Robert Harris - Lustrum

'So,' he summarised, 'Pompey fears he will lose face if his bills don't pass, and he asks me to set aside past enmities and give him my support, for the sake of the republic?'

'That's it.'

'Well, I have not forgotten the way he tried to take the credit for defeating Spartacus – a victory that was entirely mine – and you can tell him that I would not raise a hand to help him even if my life depended on it. How is your new house, by the way?'

'Very fine, thank you.'

After that Cicero decided to approach Metellus Celer, who was now consul-elect. It took him a while to summon up the nerve to go next door: this would be the first time he had stepped over the threshold since Clodius committed his outrage at the Good Goddess ceremony. In fact, like Crassus, Celer could not have been friendlier. The prospect of power suited him – he had been bred for it, like a racehorse – and he too listened judiciously as Cicero made out his case.

'I no more care for Pompey's hauteur than you do,' concluded Cicero, 'but the fact remains that he is by far the most powerful man in the world, and it will be a disaster if he ends up alienated from the senate. But that is what will happen if we don't try to give him his legislation.'

'You think he will retaliate?'

'He says he will have no option except to find his friends elsewhere, which obviously means the tribunes or, even worse, Caesar. And if he follows that route, we'll have popular assemblies, vetoes, riots, paralysis, the people and the senate at one another's throats – in short, a disaster.'

'That's a grim picture, I agree,' said Celer, 'but I'm afraid I cannot help you.'

'Even for the sake of the country?'

'By divorcing my sister in such a public fashion, Pompey humiliated her. He also insulted me, my brother and all my family. I've learned what sort of man he is: utterly untrustworthy, interested only in himself. You should beware of him, Cicero.'

'You have good cause for grievance, no one can doubt that. But think what magnanimity it would show if you were able to say in your inaugural address that for the good of the nation Pompey should be accommodated.'

'It would not show magnanimity. It would show weakness. The Metelli may not be the oldest family in Rome, or the grandest, but we have become the most successful, and we have done it by never yielding an inch to our enemies. Do you know that creature we have as our heraldic symbol?'

'The elephant?'

'The elephant, that's right. We have it because our ancestors beat the Carthaginians, but also because an elephant is the animal our family most resembles. It is massive, it moves slowly, it never forgets, and it always prevails.'

'Yes, and it is also quite stupid, and therefore easily caught.'

'Maybe,' agreed Celer, with a twitch of annoyance. 'But then you set too great a store by cleverness, in my opinion,' and he stood to signal that the interview was over.

He led us into the atrium with its huge display of consular death masks, and as we crossed the marbled floor he gestured to his ancestors, as if all those massed bland, dead faces proved his point more eloquently than any words. We had just reached the entrance hall when Clodia appeared with her maids. I have no idea whether this was coincidental or deliberate, but I suspect the latter, for she was very elaborately coiffed and made up, considering the hour of the morning: 'In full night-time battle rig,' as Cicero said afterwards. He bowed his head to her.

'Cicero,' she responded, 'you have become a stranger to me.'

'True, alas, but not by choice.'

Celer said, 'I was told you two had become great friends while I was away. I'm glad to see you speaking again.' When I heard those words, and the casual way he uttered them, I knew at once that he had no idea of his wife's reputation. He possessed that curious innocence about the civilian world which I have noticed in many professional soldiers.

'You are well, I trust, Clodia?' enquired Cicero politely.

'I am prospering.' She looked at him from under her long lashes. 'And so is my brother in Sicily – despite your efforts.'

She flashed him a smile that was as warm as a blade and swept on, leaving the faintest wash of perfume in her wake. Celer shrugged and said, 'Well, there it is. I wish she talked to you as much as she does to this damned poet who's always trailing round after her. But she's very loyal to Clodius.'

'And does he still plan to become a plebeian?' asked Cicero. 'I wouldn't have thought having a pleb in the family would have gone down at all well with your illustrious ancestors.'

'It will never happen.' Celer checked to see that Clodia was out of earshot. 'Between you and me, I think the fellow is an absolute disgrace.'

This exchange, at least, cheered Cicero, but otherwise all his politicking had come to nothing, and the following day, as a last resort, he went to see Cato. The stoic lived in a fine but artfully neglected house on the Aventine, which smelled of stale food and unwashed clothes and offered nothing to sit on except hard wooden chairs. The walls were undecorated. There were no carpets. Through an open door I caught a glimpse of two plain and solemn teenage girls at work on their sewing, and I wondered if those were the daughters or nieces Pompey had wanted to marry. How different Rome would have been if only Cato had consented to the match! We were shown by a limping porter into a small and gloomy chamber, where Cato conducted his official business beneath a bust of Zeno. Once again Cicero laid out the case for making a compromise with Pompey, but Cato, like the others before him, would have none of it.

'He has too much power as it is,' said Cato, repeating his familiar complaint. 'If we let his veterans form colonies throughout Italy, he'll have a standing army at his beck and call. And why in the name of heaven should we be expected to confirm all his treaties without examining them one by one? Are we the supreme governing body of the Roman republic or little girls to be told where to sit and what to do?'

'True,' said Cicero, 'but we have to face reality. When I went to see him, he could not have made his intentions plainer: if we won't work with him, he'll get a tribune to lay the legislation he wants before a popular assembly, and that will mean endless conflict. Or, worse, he'll throw in his lot with Caesar when he gets back from Spain.'

'What are you afraid of? Conflict can be healthy. Nothing good comes except through struggle.'

'There's nothing good about a struggle between people and senate, believe me. It will be like Clodius's trial, only worse.'

'Ah!' Cato's fanatical eyes widened. 'You are confusing separate issues there. Clodius was acquitted not because of the mob but because of a bribed jury. And there's an obvious remedy for jury-bribing, which I intend to pursue.'

'What do you mean by that?'

'I intend to lay a bill before the house that will remove from all jurors who are not senators their traditional immunity to prosecution for bribery.'

Cicero clutched his hair. 'You can't do that!'

'Why not?'

'Because it will look like an attack by the senate on the people!'

'It's no such thing. It's an attack by the senate on dishonesty and corruption.'

'Maybe so, but in politics, how things look is often more important than what they are.'

'Then politics needs to change.'

'At least, I beg you, don't do it now – not on top of everything else.'

'It's never too soon to right a wrong.'

'Now listen to me, Cato. Your integrity may be second to none, but it obliterates your good sense, and if you carry on like this, your noble intentions will destroy our country.'

'Better destroyed than reduced to a corrupt monarchy.'

'But Pompey doesn't want to be a monarch! He's disbanded his army. All he's ever tried to do is work with the senate, yet all he's received is rejection. And far from corrupting Rome, he has done more to extend its power than any man alive!'