Steven Saylor - Catilina's riddle

'The men Cicero sent after me will murder me if they catch me!'

'But what they say — is it true?' said Meto.

'Another lie!' He heaved a weary sigh. 'Cicero claims that two nights ago I slipped out of Meteflus's house and attended a secret meeting where I hatched a plan to assassinate him. Supposedly two of my friends — Gaius Cornelius and Lucius Vargunteius — were to show up at his door, pretending to make a morning visit, get inside and stab him. As if either of them would commit such an act, without hope of escape or of being able to show just cause to the Senate! But Cicero is clever; in the middle of the night he sends for certain senators who still doubt his rantings. Come at once to my house, he tells them. What can it be, they wonder, to rouse us from our sleep? When they arrive, lamps are lit everywhere and the house is full of armed guards. You see how he sets the stage for exploiting their credulity by resorting to such cheap melodrama? He tells them that an informant has just arrived with terrible information: Catilina and his conspirators have been meeting that very night at a house in the Street of the Scythemakers, plotting his murder. The agents will be Gaius Cornelius and Lucius Vargunteius, known associates of Catilina and notorious troublemakers. Just watch, he says, they will arrive in the morning, bent on bloodshed. You will be my witnesses.

'And lo, the next morning, Cornelius and Vargunteius duly arrive at Cicero's house. They bang on the door; the slaves refuse to admit them. They bang more, demanding to see the consul. The slaves hang from the windows and pour abuse on them; Cornelius and Vargunteius become abusive in turn. Bodyguards appear and show flashes of steel; Cornelius and Vargunteius turn on their heels and flee.

'Cicero's prediction has come true. The witnesses see it all. But what have they seen? Two men, already in a precarious position because of their association with me, who arrived at Cicero's door — not with the intention of killing him, but because they were roused from their beds by a summons from an anonymous caller, who said that if they valued their lives they had better go at once to the consul's house! Yes, it was Cicero who engineered the whole episode! Everything appeared just as Cicero wished, for of course Cornelius and Vargunteius arrived in an agitated state, fearful and not knowing what to expect, and when they encountered abuse they quickly became abusive and threatening in return. They were duped into playing the part of frustrated assassins, and never knew it until Cicero's speech in the Senate today, when he announced his absurd story of having survived a murder plot and gestured to his so-called reputable witnesses, who all nodded their heads in agreement! The man is a monster. The man is a genius,' said Catilina bitterly.

'You see, when he first used the trick of saying his life was in jeopardy back in the summer, when he tried to postpone the elections a second time, no one believed him; his exaggerated bodyguard and the breastplate beneath his toga were too absurd. This time he came up with a wilier and more subtle trick. When he told his tale to the Senate today, I could hardly believe my ears. I had no rejoinder. Only afterwards did I speak with Cornelius and Vargunteius and see through his deception. There was no plot to murder Cicero. Oh, not that I would mind seeing him dead. Few things would please me more—'

'Nothing would make me happier,' said Tongilius, who quietly reappeared in the glow of the fire. His cloak was wet, and beads of water clung to his ruffled hair. 'The storm shows no signs of stopping; it's raining harder than ever. The sky is aflame with lightning. Here, your apple is seared enough, Lucius. Time to pull it from the fire. Don't eat it too soon, though, or you'll burn your tongue. Would that I could set Cicero's tongue aflame!' He looked into the darkness of the tunnel and laughed aloud at the image in his mind. Did the look of cruelty on his face enhance his beauty or mar it? His laughter was brief; he began to pace, unable to keep still.

.'Tongilius has his own reasons to be bitter,' said Catilina in a low voice. 'Cicero hasn't hesitated to bandy his name about, calling him my catamite. Curious, how sexless creatures like Cicero love to exploit the very details of intimacy which they claim to find so repulsive. Everyone knows that Cicero despises his wife, and he married offhis poor daughter before she was thirteen! Hardly a lover of women; hardly a lover at all. Yet he holds up Tongilius for ridicule without the least quiver of shame. Shameless, sexless; the cavities in Cicero's character where those qualities should be are filled with arrogance and spite.'

'What happened today in the Senate, Catilina?' I said.

'I received word that Cicero planned to deliver a speech against me. I could hardly stay away, could I? I thought I could defend myself and show him up for a fool. That was my hubris, I suppose, thinking myself his match with words; now the gods have punished me for it.

'There was no formal speech. Cicero shouted; I shouted; the senators shouted me down. I found myself abandoned and sitting almost alone, except for a handful of those closest to me. I think you cannot know the shame of that, Gordianus, to be shunned by your colleagues in such a manner. I implored them to remember my name — Lucius Sergius Catilina. A Sergius was there at the side of Aeneas when he fled from burning Troy and made his way to Italy. We have been among the most respected families in Rome since her very beginnings. And who is Cicero? Who ever heard of the Tullius family from Arpinum, a town with one tavern and two pigsties? An interloper, an intruder, hardly better than a foreigner! An immigrant — that's what I called him to his face!'

'Strong words, Catilina.'

'Hardly strong enough, considering that he was threatening my life! "Why is such a man still alive?" — he said those very words to the Senate. He brought up instances in the distant past when the Senate put reformers to death, and mocked those present, saying they lacked the moral fibre to do the same. He noted the laws that prevent a consul or the Senate from executing a citizen, and declared that I stood outside those laws, a rebel and not a citizen any longer. He was inciting them to murder me! Failing that, he would see me exiled, along with all my supporters. Take your vermin and go, he said. Rid Rome of your pestilence and leave us in peace. Over and over, he made it clear that my choice was to flee the city or be murdered.

'Of course he couldn't resist repeating the most vicious and painful lies about me one more time, to my face and before all my colleagues. Again, the sneering allusions to my sexual depravity; again, the horrible insinuation that I killed my son. He intended to provoke me, to make me lose my head. I hate to admit that he succeeded. I began by calmly denying every charge he made, and ended by shouting at the top of my lungs — shouting to be heard above the jeering of my colleagues.

‘When Cicero insinuated that all his enemies should be herded into a segregated camp, I could stand no more. "Let every man's political views be written on his brow for all to see!" said Cicero. "Why?" I said. "Will it make it easier for you to choose which heads to lop off?"'

'At that, the inside of the chamber roared like the ocean in a storm But Cicero has trained his voice to carry above any noise that man or nature can contrive. "The time for punishment has come," he shouted. "The enemies of Jupiter, in whose temple we convene, will be rounded up and laid to sacrifice on his altar. We shall set them aflame, dead or alive — dead or alive!"

"There was such an uproar I was afraid for my life. I rose from my seat, put on the most brazen face I could manage, and strode towards the doors. "I am surrounded by foes," I shouted. "I am hounded to desperation. But I tell you this: if you raise a fire to consume me, I will put it out — not with water, but with demolition!" '