Rome For Sale, page 24
4
Atticus was at home, and Cæsar found another caller, Cicero. The three men were confused for a moment, and then each recovered himself. Atticus became the kindly host to whom political questions were unknown; Cæsar became the light-hearted but sympathetic commentator on the follies of men; Cicero became the slightly heavy ironist with a burden of state-affairs. Atticus was pleased to see Cæsar, for he liked to keep in touch with all leaders except the radical reprobates, but he would have preferred the visit to occur when Cicero was absent. Cicero distrusted Cæsar and envied him his carefree aristocratic manner which conciliated without condescension men and women of all classes alike, whereas he the democrat felt not quite at ease with both the lip-curling nobles and the obsequious plebeians. But he could not altogether disregard Cæsar’s air of good-fellowship; his own bonhomie found such an appeal irresistible, though afterwards the sense of having been gulled added to the original distrust. Cæsar genuinely liked Cicero, for he saw the warm humanity through all the layers of protective verbiage and sarcasm; he appreciated the man’s rise in the world at its true worth, a victory for literature over social barriers; and he felt that Cicero was a great man but not in the least the great man of his own estimation.
In the presence of a political foe Cicero was entirely on the defensive, full of crushingly grand and generalised phrases; but Cæsar refused to be drawn. He was busily summing up Atticus, seeking to pierce to the heart of the man’s quietism. Was it a real perception of values or a mere armour of fear?
None of the men wanted to be the first to mention Catalina, but Cicero could not resist.
“We live in rousing times,” he said bellicosely. “I wonder if my consulship will he more famous as the year in which Gaius Cæsar became Chief Pontiff or in which Lucius Catalina left Rome in disgrace?”
“It does not need any such minor additions,” said Cæsar, ignoring the intended insult. “Some men say that the only hope of a consulship being remembered is the chance of a good vintage year. Then the cellars are full of casks marked Cicero Consul, and every time men drink they remember you. A very good year might keep one remembered for thirty, fifty, even a hundred years. Perhaps there are worse ways of being remembered than at meetings where men grow merry; and the period is long enough.”
“It is my curse to aim higher, I fear,” said Cicero, drawing himself up. “1 judge all my actions by this criterion: How will they appear in six hundred years’ time?”
“Six hundred years,” mused Cæsar. “Six hundred years ago Rome was a hamlet. Six hundred years hence it may be a hamlet again.”
“Never,” said Cicero firmly. “Not while I am consul.” Then, realising the absurdity of the remark, he reddened and said, “I mean, I couldn’t bear such a thought. I live only for posterity.”
Atticus sighed. “It’s all very sad. The empire is ringed with enemies, and here we are tearing at each other’s throats.”
Cicero seized the opportunity and launched into a diatribe against disloyal citizens. Atticus sat without motion, his hands loosely clasped in his lap, but occasionally the thumbs twitched and caressed one another. Cæsar felt distaste for him. Men were not born to sit in a corner with twitching thumbs. Atticus feared—not for his own property perhaps; he was above crude greed; but he grasped together his nexus of credit as a safeguard against the world, and the world was always breaking in. He feared the world; but he did not want peace. That was his lie. He could have retired long ago to a country-seat somewhere in Italy or Greece; he wanted power without responsibility. His hands were spiders. He would do no man harm, but his hands were spiders. Break down the spiderweb, Catalina; that was the right course.
Cæsar made his excuses and went. Atticus sighed. “He is a pleasant fellow, and he means well, and he has the best literary sense in Rome.”
Cicero cleared his throat. “Unless I’m very much mistaken, he’s a traitor; but he has reckoned without me. I shall not let personal considerations weigh.”
Atticus felt his shoulders. He had a slight touch of neuritis. “I think Cæsar can look after himself. He’s been too well trained as an adulterer to leave traces. There’s perhaps a method in his amours—or perhaps I’m doing the usual thing of basing a lot of analysis on a trifle of hearsay about which I know nothing.”
5
The conservatives were disquieted by news of bands of rough-looking men passing through the Gates. These men came from the disaffected country-districts and were found cheap lodgings by Catalina’s agents. Cicero instructed Sestius to obtain details of these transactions for use, if necessary, in a bribery-trial. The bands grew; groups of ten to fifty were tramping the roads from Etruria, and their presence in the taverns caused many brawls. The police reported that the situation was becoming difficult. The new-corners were all propagandists for debt-abolition. Wherever they met, they talked of nothing else, and they kept at fever-point the indignation of the plebs.
Cicero was delighted at the turn that events were taking daily he found it easier to summon his wrath against Catalina. Every action of the man showed a disregard for the constitution; he was mustering forces before he had even tried the ballot-box; he was fomenting insurrection by the most bare-faced appeals to the sloth and cupidity of the mob. The man wasn’t a fool; he must know that he couldn’t carry out his programme. Even a whisper of it disrupted financial dealings throughout the empire.
In the midst of these discussions came news of the death of King Mithridates, the doughty enemy of Rome who had fought for so many decades to rouse the peasants and artisans of Asia against their oppressors and the tax-gatherers. Once by the offer of debt-rebate he had engineered the massacre of some 80,000 Roman businessmen and their families. This year he had taken refuge from Pompeius in the Crimea, where he had been trying to collect yet another army and invade Italy through the north by a march across Europe. His followers, aghast at the plan, had rebelled under his son, and he had committed suicide. No one in Italy had been very keen to welcome a redeemer from the East with the anomalous title of King; but now that he was dead, the eastern portion of the city-populace talked about his great qualities, how he had sought to be the saviour of the world and had perished old but brave and tireless. Yet the saviour would come. Surely his name was Catalina. Crowds thronged the consecrated spots where the Gracchi had been slain, leaving flowers and fruits there, and offering up prayers to the holy martyrs.
At last, having sent on as many men ahead as possible, Manlius arrived with a large body of veterans. They took up their quarters in the poorer districts in the north-west and round the docks near the Aventine, and began militantly preaching the millennium. No one but the tribunes dared call an assembly, and since all opponents stayed away, these meetings were perfervidly in unison in accepting the revolutionary policy.
Manlius was at home in the tumult. “Order of the day,” he said each morning as he called on Catalina, saluting with raised arm as if he were entering his general’s tent in the field.
Catalina grew to love him. Never did he feel that his aim was so simple and so easy of accomplishment as when he talked with Manlius.
“When are the elections coming along?” repeated Manlius. “My lads are getting out of hand. The enemy are in sight, they say, and we can smell the gold in their baggage, not to mention the women and the cooking, and yet we’re kept tied down.”
“It all depends on the consul Cicero. He has to name the day.”
“This is bad campaigning, if you don’t mind me saying so, when we have to wait on the enemy to give us the word for the advance, master Catalina. My lads can’t find a single man in the city that won’t drink to your health.”
“Perhaps it’s the wine that attracts.”
“No, you’re wrong. Do you think they’d waste their own wine-money like that? They make the other folk do the buying, and it’s seldom they have to rub a man’s face in the gutter first.”
Then he went on with reverently lowered voice. “Let’s see her again.”
Catalina smiled; he knew what Manlius desired. The first words that Manlius had spoken on arrival after his greeting had been a request to see the Cimbrian Standard of Marius. Catalina now rose and walked into the atrium with Manlius; they halted before the shrine with its silken hangings. Catalina jerked a cord and the hangings moved apart, showing the staff surmounted with a silver eagle. From the short crossbar on which the eagle with upstretched wings rested, there fell a square of purple cloth with long fringe of gold; and along the staff were affixed medallions commemorative of the engagements in which the eagle had witnessed victory.
“May I touch her?”
Catalina nodded and Manlius reached out his hand, stroking the eagle and staff as if they were fragile and liable to break.
“Marius was a soldier,” he said. “I was in Sulla’s army, and we marched on Rome and made Marius run, but that was after he’d tried to be a politician. Marius and Sulla weren’t enemies when that eagle ate the flesh of the barbarians on the Putrid Plain.”
6
The conservatives were not leaving the field to Catalina. They drafted in able-bodied men from their estates, and wrote to the more prosperous and therefore more loyal towns asking for men. From Cicero’s native town a squad of admiring young burgesses turned up armed to offer their services, and he took them as his bodyguard. The youth of the first and second aristocracies were gathering and drilling, enjoying the chance to show off their dyed uniforms and gilded swords. Atticus for once appeared in public action, taking charge of the chief detachment of the Equites. Pickets were maintained day and night on the Palatine, and the glow of their fires through the darkness contributed to keep alive the sense of Rome as a battleground. The lack of police was keenly felt, but so strong was the Roman hatred of individual usurpation that the mechanism of preserving order had remained rudimentary through fear that it would be made the tool of a militarist official. Still in theory the state was a combination of families in each of which the father was completely capable of seeing that all members were morally subordinate.
The unofficial levies were told to keep out of the poorer areas, but even so there were fights; a few men were killed and many wounded. The streets resounded with catcalls, and under cover of nightfall rival parties painted every available piece of wall-space with exhortation and abuse. Sometimes these parties met, broke each other’s ladders, and splashed each other with red paint.
Regular canvassing ceased, though Catalina and Murena, the two active partisans, kept their agents at work. Sulpicius, who became daily more disgusted, had announced his withdrawal; and the conservatives were forced to support Silanus as their second candidate. At first Silanus resented the patronage, and then drifted more and more into talking of the need for law and order, observing that perhaps the uproars were a blessing in disguise since they would turn men’s hearts to a leader who offered more rational plans.
The elections for the officers of the plebs were held. As the other conservatives were afraid to face the noisy hustlings, Cato came forward and stood for the tribuneship, and, supported by the middle-class voters, he scraped into the corporation; but among his colleagues he had Bestia and Metellus Nepos.
7
Orestilla did not again raise the subject of Catalina’s first wife, but she remained restless and asked questions of some of the older slaves who had been with Catalina in the days of his first marriage. Then she grew ashamed of this, frightened that one of the slaves would repeat to his master her undignified behaviour.
Cethegus continued to beset her with glances and touches of the hand. His affairs were still tormenting him. Chelidon had scared him into accepting a meeting in a room over a perfumer’s shop. He took her to keep her quiet, intending to argue the matter out reasonably. He told her that he didn’t love her.
“That’s all right,” she said, kicking out her lean smooth leg at the linen coverlet. “I don’t love you. I only want to meet you here twice a week.”
“It can’t go on. There isn’t any point to it.”
“O yes there is. I’ll show you.”
“You can’t want a man who doesn’t want you.”
“Can’t I? Live and learn.” She flung her arms about him. “I’m not going to let you go. You’re the only man I’ve ever met that could make me shiver so gloriously. I like the way you glare at me and show your teeth. Would you really like to eat me? Say yes. I want somebody to want to eat me.”
“I tell you I loathe you.”
“It’s so wonderful to have a man like you loathing me. I had the most horrible dream last night. Do you know that the man who keeps this shop will poison a rival if one pays him enough? He puts something into her face-lotion. It soaks through to her brain, and when she dies there’s a frog found in her brain. Fancy that.”
Cethegus could make no headway. He tried harder to gain Orestilla, though he knew very well that if he were successful he would merely complicate things, and that if Chelidon heard she would be ungovernable. But he could not stop himself. At last one day Orestilla did not move away when he pressed his arm against her. He went home almost dazed with pleasure, and spent the rest of the day among his weapons, fingering them amorously.
Precia was becoming suspicious. She came into the armoury and watched him. “You’re very subdued of late.”
“You know what’s going on.”
Her small dried-up face with large yellow eyes scrutinised him. She came over and stood looking down at him as he sat on his stool with an Iberian sword in his hand.
“You’re very forgetful of late. You seem to have forgotten where I sleep.”
“I’m absorbed by what’s going on,” he mumbled, without meeting her eye.
She continued staring at him. “If you want a change, I’ll send in my girl Rhodanthe, or I’ll buy you something out of the ordinary from the war-slaves that are being put up daily down at the docks. But I won’t have you making a fool of me with other women. You know that?”
“Yes,” he said sullenly, “and you can keep Rhodanthe to yourself. I don’t want her or anyone else.”
Precia turned slowly on her heel and went out. Cethegus squeezed his finger between the hilt and scabbard of the sword, and cursed under his breath. All women ought to be kept in a jail where one could visit them in the dark; there they could bear children, never seen of men; and the world would be a fine place.
8
After Cethegus had gone, Orestilla waited till she could find Catalina alone. “Do you trust Cethegus?” she asked.
“Of course.” He blinked at the unexpected question. “I don’t say that his motives are altogether pure. I’ve gone past asking such questions of myself or any other man. But he’s in this thing with me beyond chance of withdrawal. Why do you ask?”
“I don’t like his eyes.” She was sorry that she had spoken; she would only discontent Catalina to no purpose. “I suppose I’m wrong. I thought it was a pity he came here so much. Couldn’t you get rid of him by sending him to Capua or somewhere?”
“But I can’t treat him like one of the lesser men, even if I wanted it. He’d feel resentful. Besides, he’s far more use here.”
“I suppose I’m wrong.” She passed her hand over her brow. “Something in his eyes. I shouldn’t have mentioned it.”
Catalina dismissed her remarks as mere feminine vagary. “You seem to be getting rather worn out,” he remarked, realising it for the first time. “Why don’t you take a holiday? The season’s past for Baiæ, but perhaps that would be all the better. Why not go to Antium? That’s closer. You need a rest.”
“I don’t,” she said fiercely. “I need something to do. I see you obsessed with a world of action, and I can only wait. Can’t I help you? Can’t I do something?”
Catalina was touched. “I understand.” He pondered. “But I don’t see a way out. You know how your love helps me, but it seems so selfish for me to say that. I know how inaction crazes me. I ought to be more sympathetic. I keep things too much to myself, when it would freshen me and quicken my mind if I talked them over with you.”
At a loss, he rose and took her in his arms. For a moment she stiffened with a resistance that she had never known before; then she clung to him.
9
Sulpicius was causing trouble with his objections. He pointed out that no one was obeying the election-law that he had sponsored and that the worst offender was the conservative Murena. He was joined by Cato who demanded that the infringers of the law should be disqualified. Both Murena and Catalina, Cato declared, should be turned down by Cicero on the election-day; for the presiding consul could refuse nominations.
“I have the legal right,” agreed Cicero, “but everyone will say that we’re afraid of Catalina and stretching a point to oust him. Nominations are hardly ever refused unless a criminal action has already been begun.”
“Then turn down both men. Who can speak of favour then?”
“They’ll say we have plenty of possible candidates, but all their effort is concentrated in Catalina.”
“So much the worse for them.”
But Cicero shook his head. A point-blank refusal would mean riots and civil war. But Sulpicius and Cato continued to collect evidence against Murena, exasperating the consular council. Cato was known to be pigheadedly consistent, but virtue could be carried too far. To quash Catalina before the elections was too dangerous; but perhaps the matter could be settled with a little more shrewdness. If public opinion was sufficiently prepared and Catalina impeached beforehand, the refusal would be different.
