Steven Saylor - Catilina's riddle

'I've already had a look at the highway,' said Tongilius. 'The road is clear.'

We led our horses one by one through, the narrow passage between the boulder and the oak. To make up for the missing hone, I gave them my own. Meto and I mounted his horse together.

The exhilaration of the descent had restored Catilina's confidence. He clutched his reins and let his mount canter about. She stood upright on her hind legs and whinnied, happy to be out of the mud and muck. When he had calmed her, he came over to us, leaning forward to stroke the beast's neck. 'Are you sure you won't come with us, Gordianus? No, I'm only joking! Your place is here. You have a family. You have a future.'

He circled, waving for his men to form a bodyguard around him. How strange his company looked, filthy and ragged and yet wearing smiles as if they had just won some glorious battle. 'Tongilius, you have the silver eagle? Good. Gordianus, I thank you for what you've done. And for what you might have done against me but did not do, I thank you even more.'

He turned and rode away at a swift gallop. Meto and I followed him to the crest of the hill and watched the company for a long time as they grew smaller and smaller, vanishing into the north.

Meto said aloud what I was thinking: 'Will we ever see him again, Papa?'

I let my body answer — a twitch of the shoulders to form a non-committal shrug. Who but the Fates could answer such a question? Even so, I feared that we had seen the last of Catilina.

When we returned to the house, Diana was delighted, thinking we must have been out early playing in the mud. Bethesda was appalled, but also relieved, though she tried not to show it. Exhausted, I let her scrub me with a sponge and then crawled into my bed. At some point she joined me and made love to me with a consuming ferocity she had not shown in a long time.

On that very day — while I dozed, while Catilina and his company raced northwards — Cicero made a second speech against Catilina in Rome, not to the Senate but directly to the citizens assembled in the Forum. This I learned the next day from a slave who brought a letter from Eco, which warned me, too late, of Catilina's flight. The speech to the people reiterated much of what Cicero had said to the Senate, but with even greater venom and a crude hyperbole that showed no small contempt for his audience's sophistication. Eco made no comments on the speech — understandably, for what if the letter had fallen into other hands? — but instead quoted it at length. Perhaps he was as appalled as I was and thought that rendering Cicero's words verbatim would convey all that needed to be said, or perhaps he was merely amused at such outrageously inflammatory rhetoric, and transcribed it for my amusement.

In his speech Cicero announced Catilina's flight from Rome and humbly took credit for 'removing the dagger from our throat.' He then coyly acknowledged that some might fault him for not putting the scoundrel to death instead (though he could not have done so legally; only the courts and the people's Assembly have that right). Catilina's flight was proof of his guilt, and Cicero berated those who had been too stupid to see the truth before. If there were those who portrayed Catilina as a guiltless martyr and Cicero as his vengeful persecutor, then Cicero would bear the burden of such slander for the sake of saving Rome. As for those in league with Catilina who remained at large in the city, that band of perfumed and overdressed 'warriors' could hope to have no secrets from him; the consul's eyes and ears followed them everywhere, and he was aware of their innermost thoughts.

As for rumours that Catilina was headed for Massilia and exile rather than for Manlius and his soldiers, Cicero hoped it might be true but doubted it 'By Hercules, even if he were utterly innocent of traitorous designs, Catilina is precisely the sort of person who had rather die an outlaw's death than wither away in exile.' Cicero had gauged his opponent shrewdly.

He dwelt on Catilina's sex life repeatedly and at great length, calling him the world's most accomplished seducer of young men, mentioning Tongilius and others by name, and saying that Catilina made some of his conquests by murdering young men's parents at their request and thus sharing their inheritances even while he plundered their orifices. Catilina, Cicero said, was shameless in taking both the dominant and the subservient role. His once-famous attributes of physical endurance and energy had long ago been squandered in mindless orgies.

Catilina's inner circle shared his sexual excesses. Like their mentor they flaunted their skill at playing either role in bed. Pretty boys made for dancing and singing, they had nevertheless learned to flail daggers and sprinkle poisons, and were thus more dangerous than their pouting faces and neatly coiffed beards might suggest. They frittered away their fortunes on gambling, harlots, and expensive wines, and the vomit that came from their mouths was vile talk about murdering loyal citizens and burning the city to the ground merely to cancel their debts. Now that they were fugitives, what would Catilina and his boys do without their debauched socialites and whores to tuck them in at night? Perhaps, Cicero pondered, their notorious practice of dancing naked at parties had only been conditioning for the cold nights to come by the camp fire.

The crowd in the Forum would devour such leering wit. But could even the least discriminating among them swallow the exaggerations that Cicero served up? 'What crime or wickedness has Catilina not been guilty of?' he demanded. 'In all of Italy there is not one poisoner, gladiator, robber, assassin, parricide, will-forger, cheat, glutton, wastrel, adulterer, prostitute, corrupter of youth or corrupted youth who has not been his mtimate. What murder has been done in recent years without him? What nefarious debauchery, except through him?'

The issues could not be clearer, for the two sides were like day and night. On the side of his cause, said Cicero, was everything modest, chaste, honest, patriotic, level-headed, and self-restrained; on the side of Catilina was everything insolent, lecherous, fraudulent, traitorous, hysterical, licentious, and hotheaded. 'On one side of this confrontation are justice, moderation, courage, wisdom, and all that is good; on the other side are injustice, luxury, cowardice, recklessness, and everything bad. Prosperity struggles against poverty; right against wrong, sanity against madness, hope for the future against bottomless despair. In such a conflict, even if human efforts may fail, will not the immortal gods themselves ordain that such a league of vices must be overthrown by such a glorious army of virtues?'

What patriot in the Forum could fail to cheer such a sentiment?

Along the way Cicero managed to reiterate the danger of a slave uprising, saying that even if Catilina succeeded in his revolt, he would merely bring chaos, and that would mean a country overrun by escaped slaves and gladiators. He deplored violence, but promised the people that in the dreadful event of war he would strive for the lowest number of casualties. And he piously called on 'the immortal gods themselves' to give strength to 'this invincible people, this glorious empire, this most beautiful of cities.'

Cicero's voice was in fine form and his timing impeccable, Eco said; the speech was well received. Reading these excerpts left me profoundly depressed.

The messenger who had arrived with Eco's letter returned bearing my reply. Itold him that the house guest he had inquired about had indeed passed by on the Cassian Way, but had not stopped at my house. Indeed, by mutual agreement, the man would not be staying with me in the future. I did not want Eco to worry.

The rains continued. The earth was refreshed and the stream was recharged. Though our worries over the shortage of hay were just beginning, our great worry about water was finally over, and for the first time I saw the water mill move without human intervention, driven by the power of the rushing current. To see it in motion, the great wheel revolving in its circle, the gears meshing against one another in harmony, made me think of my old friend Lucius Claudius, whose demeanour had been likewise harmonious. He would have been delighted by the mill, and that pleased me. I thought also of Catilina, whose practical genius had solved the riddle of the water mill where I had failed. Those thoughts pleased me less, for I could see no happy outcome for Catilina and his company. I tried not to think of them at all.'