Rome For Sale, page 25
But how to prove Catalina a conspirator? The law against conspiracy was indeed conveniently vague. Any private organisation of which a majority in the Senate disapproved became a conspiracy if an Ultimate Decree was passed against it; and the adherents of Catalina were avowedly malcontent. But to carry the timid majority of the Senate it would be necessary to have a proof of definite implication in a plot for the use of force. Fifty years ago the available evidence would have been ample; but with the complex growth of cultural and social relations, questions of conscience become more entangled, fears of action entrench themselves behind doubts of legality. Some dramatic exposure was necessary, something more than the direct statement of Catalina’s responsibility for an unruly faction. Sestius had reported to Cicero what Fulvia had told him, and he was now ordered to make every effort to find some striking fact illustrative of Catalina’s guilt—the kind of thing that would panic the senators into yielding the government a solid moral support.
10
Cato, leaving to Sulpicius the work against Murena, put his energies into attacking Catalina in the Senate. His denunciations were general in character and consisted of accusing Catalina of corrupting the electorate through ambition and greed. The debates sickened Catalina, but he could not stay away without giving the conservatives the chance to circulate the rumour that he was over-awed and frightened. He schooled himself to sit impassively through the interminable discussions enlivened only by the bitter attacks of Cato and his clique.
Once, however, Cato’s vituperation became even more personal than usual. He shouted in his tirelessly hoarse voice that doom was prepared for Catalina, that a man must meet the fate he prepared for others. A drone of thunder filled the air. As a man sows, so shall he reap. The thief shall be robbed, and the slayer slain.
Suddenly Catalina lost his control; the long room darkened, redly starred. If the world was ripe for destruction, let it perish. He rose to his feet and cried in a vehemently ringing voice:
“If a conflagration is lighted against me, I shall put it out not by water but by pulling down the roof of things.”
There was a silence through the room. The senators were stupefied by this cry of pain which to them was the extorted admission of villainy. The worst was true. Cato himself was surprised. He paused, remarked in a cold voice, “You have condemned yourself,” and sat down.
All looked at Catalina, who after his outburst had drawn back into his impassive mask. Then they looked at Cicero, awaiting a momentous utterance. Cicero felt at last the great triumphant hour of his consulship. His career was finalised. The rest was easy. He had the man in the open, he would hunt him down with a clear heart. Catalina was condemned out of his own mouth.
Catalina felt the strength that his outcry had given his enemy. He gritted his teeth and fought down the angry words that struggled in his brain. He had said enough, he had said too much already. Let them grin. He would prove his words true. His enemies had torn the words from him, and now he must abide by those words. Smash the world.
But the senators were not grinning. They were afraid. Only Cicero and Cato were calm. In both men a sense of victory was enkindled. But whereas Cato merely knew an intensification of his normal feeling of duty done, Cicero was like a man reborn in a glorified earth. His enemy had delivered himself into his hands. A word had left him naked.
Cethegus who was sitting beside Catalina fidgeted, and Lentulus roused himself from a meditation to cast from his prætor’s chair a lazily shrewd glance towards the bench where they sat. Nobody was quite ready for such a declaration of hostility, though Cato and his allies had been bawling for it for months. Everyone had known that it must come, and now that it had come they were thunderstruck.
Catalina rose. There was no point in staying longer now that Cato had desisted and Cicero had shown himself unable to act. He wanted to go. For a moment he stood in the row, looking round the room to see if anyone else would rise to challenge him; then he walked down the steps and out through the centre of the hall. His gaunt face showed no emotion.
Cicero wanted to scream to the attendants to stop and arrest him. Perhaps the armed youths who thronged the porch, listening to the echoes of the debate, would cut him down. Why did no one send and bid them kill the rebel? All the senators were cowards and waited for the consul’s order. He would give it, but in his own time.
The proceedings dragged on without conviction. Everyone felt that Cicero had won a great advantage and yet that he had somehow lost his chance. On dismissal the senators clustered in anxiously murmuring groups.
11
Cicero now redoubled his efforts for evidence. Catalina himself had facilitated things. If only the dramatic details would be forthcoming to release into action the now steadily increasing but damned-up emotional forces!
Sestius called on Fulvia, but she had nothing beyond the ordinary talk of threats and hopes to repeat. Sestius stretched himself. He felt easy with Fulvia now as with an old friend. “We know ourselves,” he said, looking her up and down. “I don’t need back-alleys when there’s a straight cut before me. Cicero wants evidence about a coup for election-day.”
“I don’t think there’s any. They seem sure of winning.” She curled up her legs under her.
“Well, perhaps a clever woman like you could start a plot rolling.”
She caressed her throat; the apothecary had sent her some special almond-paste for rubbing into the creases; but what was the use of trying to be beautiful when her nerves were lacerated daily by Curius. “I’ll do my best. But Curius can’t actually do anything without the others. He isn’t one of the heads, and you’ve promised that he won’t be punished whatever happens, haven’t you?”
Sestius nodded She wondered why she had asked for that promise. At first she had thought that she would involve Curius in any disclosures and thus get rid of him. Then she had felt afraid. Besides, what would Sestius and the others think of her if she didn’t make that stipulation? She went on. “Why can’t you dress up some of your own men and produce an attempt that fails, then blame Catalina?”
“A clever woman! I said so. But I’d thought of that idea already. It might be used. But look here now. Can’t you give me some of the kind of facts that would make the trick look genuine?”
“I’ll try. But you’re fools if you try to rush matters. There’s violence behind these people. I’m sure of it, and if you take your time you’ll get your facts.”
Sestius regarded her thoughtfully. “If I was ever to deceive my poor wife, it would be with a woman like you.”
“Then you’ll never deceive your poor wife,” said Fulvia, uncurling her legs and rising. “ Not unless you find my double.”
“Don’t take me up so quickly!” complained Sestius. “I meant it as a compliment, not as an invitation.”
12
August, the month of harvest when the deities of fire and water were propitiated, was passing, and yet there was no election-day. The Flamen of Iuppiter had plucked the first grapes and prayed for the crop; the navel-hole, the earth-pit that reflected the sky-dome, on the Palatine had been opened for a day. The harvest could be made; the dead could come forth and return. Still there were no elections.
At last Cicero had to do something. The joy of Catalina’s self-exposure in the Senate had gone, reinforcing the now-unquestioned need to destroy the man, but deepening anxiety. How was the destruction to be made in a way that would be as simple and finally effective as the single sentence that had confessed the rebel-wrath? But something must be done at once. Resentment was growling out of the city-mob. There were lawless meetings at the street-corners and even in the Forum. The police could do nothing. Frays between the mob and the government-supporters grew more violent. Everyone felt the nervous stress. The senators could stand it no longer. Let a move be made against Catalina, or let the elections be held.
Cicero could not bear to let his first success pass tamely by. With the meagre evidence at his disposal he decided to call the Senate and see if they could not be warmed to that state of terrified resolution in which compacted measures could be taken. He fixed the election-day, and then called a meeting of the Senate on the day before the date. Striving hard to work himself into a rage, he declared that plans had been laid by the radicals for a tumult on the morrow and for the murder of him, the presiding consul. Cicero wanted to persuade and the Senate wanted to believe, but the magnetic point of conviction was lacking. Everyone expressed the greatest concern for the allegations, but the speeches lacked fire and all that Cicero could do was to promise fuller details on the next day.
Next day the Senate assembled full of apprehensions. Catalina took his seat and Cicero spoke in terms of vague and diffuse denunciation. A plot had been laid for the murder of the consul in the Fields of Mars, and he demanded protection. The debate opened with strong support from the Cato-section; then other senators spoke, all agreeing that the commonwealth was threatened by evil-minded men; but there was no pervading force. All wanted to throw on someone else the responsibility for any irretrievable course, and the mere multiplicity of words produced an effect of retreat from the demand for action.
At last Cicero called on Catalina. He rose and spoke laconically:
“There are two bodies in the state. One is feeble with a feeble head. The other is strong, but headless. While I live, the strong body shall never lack a head if it deserves one.”
Cries of rage surged up all around him, but the pulse of action was still lacking. Reluctantly Cicero dismissed the gathering; he had the good sense to see that it would be futile to ask for an Ultimate Decree. The moral cohesion that alone could give the decree meaning was altogether absent. Cicero felt oozing out of him the power which Catalina’s self-exposure had created, but there still remained the hard knot of fear and determination to crush. The misery now was lack of means, not lack of an easy conscience.
13
The election-day arrived. The streets were crammed with quarrelsome and gleeful factions. Any member of either side who went alone was likely to be trounced. Respectable burghers, summoned by letters from the Senate, had come from all over Italy; and the army of vertean under Manlius had swelled daily through the last month. The conservatives’ hope that they would be starved out by the delays had proved false; if they were hungrier, they were all the angrier because of it. In the Field of Mars outside the walls there were continual scrimmages; the mob did their best to intimidate the better-class voters; the gangways were thronged with tightly crushed files proceeding to drop their votes into the ballot-boxes. Both sides did their best to destroy any secrecy in the ballot by crowding the booths, peering at what initials had been scribbled on the wooden tickets, shouting insults, slogans and threats.
Cicero was not leaving all the intimidation to the mob. His armed bands had been picketed in all the temples, porticoes and other points of mob-gathering. At the city-gates and at convenient positions about the Field there were imposing detachments of soldiers, their weapons and corselets brightly scoured. According to instructions, they clashed their weapons and occasionally executed movements to show their discipline in comparison with the surging populace. Cicero himself on his presidential dais, surrounded by the armed Volscians, was dressed in a toga thrown loosely over a heavy suit of armour, and he took care to let the sunlight glint on the metal dazzlingly. Emissaries spread the news that several attempts to assassinate him had been narrowly foiled.
Cato, followed by Favonius, thrust his way among the sweating crowd, informally superintending. The clerks at the ballot-boxes were mopping their brows, badgered by the representatives of the candidates. Everyone was sure that everyone else was cheating and that whatever votes were registered a faked account would declare the foe elected.
The day was a blaze of dust and white-gold light. The sun throbbed in a cloudless sky. All the roads to Rome were thronged. The heat rose from the earth in corrugated veils like water and ran in sweat down the foreheads of the wayfarers. But it was the dust that was most irksome; it threshed up from the road as if the rays of the sun were flogging at the earth as well as biting through cloth and skin; it smarted in eyes, gritted between teeth, prickled behind the nostrils, crawled itchily under garments, and blackened the most elegant of fingernails. Not a pleasant day for travelling, and yet the roads were thick with people.
“How’s it all going?” cried a red-faced man nearing the Raudusculan Gate on the Ostian Road to a traveller from the city.
“Fine, my friend, fine!” shouted the other, his voice cracking under the effort as he found his saliva dried. “We’ve got them right here.” He smacked his fist into the open palm of his other hand.
A ragged tramp raised a throaty whoop and stared insolently at a passing litter. The curtain had parted; a hand with plumply tapering fingers appeared; an emerald ring gleamed on the second finger, and the hand had the pale sleekness which confessed continual lotions and ointments. Then the gold braid was lifted and a cosmeticked sagging face looked out. The tramp smirked, and the woman hurriedly withdrew.
“You’ll be learning the feel of a staff across your shoulders.”
“I learned it long ago. But my day’s coming. I’ll knead her sort like a lump of dough before long. That’s what she’s asking for. O, it will be a sweet day!”
The group halted to argue in the few yards of shadow thrown across the parched road by a fig tree. Beyond the sparse boughs, between the road and the river, several old tombs were mouldering. The nearest tomb showed the statue of a shrouded woman and a battered sundial; and a melancholy goat chewed at the shrivelled grass. On the rising ground behind stood a ruinous hut with an overgrown vegetable-garden and a new villa on which the workmen were busily stuccoing the walls.
A posse of well-dressed horsemen with attendants galloped past, making no effort to avoid the talkers. The tramp was almost run down. He cowered against a mile-stone and then shook his fist after the riders.
“Mark them down,” he said. “Mark them all down. The great day’s coming.”
14
Murena and Silanus were announced as consuls elect. Catalina had been beaten by a few votes. The greater voting-power of the wealthy had beaten the numerically far greater will of the populace.
15
Catalina was numbed by the blow. He had staked everything and lost. Though he had joked with Manlius about taking by force what the ballot-box might not bring, he had never believed that he could lose this time. The enthusiasm that he had aroused had been so terrific; the compulsive moral force which he had felt within himself had seemed invincible. All his faith crumbled, and he felt defenceless. Evading his followers, he tried to lose himself in the crowd, muffling his face.
He wanted to lose himself, to be one of the undistinguished crowd. There people might suffer; they might love and hate and toil and desire things that they couldn’t get; but they weren’t asked to stand out against the world and be rejected. He had fought and lost. He was worthless. The months of baffled effort recoiled in a blind hunger for oblivion. He had stood out against the world. That was madness. The only way was to discard resistance, to suffer and enjoy without thought. He had forgotten Orestilla and his friends. They were his thoughts. He didn’t want to see them again or anyone that he knew. He wanted to be lost.
Drink. That was the first step. He had thrown off his senator’s toga into the hands of a slave and donned a cowled cloak which was always held ready in case a riot should make a disguised escape necessary. Now he slipped into the first tavern near the Carmental Gate. On its wall was painted the sign of a large woman labelled Venus, embracing an equally large wine-jar. He must get away from the babel of the street.
Half a dozen depressed men were sitting about, two of them farmers who had trudged up for the day. The lamps were lighted, flickering with fat yellow flames as the door opened. A smell of rancid-oil, sweat and wood-ash. “There was a trick somewhere,” said one man, shaking his head slowly. “I told you this morning that there wasn’t any chance of a fair deal.”
“Liar,” said another in friendly but depressed banter. “You thought there’d be two suns in the sky to-morrow.”
“A lot of good that would do me. Two suns would only parch what’s left of my crop.”
“I’m sick of elections,” said a squat bearded man. “They can’t do any good, and they always do harm. Perhaps things or people were different once, or I don’t suppose elections would have been started.”
A fourth man, savager-looking than the others, spoke. “I don’t believe in starting things, but the way I look at it is that someone else is doing the starting, and if we don’t look out we’ll be too late for our own funerals.”
There was a silence. The men were sitting about a rough table where drinks were served. Catalina sat in a corner-seat under cobweb-blackened rafters, beside a deep chimney-hole, and ordered a flagon. Everything must be washed out. How could a clear future be born while the torment of the past buzzed and stung the flesh? The past was a swarm of wasps, stinging the flesh from within. Drown the mind. Drown the wasps in their nest, the mind.
A man with a black bandage over his left eye entered, a city-ruffian. Taking up an empty cup, he banged on the table. “Some drink here!” He leered at the others. “You look a sad lot. Can’t you do something? Haven’t you a right to dung on the earth? There’s room for all and food for all and enough women to go round twice. String up the bankers, and then let the world get drunk in a heap.”
