A Pillar of Iron: A Novel of Ancient Rome

  He stepped down the stairs that led to his chair and the Senate, in deep silence, rose in respect to watch him go. Midway down the aisle he came face to face with Catilina. He halted and confronted his enemy. The silence became intense as all watched the confrontation. Cicero’s pale face became almost incandescent with the fire of his inner hatred and detestation, and he thought, Murderer! Livia shall be avenged, and Fabia, and all the innocent you have assassinated! Destroyer! And Catilina looked back into those eyes and read them. He pretended to repress a smile, and he bowed deeply and with affected humility. Cicero moved on, with Quintus clanging in his armor by his side. The soldiers saluted. Cicero reached the door and heard the thunderous shout he had heard so many times before:

  “Hail Cicero, Savior of Rome! Hail to the Hero!”

  He lifted his right arm in salute and smiled a little with ironic and sombre humor. He had not saved Rome. He had only delayed the final catastrophe, and this he knew.

  That night Catilina left in darkness for Etruria. He was exultant again. None had impeded his passage. He had left the Senate Chamber and while the multitudes had looked at him with fierce and vengeful hatred they had not moved against him. He had bowed to the Senators and had smiled in their faces with contempt; he had bowed even deeper to Crassus and his company. He had laughed silently into the eyes of Antonius, who had betrayed him. No, he had not yet done with Rome, with any of them.

  When he reached Manlius he said, “We have not suffered anything, dear friend! I have a plan, a most bold and audacious plan. The Slave Holiday will soon be upon us. We must make haste to strike then, and for all time. The auspices are with us.”

  Crassus and Caesar went to the house of Cicero, and he greeted them with cold bitterness. “Do you think it is ended?” he asked them. “It has only begun. Do not felicitate me! You lie in your teeth. I have removed a present danger only for the moment from you. It will return—thanks to your long past conspiracies with Catilina. I salute you, who attempted to use Catilina for your own purposes, and now wish to use me in defense against him. You have won. History will record it. Leave me.”

  *Actual speech made to the Senate by Catilina, as reported by Sallust.

  *This first oration against Catilina has been greatly condensed.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  Shortly after his first oration against Catilina, Marcus Tullius Cicero was lying on his bed sleepless, at midnight. But the city, though quieter than at midday, still murmured and thundered distantly like a restless Titan enduring nightmares. Marcus’ eyes were dry with strain and exhaustion. The faintest moonlight fell through an open fold at the curtained window and lay on the opposite wall. He watched it without awareness. Then all at once it glowed brighter and brighter, and his sharp attention was captured and he half-raised himself on his elbow. Moment by moment it brightened, became sharper, until it was a face. Marcus’ heart began to beat with mingled dread and fear. The features became clearer, and then it was his father’s face, not the face of Tullius in his age but the countenance of Tullius in his youth as Marcus had known him as a child. He saw the limpid brown eyes, the anxious and tender smile, the smooth brown hair and thin throat.

  “Marcus!” exclaimed the apparition in an urgent voice. Marcus could not reply. The face came closer to him and now Marcus could see the outlines, very dimly, of shoulders and robe.

  “Marcus! Flee Rome at once!” Shadowy hands were lifted, as if pleading.

  “I cannot desert my country,” Marcus whispered.

  I am dreaming, he thought. Swiftly he glanced about his room and saw the vague outlines of his furniture, the misty oblong of his window. He looked back at his father and felt a pang of grief.

  “Your country, and mine, was lost even before I was born,” said the vision mournfully. “The Republic was dying when my father came from the womb. Flee, Marcus, and end your days in peace and in safety, for the wicked will triumph as always they have done, and will murder you if you remain.”

  “I cannot desert Rome,” Marcus said. “No, not even if I die for it.”

  The apparition was silent. It appeared to be listening intently to voices of others unseen. Then it lifted its shadowy hands in blessing and disappeared.

  Marcus came to himself with a violent start and found himself wet with sweat. The faint moonshine lingered on the wall. “I have been dreaming,” he said aloud. He shivered. He rose and then for the first time he lighted a votive candle to his father’s memory and felt a shock of sorrow such as he never felt before for Tullius. Yet, he was comforted in spite of his Roman skepticism. It was good to know that the dead still loved the living, and that they guarded them and prayed for them. He pondered, remembering the apparition’s words. He had always known he was in danger; now the danger was desperate for all he was hailed as a hero and the guards were doubled about his house. Always, the assassin waited, the quiet and patient and deadly man, unnoticed in a crowd, ready to strike as swiftly as a viper. Or, those very same mobs who hailed the hero today destroyed him tomorrow in their incontinent capriciousness and tempers. What man could trust men? A brave man rejoiced to give his life for his country if it availed that country. But it never did.

  Cicero delivered the second and third oration against Catilina, who was not present. It was Cicero’s intention to give his countrymen the whole history of the conspiracy, and their great part in it, for their apathy, complacence, tendency to hope for the best, optimism, and tolerance of villains and enemies of the State. “Too long have we said to ourselves, ‘Intolerance of another’s politics is barbarous and not to be countenanced in a civilized country. Are we not free? Shall a man be denied his right to speak under the law which established that right?’ I tell you that freedom does not mean the freedom to exploit law in order to destroy it! It is not freedom which permits the Trojan Horse to be wheeled within the gates, and those within it to be heard in the name of tolerating a different point of view! He who is not for Rome and Roman law and Roman liberty is against Rome. He who espouses tyranny and oppression and the old dead despotisms is against Rome. He who plots against established authority and incites the populace to violence is against Rome. He cannot ride two horses at the same time: He cannot be for lawful ordinances and for an alien conspiracy at one and the same moment! One is a Roman or not a Roman!”*

  His own secretary, to whom he had taught his invented shorthand, wrote furiously with the other scribes. Cicero spoke with passionate force; he felt he was not only addressing the Senate and the people of Rome, whom he prayed would remember his words, but generations to come. “Though liberty is established by law, we must be vigilant, for liberty to enslave us is always present under that very liberty! Our Constitution speaks of the ‘general welfare of the people.’ Under the phrase all sorts of excesses can be employed by lusting tyrants to make us bondsmen.”

  Always Caesar, Pompey, Crassus, and Clodius, and many of their friends, were present to hear the impassioned Cicero, and everyone glanced at them to see their nods of grave approval and thought, In these defenders of the people we see the friends of our hero, Cicero. He speaks for them. Cicero thought: Mountebanks! Would I could denounce you also before the faces of those against whom you have conspired!

  Among those who listened to him with sincerity and with a burning heart was Marcus Porcius Cato, grandson of the fiery old patriot and Censor; a philosopher, for all his youth, and known to the reading public as “Uticensis.” He was a tribune and one of the leaders of the Senatorial aristocracy and a devoted admirer of Cicero. He was also a man of known probity and virtue as well as an eloquent essayist and politician. It was he who persuaded the cautious Cicero—who knew how dangerous was the swamp over which he was now treading—to arrest some of the lieutenants of the absent Catilina, such as Cethegus, Gabinius, Coeparius, Lentulus, and Statilus, patricians all and conspiritors all, who had remained in the city to show their superb contempt of Cicero. “Minor rascals,” Cato had said, “but they must be arrested lest the people think y
ou impotent, dear Marcus. They will say you are all brave words, and will begin to wonder why, in spite of your power as Consul, these known enemies of the State remain free. They will begin to suggest among themselves that they are not so dangerous after all, and that you are a mere noisy demagogue. Yes, I know you fear to precipitate chaos. But there are times when one must confront that danger for the sake of one’s country.”

  The prudent Cicero hesitated. It was his liability of nature, which gave him both strength and weakness, to consider all sides of an act before committing himself to it. Sometimes this resulted in total paralysis. He remembered those occasions. So now he resolutely struck at Catilina’s lieutenants, some of whom were relatives of the Senators themselves, and had them arrested and thrown into prison as conspirators against Rome. Romans went mad with speculation and with praise of Cicero, that he dared affront the mighty in their name. Many of the Senators were enraged. Some of them went to Crassus and Caesar and laid infuriated complaints against this “impudent new man, this Chick-pea, this country vulgarian, this Pleb! How long are we to be affronted by his insolence?”

  Caesar said mildly, “You have forgotten. He was elected by the people, with the assistance of many patriotic Senators. They love him, one and all. He has the power to do what he has done—though I deplore it.”

  One night when Caesar was in his library trying to read, but overcome by foreboding and restlessness, his overseer came to him and whispered that the noble patrician, Lucius Sergius Catilina, was without and urgently desired to converse with him. Caesar’s antic face paled at this dangerous insolence and this threat to himself. But he controlled himself and ordered that Catilina be brought to his library. He then quickly drew the curtains upon his windows, which looked out upon the pearly snow illumined by the moon. He also loosened his dagger in its sheath. And while he waited he pondered and plucked his lower lip with his fingers.

  “Greetings, Caesar!” cried Catilina as he entered, throwing back the hood of his cloak. His beautiful and depraved face was alight with dark exultation. He held out his shapely and jeweled hand. Caesar gazed at it a moment, then took it. It seemed feverish to him, and tremulous, as though Catilina was vibrating with inner fire. Catilina, without an invitation, flung himself in a chair; his feet rested deep in the fur rug that covered the marble floor. Caesar turned to the wine he had ordered and slowly filled a goblet for himself and another for Catilina. He gave the goblet to his unwelcome guest and looked over the rim of his own at the other, whose expression grew more exultant moment by moment.

  “Why are you here, Lucius, you audacious man? Do you not know that Rome is dangerous for you?”

  “It was the city of my fathers before the Ciceroni ever saw it!” exclaimed Catilina. “It was the city of my fathers before the Caesares ever saw it! Shall Rome be deprived of her son?” There was profound derision in his voice and a passion which he could not control.

  His compelling blue eyes fixed themselves on Caesar. “Dear friend,” he said in a deadly and caressing voice, “dear friend, sweet friend, faithful friend! Most trusted friend! I have come to thank you for your noble support, for your tears in my behalf.”

  Caesar gazed at him in silence, though he moved his hand as though sweeping away the vicious mockery of the other.

  “Considering your valorous courage, your undying friendship for me, I may be inclined to mercy—later,” said Catilina, and he laughed a little and took a long drink from his goblet.

  “It is very gracious of you, Lucius,” said Caesar with a faint smile. “But I doubt you will be forced to that consideration. Take my advice at once. Leave Rome. Cicero has been mild; he could have ordered your arrest and your execution. Do not tempt the Fates again.”

  “Ha!” cried Catilina. “Do you not know the Fates are with me?” He leaned toward Caesar now with vehemence glowing on his face. “I came to exult over you, Caesar, faithless friend, treacherous enemy.”

  Caesar was silent. Should he tell Catilina that Curius’ mistress, Fulvia, had betrayed all to Cicero only that day? For a large price, a large price indeed, for she had wearied of Curius’ promises and boasts and she was no longer young and no longer rich.

  Catilina continued to speak in his muscial but disordered tones. “I am ready to strike,” he said. “Do you think you can halt me, you, Crassus, all of you, and that unspeakable Chick-pea?”

  Caesar said, “Tomorrow, Cicero speaks again against you in the Temple of Concord, before the Senate. He may ask for your arrest and your execution. I beg of you, flee at once as he advised you before. I thought him temperate then—”

  “He was afraid! He dared not lay a hand upon me, for fear of me! Was it temperance indeed, or prudence out of terror? But I tell you now, Caesar, that should a single hair of my head be harmed you shall go down with me, all of you. I have warned you before. I warn you now.”

  Caesar was alarmed, not at his words but at his aspect. He had always suspected that Catilina was mad; it was a disease of the family.

  “I shall appear tomorrow at the Temple of Concord,” said Catilina, “and I shall speak to the Senators and my fellow great soldiers, and we shall destroy Cicero in one blast of laughter.”

  “You cannot appear!” said Caesar, not believing this deranged folly. He was almost certain that if Catilina appeared the Senate would agree to his execution. But there were many imponderables to consider, and man could be trusted only to do the unexpected. Catilina had a strange and brilliant eloquence of his own, and he would speak to the hearts of the proud Senators, who secretly despised the middle-class Cicero. If Catilina were exonerated of conspiracy then he would continue to inspire his dark and violent and lusting underground to attack Rome, until at last she was destroyed. If Catilina were condemned, then that underground might rise in rebellion, and Rome might be destroyed after all. But malefactors by very nature were cowardly; the lesser danger lay with them, if Catilina were eliminated. The body did not operate without the mind.

  “I shall appear,” said Catilina, gloating.

  “Then you will surely be condemned, for you will affront the Senate by your very appearnace, after they believed you had left Rome forever, and in peace.”

  “I shall not be condemned, sweet lying Caesar. I shall have an advocate.”

  “And who is this reckless advocate?”

  Catilina burst out laughing. He rose and refilled his goblet. He lifted it and toasted his unwilling host. “You, Caesar.”

  “I?”

  “You.” Catilina drank with enjoyment. Then he was no longer laughing. He hurled the jeweled goblet from him and against a marble wall and it crashed into fragments. He lost what little control he had over himself. He advanced on Caesar and held his clenched fist under the other’s chin. For the first time Caesar felt loathing for him and wished he had poisoned the wine.

  “You have told me before, sweet and treacherous friend, that Cicero knows all, and the parts of all of you in our original plot, and that you laid it all before him, for the sake of Rome. But there are many virtuous and patriotic and simple men in that Senate. They do not know. I shall enlighten them, if you refuse to be my advocate! What then, great Caesar, noble soldier? Do you think Crassus will save you, come to your rescue, to the rescue of Pompey and Piso and Curius and Clodius, and others of our brotherhood? He will consign you to death with me. I will not die alone.”

  He laughed in Caesar’s face with delight. “Do not think to have me murdered when I leave here, my devoted companion. I have a large guard waiting outside.”

  Caesar’s white mouth contracted. A beautiful Alexandrian lamp began to smoke on a distant table and Julius went to it with pretended concern and trimmed it. Lazy wisps of smoke rolled about the library and he watched them idly. But he was thinking with intense rapidity. There was much in Catilina’s threats, too much for any complacency. It was useless to appeal to Catilina’s reason, for he had none. It was absurd to appeal to any patriotism, for he had none. But Caesar said:

 
“You, alone, abandoned our original plan, for you have no patience, Lucius. Had you listened to us you would still be one of our companions, would be with us when we seize Rome in an orderly fashion. But—”

  However, he halted at Catilina’s wild gesture of contempt. The blue eyes had lost what little sanity they had ever possessed and the face was contorted. “Hark to me, Caesar, for the last time! I care nothing for Rome. I care nothing for your law and order, whimpering echoes of a contemptible Cicero! Consider him! He believes that a virtuous man of good will can be recognized even by the dullest or the most disreputable, and be respected. He has never known, that ridiculous lawyer, that virtue only arouses the derision of others, for virtue cannot be understood by the ordinary mind or the soul of a slave or by a man whose soul resides in his purse or his belly. So virtue receives its fitting reward—exile or death, or, at the very least the taunting cackle of the multitude.”

  “Then you,” said Caesar, “grant him virtue and speak with disgust of those who do not respect or admire that virtue.”

  “I detest his virtue, which builds dull cities and dull societies and infamous peace. Do you know why I was born, Caesar?” The glittering eyes moved closer to Caesar who felt a rising alarm at the sight of them. “I was born to destroy the base and the contemptible! Ah, you would speak of Rome! Observe our country, Caesar. Shall I recount her virtues to you, her dirty little vices, her gross and slavish perversions? Shall this city of offal be permitted to live? No! I shall destroy it.

  “Destruction is not less godly than creation. If a sculptor is offended by the ugliness of his statue he will demolish it with his hammer. But Chick-pea would have that ugliness remain for the stupid reason that it has been created, that it is. But I have greater plans! This Rome shall be cleansed and demolished by fire, and on its cooling embers I will build a white city of marble, brighter than the sun, where a slave shall forever remain a slave, and a patrician shall be forever a patrician, and an emperor an emperor. I shall use the very mobs I will later destroy to attain that felicity and you, Caesar, shall call from your ashes: ‘Well done, Savior of civilization!’”