John Roberts - The Catiline Conspiracy

We took our leave of the Consul and Tiro conducted us to the door. Outside, I spoke to Fabius."

"I would like a few words with you, Quintus Fabius, if it is convenient."

"And I with you. Let's walk to the Forum. The moonlight is adequate tonight, and there we can see for a good distance in all directions." I was glad to see that he was being cautious. A full moon made the streets navigable, and once we were in the Forum, it was reflected from the white marble that was everywhere, bathing the whole place in a ghostly luminescence. The Forum is like a place seen in a dream on such nights, We paused before the Rostra. "You first, Decius Caecilius," Fabius said.

"When I met you a few days ago, you were speaking with Crassus. More accurately, you were arguing with him. When I approached, you broke off your argument. Then Crassus said something strange. There were two men with me, Valgius and Thorius, both involved in the conspiracy. Crassus said that he had not met them. Yet when I spoke to your charioteer, he said that Valgius had accompanied Crassus to your house."

"That is so. I believe that, just now, Crassus is trying to put distance between himself and anyone involved in the conspiracy."

"And the nature of your argument?" I asked… "He wants me to surrender my patronage of the Allobroges. He claims it is for business purposes, involving his many Gaulish interests." He snorted disgust. "He offered to buy my patronship, as if such a thing could be subleased! Crassus thinks of everything in terms of money. Of course, he simply wants to manipulate the Gauls in Catilina's behalf. He does not yet know that they have already revealed everything to me."

"And you told Cicero of this?" I asked.

"I did. By now, you know that he is afraid to prosecute Crassus."

"So I have found, and I cannot understand why. I thought that Marcus Cicero was afraid of nothing. Why is he so fixed on Catilina when he knows that there must be someone more powerful behind him?"

He brooded over the expanse of moonlit marble around us. "Decius Caecilius, you and I are of ancient senatorial families, mine patrician, yours plebeian, families almost synonymous with the Roman state. Cicero is a good man, but he is novus homo, and can never forget it. No matter how high he climbs, he will never be secure." This was a sorrowful thing to hear about a man I greatly admired, but in later years I was to find it an accurate assessment of Cicero. "He will pursue Catilina, and that ruthlessly, precisely because he is the least of the leading traitors. He wants to smash the rebellion before it has a chance to become fully organized, in hopes that the great men will then back away from a lost cause."

"But won't Catilina implicate them?" I asked. He shrugged. "Who will believe him? We have already heard the names of wholly innocent men he and his followers have thrown around to appear stronger than they are. If he should accuse Crassus of backing him, why should Crassus not claim to be as innocent as your father?"

"Why, indeed?" I said. "And we can be sure that Crassus will put his name to no foolish letter to the Gauls."

"Of that you can be certain," Fabius agreed. "Quintus Fabius," I said, "one more question. You went to Cicero with your report of treason. Why not to Antonius Hibrida?"

He laughed, a flat, humorless sound. "The same reason as you. Hibrida is no more to be trusted than any other man bearing the name of Antonius. They are a reckless, unreliable breed, and I've no doubt that Catilina has already approached him."

I had not thought of that. "Any chance that he is with them, do you think?"

He shook his head. "You recall how the proconsular provinces were assigned, after the election?"

"Certainly. Cicero drew Macedonia, Anotonius drew Cisalpine Gaul. But for some reason Cicero refused Macedonia and Antonius got it by default. Catilina thinks Cicero is afraid of the command because there is fighting in Macedonia."

"Wrong. Catilina wanted to be Consul this year with Antonius as his colleague, but Antonius threw in with Cicero instead. Too much dirt has clung to Catilina from past corruptions. Anyway, Cicero made him a better offer."

"A better offer?"

"He gave Antonius Macedonia because Antonius wanted it. Antonius wanted a foreign war and the loot that a foreign war brings. And thus he bought Antonius's loyalty. I don't doubt that Antonius is toying with Catilina even now, but not seriously."

He was uncommonly well informed for a man who spent little time in Rome, but patricians have their ways of passing information among themselves. Another imponderable occurred to me.

"I am greatly troubled by the position of tribune-elect Bestia in all this," I said. "He is more intelligent than the others, and I think he's playing some game of his own."

"When are tribunes ever anything but troublemakers?" he said, in true patrician fashion. "Somehow, over the centuries they've bypassed the Senate and the courts and come to be the most crucial members of the government, and anybody can get elected to the tribunate."

"Anybody but a patrician," I reminded him. "Clodius has given up his patrician status just to become a tribune."

"It's about what you'd expect from a Claudian," Sanga all but growled. "I know very little about Bestia, but he seems to be a friend of your kinsman, Metellus Nepos."

"Pompey's legatus? That makes little sense."

"Things seldom make much sense in politics until you get a closer look. Sometimes not even then."

"How true. For all I know, Nepos and Bestia are old school friends, studied philosophy at Rhodes or some such. Pompey is the one man we can be certain has nothing to do with this conspiracy."

"Nothing is certain," Sanga reminded me. "Good night, Decius Caecilius Metellus."

I bade him good night and we went our ways. Before returning home, I trudged the long climb to the Capitol and entered the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus. At that hour there was no one in the temple but a slave who, every hour or so, would check the oil level in the lamps and trim their wicks.

The new statue of Jupiter was a beautiful thing, much like the old one but nearly double its size. It was in the traditional mode, modeled after the legendary Olympian Zeus of Phidias. This statue had been paid for by the great Catulus and the god's body was sculpted of the whitest alabaster, his robes of porphyry. His hair and beard were covered with gold leaf and his eyes were inlaid with lapis lazuli. In the flickering lamplight, he almost seemed to breathe.

I took a handful of powdered incense from a chased bronze bowl and tossed it onto the brazier of coals that glowed at the feet of the god. The haruspices had said that this new Jupiter would warn us of dangers to the state, but as the smoke ascended he said nothing. As I left the temple, I paused on the steps, but I saw no mysterious flights of birds, no lightning from the clear sky, no falling stars or thunders from inauspicious directions. As I walked home, I decided that the gods probably had little interest in the petty schemings of the degenerate dwarfs men had become. In the days of heroes, when Achilles and Hector, Aeneas and Agamemnon had contended, the gods themselves had taken an active part in the struggle. Those heroes were near to being gods in their own right. The gods were not likely to bestir themselves for anyone like Catilina, Crassus or Pompey, and least of all for Decius Caecilius Metellus the Younger.

The next morning Asklepiodes was found murdered on the bridge connecting the island to the riverbank. Since I was investigating these murderous doings, I made my way to the Temple of Aesculapius to view the body. Anything to get out of the Temple of Saturn. Forum gossip was full of speculation about this latest wrinkle in the wave of murders that had swept the city. Most of the other victims had been wealthy equites. This one, while wealthy, was not even a citizen. For once, I had the satisfaction of knowing what it was all about.