Steven Saylor - Catilina's riddle

'If you had a beard, you'd look like Jupiter,' I said.

The thought amused him. He thrust his right arm stiffly before him, palm down, and spread his fingers. 'If only I could cast lightning bolts, like Jupiter.' He gazed at the back of his hand. 'Cicero can — did you know that? Lightning bolts emanate from his fingers. A kind of lightning, anyway. He points at the mob in the Forum; sparks gather at his fingertips and flash into blue flame. He shoots shafts of lightning straight into their eyes and ears, blinding them to the truth, taming them deaf to reason.' Catilina thrust out his arm again and pointed down with his forefinger, miming the action. 'Cicero's forefinger: the Vestal Virgins must be protected from Catilina! Crack! The lightning strikes, the voters quiver with superstitious awe and revulsion. His middle finger: Catilina seduces young men! The lightning flashes, the voters grimace with distaste — and perhaps a little jealousy? His next finger: Catilina pimps for rich matrons! The voters howl in disgust. His little finger, in the name of serving Sulla, Catilina murdered good citizens and raped their wives and children! The voters tremble with loathing. And on his other hand — well, with his other hand, he's busy masturbating, isn't he?'

I laughed out loud. Catilina grunted and began to laugh as well, a rich, good-natured laugh, I thought at first, until a taint of bitterness seemed to swallow it up before it had run its course.

'He has destroyed me with lies and distortions, and the mob acclaims him as the First Citizen in the land. Still, I had rather be Catilina than Cicero,' he said, studying his hand for a moment and then dropping his arm to his side. 'What about you, Gordianus?'

'What, had I rather be myself than Cicero?'

'No! Which would you choose to be: Cicero or Catilina?'

'An odd question.'

'An excellent question.'

'You're forever playing games, Catilina.'

'And you are forever avoiding them. Do you fear the element of chance? Must you always know the outcome ahead of time? Then choose to be Cicero!' He gazed down at me. Pockets of shadow obscured his eyes, but his lips had a quizzical twist. 'Do you know what I think? I think it would frighten you to be Catilina.' He jumped down from the stump. He picked up a broad towel, spread it on the ground and lay down on it, joining his hands beneath his head and gazing up at the moon.

'Lie down beside me, Gordianus.'

I hesitated.

'Come, join me. Gaze up at the face of the moon. You call your daughter Diana, don't you, after the goddess of the moon? Look up at her face with me.'

I lay down beside him, acutely aware again of my nakedness as I was bathed in bright moonlight 'Diana is short for Gordiana,' I explained.

‘Vaguely impious, even so, to call a child by a goddess's name,' said Catilina. ‘But fitting, I suppose. Diana, patron goddess of the plebeians, who inspired the Sabine women in their revolt. Diana, goddess of fertility and birth, dweller in mountains and woods, lover of all wild things. One tends to forget her in the city, just as one forgets the moon there amid so many lamps. She's stronger here. Her light bathes all the world with its glow. Lie here and worship her with me for a while.'

We lay in silence. Except for the occasional rustling of leaves and the hooting of the owl, the world was so quiet that I could hear my own heartbeat and Catilina's breathing beside me. After a while he said, 'May I speak with you frankly?'

I smiled. 'I doubt that I could stop you.'

'We seem to share the same taste in women, Gordianus. Your wife Bethesda is quite spectacular; she reminds me more than a little of my own Aurelia. Their beauty is much alike, as is their haughtiness, their mysteriousness. But it seems that we do not share the same taste in young men.'

'Apparently not.'

'Yet I can't imagine how anyone could fail to find Tongilius beautiful, even Cicero. His green eyes, the way his hair sweeps back from his forehead—'

'Tongilius is beautiful,' I acknowledged.

'Yet you do not desire him?'

'That would hardly be proper, would it, since I am your host and Tongilius is your companion?'

'Now who plays games with words, Gordianus? My point is this: if you have an eye for beauty, why do you not act on it? How can you resist?'

I laughed softly. 'First of all, Catilina, like many unusually good-looking men and women who encounter constant temptation, you seem to think such opportunities are as rampant for others as for yourself'

'Do you really underestimate yourself so ludicrously, Gordianus? Tongilius, for one, finds you quite attractive. He tells me so.'

At this I felt an unexpected and dubious quiver of gratification. 'You're joking, Catilina. Tongilius would never have told you such a thing. How could the subject have ever arisen?'

'It seems a quite natural subject to me. Unless they're talking about politics, what else do people talk about, except the relative attractiveness and desirability of other people? Indeed, what else is there to talk about?'

'Catilina, you are incorrigible.'

'No, insatiable perhaps, but eminendy corrigible. I am always ready to learn something new and to be corrected when I'm mistaken. You'd do well to follow my example, Gordianus. In this matter, as in others.'

'What matter?'

'The unreasonable restraint you show in your relationships with beautiful young men.'

'Catilina, you mustn't try to corrupt me! I'm unworthy of your efforts!'

'Nonsense, I find you entirely worthy.' 'I suppose I should be flattered?' 'No, grateful and attentive.'

I laughed deep in my throat, surprised at how much I was enjoying this banter between us. It was the spell cast by the full moon, of course, looming huge and white above us, almost close enough to touch. It was my own nakedness, and the moth which had flitted across our path, and Catilina's indisputable charm that made it possible to speak of things that never were or would be.

'Do you know what I think, Gordianus? I think we are opposites in many ways, and yet complementary. Caelius says that you have quite a reputation for extracting the truth from others, that you're something of a legend that way; men naturally want to empty their hearts to you. My gift is the same, yet different. I see into other men's hearts, into the places where they never look, and it's ‘ who tell them what resides there. Do you know what I see in your heart about this matter?'

"This matter, which fascinates you more than it does me?'

'I think not. I see inside you an extraordinary moral character, a man very much out of step with the world in which he lives. "We both know the Roman way of sexuality: power is everything; even more important than pleasure. Indeed, pleasure as an end in itself is something alien to a good Roman — decadent, Eastern, a vice of the Egyptians and the Greeks. Power rules, and power means penetration. Men possess that power, women do not. Men rule Rome and have made it what it is: an empire bent on conquering all the world, penetrating and subduing every other nation and race.'

"This seems far from the subject of lust.'

'Not at all. In such a world the natural proclivities of love are bent; pleasure bows to power. Everything is reduced to penetrating or being penetrated. How simple-minded, how much more suitable to the mechanics of your water mill than the complexities of the human spirit, but there you have it. Penetrate or be penetrated: women have no option in this matter and are thus permanently reduced to an inferior status. On the other hand, any man who submits to being penetrated by another man relinquishes his power and is thought to be no better than a woman, or at least so goes the consensus, though we all know that behind closed doors men tend to do whatever they wish, compelled more by pleasure than prestige. Thus all that gossip about Caesar in his younger days when he played catamite to King Nicomedes of Bithynia — such un-Roman behaviour! But of course