A Pillar of Iron: A Novel of Ancient Rome

  The engagement was comparatively short. Catilina’s men fought like lions, even the “nondescript” elements, for there would be no quarter given or prisoners taken. Death alone would be the supreme victor. The Romans fought grimly and far more tenaciously, and with a kind of enormous contempt for the foe they faced. To a man they loathed treason, for they were soldiers first and soldiers love their country. And thousands of the enemy were Etrurians, whom the Romans did not consider Italians at all. The Romans had their nation to defend; even the bravest among the enemy knew that they were defending nothing but themselves.

  Quintus tore his sword loose from flesh, to turn it on more flesh, until blood ran down his brown arm and splashed all over his armor, his tunic, his leggings and his boots. His horse was wounded, but was as valorous as himself. He had a deep wound on one thigh, and his face was also bleeding. He felt nothing but the lust of battle; he swung his horse about and leaped and battered his way through the wall of flesh that faced him. His arm never tired. And his comrades were valiant, too, and pressed about him, heaving and groaning and shouting and cursing and panting; officers and men mingled together in an iron phalanx that relentlessly pressed back the army of Catilina, hundreds of whom fell with mighty splashes in the river to drown and to choke the watery passage with their bodies. Trumpets repeatedly shattered the brilliant air with their metallic cries; drums thundered for fresh charges, for the gathering of forces. The wheeling chariots of the Romans, crowded together, crashed over and over, the wheels spurning the bloodied snow.

  Then all at once the frightful encounter was over as swiftly as it had begun. Gasping for air, and looking about him, Quintus searched for Petreius, and could not see him. A mound of the reddened dead lay before him, sprawling in the last agony, leg touching arm, face thrust against foot. Now the Romans, scattered far and wide in their mission of fury, raced to the center again and cut down the last of the foe, who tried to evade them. The slaughter of both sides had been most terrible. Romans swung from their horses to embrace and console their dying comrades, or to kneel in the drenched snow to weep over a brother or to lift a visor. Chariots churned to a halt. The confusion was covered by the smoke from the nostrils of thousands of horses, who stood trembling in their tracks with lowered heads. And the blazing hills looked implacably down at the carnage and crowned themselves with fire.

  Quintus was suddenly aware of exhaustion. Officers rode up to speak to him; he could only nod or shake his head, for it seemed to him that he had become deaf. He rode apart from them, to wipe his sweating face, to press his hands against his wound. It was then that he saw Catilina lying on the ground, miraculously in a little circle of his own, and in a puddle of his own blood.

  Quintus, shaking as if with fever, slowly descended from his horse and staggered to the fallen man who still clutched his sword. The helmet had dropped from the noble head, and a quick wind stirred the thick dark hair with its ruddy shadows. Catilina’s face was white with death, that wonderful face which had seduced Fabia and a thousand other women in his lifetime, and had enchanted countless men who had followed him to this violent day, and this final and enormous rendezvous. His eyes, those blue eyes which had terrified and fascinated, stared at the sky sightlessly. Quintus fell to his knees beside the crushed enemy and stared at him, and dumbly wiped his sweat from his eyes with the back of his scarlet-wet hand.

  One of the most appalling enemies Rome had ever known lay on his back and gazed at the sun, undone at last by the madness of hatred and ambition and lust, fallen at last by his own will. Quintus leaned over him; his breath made a cloud before his face. He brushed it away, dumbly, as if it were an intruder and not his own breath. Then he started, and shuddered, for Catilina’s eyes had turned from an apparent contemplation of the sun and were directed at him. The intense blueness was failing rapidly and glazing, but all his savage soul struggled to see behind the closing veil of death.

  “Lucius?” said Quintus, and his voice was a hoarse groan. He could not help himself. He lifted the cold and flaccid hand near him and held it.

  The spirit struggling to be free from Catilina’s flesh paused a moment to listen, to peer again. And then it saw Quintus’ dark and suddenly weeping face, and the faintest smile touched the handsome gray lips.

  “Quintus,” he whispered. The smile deepened, and Catilina called him by the affectionate nickname he had once given him: “Bear cub.” The dying fingers, by sheer force of will, tightened on Quintus’ hand.

  “Farewell,” said Catilina. He turned his eyes to the sky again, and said, “Long I hoped for this day, and blessed is its coming.” The white lids fell over the glaucous eyes; a long shivering and convulsion seized the whole body of Catilina; he stretched and straightened and his back arched. Then with a dull crash the armored body subsided on the ground and lay still, suddenly much dwindled, suddenly spent, and that which had animated it fled and left it small and collapsed, and, at the last, at peace. The sword fell from the fingers of his other hand, the short sword of Rome which he had carried in honor and dishonor.

  Quintus lifted his own eyes to the indifferent sky which had witnessed endless carnage and madness, and, weeping, he said aloud, “I thank all the gods that it was not my hand which slew him! I thank the gods.” He resolutely repeated it, but something far in his mind wondered and trembled and would not let him know.

  He looked down at the still hand he had not yet relinquished and he saw something glowing on one finger. It was the serpentine ring of the deadly brotherhood. Quintus recoiled. Then he forced himself to remove it, and he dropped it in his pouch, and forced himself to his feet and looked about him and with a dull stare, weaving where he stood. He saw a fallen Roman banner, sodden, stained, torn. With a gigantic effort he went to it and he lifted it from where it lay and it seemed to him that he was lifting iron and not cloth. He raised it as high as he could and stumbled back to Catilina and covered that stately body with it to hide it from the contempt of the heavens, the scorn of man, and the bitter air. For, at the end, Catilina had not died ingloriously, in the adventure of death.

  “He was the enemy of Rome,” said Cicero to his brother. The serpentine ring lay on a table before them. “He was master of an abattoir. He had no real plans to rebuild, to renew, had he conquered. He was pure destruction. He wished only to gaze on terror and ruin and the collapse of a whole civilization. Violence was his mother, his wife, his mistress. He lay down with them and dreamed with them. He was filled with hatred of all men. For that, he suffered the vengeance of God.”

  “He was a brave man,” said Quintus.

  Cicero smiled sadly. “You speak as a soldier, my brother, and soldiers honor courage and valor above all things. But there is a greater honor and a greater valor, and that is the service of God and country, and not conquest, not personal ambition, not the love of terror for terror’s sake, not the desire to rule one’s fellows as one rules animals, not the craving for power. This honor, and this valor, is not always hailed, not always known. Yet I tell you that they are greater than the bravery of the Catilinas, and more heroic than any banners. For they are the Law.”

  He stood up and embraced Quintus as he stood before him, and then left his right hand on the other’s shoulders and looked earnestly into the dulled and reddened eyes.

  “I do not reproach you, Quintus, that you wept for him. It is nothing that he would have killed you gladly on that day, and would have rejoiced in the murder of myself. He was like a holocaust, a mad disaster, and such men happen to all nations as do all calamities, at many times in their history when they cease to care for the profound Laws of God. Mourn the comrade you knew, the man who saved your life. But thank the Eternal that that which was the larger part of him has forever passed away.” He added, “In his own form at least.”

  But it was not yet the end, as Cicero knew only too well that it would not be.

  Cneius Piso, the fair-haired and small and slender old comrade of Catilina, had been made governor of Spain a year befor
e Catilina’s trial by the Senate. Cicero had bitterly opposed that appointment by Crassus, and before his own election to the Consulship. But Crassus had replied coldly, “You speak always of plots, Cicero. It is an obsession on your part. Cneius Piso is a noble patrician and of a great family, and a notable soldier and administrator. I reject your protestations.”

  But a short time before his appearance at the Temple of Concord Catilina had sent a courier to his friend, with the one word, “Strike!” So Piso gathered a Spanish army about him, who loved him, and marched on Rome to assist his beloved fellow conspirator and to exult with him and to rule under him. The Spaniards were a gloomy but an honorable body of soldiers, and were devoted to their Roman governor. It is strange, then, that on the second day of their march they suddenly, and without apparent cause, mutinied and assassinated Cneius Piso and buried his body where they had slain him, and returned to their home.

  And Q. Curius, who lurked sullenly in Rome, hidden and disgraced, was found murdered in his own bed one morning, only a week after Catilina’s bloody defeat.

  “It is said,” wrote Sallust the historian, in commenting upon these events, “that Cicero’s secret police had ordered their death. It is known that Crassus, who always proclaimed his love for the two men, sacrificed for their souls in the temples but was seen with a contented smile. Julius Caesar was observed in public mourning for them, but was not evidently in the deepest grief. Pompey does not mourn, nor does Publius Clodius, who was their devoted friend. Who ordered their death will remain the secret of history.”

  Cicero knew that every disastrous conspirator with Catilina must be extirpated. He shrank from the slaughter, but it was necessary so that there would be no more a focus of Catilina’s infection left to afflict the body politic again. Antonius begged him for mercy. Cicero cried to him passionately, “Do you think I revel in this? I do it only for Rome, and not from malice and personal vengeance.”

  He feared that after Catilina’s death the tens of thousands of the poor and ragged and hungry in Rome, who had loved Catilina, would create riot and chaos in protest, if only temporarily, in Rome. But he had underestimated his own eloquence and the understanding of the people. For Sallust wrote: “Even the poorest and the most abandoned did not like the final idea of burning the city where they had their miserable homes, nor, until Cicero revealed it, did they understand that this, and not a great loot and redistribution of the wealth, was in Catilina’s mind.”

  Manlius, on the morning Catilina’s army set out, had fallen on his own sword and was given silent burial by his men. Cicero’s secret gratitude that the brave old soldier would not have to suffer an ignominious death shook him to the heart.

  All of the rebellious patricians had relatives and all those relatives, among them Publius Clodius, became Marcus’ mortal enemies. Julius Caesar saw old friends seized and executed. He and Clodius went to Crassus and said, “Cicero has lost his mind. He is arresting everyone who even knew Catilina.”

  Crassus looked at them darkly and said, “What would you have? The men are guilty; you know that with certitude. Do you wish him to spare them because they are patricians and men of influence, and you have dined with them, and loved them? Are they more than the poor scoundrels, the effeminate actors and wrestlers, and the pugilists and the freedmen and the criminals who were Catilina’s followers also? I tell you they are more deadly than these.” But he frowned.

  Clodius said to Caesar, “Crassus fears for himself, and what the condemned might say of him. The sooner they are dead the safer he will be. What! Did you think he would intervene? Have dictators any compunctions?”

  “Dictators, my dear Clodius,” replied Julius, “cannot afford compunctions.”

  Clodius had a small dark face in which the large black eyes were set so far apart and were so full and wide, that the malicious declared he resembled an intellectual frog. Now his eyes gleamed. “I shall not forget this Cicero, whom I once admired and honored.”

  Julius shrugged. “Do not remember him then so long as we need him.”

  “Exigency makes strange companions,” said Clodius. “Young Mark Antony is your admiring follower, yet your uncle, Marius, put his father to death. Now he swears a vendetta against Cicero because his beloved stepfather, Lentulus, was condemned to a shameful death by that Cicero. The dear Consul has made enough enemies to form a company of men.”

  Cicero knew of the hatred which was following him like an army. Terentia was avid in informing him, and sometimes with tears and lamentations. “My dear friend, Julia, wife of Lentulus, is inconsolable. So are many other ladies, who were my friends. Now I am proscribed.”

  “Your friendships, my dear Terentia,” said Cicero with sadness, “are less than the safety of Rome. Did you think I aspired to the Consulship to serve self-glorious ends? No! I serve only Rome.”

  “Your family is nothing to you! What is political office, if a man’s family cannot enjoy their new position? There are times when I detest you, Marcus, and regret that I married you. I am ostracized! My former friends avert their faces. Our son-in-law finds many doors closed to him, even those of fellow patricians. What future will be your son’s?”

  “Rome’s future, if any,” said Cicero. He thought of divorcing Terentia, for her complaints and recriminations were more than he could bear in these arduous and bloody days. He knew that the Catilinian conspiracy had involved many great families, but he had not, himself, known the extent. He now knew that Cornelius Lentulus had been assigned to the personal task of assassinating all the Senators, by Catilina, yet now those very Senators muttered that Cicero had been too harsh in his destruction of the conspiracy! Cicero remembered that Aristotle had wryly remarked that God had not endowed men with logic. He, Cicero, had saved Rome and had saved those very men secretly condemned to slaughter by Catilina. Yet now they whispered he was going to extremes, and even the people in the streets, aroused by the disaffected, turned sullen against their savior. There were moments when he considered leaving Rome, so great was his despair of mankind. Once, in an attempt to calm the growing animosity against him, he addressed the court of judicature wherein he outlined the full conspiracy against Rome and his own desperate efforts to overthrow it. The court listened in silence. Later, with derision, it was broadcast that he had made a vainglorious eulogy in his own behalf, and the walls of Rome were scribbled with obscenities against him by those whom he had saved from fire, death, and hideous slaughter.

  Like many men of deep humor, he made the error of believing that every man was also endowed with it. So, when he sometimes ventured a wry or jocular remark to some acquaintance, to lift the sombreness of these days, the remark was repeated eagerly as an evidence of his hard-heartedness or frivolity or even foolishness. He said, when hearing of these things, “Unhappy is the politician! If he is always very sober, it is said he is a humorless dull ass. If he speaks lightly at times, he is considered lacking in seriousness. If he is frugal, it is said he is filling his own coffers. If generous with public funds, he is denounced for wasting the people’s substance. If he is honest, it is cried that he is dangerous or contemptuous. If a genial quibbler, it is said that he cannot be trusted. If he refuses to be intimidated by a foreign enemy, the people shout he wishes to plunge his nation into war. If he is very temperate, he is called pusillanimous. And his friends, of course, are always extremely mild in defending him against calumny!”

  In the early spring he went to the island to escape his sorrow and his weariness and the growing hatred against him, which was inspired by the patricians.

  *Actual’ letter from Manlius to Marcius Rex.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

  One of the miseries of being a powerful official, Cicero had discovered, was the necessity of being guarded constantly against the homicidal tendencies of those he served. So he was accompanied to Arpinum by his brother, Quintus, and a large guard. The guard stationed itself on the bridge, which was dear to Cicero for having been the spot where he had first seen Livia Curius.
One venture on it, and one glance at the faces of the selected and devoted soldiers, made the bridge untenable for him. The ghost of Livia never came there any longer. On the island itself he was more free of intrusion, though he was sometimes aware of discreet rustlings in the bushes as he made his passage along the shores. If he walked in the meadows he was never certain but that the shadows at the edges of the forest were not soldiers; he sometimes caught the glint of a helmet where least expected. He complained to Quintus that since the bridge was guarded, no one could pass. But Quintus said, “Who knows but a servant has been bribed?” So Quintus slept on a pallet across the door of his brother’s bedroom.

  “I shall be glad when I am no longer Consul!” Cicero exclaimed one day.

  “Do you think that in retirement you will be safe, Marcus? No. You have too many enemies. Your old friend, Clodius, has sworn to destroy you. So have a number of others. Perhaps they would have preferred Catilina, and a cruel death, after all.”

  Cicero would permit no one to intrude upon his library, where he would write for hours at a time, books and essays for his publisher, Atticus. Pouches of letters were brought to him from Rome, bills to be signed or to be rejected, and correspondence. All this was irksome, except for his own writing. However, the light of spring was radiant and the island was plunged into the ardent gold of the season and the air was sweet and the night was quiet except for the voices of the trees and the soft winds. Here Marcus could forget Terentia and all those others who were like iron weights on his steps, and his spirit. Sometimes he evaded his watchful guards and visited the forest, places where he had met Livia, especially when the moon was a large gilt coin in the black sky. Tree frogs shrilled to the night, a nightingale sang, and the sound of the river was unbearably musical and full of memories. Marcus would think, “The darkness of all these years have never diminished Livia. I am growing old, and she is eternally young, and when I think of her I am a youth again.” All the evil that had come to that young girl had fallen from her like a black cloak, and she was free of it, free of the pain of her girlhood and the terror of her marriage. She was Livia only, blithe and singing, and she was a blessing to Marcus’ spirit. He often thought of death, and when he did a thrill ran through him as a lover is thrilled on the journey to his beloved whom he has not seen for a long time.