Cicero looked at his colleague’s cheerful and handsome face and his winsome eyes, and shook his head in dismay. Reared in republican virtues, Cicero found himself frequently confounded by Antonius. Antonius heartily agreed with him that the budget should be balanced, that the Treasury should be refilled, that public debt should be reduced, that the arrogance of the generals should be tempered and controlled, that assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt, that the mobs should be forced to work and not depend on government for subsistence, and that prudence and frugality should be put into practice as soon as possible. But when Cicero produced facts and figures how all these things must and should be accomplished, by austerity and discipline and commonsense, Antonius became troubled.
“But this—or that—would bring hardship on this—or that—class,” Antonius said. “The people are accustomed to lavish displays in the circuses and the theatres, and the lotteries, and free grain and beans and beef when they are destitute, and shelter when they are homeless and a part of the city is rebuilt. Is not the welfare of our people paramount?”
“There will be no welfare of the people if we become bankrupt,” said Cicero, grimly. “We can become solvent again, and strong, only by self-denial and by spending as little as possible until the public debt is paid and the Treasury refilled.”
“But one cannot—if one has a heart at all—deprive the people of what they have received for many decades from government, and which they expect. It will create the most terrible hardships.”
“Better that all of us tighten our girdles than Rome fall,” said Cicero.
Antonius was even more troubled. It seemed very clear to him that the people should have all they desire, for were they not Roman citizens, and inhabitants of the mightiest and richest nation on earth, and the envy of all other peoples? On the other hand, Cicero’s facts and figures were inexorable. Then Antonius brightly suggested higher taxes, to fill the Treasury and to continue larger and wider public expenditures. “I, myself, am willing to accept more taxation,” said the young man with such sincerity that Cicero sighed.
“But there are hundreds of thousands of good and decent citizens of Rome who are even now laboring under taxation which is unbearable,” said Cicero. “A little more pressure and the backs of the faithful horses will break. Who, then, will carry Rome?”
Antonius’ mind, or at least that part of his mind which was not so totally suffused with good will that it was blind and deaf, acknowledged the logic of this. He liked a pleasant life, and could not understand why all men should not have it also. He frowned at ledgers and books, and sighed over and over. “How did we come to such a pass?” he murmured.
“By extravagance. By the purchasing of votes from the mendicant and the unworthy. By pandering to the mob. By our attempts to raise idle nations to the standards of Rome, and the pouring out of our wealth to them. By foreign adventures. By mighty grants to generals, so that they might increase their legions and their honors. By wars. By believing that our resources were endless.”
Antonius then remarked that he had an appointment at his favorite book shop, where an alleged original manuscript by Aristotle was on sale, and he arranged his snowy toga and hastened out. He left Cicero with the mournful wreckage. Cicero understood that his colleague had received the second highest vote because of his affability and his concern for the Roman people and his love for them. But Antonius, who had never before faced facts must face them now, and facts were terrible Gorgons for idealists to face. They had a way of turning them to stone or sending them off in affright, hoping for a miracle. “Two and two make four,” said Cicero, aloud, “and that is irrefutable. But men like my dear Antonius believe that by some thaumaturgy, mysterious and occult, two and two can be made to add up to twenty.”
He was not present that night, of course, in Antonius’ elegant villa when Lucius Sergius Catilina called on his fellow patrician.
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
Antonius was delighted to embrace Catilina, whom he admired for the beauty which even middle-age had not dimmed or distorted, and because Catilina was intellectual and amusing and made even a depraved phrase sound light-hearted and sophisticated. Catilina was not dusty with ledgers and with facts. He moved grandly and with natural stateliness, and spoke in the tones and words native to Antonius, and his allusions were familiar to him. Moreover, Catilina could be depended upon not to speak of the necessity of money—patricians disdained money—unlike Cicero who was always dwelling on the squalid subject. Antonius prepared himself for a pleasant evening. They sat together in Antonius’ library—he had not bought the manuscript of Aristotle after all, discerning it was a forgery—and drank wine and ate fruit and sweetmeats and commented on the cold winter weather, and jested, and laughed, and exchanged gossip of the city. It was a great relief to Antonius who liked to think that life would be a very happy state of affairs if men would cease to be grim and point at books and documents with an ink-stained finger and talk of economy, a most disheartening topic of conversation.
It was not for some time that Antonius became aware of the terrible fixity and vivid light in Catilina’s magnificent blue eyes, and that the whole power of his personality had begun to center on him. Catilina was unusually pale; his mouth had a bluish cast; his nostrils were white and distended with tension. Antonius, always solicitous, said, “Are you well, Lucius?”
“Well enough,” said Catilina. “Do not think I brood on my failure to become Consul of Rome.” He paused. “And how do you find our suetty Cicero, the Vetch, the Chick-pea, the dull man who bites every coin he spends either of his own or the Treasury’s?”
His voice was so full of hatred and malignancy that Antonius was disturbed. He knew that Catilina “disliked” Cicero, and was contemptuous of him as a “new man,” and that Catilina had ardently desired to be elected Consul despite the opposition—strange to Antonius—of those he could surely have deemed his friends. But cold and violent hatred was alien to the colleague of Cicero, and he could not understand it. He smiled with uneasiness. “Cicero is a very realistic man,” he replied. “I was much taken aback to discover how insolvent our Treasury is, and how dire are our natural circumstances. I constantly tell Marcus that matters will improve and that our nation is sound at heart and rich. But he is not so optimistic.”
“The Vetch is a vulgarian,” said Catilina, his fine voice hard as iron. “You have surely discerned this, yourself. He will destroy Rome, for he knows nothing of her spirit and vitality and the changing days in which we live, and the opportunities which are constantly presenting themselves to intelligent men. He would have us return to the meagre and barefoot days of Cincinnatus, and like Cincinnatus bend ourselves to the plow, forgetting that we are now an urbane and mighty nation, and complex, and surrounded by a myriad problems which cannot be solved by a few platitudes.”
Antonius was even more uneasy. “But still,” he murmured, “there are problems. I saw them for myself.”
“None that cannot be overcome,” said Catilina. He suddenly rose and shut the bronze door of the library. He refilled his goblet with wine and then stood in silence, staring down at the wine, his fine strong legs apart, his hands and neck and wrists and armlets glittering with jewels, his darkly ruddy hair touched with gray. His profile was still godlike and noble. He resembled a sparkling statue as he meditated. “You are not a fool,” he said suddenly to Antonius, “for all you dodge facts. I have a way to save Rome. A heroic way, the way of valorous men, the way of a patrician, the way of a man who knows his country and the people therein, as the Chick-pea does not know them.”
He turned his blazing eyes on Antonius, who was staring at him. “Are you valorous, Antonius? Are you brave, manly, aristocratic? I have known you from our childhood, and I think you are. Have you heard me? The Vetch is right in one matter: Rome is about to be destroyed.”
Antonius sat up in his carved ebony chair as if struck across the face. His light brown eyes fixed themselves on C
atilina’s own eyes and it seemed to him that he was gazing at blue lightning.
“I have said that Rome is about to be destroyed,” said Catilina.
Antonius was incredulous. The warm lamplight on the lemonwood and teakwood tables stirred in a slight draft. The colors of the Persian carpets flowed into each other. The brazier was hot with red coals. Books gleamed on shelves and figurines were illuminated, and there was a scent of roses in the air. Antonius darted a bemused glance about him, disbelieving what he had heard, then turned again to the standing Catilina with an imploring smile which beseeched the other man to withdraw his frightful words.
“It is true that the Treasury is almost empty,” he said. “But surely it can be refilled, if we take long and serious consideration.”
“It is not the Treasury of which I speak,” said Catilina. “It is of some of the people of Rome, themselves, who will destroy Rome tomorrow.”
“Those of whom Cicero has been speaking, the mobs who will not work but depend on bribes and favors and gifts from the government?”
“Ah, so the Vetch still loathes the people, does he? He has no compassion for the poor and the destitute, the homeless, the sick, the exploited, the shelterless, the unfortunate, the hapless ones who are miserable and in despair for no fault of their own?”
Catilina knew Antonius for an idealist, and it was to the idealist that he had spoken, while detesting him in his violent heart.
“I do not think that Cicero is merciless, and detests the people,” said Antonius. “He wishes only to curtail or remove laws which encourage idleness and beggary and footless ease of life at the expense of the general public, the taxpayers. He wishes to relieve the burden on the industrious and the venturesome, who have pride.” Antonius paused. “I know, Lucius, that your heart has always bled for the masses, and that you have always desired to relieve misfortune, and for that I honor you. But there are the multitudes who have no honor, no pride, no discipline, no patriotism—” He was amazed at his own words.
Catilina sat down and once again fixed him with his terrible eyes. “I see that the Vetch has already corrupted you, my friend.”
Antonius shook his head in confusion. “No. No. It is true that Cicero speaks always of this, but never before did it strike me so starkly.”
Catilina not only now despised his friend, but hated him. But he spoke gently and softly in his very musical voice, as one who speaks to a dearly beloved.
“You have misunderstood me, Carissime. Those who will destroy Rome are the ‘new men,’ the gross merchants, bankers, businessmen, manufacturers, brokers, and all their disgusting companions who loot the defenseless people and rob their workers. They are joined in their conspiracy against our country by avaricious Senators, and even some of our own class who love money more than our nation. I know them well! I know Caesar and Crassus and Clodius and Pompey, who are ambitious, not for Rome, but for loot and power. And what will be the end? Chaos. Infamy. Destruction. Decay. The fall of Rome. It is inevitable, unless we strike at their hearts and remove them from their seats of power and restore the Republic again in all her pride and strength and virtue.”
He waited, then said, “You know Manlius?”
Catilina knew the magnetism of his voice, and the formidable force of his charm. He saw Antonius staring at him with considerable wildness, and he thought to himself in satisfaction that the other man had been seduced as by a siren. He did not know that to Antonius his words and his voice had sounded like the thunderings of an earthquake, as if mountains had been falling, and that the pit had yielded up dreadful forms before his horrified gaze. It was as if his spirit had been struck from sleep by a bolt from the hand of Zeus, and in the fearsome light of that bolt he was seeing a landscape he had never known before.
Antonius closed his eyes, for it is an appalling thing for an idealist to see the world suddenly for what it is, and not the pleasant garden he had believed it was, populated with men of innate nobility, men of reason, men who preferred goodness to evil, and men who are civilized and mindful of the fate of their fellows, and striving for justice at all times.
All that he had disbelievingly heard of Catilina returned to him in a hundred strong and emphatic voices, and he said to himself, It is true. It is quite true.
He said in a faint voice, “Yes, I know Manlius.”
“C. Manlius,” said Catilina, making his voice deep and warm and vibrating, “is an old general, one of Sulla’s heroes, a man who gave all to his country, and who is beloved of the veterans of the legions. Manlius has pleaded with Cicero to assist the old veterans and increase their piteous pensions. Cicero has refused. But then, he is no military hero himself, but a pale man of the city, without valor or bravery. Do we not owe all we have to the old generals like Manlius, and his legionnaires? Shall we abandon them to starvation, or force them to sell themselves into slavery in order that they might be sheltered and fed? This Cicero would permit, the traitorous Cicero who is very ambitious and greedy, and who is known for his avarice.”
Antonius pretended to be moved and desperately uncertain. He said, forcing himself to meet those deranged eyes fixed on him: “Cicero has been kind to the old veterans of many wars, to the disabled and the sick, and has generously increased their allowances. He wishes only that the young and able-bodied support themselves henceforth, with their own labor and industry, in order that our country not become bankrupt and ruined.’”
“Ah,” cried Catilina, striking his strong knee with his jeweled fist. “He lies! I can tell you of tens of thousands of veterans who are in despair at this very moment, old, unfortunate, landless, unable to find employment, because they spent years in the service of their country! I can tell you of their tears and their homelessness and their bitter cries against those who have abandoned them!”
“Oh,” murmured Antonius, in compassionate tones. “I have not seen these veterans. Where are they? What is their place of congregation, that I may address them and inspire them with hope?”
Catilina was silent. His fists remained on his knees. His eyes flickered like blue fire on Antonius, whose ingenuous expression was more ingenuous than ever. Then Catilina, having satisfied himself that this unworldly fool had spoken without guile, answered, “They are with C. Manlius, who gives what he can to them, in Etruria, and what shelter he can, though his own purse is lean.”
Antonius’ heart jumped. He was recalling vague rumors, which he had discounted, that General C. Manlius had gathered about him thousands of disgruntled mercenaries who had enlisted in the legions for the pay, and who had expected looting and small fortunes in return.
“Why does not Manlius present himself before Cicero, and the Senate, and ask help for his men?” said Antonius.
“Has he not done so?” exclaimed Catilina. “Did he not appeal under the proposed new agrarian law (lex agraria) to give to the old veterans proportions of the public lands for their own use? I spoke before the Senate, myself, as you may recall, in support of agrarian reform. And, who opposed the law and caused the Senators and the tribunes to vote against it? Your superior colleague, Cicero!”
“Cicero opposed it, not because he was against the giving of land, but because it placed too much power in the hands of government,” said Antonius, with a pleading and questioning look at the excited Catilina. “You will recall what he said:
“‘In studying this law, I find that nothing else is intended or done than the creation of ten “kings,” who under the name and pretense of agrarian law, are made the masters of the whole republic, the kingdoms, the free nations—in short, the whole world. I assure you, men of Rome, that by this specious and popularity-hunting agrarian reform law nothing is given to you, but all things are conferred on a few individuals. A show is made of granting lands to the Roman people and the veterans, but in fact they are deprived of their liberty. The wealth of private persons is increased, and their power under this law, but the public wealth is decreased. In short, by means of the government, the tribunes of the
people, whom our ancestors intended to be the protector and guardian of freedom, petty kings without restraint are to be established in the state.’”*
Catilina threw back his magnificent head and laughed loudly, while Antonius affected to regard him with trouble. Antonius added, “Not only the veterans were to be given rich land, but the mobs of Rome, also, who wished, according to Cicero, only to loot and exploit and resell at marvelous profits.”
“If that is true, and it is not, who has more right to land than Romans, to use as they wish? Have they not labored and fought for it? Who is this Vetch that he should oppose the agrarian law which grants to the people what is their due, their civil rights?”
Antonius shook his head as if in doleful agreement and great trouble, and yet greater confusion. His heart was pounding against the walls of his chest like a hammer, and he said to himself, Why is it that I never understood before, and never believed in the enemies of my country, and smiled disbelievingly at Cicero when he spoke of them?
“I tell you,” cried Catilina, “for this alone Cicero is in danger of assassination at the outraged hands of the very citizenry who elected him!”
“Oh, not truly,” murmured Antonius. “Surely the people understand his opposition. You will recall that Cicero said, in opposing the lex agraria, that the petty ‘kings’ would surround themselves with a regal and legal retinue in order to enforce the law, and so would terrorize the populace and repeal their liberties. Even the Senate, even those who favored the law, laughed uproariously, when Cicero mentioned the ridiculous probability that Rullus would send a summons to General Pompey, the Magnus, to stand by in military might while he, Rullus, put up for sale the lands which Pompey, himself, had won by his own sword! When a civil right, Cicero said, invades the domain of the rights of all the people, then it becomes a special right of a special class.”