Steven Saylor - Catilina's riddle

The senators feared that nightfall might bring an attempt to free the prisoners, and no time was wasted in carrying out the sentence. While praetors went to fetch the others, Cicero himself, flanked by numerous senators and an armed bodyguard, went to fetch Lentulus from the house on the Palatine where he was being kept. The senators formed a moving cordon as Cicero escorted the former consul through the middle of the Forum I was among the crowd, holding my breath, listening to the pounding of my heartbeat, alert for the first signs of a riot, my ears pricked for cries of insurrection. But the crowd was hushed and made only a dull, wordless roar like the surging of the sea. I have never seen a crowd in the Forum so subdued. I looked at the men around me, and on their faces I saw that awe which overcomes men when they witness some terrible spectacle. The solemn ritual of death held them spellbound. I thought again of the theatre, with its strange power to remove men from reality and yet bring them face to face with something vaster than themselves. The Senate of Rome was enacting its will, and there was no power on earth that could stop it.

Eco and Meto were with me. I was content to hang back, but Meto wanted to work his way closer to the procession. Beyond the shields and upraised swords of the bodyguard, through a brief opening in the sea of purple-striped togas, I caught a glimpse of Cicero. One arm was at his side; the other was raised to his chest to clutch the hem of his toga. His chin was held high. His eyes looked straight ahead.

Beside him walked another, older man in senatorial garb, whose posture and expression were exactly the same. Lentulus showed no trace of that irascible sarcasm that had earned him his nickname, nor did he bow his head in shame or tremble with fear. Had I not known which was the consul and which the prisoner, by their bearing alone I could not have told them apart Then Lentulus chanced to turn his face in my direction. I caught a glimpse of his eyes and knew that I saw a man approaching his end.

Close by the Temple of Concord, built into the hard stone of the Capitoline Hill, is the ancient state-prison of Rome. The prison was built in the days when kings ruled the city, as a place to put their enemies. Once Rome became a republic, the prison became a place to keep Rome's conquered foes. Its most famous inhabitant in my lifetime had been King Jugurtha of Numidia; after being dragged through the streets of Rome in chains, he and his two sons were taken to the prison and cast into a lightless, airless pit twelve feet underground, reached only through a hole in its stone roof. There they lingered for six days without food or water before being strangled by their jailers.

Lentulus did not have so long to wait. Inside the prison, where the four other prisoners had already been brought, he was stripped of his toga, then escorted to the same pit where the King of Numidia had met his end. As befitted his rank, Lentulus was the first to be lowered through the hole. As soon as his feet touched the ground, executioners strangled him with a noose. One by one the four other condemned men were lowered into the pit to join him in death.

When it was over, Cicero emerged from the prison and announced to the hushed crowd, 'They have lived their lives' — the traditional way to speak of death without saying the ill-omened word itself, so as not to tempt the Fates or raise the lemures of the unquiet dead.

Once the executions were over, a great tension lifted from the city, as when the final words of a tragedy are spoken and the actors leave the stage. Night was falling. The crowd began to disperse. Cicero, surrounded by his bodyguard, made his way across the Forum Sudden cries of acclamation filled the air. Men rushed towards Cicero, calling him the saviour of the city. As he left the Forum and walked through the luxurious neighbourhood of the Palatine towards his house, rich matrons rushed to their windows to see him and sent slaves to put lamps and torches in their doorways, so that his path was brightly lit. He no longer wore a grim face, but smiled, and waved to the crowd as generals do in their triumphal parades.

Thus ended the Nones of December, Cicero's greatest day. To watch the crowd hail him as he ascended the Palatine, one might have believed his triumph was endless and absolute. But when we returned to Eco's house on the Esquiline, we saw no celebrations in the Subura. In its dirty, unlit streets, a sullen silence reigned.

XXXVII

The year dwindled and the winter grew harsher. Cold winds blew from the north. Sleet pelted the shutters at night. Frost covered the earth, and days seemed to grow dark before they had even begun.

Hie shortage of hay on the farm grew acute. 'We should begin to favour the younger, healthier animals’ Aratus told me, 'and to consider slaying some of the others to eat, or else try to sell them at market, even at a loss, rather than see them wither and grow weak. Underfed animals will fall prey to a hard winter. They'll die of illness if not starvation. Better to get some use from them than to watch them slowly die.'

From time to time we saw troops marching up the Cassian Way towards the north, dressed in battle gear and wrapped in their marching blankets. The Senate's forces were gathering strength for a confrontation. One day, when a troop of legionnaires was passing by, I came upon Meto and Diana up on the ridge. He was pointing to the ranks of soldiers passing below and telling her the names and uses of their various weapons and pieces of armour. When he realized that I was behind him, he fell silent and walked away. Diana ran after him, then turned back. She cocked her head and frowned at me. 'Papa’ she said, 'why do you look so sad?'

Eco sent messages from the city to keep me informed of developments. He continued to hear news of uprisings as far away as Mauritania and Spain, but following the executions in Rome a great many of Catilina's supporters abandoned him at once. Still, there were those who persevered in their loyalty, and even within families there had been great upheavals. Most terrifying was the story of a senator's son, Aulus Fulvius, who had left Rome to join Catilina. His rather sent a party of men after him. Aulus was apprehended, brought back to Rome, and put to death by his father.

The Saturnalia came and went without bloodshed. The midwinter holiday was celebrated in Rome as a day of deliverance. Cato declared to the throng in the Forum that Cicero should be saluted as the Father of the Fatherland. The crowd took up the cry without hesitation, and the Senate later passed such a resolution into law. When he began his year as consul, could Cicero have foreseen in his wildest dreams that he would attain such glory?

The first sour note was struck at the beginning of the new year, when Cicero was obliged to lay down his office. Tradition demanded that he should take an oath proclaiming that he had been faithful in his service to Rome, and then be allowed to deliver a valedictory address from the Rostra in the Forum. What a speech Cicero must have been planning! Having once spent several days in his house while Cicero composed his defence of Sextus Roscius, I could imagine him in his opulent library, pacing back and forth, trying out this phrase and that, sending Tiro after various books so as to get every quotation right, polishing and repolishing what was to be the supreme oration of Rome's greatest orator, his declaration to posterity of all his magnificent accomplishments as consul.

But it was not to be. Two of the new tribunes, who had already taken office, used their power to block Cicero from delivering his farewell speech, citing a technicality of the law and saying that a man who had put Roman citizens to death without due process of law could not be allowed to deliver a valedictory address. They occupied the Rostra and would not allow him to mount the platform. Finally they relented, but only to let him pronounce the oath of leaving office. While the tribunes watched, ready physically to remove him, he began the oath — and then quickly improvised: 'I swear… that I did truly save my country and keep her great!'