Steven Saylor - Catilina's riddle

His voice was shaking with emotion. His eyes glittered. I had never seen him so stripped of his composure. Tongilius knelt beside him and laid a hand on his shoulder. We were silent for a long time. The flame needed to be rekindled, but no one moved.

At last I spoke. 'Are you telling me, Catilina, that you are completely innocent of conspiracy? That your secretive comings and goings, your alliance with all the discontents of the city, your military link with Manlius — that these things exist only in Cicero's feverish imaginings? Are you telling me that you have no intention of bringing down the state?'

His eyes reflected the firelight but somehow seemed to sparkle from within. 'I claim no false innocence. But I do say that my enemies have manipulated me into a position where no other option is open to me. I have always worked within the political system of the Roman state. I have suffered the indignities of spurious trials, I have made endless compromises with men like Caesar and Crassus; I have submitted myself to electoral campaigns of ferocious ugliness. Twice I have run for consul; twice the Optimates have engineered my defeat. No one can say that I looked to violent action until no legitimate recourse remained. The Republic is a shambles, a tottering pile of bricks about to fall, with the Optimates standing jealously on top. Who will bring it down? Who will pick up the pieces and refashion it to their choosing? Why should it not be me, and why should I not use whatever tools are called for?

'Yes, for some time I have contemplated the possibility of violence, but to say that I have a plot afoot is absurd. I have met in secret with friends; I have consulted with Manlius about the readiness and loyalty of his troops. Call it conspiracy if you want, but so far it has remained a vague expression of a shared will for creating a change, with no consensus about how to do it. Manlius is eager to use his veterans. Lentulus favours inciting slaves to revolt, an insanity I utterly reject. Cethegus, always hotheaded, would resort to burning Rome.' He shook his head. 'Do you know what my dream is? I think of those ancient revolts of the plebeians, when to claim their rights they banded together and simply walked out of Rome, leaving the patricians to cope for themselves and ultimately to seek compromise. If I could draw all the discontented to me — the poor, the indebted, the powerless — and bring the Optimates to their knees without shedding a drop of blood, I would do it. But that is only a sentimental folly; the Optimates will never give up a shred of their power. The leaders of a peaceful withdrawal would be massacred and their followers enslaved.

'It's Cicero who has forced matters to a crisis. Where there was no evidence of a plot, he invented evidence. Where my colleagues and I have procrastinated, he has forced us to take a stand. He has set the stakes; he must die, or we must die, and there can be no middle ground. He provokes a premature conflict, for his own purposes. He thinks that if he can destroy us now, during his term as consul, he will have achieved true greatness; the people will love him, the Optimates will kiss his feet, he will be the saviour of Rome.

‘Yet even now I waver. From his speech, from his repeated demands that I go into exile, I wonder if Cicero would be satisfied with that. Would that sate his appetite for exercising power? Would that be a great enough achievement for the New Man from Arpinum, to have saved Rome from a conspiracy that never existed and to have driven a dangerous rebel into exile before he ever had a chance to rebel!'

'Will you go into exile, then?' said Meto, drawing closer to the fire. 'Or will you take up arms?'

'Exile…' said Catilina, not as an answer but as if he were testing the quality of the word. 'Before I left Rome, I dispatched letters to several men of rank — former consuls, patricians, magistrates. I told them that I was leaving for Massilia, on the southern coast of Gaul — not as a guilty man fleeing justice, but as a lover of peace eager to avoid civil strife and no longer able to defend myself against persecution and trumped-up charges. I could go to Massilia — if they allow it, if they don't block the passes to Gaul. To take up arms — I'm not ready, I'm still uncertain. Cicero has pressed the crisis to his own advantage; he has made a fugitive of me against my will. He wants me to take desperate action, and in doing so, stumble.'

'And what of your wife?' I said.

He turned his face so that the fire no longer lit it. 'Aurelia and her daughter I commended to the care of Quintus Catulus. He is one of the staunchest of the Optimates, but an honest man. She'll be safe with him, whatever happens; he will not harm her, and no one could ever accuse him of colluding with me.'

The storm grew worse. The wind howled outside the mine like a screaming chorus of lemures. Thunderbolts pounded the mountain and made it shudder like the belly of a drum. Water poured down the steep slopes in great sheets, carrying uprooted trees and rocky debris. Bethesda would be mad with worry, I thought, and felt a pang of dread. In such a storm, even the clogged pursuers of Catilina might have turned back. What if they had sought shelter in my home and found me gone? Spinning out the consequences of such thoughts kept me far from sleep.

The hours passed uneasily. Catilina's men took turns trying to sleep, wrapping themselves in the blankets I had brought and pressing against one another for warmth. The watch at the entrance grew lax; not even a Titan would have dared to scale the mountain and attack us on such a night. Catilina sat against a stone wall. Tongilius lay curled on his side, clutching a blanket, his head on Catilina's lap. Catilina's face was in shadow, but I could see that his eyes remained open; now and again they caught the nicker of the names.

Meto dozed, but at one point he opened his eyes and was wide awake. He stared at something set atop a rock against one of the walls. The cloth in which it was wrapped had come loose, exposing a glint of silver.

'What is that?' he whispered, rising to a crouch and stepping towards it with an odd look on his face.

Catilina slowly turned his head. "The eagle of Marius,' he said in a low voice.

I peered at it through the gloom. It was an eagle with its beak held high and its wings spread. But for the glimmer of silver, it might have been a real bird, frozen in glory. Meto reached towards it, almost but not quite touching it with his fingertips.

'Marius carried it in his campaign against the Cimbri, when you and I were boys, Gordianus.'

'It's absurdly heavy,' murmured Tongilius sleepily. 'I know; I carried it up the mountain.'

Catilina ruffled the youth's hair and then gently stroked it. 'If it should come to battle, I intend to carry it atop a pole as my standard. An extraordinary object, is it not?'

'How did you ever come to possess it?'

'That is a long story.'

"The storm rages; we have all night.'

'Suffice to say that it came to me through Sulla, during the proscriptions. It has a bloody history. Cicero told the Senate that I keep it in my house as some sort of shrine, bowing down to worship it before commencing with my murders. He tarnishes even pure silver with his acid tongue.'

'An eagle,' said Meto, turning his face towards me so that the firelight reflected from the silver lit his face like a strange mask.

'Yes,' I murmured, suddenly sleepy. 'But an eagle, Papa — don't you see?' 'Yes, an eagle,' I said, closing my eyes.

XXXIV

The storm abruptly lifted to reveal a sky littered with clouds shredded like torn pennants, Lit from beneath with a pale orange glow by the first rays of dawn. Catilina's men roused themselves, gathered up their things, and helped one another scale the wall that blocked off the mine. The only evidence left behind of their stay were some bread crumbs and apple cores, scattered pieces of charcoal and the tangy smell of a wood fire.