Do something quickly!”

Pompey came down the steps with an arm extended, which he draped over Clodius’s shoulders in a gesture of concern and conciliation. The two turned and went back up the steps. Behind them, the noise of the crowd muted a bit, not calm yet, but indecisive.

“A screen, here,” Pompey said. The other senators closed around them, and Pompey, Milo, Clodius, Cicero, and Cato got their heads together for some hasty planning. It was amazing to see how this group of men, among whom there were far more poisonous hatreds than fast friendships, could drop their animosities in an instant and cooperate for the common good. Another aspect of the Roman genius, I suppose: political compromise.

After a few minutes’ conferral, they broke apart. Behind the screen of senators Clodius and Milo worked their way to the edge of the steps while Pompey and Cicero went through the center. Cato came to stand beside me.

“What did they work out?” I asked him.

“A makeshift,” he said, his mouth a grim, tight line. “It might work. Be ready to jump forward when your name is called.”

Oh, no , I thought, my heart sinking. They had involved me!

Pompey strode superbly to the front of the terrace and held up his hands for silence. Gradually, the shouting died down, then the muttering and murmuring, and after a few minutes there was silence. Even the waving of the torches grew less wild until they were held steady, and then the only noise was the not-unpleasant crackle of the bonfires. Clodius had been right: on that night, only Cnaeus Pompeius Magnus could have quieted such a mob. The only other man who could have done it was Caesar, and he was far, far away.

“Citizens!” Pompey shouted in his parade-ground voice, echoing off the buildings on the far side of the Forum, “a great evil has befallen us! The gods have not yet forgiven us for the sacrilege committed five days ago, when my coconsul, Marcus Licinius Crassus, departed for his proconsular province.” Good phrasing, I thought. Whatever had happened, this would remind people that Ateius had brought his fate upon himself.

“Now another sacrilege has been committed!” he went on. “A Tribune of the People, holder of a sacrosanct office, has been foully murdered! Like all Romans, I fear the anger of the gods! All our animosities must be put aside until justice has been done, and we can once again discern clearly what our gods want of us!”

He went on for a while in that vein, speaking of the gods and conciliation, staying rigidly away from partisanship and faction. It was an excellent performance. Pompey wasn’t much of a politician, but he knew how to harangue the troops. While he was speaking, I saw Clodius and Milo down at the corner of the steps, in a dim spot behind an old monument to Scipio Africanus where they couldn’t be seen, briefingtheir men. One would get his orders and rush off into the crowd. I saw one man there who belonged to neither of their gangs: a well-known Forum loudmouth and malcontent named Folius. He formed a sort of party of one, with no clear political agenda, but always ready to mouth off to the mighty.

After a few minutes, Milo and Clodius rejoined us. “They’re primed now,” Milo said to Pompey. The three conferred in low voices for a moment, and the crowd murmur began to rise again. Then Pompey stepped forward.

“Bring forth the body of Ateius Capito!”

Another surge swept through the mob. From somewhere near the center of the Forum, there was a stirring, then a massive shape rose and began to come toward the basilica. It was an eerie sight, as the thing parted the crowd and its torches, like a ship passing through an unearthly sea, and for a moment I shuddered at its fancied resemblance to Charon’s ferryboat conveying the souls of the dead across the Styx.

Then it was near, and I saw that a group of men bore a corpse laid out on a makeshift catafalque: a platform of scavenged timber atop which they had set a couch, doubtless looted from some house or store. On the couch lay something vaguely man shaped and blood-soaked, wrapped in a weirdly striped robe with which I was all too familiar.

“Pompey!” I saw the man Folius push through the crowd and stop short only at the line of lictors. He pointed at the consul. “The people of this City will have justice for the sacrosanct blood of Ateius! Will you satisfy us, or will we hang every aristocrat in Rome by his own white toga?” At this a great shout went up from the mob.

Pompey pressed a hand against his breast and looked mortally hurt. “My friend! Has Cnaeus Pompeius Magnus, victor on land and sea in all parts of the world, triumphator , and twice consul, ever failed his masters, the Roman people?” Approval and applause from the crowd this time. This was great theater.

“It is not enough to rest on past victories, Pompey!” shouted Folius. “This time the enemy is neither barbarian nor pirate! It must be one of your own little well-born crowd, the Senate!” Roars of agreement. Foreigners are always astonished at the way Roman commoners speak right up to the highest officials. They used to, anyway. Much as I detested him, a man like Folius was worth more than all the lickspittles who fawn on the First Citizen these days.

“Was Quintus Sertorius not a noble Roman and a senator?” Pompey demanded. “And when he offended Rome, did I not hunt him down and slay him?” Leaving aside for the moment the fact that Sertorius bested him in every fight until he was assassinated by his own second-in-command, Perperna. It was Perperna whom Pompey defeated. He got Sertorius’s head secondhand. No matter. The crowd was accustomed to attributing all glory to Pompey, and they cheered mightily.

“Who is to prosecute, Pompey?” Folius shouted. “Who is to investigate?”

“This case,” Pompey cried, “will be handled by the highest judicial authority in Rome, the praetor urbanus , Titus Annius Milo!” He clapped Milo on the shoulder. There was a great roar from the crowd. “I hereby clear from his docket all other business. This murder shall take precedence over all other legal matters before the Roman bar!”

Milo stepped forward. “With the approval of the Senate and People, I will appoint Decius Caecilius Metellus the Younger as iudex to investigate this murder. He is to have full praetorian authority, equal to my own, save that I will retain my praetorian imperium .”