Imperium - Харрис Роберт - Страница 59

“You see how hard-pressed I am?” Cicero complained to me the next morning, rubbing his forehead with his knuckles. “There is no respite for me anywhere, either in my business or my leisure.”

As for Terentia, she became increasingly preoccupied with her supposed barrenness and took to praying daily at the Temple of the Good Goddess on the Aventine Hill, where harmless snakes roamed freely in the precincts to encourage fertility and no man was allowed to set eyes upon the inner sanctum. I also heard from her maid that she had set up a small shrine to Juno in her bedroom.

Secretly, I believe Cicero shared Terentia’s opinion of Pompey. There was something suspicious as well as glorious about the speed of his victory (“organized at the end of winter,” as Cicero put it, “started at the beginning of spring, and finished by the middle of the summer”) which made one wonder whether the whole enterprise could not have been handled perfectly well by a commander appointed in the normal way. Still, there was no denying his success. The pirates had been rolled up like a carpet, driven from the waters of Sicily and Africa eastward, through the Illyrian Sea to Achaia, and then purged from the whole of Greece. Finally, they had been trapped by Pompey himself in their last great stronghold, Coracesium, in Cilicia, and in a huge battle on sea and land, ten thousand had been killed and four hundred vessels destroyed. Another twenty thousand had been captured. But rather than have them crucified as no doubt Crassus would have done, Pompey had ordered the pirates to be resettled inland with their wives and families, in the depopulated towns of Greece and Asia Minor-one of which he renamed, with characteristic modesty, Pompeiopolis. All this he did without reference to the Senate.

Cicero followed his patron’s fantastic progress with mixed feelings (“‘Pompeiopolis!’ Dear gods, the vulgarity of it!”), not least because he knew that the more swollen with success Pompey became, the longer the shadow he would cast over his own career. Meticulous planning and overwhelming numerical superiority: these were Pompey’s favorite tactics, both on the battlefield and in Rome, and as soon as phase one of his campaign-the destruction of the pirates-was completed, phase two began in the Forum, when Gabinius started agitating to have the command of the Eastern legions stripped from Lucullus and awarded to Pompey. He used the same trick as before, employing his powers as tribune to summon witnesses to the rostra, who gave the people a sorry picture of the war against Mithradates. Some of the legions, unpaid for years, had simply refused to leave their winter camp. The poverty of these ordinary fighting men Gabinius contrasted with the immense wealth of their aristocratic commander, who had shipped back so much booty from the campaign that he had bought an entire hill just outside the gates of Rome and was building a great palace there, with all the state rooms named after the gods. Gabinius subpoened Lucullus’s architects and had them brought to the rostra, where he forced them to show to the people all their plans and models. Lucullus’s name from that time on became a synonym for outrageous luxury, and the angry citizens burned his effigy in the Forum.

In December, Gabinius and Cornelius stood down as tribunes, and a new creature of Pompey’s, the tribune-elect, Caius Manilius, took over the safeguarding of his interests in the popular assemblies. He immediately proposed a law granting command of the war against Mithradates to Pompey, along with the government of the provinces of Asia, Cilicia, and Bithynia-the latter two held by Lucullus. Any thin hopes that Cicero might have entertained of lying low on the issue were destroyed when Gabinius came to see him bearing a message from Pompey. This briskly conveyed the general’s good wishes, along with his hopes that Cicero would support the lex Manilia “in all its provisions,” not only behind the scenes but also in public, from the rostra.

“In all its provisions,” repeated Gabinius, with a smirk. “You know what that means.”

“I presume it means the clause which appoints you to the command of the legions on the Euphrates, thus giving you legal immunity from prosecution now that your term as tribune has expired.”

“You have it.” Gabinius grinned and did a passable impersonation of Pompey, drawing himself up and puffing out his cheeks. ‘Is he not clever, gentlemen? Did I not tell you he was clever?’”

“Calm yourself, Gabinius,” said Cicero wearily. “I assure you there is no one I would rather see heading off to the Euphrates than you.”

It is dangerous in politics to find oneself a great man’s whipping boy. Yet this was the role in which Cicero was now becoming trapped. Men who would never have dared to directly insult or criticize Pompey could instead land blows on his lawyer-surrogate with impunity, knowing that everyone would guess their real target. But there was no escaping a direct order from the commander in chief, and so this became the occasion of Cicero’s first speech from the rostra. He took immense trouble over it, dictating it to me several days beforehand, and then showing it to Quintus and Frugi for their comments. From Terentia he prudently withheld it, for he knew he would have to send a copy to Pompey and it was therefore necessary for him to ladle on the flattery. (I see from the manuscript, for example, that Pompey’s “superhuman genius as a commander” was amended at Quintus’s suggestion to Pompey’s “superhuman and unbelievable genius as a commander.”) He hit upon a brilliant slogan to sum up Pompey’s success-“one law, one man, one year”-and fretted over the rest of the speech for hours, conscious that if he failed on the rostra, his career would be set back and his enemies would say he did not have the common touch to move the plebs of Rome. When the morning came to deliver it, he was physically sick with nerves, retching again and again into the latrine while I stood next to him with a towel. He was so white and drawn that I actually wondered if he would have the legs to get all the way down to the Forum. But it was his belief that a great performer, however experienced, must always be frightened before going onstage-“the nerves should be as taut as bowstrings if the arrows are to fly”-and by the time we reached the back of the rostra he was ready. Needless to say, he was carrying no notes. We heard Manilius announce his name and the applause begin. It was a beautiful morning, clear and bright; the crowd was huge. He adjusted his sleeves, drew himself erect, and slowly ascended into the noise and light.

Catulus and Hortensius once again were the leaders of the opposition to Pompey, but they had devised no new arguments since the lex Gabinia, and Cicero had some sport with them. “What is Hortensius saying?” he teased. “That if one man is to be put in supreme command, the right man is Pompey, but that supreme command ought not to be given to one man? That line of reasoning is now out of date, refuted not so much by words as by events. For it was you, Hortensius, who denounced that courageous man Gabinius for introducing a law to appoint a single commander against the pirates. Now I ask you in heaven’s name-if on that occasion the Roman people had thought more of your opinion than of their own welfare and their true interests, should we today be in possession of our present glory and our worldwide empire?” By the same token, if Pompey wanted Gabinius as one of his legionary commanders, he should have him, for no man had done more, apart from Pompey, to defeat the pirates. “Speaking for myself,” he concluded, “whatever devotion, wisdom, energy, or talent I possess, whatever I can achieve by virtue of the praetorship which you have conferred upon me, I dedicate to the support of this law. And I call on all the gods to witness-most especially the guardians of this hallowed spot who see clearly into the hearts of all who enter upon public life-that I am acting not as a favor to Pompey, nor in the hope of gaining favor from him, but solely in the cause of my country.” He left the rostra to respectful applause. The law was passed, Lucullus was stripped of his command, and Gabinius was given his legateship. As for Cicero, he had surmounted another obstacle in his progress to the consulship, but was more hated than ever by the aristocrats.