Steven Saylor - Catilina's riddle

'Because, while the praetors thought the ambush was real, the men they ambushed were expecting them and put up no resistance. Why? Because the informant Volturcius, who was accompanying the Allobroges, was also in on the game, another of Cicero's agents.'

'Were they saying that, too, in the Forum?'

'No,' said Meto, with a hint of a smile softening his outrage. "The part about Volturcius is my idea.'

'But not unlikely,' I said, sitting up and rejoining the conversation. 'We know that Cicero's spies are everywhere.'

'Even in this room,' whispered Meto, so low that I barely heard him.

'Still,' said Eco, shaking his head, 'even if what you say is true, and Cicero set a trap for the conspirators, they needn't have stepped into it. They allied themselves with foreign subjects and plotted war against Rome.'

'Yes,' I said, 'and Meto is right to call them fools for doing it. The Roman people might forgive a plot to bring down the state from within — many of them might even join in such an insurrection, if only for the chance to plunder — but for Romans to plot with foreigners against the state is unforgivable. It turns them from rebels into traitors. I think you're right, Eco, when you say that Catilina can never recover from this. Really, it's no wonder Cicero gave thanks to the gods at the end of his speech — Jupiter himself couldn't have devised a more foolproof way to discredit Catilina and his followers.'

Meto covered his ears. 'Please, Papa, no talk about gods! You know how Cicero really feels about religion; he makes quite a show among his intellectual friends of having no belief in the gods at all. He says it's all nonsense and superstition. Yet when he talks to the people in the Forum, he turns as pious as a priest and calls himself Jupiter's vessel. Such hypocrisy! And can you believe that nonsense about the statue of Jupiter being an omen? Don't you find it more likely that Cicero chose the day for the "ambush" on the Allobroges to coincide with the installation of the statue, so that he could exploit the coincidence? That proves, more than anything else, that he must have masterminded the whole affair and timed it to his liking’

Eco opened his mouth to say something, but Meto wouldn't be stopped. 'Do you know what else? I'm not even sure that Lentulus and Cethegus were plotting to torch the city. What evidence do we have for that, except the word of Volturcius the informer — Cicero's hired spy? Perhaps Lentulus and Cethegus were stupid enough to have come up with such a plot, or perhaps Cicero simply made up the part about fire to frighten people, just as he made up the stories about Catilina's wanting to lead a slave revolt. Nothing frightens people more than those two things, fire and slaves, running out of control. The rich fear the vengeance of slaves, and the poor fear fire, which can claim all they own in an instant. Even the poorest, who look to Catilina as a saviour, would turn their back on any man who plotted arson.'

'Thunderbolts, cast into the crowd!' I murmured.

'What did you say, Papa?' said Eco.

'An idea I got from Catilina. Vestal Virgins and sexual debauchery; arson, anarchy, slave revolts; conspiring with foreigners; the will of Jupiter — Cicero seems to have made a science of the words and phrases that will manipulate the masses.'

'Don't forget his watchfulness,' said Meto. He stood up and put down his cup. His hands were trembling. 'At least I can say something no one else in this room can say: I've never served as the consul's eyes or ears.' With that he abruptly turned and left us.

Eco stared after him. 'Papa, what on earth has happened to my little brother?'

'He's become a man, I suppose.'

'No, I mean — '

'I know what you mean. Ever since his birthday celebration here in Rome, he's become more and more as you see him now.'

'But these wild ideas, and the depth of his anger against Cicero — where does it come from?'

I shrugged. 'Catilina has slept under my roof several times. I think Meto may have had some private conversations with him while I was elsewhere. You know Catilina's notorious effect on the young.'

'But such ideas are dangerous. If Meto wants to brood on the farm, that's one thing, but here in the city I hope he knows enough to keep his mourn shut, at least in public. I think you should have a talk with him.'

'Why? Everything he says makes perfect sense to me.' 'Yes, but aren't you worried?'

'I suppose. But when he left the room just now, it wasn't worry that I was feeling. I was feeling rather proud of him, actually — and a little ashamed of myself'

There are moments in the theatre when the characters and events upon the stage seem to become more real than reality itself. I speak not of bawdy Roman comedies, though sometimes even those attain the phenomenon I'm thinking of; I speak more of those sublime tragedies of the Greeks. One knows that mere actors reside behind the masks, and one knows that the words they speak come from a script, and yet when Oedipus is blinded one feels an anguish more vivid than physical pain and a terror that seems to well up from the deepest recess of the soul. Gods hover in the air: one knows they are merely men suspended from a crane, and yet one experiences an awe that transcends all reason.

The days that followed Cicero's speech in the Forum were coloured with that same sense of vivid, compelling unreality. There was something grand and theatrical, but at the same time grubby and absurd, about the inevitable progression towards the destruction of the men who had fallen into Cicero's power. Ultimately it was not Cicero who decreed their annihilation, but the Senate. Whether that august body acted legally or not is a controversy which I doubt will be resolved in my lifetime.

Roman law does not give to either the consuls or to the Senate the right to put a citizen to death; that right is reserved for the courts and for the people's Assembly. Because the courts are slow and cumbersome and the Assembly is dangerously volatile, neither institution is of much use in an emergency. It might be argued that the Extreme Decree, by which the Senate had empowered the consuls to take any steps necessary to preserve the state, superseded other restrictions and allowed for a penalty of death against Rome's enemies within. Even so, was it right, legal, or honourable to put to death men in captivity, who had laid down their arms and given themselves into custody, and thus posed no immediate threat to anyone? These were some of the arguments that occupied the Senate over the next two days.

Self-professed hater of politics that I was, I should have left the city at once, but I did not I could not Like every other citizen I endured the passing hours in nervous, spellbound suspense, feeling the dread of something awful hanging over the city and its people. Everyone felt it, no matter what his political stripe, or his opinion of Cicero, or his belief in the righteousness or wickedness of the men in custody. The dread was like an ache that had settled into every joint of the body politic, a fever that addled the collective mind. We wished to be rid of our illness. We also feared that our physicians in the Senate would resort to some drastic cure that would not only break the fever but also kill the patient.

On the day after Cicero's speech the city became a vast whirlpool of rumours, with the Temple of Concord, where the Senate continued to meet, at its ravenous centre. The news that one of Catilina's supporters had implicated Crassus sent a panic through the commodity traders in the Forum; men wrung their hands, wondering what would happen if Crassus should be arrested and his fortune immobilized or confiscated, while others said that Crassus would never allow such a thing and would instead join Catilina in civil war. In fact, a certain Lucius Tarquinius had come before the Senate to state that Crassus had sent him to Catilina to carry news of the arrests and to advise Catilina to march on Rome at once. The senators' reaction, after some consternation, was to shout the man down. Even if the story was true, no one particularly cared to draw Crassus into the affair so long as he remained publicly loyal to the Senate. After a brief debate, those present recorded a vote of confidence in their richest member. It was also decided that Lucius Tarquinius would not be allowed to give any further testimony until such time as he was willing to reveal who had bribed him to give false and slanderous testimony against a man of such indisputable patriotism as Marcus Crassus. Some believed that Tarquinius had set out to implicate Crassus in order to moderate the punishment of those already in custody, since with Crassus among them the Senate would shrink from taking drastic measures. Others thought that it was Cicero who put Tarquinius up to it, in order to silence Crassus and keep him from influencing the debate. Lucius Tarquinius nevertheless stood by his original story and, disqualified from further testimony, was effectively gagged. The matter of Crassus's loyalties was not raised again, but he also removed himself from actively debating the fate of the arrested men.