Caesar's Women (54 page)

Did he have them? Yes, decided Cicero. Until he looked at Caesar, who was sitting very straight on the bottom step, mouth thin, two spots of scarlet burning in his pale cheeks. He would meet opposition from Caesar, a very great speaker. Urban praetor-elect, which meant he would speak early unless the order changed.

He had to ram his point home before Caesar spoke! But how? Cicero's eyes wandered along the back tier behind Caesar until they lighted upon little old Gaius Rabirius, in the Senate for forty years without ever once standing for a magistracy, which meant he was still a pedarius. The quintessential backbencher. Not that Rabirius was the sum of all manly virtues! Thanks to many shady deals and immoralities, Rabirius was little loved by most of Rome. He was also one of that band of noblemen who had sneaked onto the Curia Hostilia roof, torn off the tiles, shelled Saturninus.…

“If this body were to decide the fate of the five men in our custody and of those men who fled, its members would be as free from legal blame as—as—why, trying to arraign dear Gaius Rabirius on charges that he murdered Saturninus! Manifestly ridiculous, Conscript Fathers. The Senatus Consultum Ultimum covers all, and allows all too. I am going to advocate that in full debate this House should reach a decision today on the fate of our five self-confessed prisoners, guilty out of their own mouths. To hold them for trial would, in my opinion, be to imperil Rome. Let us debate here today and decide what to do with them under the existing blanket protection of the Senatus Consultum Ultimum! Under that decree we can order them executed. Or we can order them into a permanent exile, confiscate their property, forbid them fire and water within Italia for the rest of their lives.”

He drew a breath, wondering about Cato, also sure to oppose it. Yes, Cato sat rigid and glaring. But as a tribune of the plebs-elect, he was very far down the speaking hierarchy indeed.

“Conscript Fathers, it is not my business to make a decision on this matter. I have done my duty in outlining the legalities of the situation to you, and in informing you what you can do under a Senatus Consultum Ultimum. Personally I am in favor of a decision here today, not a trial process. But I refuse to indicate exactly what this body should do with the guilty men. That is better from some other man than I.”

A pause, a challenging look at Caesar, another at Cato. “I direct that the order of speaking be not in elected magistracy, but in age and wisdom and experience. Therefore I will ask the senior consul-elect to speak first, then the junior consul-elect, after which I will ask an opinion from every consular present here today. Fourteen all told, by my count. After which the praetors-elect will speak, beginning with the urban praetor-elect, Gaius Julius Caesar. Following the praetors-elect, the praetors will speak, then aediles-elect and aediles, plebeian ahead of curule. After which it will be the turn of the tribunes of the plebs-elect, and finally the current tribunes of the plebs. I pend a decision on ex-praetors, as I have already enumerated sixty speakers, though three current praetors are in the field against Catilina and Manlius. Therefore I make it fifty-seven speakers without calling on ex-praetors.”

“Fifty-eight, Marcus Tullius.” How could he have overlooked Metellus Celer, urban praetor?

“Ought you not to be in Picenum with an army?”

“If you recollect, Marcus Tullius, you yourself deputed me to Picenum on the condition that I returned to Rome every eleventh day, and for twelve days around the tribunician changeover.”

“So I did. Fifty-eight speakers, then. That means no one has the time at his disposal to make a reputation as a dazzling orator, is that understood? This debate must finish today! I want to see a division before the sun sets. Therefore I give you fair warning, Conscript Fathers, that I will cut you short if you start to orate.” Cicero looked at Silanus, senior consul-elect.

“Decimus Junius, begin the debate.”

“Mindful of your caution about time, Marcus Tullius, I will be brief,” said Silanus, sounding a little helpless; the man who spoke first was supposed to set the tenor and carry all succeeding speakers his way. Cicero could do it, always. But Silanus wasn't sure he could, especially because he had no idea which way the House would go on this issue.

Cicero had made it as plain as he dared that he was advocating the death penalty—but what did everybody else want? So in the end Silanus compromised by advocating “the extreme penalty,” which everybody assumed was death. He managed not to mention a trial process in any way whatsoever, which everybody took to mean that there should be no trial process.

Then came Murena's turn; he too favored “the extreme penalty.”

Cicero of course didn't speak, and Gaius Antonius Hybrida was in the field. Thus the next in line was the Leader of the House, Mamercus Princeps Senatus, senior among the consulars. Uncomfortably he elected “the extreme penalty.” Then the consulars who had been censors—Gellius Poplicola, Catulus, Vatia Isauricus, a worried Lucius Cotta—“the extreme penalty.” After which came consulars who had not been censors, in order of seniority—Curio, the two Luculli, Piso, Glabrio, Volcatius Tullus, Torquatus, Marcius Figulus. “The extreme penalty.” Very properly, Lucius Caesar abstained.

So far so good. Now it was Caesar's turn, and since few knew his views as well as Cicero did, what he had to say came as a surprise to many. Including, it was plain to see, Cato, who had not looked for such a disconcerting, unwelcome ally.

“The Senate and People of Rome, who together constitute the Republic of Rome, do not make any allowances for the punishment of full citizens without trial,” said Caesar in that high, clear, carrying voice. “Fifteen people have just advocated the death penalty, yet not one has mentioned the trial process. It is clear that the members of this body have decided to abrogate the Republic in order to go much further back in Rome's history for a verdict on the fate of some twenty-one citizens of the Republic, including a man who has been consul once and praetor twice, and who actually is still a legally elected praetor at this moment. Therefore I will not waste this House's time in praising the Republic or the trial and appeal processes every citizen of the Republic is entitled to undergo before his peers can enforce a sentence of any kind. Instead, since my ancestors the Julii were Fathers during the reign of King Tullus Hostilius, I will confine my remarks to the situation as it was during the reign of the kings.”

The House was sitting up straighter now. Caesar went on. “Confession or no, a sentence of death is not the Roman way. It was not the Roman way under the kings, though the kings put many men to death even as we do today—by murder during public violence. King Tullus Hostilius, warlike though he was, hesitated to approve a formal sentence of death. It looked bad, he could see that so clearly that it was he who advised Horatius to appeal when the duumviri damned him for the murder of his sister, Horatia. The hundred Fathers—ancestors of our Republican Senate—were not inclined to be merciful, but they took the royal hint, thereby establishing a precedent that the Senate of Rome has no business doing Romans to death. When Romans are done to death by men in government—who does not remember Marius and Sulla?—it means that good government has perished, that the State is degenerate.

“Conscript Fathers, I have little time, so I will just say this: let us not go back to the time of the kings if that means execution! Execution is no fitting punishment. Execution is death, and death is merely an eternal sleep. Any man must suffer more if he is sentenced to a living exile than if he dies! Every day he must think of his reduction to non-citizen, poverty, contempt, obscurity. His public statues come tumbling down; his imago cannot be worn in any family funeral procession, nor displayed anywhere. He is an outcast, disgraced and ignoble. His sons and grandsons must always hang their heads in shame, his wife and daughters weep. And all of this he knows, for he is still alive, he is still a man, with all a man's feelings and weaknesses. And all a man's strengths, now of little use to him save as torment. Living death is infinitely worse than real death. I do not fear death, so long as it be sudden. What I fear is some political situation which could result in permanent exile, the loss of my dignitas. And if I am nothing else, I am a Roman to the tiniest bone, the most minute scrap of tissue. Venus made me, and Venus made Rome.”

Silanus was looking confused, Cicero angry, everyone else very thoughtful, even Cato.

“I appreciate what the learned senior consul has had to say about what he insists on calling the Senatus Consultum Ultimum—that under its shelter all normal laws and procedures are suspended. I understand that the learned senior consul's chief concern is the present welfare of Rome, and that he considers the continued residence of these self-confessed traitors within our city walls to be a peril. He wants the business concluded as quickly as is possible. Well, so do I! But not with a death sentence, if we must go back to the time of the kings. I do not worry about our learned senior consul, or any of the fourteen brilliant men sitting here who have already been consul. I do not worry about next year's consuls, or this year's praetors, or next year's praetors, or all the men sitting here who have already been praetor and may still hope to be consul.”

Caesar paused, looked extremely grave. “What worries me is some consul of the future, ten or twenty years down the road of time. What kind of precedent will he see in what we do here today? Indeed, what kind of precedent is our learned senior consul taking when he cites Saturninus? On the day when we-all-really-know-who illegally executed Roman citizens without a trial, those self-appointed executioners desecrated an inaugurated temple, for that is what the Curia Hostilia is! Rome herself was profaned. My, my, what an example! But it is not our learned senior consul worries me! It is some less scrupulous and less learned consul of the future.

“Let us keep a cool head and look at this business with our eyes open and our thinking apparatus detached. There are other punishments than death. Other punishments than exile in a luxurious place like Athens or Massilia. How about Corfinium or Sulmo or some other formidably fortified Italian hill town? That's where we've put our captured kings and princes for centuries. So why not Roman enemies of the State too? Confiscate their property to pay such a town extremely well for the trouble, and simultaneously make sure they cannot escape. Make them suffer, yes! But do not kill them!”

When Caesar sat down no one spoke, even Cicero. Then the senior consul-elect, Silanus, got to his feet, looking sheepish.

“Gaius Julius, I think you mistake what I meant by saying 'the extreme penalty,' and I think everyone else made the same mistake. I did not mean death! Death is un-Roman. No, I meant much what you mean, actually. Life imprisonment in a house in an impregnable Italian hill town, paid for by property confiscation.”

And so it went, everyone now advocating a stringent confinement paid for by confiscation of property.

When the praetors were finished, Cicero held up his hand. “There are just too many ex-praetors present here to allow everyone to speak, and I did not count ex-praetors in that total of fifty-eight men. Those who wish to contribute nothing new to the debate, please hold up your hands in response to the two questions I will put to you now: those in favor of a death sentence?”

None, as it turned out. Cicero flushed.

“Those in favor of strict custody in an Italian town and complete confiscation of property?''

All save one, as it turned out.

“Tiberius Claudius Nero, what do you have to say?”

“Only that the absence of the word 'trial' from all these speeches today disturbs me greatly. Every Roman man, self-confessed traitor or not, is entitled to a trial, and these men must be tried. But I do not think they should be tried before Catilina is either defeated or surrenders. Let the chief perpetrator stand trial first of all.”

“Catilina,” said Cicero gently, “is no longer a Roman citizen! Catilina is not entitled to trial under any law of the Republic.”

“He should be tried too,” said Claudius Nero stubbornly, and sat down.

Metellus Nepos, president of the new College of Tribunes of the Plebs to go into office in five days' time, spoke first. He was tired, he was ravenous; eight hours had gone by, which really wasn't bad considering the importance of the subject and the number of men who had already spoken. But what he dreaded was Cato, who would follow him—when was Cato not long-winded, prolix, awkward and utterly boring? So he rattled off his speech supporting Caesar, and sat down with a glare for Cato.

It never occurred to Metellus Nepos that the only reason Cato stood in the House today a tribune of the plebs-elect was due entirely to him, Metellus Nepos. When Nepos had returned from the East after a delightful campaign as one of Pompey the Great's senior legates, he traveled in some style. Naturally. He was one of the most important Caecilii Metelli, he was extremely rich and had managed to enrich himself even more since going east, and he was Pompey's brother-in-law into the bargain. So he had journeyed up the Via Appia at his leisure, well before the elections and well before the summer's heat. Men in a hurry rode or drove, but Nepos had had enough of hurrying; his choice of locomotion was a huge litter borne by no less than twelve men. In this fabulous equipage he lolled on a down mattress covered in Tyrian purple, and had a servant crouched in one corner to minister to him with food and drink, a chamber pot, reading materials.

As he never stuck his head between the litter's curtains, he never noticed the humble pedestrians his cavalcade frequently encountered, so of course he never noticed a group of six extremely humble pedestrians headed in the opposite direction. Three of the six were slaves. The other three were Munatius Rufus, Athenodorus Cordylion, and Marcus Porcius Cato, on their way to Cato's estate in Lucania for a summer of studying and freedom from children.

For a long time Cato simply stood on the side of the road watching the parade amble by, counting the number of people, counting the number of vehicles. Slaves, dancing girls, concubines, guards, loot, cook-wagons, libraries on wheels and wine cellars on wheels.