A Pillar of Iron: A Novel of Ancient Rome

  “Yet, I am afflicted. All the years during which I served my country and my God have been as nothing; they have brought me only sorrow, despair and disgrace and lies. What is left for me but death? The incredible affair of Antonius seems to have unsettled the very fount of my rationality so that there are times when I begin to believe the calumnies against me! I often gaze at my reflection in the mirror and ask myself, ‘Are you truly, Cicero, such a one as they rumor? If so, then you deserve to die.’ You see to what I have been reduced.

  “Yes, I think of death with increasing longing, and hope that nothing is beyond the grave, for if I live thereafter I should remember my sorrows and my present infamy. If it were not for my children I should long ago have fallen on the mentioned sword, which I believe is somewhere in my house.”

  He might indeed have killed himself, for the thought was ever with him now from the dawn to the night—during which he could not sleep in his loneliness and agony—if he had not recalled the letters of Noë ben Joel: “Suicide is man’s ultimate hatred of God.”

  *Bona Dea.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

  In the meantime Cicero’s troubles increased. The animus against him in Rome became so fierce that he could no longer pretend to ignore it in public, but retired more and more to his house or fled with Tullia to his various villas, or to the island. On these excursions Terentia refused to permit little Marcus to accompany his father. She could not bear the separation, and as she was engaged in repairing her shattered friendships in Rome, and had her investments to consider, she could not go with her husband, for which he thanked the gods.

  His law practice declined so that he was forced to discharge his law clerks and retain only his secretary. His litter was no longer hailed on the streets of Rome. He was like one whose sword has been broken and the fragments hurled into his face. If only his enemies would emerge and he could see them! But though the antagonism of the Senate increased, and their scorn of him, and though the people now ignored him, and he was conscious of the power of a silent plot against him to destroy him completely, he was not entirely certain of the plotters. He suspected many, but could not prove it. He had become like one isolated, who has been afflicted with the plague, he who had saved his country. The Senate still did not dare to censure him formally, for there were multitudes who remembered him among the commons, and as he was a knight the knights were still one with him. The multitudes had no voice, however, and his fellow knights were busy with their own affairs and during his rise he had not been often in their company. “The descent is steep,” he wrote Atticus. “A man should not neglect his friendships when he is rising, or his friends will not remember him when he declines, not out of their malice or envy or resentment, but because they have forgotten he was ever one of them.” He still had a small coterie of friends devoted to him, but they would not lie and say he was still acclaimed. He had entered politics not in eagerness and in pursuit of power, but to serve his country. He discovered that this was the most foolish of ambitions, for those who serve their country are not remembered with love, and honored, whereas those who serve only themselves and become rich and powerful are celebrated as wise and lovable men and given even higher honors. Who can refrain from adoring a man who adores himself?

  He was surprised one day in his library by a visit from Julius Caesar. He said to the younger man, sourly, “What! I thought you no longer remembered my name!” But Julius laughed and embraced him and shook him affectionately. “How is it possible for me to forget you, Carissime? My childhood mentor, my tutor, the man whose honor can never be questioned?”

  “It is being questioned incessantly,” said Cicero. “O Julius! You know it too well!”

  “Bah,” said Julius. “The mob acclaims; the mob denounces. One ignores the mob.”

  “And the Senate, and the patricians, and the soldiers, and the people. Who then, is left?”

  “I and Crassus, who love you. I am here to ask your help.”

  “I?” Cicero could not believe what he had heard.

  “You. I have put up my candidacy for Consul. If you speak for me few will vote against me.”

  Cicero stared at him incredulously. “You are not serious!”

  “I am. Despite the majority, the minority honor you. And a Consul is, at the last, elected by a minority of fastidious men who can throw their votes one way or another.”

  “When I said you are not serious, I meant you surely do not expect to become Consul?”

  “Sweet Marcus, your expression and your tone are hardly flattering.”

  Cicero flushed with indignation. “You are not worthy to become Consul, Julius.”

  Julius was not insulted. He was highly amused. “If only those worthy to become Consul ran for office, dear friend, we should have no Consuls. I also wish you to help me to pass the Land Bill. That should be precious to your heart.” He coughed. “There is another matter. Crassus and I will also be running for a Triumvirate—with Pompey. Crassus is going to grant Pompey his just demands for the Land Bill which will assist his valorous and devoted soldiers. Are not veterans entitled to land, and some other reimbursement for their sacrifices for their country?”

  Now Marcus was stunned. “Triumvirate?” he stammered.

  “Certainly. Rome deserves more than a mere dictator. Dictators were never popular with Romans, and Rome is restive under them. Do you not remember the stern measures once set up to guard the State against the permanent seizing of power by a dictator? You should honor that tradition. We, Crassus and I, and Pompey, bow to the innate aversions against dictators which are in the fiber of the being of our country. Crassus, in particular, is uncomfortable as dictator. He, too, wishes to give our country the best it deserves.

  “Now we feel,” said Julius, blithely ignoring Marcus’ horrified expression, “that to meet the complex problems of a vast nation such as ours, with subject states, allies and provinces and territories, one man is not sufficient, and certainly not a dictator! I will cover the popular interests of Rome, for am I not a Popularis? Crassus will attend to the financial problems. Pompey will govern the military. His quarrel with Crassus will be resolved with the passage of the Land Bill; I know you are in favor of it. He is a mighty soldier; the legions worship him; he will be an able administrator of military matters. Crassus is not only the richest man in Rome, but will have solicitude for Rome’s financial affairs, and he is a patrician. And I—I will have the masses.’

  “We find it eminently sensible and orderly. Consuls are no longer enough, just in themselves. When we were a small nation, yes. But not now.”

  “An oligarchy, an infamous oligarchy, such as destroyed Greece and brought her oppression and slavery!” Marcus’ heart had begun to thump with sickening sounds audible in his ears. “No! By the gods, no!”

  “Hardly an oligarchy,” said Julius in musical tones, and with downcast eyes. “Only three men. It would be nonsense to have a Consul, a vice-Consul, and a vice-vice-Consul, with one man in supreme authority and the other subservient. Each must have power over his particular province, with no interference from the others. We believe this division of authority the safest for Rome. And, certainly, we shall be subservient to the Senate, and the tribunes of the people. We shall preside under their jurisdiction, and with their approval. Should they disapprove of all of us, while we are serving their country, they will have the power to disband us. If they disapprove of any, they will have power to remove him and appoint another, or another will run for office.

  “My dear sweet Marcus! Let your obdurate mind consider! Is not this most excellent for Rome?”

  Marcus sat in stupefaction, and aghast and still unbelieving, behind his table. His graying hair rose in a crest over his pallid face. His eyes gleamed with desperate emotion. He tried to speak; his voice was choked in his dry throat. Now he began to struggle for breath. His body felt numbed, as if all his flesh had been beaten with clubs and whips.

  Julius studied him benevolently. “We shall really be called t
he Committee of Three, and consider us that, rather than a Triumvirate.”

  Marcus’ voice came in a groan. “Rome is lost. So, this is the plot that has long lain in your minds! This is the plot which the murderer, Catilina, would not countenance, for you should not have chosen him as one of you. Besides, he wished to destroy and then assume supreme power. This is what I dimly, but surely, suspected, all these years!”

  “There is, and was, no plot,” said Julius, kindly. “Natural forces in the nation have led to this natural solution of all our troubles and our unwieldy affairs. When you were Consul, my dear friend, were you adequate to manage all things in Rome—finances, the military, the problems of a huge nation? You know you were not. Not even a single god, however endowed with supernatural powers, could rule our present complexity. Are not duties and provinces assigned each god, in the affairs of the world and Olympus? What is more exemplary and sensible, than to emulate the gods, themselves?”

  He daintily examined a fingernail, which was coated with a rosy substance. “No more dictators, sweet, suspicious Marcus. A division of three dedicated men, with individual authority, answerable to the Senate and the people. Again, I say, you should rejoice, for dictatorship will be dead.”

  Cicero put his hands suddenly over his face as if to shut out the very sight of Julius. A sensation of utter powerlessness, horror, and futility overcame him.

  “If you do not wish to assist me in attaining the Consulship, after which I will have only one-third the power you had, Marcus, then I must be sorrowful. But I should prefer your help.”

  Cicero dropped his hands. His eyes burned on Julius. “Assist you? I am defamed, rejected, calumny follows my steps, I am accused of vile crimes, the walls of Rome are scribbled with obscenities against me, I am lost, undone! And you ask for my help!”

  “Then, at the least, do not inflame those who still love you and admire you, against me.”

  Julius stood up, and leaned his palms on the table and bent down to bring his face to a level with Cicero’s. “I tell you, it will do you no service at all, Marcus, to oppose me.”

  Then Marcus spoke out of his despair and his wrath. “Yes! There are still many who will listen to my voice, Julius! I will speak in the Forum! I will lay bare what I know about you, what I have always suspected! I will denounce Crassus! I will warn the people who fear the military, and that will dispose of Pompey! You shall not win, Caesar.”

  Julius stood up and struck the table with the flat of his hand. “Then you may as well fall upon your sword, Marcus. I came today to warn you. Oppose us, speak against us, and you are lost. I had hoped to reconcile you to the Committee of Three. I have failed. Have you forgotten Clodius? And Mark Antony? They, among many others, have vowed to destroy you; they have powerful friends and relatives in the Senate, and among the financiers and bankers and even among your own ‘new men’ who have envied you because you are one of them.”

  Julius’ vivid black eyes gazed at Marcus with mingled exasperation, anxiety, and love. “This is your final opportunity to recover much of what you have lost through no fault of your own. Oppose us, and you are ruined forever.”

  Marcus knew, with absolute and awful finality, that Julius spoke the truth. His face paled more and more. But his mouth became resolute and appeared carved of stone. He opened a small casket on his table and brought forth something and then spun it between himself and Caesar. “Do you recognize this?” he asked.

  Julius took the serpentine ring in his hand. He looked at it and then slowly lifted his eyes to Marcus’ face. Marcus smiled palely. “This time you cannot return the ring to the owner, unless you cross the Styx. Take it. It profanes my house.”

  “Then Quintus killed him?”

  “He does not think it. He prays it is not so. They were comrades together.”

  Julius dropped the ring in his pouch and looked down at the table in silence. Marcus fell suddenly into despair. He bowed his head and said, “No matter what happens to me I will use what little power I still retain to oppose you.”

  Julius said, “Then, Marcus, we must say farewell, for you are standing on the abyss.”

  “No matter. I must do as I must do.” Marcus raised his head and stared at Julius. All at once the flamboyant figure before him, splendid even though the head was balding, disappeared, and as through mist he saw Julius clad in a white toga, staggering wildly and covered with wounds, blood flowing through fingers pressed over his heart, and bloody froth on his lips. Marcus gave a great cry and sprang to his feet and instantly the vision departed and Julius, vital and whole, was standing before him with an astonished expression. “What is it?” he exclaimed, aghast at Marcus’ face.

  “In the name of the gods!” cried Cicero. “Abandon your plots at once! Abandon your ambitions! I have seen an augury—!”

  Julius suddenly remembered what Marcus had told him many years ago, when they had both been young, and he quickly made the gesture of averting the evil eye, and a thin trembling ran along his nerves.

  Marcus came slowly, stumbling, from behind his table and he seized Julius’ arm and implored him with his eyes. “What I have seen must not come to pass, Caesar. I have just recalled that I loved you once. I have seen you with many wounds, and many hands flashing daggers, and you have died of them.”

  Frightened to the very heart of his superstitious soul, Julius tore his arm from Marcus’ grasp and fled.

  The next day Clodius said to him and Crassus and Pompey, “I am ready to move against Cicero and dispose of him. Do not oppose me this time.”

  Caesar said nothing. He looked at Pompey, and then at Crassus. Pompey said nothing. But Crassus, raising his eyebrows and smiling unpleasantly, turned down his thumb.

  Within a few days the Senate passed a bill which Clodius had introduced: Anyone who had put Roman citizens to death without due process of law, or should do so in the future, should be “interdicted from fire and water.” In short, exile. The Senate summoned Cicero to appear before it, and he was then solemnly censured for having requested the death penalty for Catilina and his five lieutenants, “against all the Articles of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution.”

  Pale but dignified, Marcus addressed the frowning and hostile and august body. “It is useless, I see, for me to offer arguments, but I must do so for history. Catilina menaced Rome. That is now history. There was no time for the proper processes of law, as well, my lords, you know. Catilina should have taken any legal time to complete his plans, to fire Rome, to destroy her, to massacre tens of thousands, including many in this Senate, to have brought chaos and disaster to our country. The hour was desperate; moments were precious. There could be no delay. Rome must strike, or Catilina would. He was not executed. He was defeated by the Roman armies, when he attempted to march on the city to devour her. His five lieutenants were executed to save Rome.

  “I must remind you, lords, that though I suggested execution, it was in your hands to reject the suggestion and to advise the due processes of law. You saw with your own eyes the calamity that awaited any delay. You acted wisely, and in the name of Rome. You could do nothing else, lest we all die!

  “It is said that only traitors who are not citizens of Rome could be so summarily executed. I have maintained that Catilina and his lieutenants, being traitors, had forfeited their citizenship. You have said it is not in the law, and that only the magistrates have the power, after a trial, to revoke citizenship, when treason is judged. We all well knew that Catilina was a traitor, and that if there had been time for a trial he would so have been judged, and he would have been executed, for he would then have retained no citizenship. What good would have ensued if he had been formally remanded for trial? Before his case could have come before the magistrates he would have fired Rome and turned her into a vast smoking heap of rubble! We all should have perished for standing like blind heroes on a point of law, a point of order! Would that have been preferable?”

  “Nevertheless, Cicero,” said one old Senator sternly, ??
?you as a lawyer of much fame in Rome, a stickler for all points of the Constitution, knew that you acted outside the Constitution.”

  “So did this august body, then, lord,” said Marcus with a weary smile. “I am not alone the guilty—if there truly were guilt, which I deny. Moreover, lords, the Constitution states that there must be no de facto law passed at any time. The law under which you have summoned me is de facto; if I were truly a criminal I still could not be tried under it, for my alleged crime was committed before this bill was even introduced.”

  “One who quibbled about law in the past should not quibble about it now,” said another Senator, with hate in his eyes, for he was a cousin of Clodius.

  “This Senate has no authority to censure me under a de facto law, nor to command my exile,” said Cicero. “The Senate, in truth, has no right to censure me for anything, for I did but my duty and exposed traitors and treason against the State. If that is a crime, then I am indeed a criminal!”

  Crassus, Caesar, and Pompey were present. He turned and looked at them, but their faces were shut against him, and averted. Now his smile was sad. He said to them, “You have succeeded against me. Be it as you will. I will depart at once.” He turned to the Senate again. “For this day’s work, lords, you have encouraged treason and opened the prison doors to free the traitors. A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and he carries his banners openly against the city. But the traitor moves among those within the gates freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears no traitor; he speaks in the accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their garments, and he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation; he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of a city; he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to be feared. The traitor is the carrier of the plague. You have unbarred the gates of Rome to him.*