Steven Saylor - Catilina's riddle

Just off the Flaminian Way, between the built-up, southern area of the Field of Mars and the more open spaces to the north, is the Villa Publica. The walled enclosure is very old, as are the buildings within. Besides housing the offices of the census takers, who keep the registries of voters, the Villa Publica serves the city of Rome as a vestibule or foyer serves a house; foreign ambassadors are lodged there, as are Roman generals who must reside outside the city before making their triumphal entries. It is also the place where candidates withdraw to await the election results.

Adjoining the Villa Publica is another walled enclosure called, without ostentation, the Sheep Pen. On election day ropes are stretched across its length to split the space into aisles. To cast their ballots the voters are guided through the Pen like sheep through a run. It does not require a great wit to extrapolate the metaphors.

Under the rising sun citizens thronged to the open fields around the Villa Publica. Roman voters are split into various classes according to their wealth, and within those classes are assigned to voting units, or centuries. Organizers within each century were working doggedly to gather their members together; many of the centuries obviously had predetermined meeting places, but in such a vast crowd there was still considerable confusion. Compounding this was the weather.

It had not rained for several days, and there was a great deal of dust in the air. The morning was already warm and likely to get much warmer. The atmosphere was not unlike that of a great feedlot on a hot summer day.

It did not take long for me to see signs of outright bribery. I recognized a number of disreputable types in the crowd and I watched them move among the century leaders, smiling and clasping hands and brazenly handing out small, lumpy sacks that could only have been filled with coins. A few of these agents I recognized as henchmen of Crassus, and at least one of them I had noticed in Caesar's retinue the day before, but there were many more whose allegiance I did not know.

There were a few scattered instances of violence, but no general disruptions. We saw a country farmer and his sons beaten and run off by a gang of youths. We watched two red-faced, grey-haired Optimates engaged in a blustering fistfight with each other (one supported Murena, the other Silanus — who but an Optimate could tell the difference?); their attendant slaves stood back helplessly and looked on, variously appalled, alarmed, and amused. We came upon the aftermath of a duel with knives that ended with both parties being carried off, bleeding and moaning, by their friends. All in all, it was a more peaceful crowd than I had expected. Of course, these were only the violent episodes that we happened to witness; within the great milling throng there must have been many more.

A tumult of shouting moved towards us through the crowd, and I turned to see that Cicero and his fellow consul Gaius Antonius were arriving. Cicero was surrounded by his armed bodyguard and wore his toga open to show the breastplate across his chest, a last reminder to the voters of the presumed treachery of Catilina. They disappeared within the gates of the Villa Publica and eventually reappeared at the podium built into the wall. Antonius announced that the auspices had been duly observed by the augurs in the Villa Publica and had been declared acceptable. Without an earthquake and with a blue sky above, it could hardly have been otherwise, I thought, especially since the Senate had made its desires in the matter very clear on the previous day. The election could proceed.

Shortly thereafter the candidates arrived. Each was attended by a long retinue of supporters who pushed and shoved their way through the crowd. Each made an appearance on the podium before disappearing into the Villa Publica. There were mingled hisses and cheers for Murena and Silanus, the Optimate favourites, who appeared one after the other.

As the candidates left the podium, the grey-haired fistfighters, who had called a truce while their favourites were on stage, fell to cursing and striking each other again.

A number of other candidates paraded across the podium, none of them eliciting more than a smattering of applause or angry catcalls. Then Catilina arrived.

We heard his approach long before we saw him. It began with a roar of sound that seemed to come all the way from the Fontinal Gate and grew louder and louder at it approached the Villa Publica. The sound was like a wall, palpable and impenetrable, as if one might be crushed beneath it. What it was made of was hard to tell at first — the aggregate of booing, hissing, cheering, applauding, jeering, cursing was blended into a single roar. Nor was the physical reaction of the crowd easy to determine. When the retinue passed by, men opened their mouths to shout, but were they cursing or cheering? They thrust their arms into the air, but did a clenched fist signal hatred or support? Through the throng I glimpsed Catilina himself, and from the smile on his face one might have thought that every voice was cheering and every upraised fist was his to command.

When he stood upon the podium, the uproar was deafening. The crowd began to chant his name: 'Catilina! Catilina!' Around me young men jumped up and down, waving their arms. It seemed to me that the whole crowd adored him, and that all their jeering and cursing must have been not for Catilina, but for his enemies. Cicero, meanwhile, withdrew to the farthest corner of the podium and turned his face away.

Catilina withdrew into the Villa Publica with his rivals, and the voting commenced. The wealthier classes, which vote first, had already gathered outside the Sheep Pen. At the entrance each voter was given a wooden tablet and a stylus with which to write the name of his candidate; the styluses and tablets were gathered up at the end of each roped aisle and the tablets deposited in an urn for counting after the entire century had voted; the overall choice of each century counted for a single vote. In all, there are just under two hundred centuries, of which the two very wealthiest classes claim over a hundred. The lower classes have many more individual voters, but control far fewer centuries. The very poorest class, who might arguably make up a majority of Romans, have only five centuries among them. Often, by the time their turn to vote arrives, the outcome has already been decided and they are not allowed to vote at all; not surprisingly, they come to the elections more to view the spectacle than to vote, if they come at all.

We had found a shady spot and were sitting against the west wall of the Villa Publica, where I was explaining these matters to Meto, when Belbo, scratching his straw-coloured hair, asked, 'And what class do you belong to, Master?'

I looked askance at his bovine race, but Meto pressed the question. 'Yes, Papa, what class? You've never told me.'

'Because I haven't bothered to vote for a very long time.'

'But you must know.'

'Actually, yes. We changed classes this year, thanks to my inheritance from Lucius Claudius. Where before we were members of the Fifth Class — which is to say just above the poor — we are now members of the Third Class, just below the rich, along with most other families who own a single farm and a dwelling in the city.'

'And which century do we vote with?'

'If we voted, we would gather with those of the Second Century of the Third Class.'

'And I would be able to vote as well?' I made a face. ‘You would if—' 'I want to see it.' To see what?'

'The Second Century of the Third Class. The other voters of our century.' 'But why?’

'Papa…' He had only to speak with a certain inflection to remind me of our conversation of the night before.

'Very well. But there's no hurry. It's not quite noon, and the first two classes can't have completed their voting yet. And after them, the equestrians, who have their own special class of eighteen centuries, will vote, and then the Third Class. We'll have some wine and a bite to eat, and then we shall go find our fellow voters. The crowd will have shrunk by then; people will start to leave from the heat and the dust and the boredom'