Rubicon: The Triumph and Tragedy of the Roman Republic (20 page)

Sometimes Cicero was tempted to agree. He was perfectly capable of acknowledging that ‘electioneering and scrabbling after office can be a wretched business’.
²¹
But whether his breakdown had been purely physical, or perhaps something more, he retained his passionate conviction that public life was the ideal. Leaving Athens, he crossed the Aegean to Asia. There he met Rutilius Rufus, the old enemy of the
publicani
, and still in exile fifteen years after being convicted in the most notorious scandal in Roman legal history. Rutilius was an object lesson in how dangerous it could be to uphold ancient values against the predatory greed of corrupt officials, and yet, despite his hounding, he had not despaired of the Republic. For several days the old man entertained his guest with anecdotes about the heroic figures of his youth, then sent him onwards to visit his friend, the philosopher Posidonius, on Rhodes. The great sage’s conversation would have been even more motivational than that of Rutilius. Posidonius had lost none of his faith in Rome’s global destiny, nor in the traditional virtues that she could bring to such a mission: ‘Rugged fortitude; frugality; a lack of attachment to material possessions; a religion wonderful in its devotion to the gods; upright dealing; care and attention to justice when dealing with other men.’
²²
So the list ran on. Cicero, who had always dreamed of being the most traditional kind of Roman hero, was thrilled. What was a sore throat to stand in the
way of fulfilling such a destiny? By a fortunate coincidence, the world’s most famous oratory clinic was also to be found on Rhodes. The rhetorician Molon, who ran it, was typical of a new breed of celebrity professors who had begun tailoring their courses to suit high achievers from Rome. Cicero was soon able to establish himself as Molon’s star pupil. Having encouraged him to adopt a more restrained manner of speaking, the teacher ended up in a theatrical state of despair, lamenting that even in the field of oratory Greece had now been surpassed by Rome. Cicero, always a sucker for flattery, was delighted. ‘And so I came home after two years not only more experienced,’ he recalled later, ‘but almost a new person. The excessive straining on my throat had gone, my style was less frenetic, my lungs were stronger – and I had even put on weight.’
²³

Energy and self-confidence now fully restored, he returned to his legal practice in the Forum, where he continued to speak for the defence. Favours were duly earned and obligations totted up. Cicero was starting to close the gap on Hortensius. At the same time he was also picking up speed in the
Cursus.
At the age of thirty, the youngest legitimate age, he was elected to the quaestorship, the most junior of the Republic’s great offices, it was true, but a start all the same and, considering his background, an impressive one. The provincial from Arpinum was now not only a magistrate of the Roman people, but a member of the Senate. Assigned to Sicily, he spent a year there, attempting to put the example of Rutilius to good use, earning the respect of the provincials, and efficiently organising shipments of grain back to Rome. The brilliant young quaestor, with his customary lack of modesty, imagined that his fellow citizens would be talking of little else. Landing at Puteoli on his way home, however, Cicero was appalled to discover that no one had even realised he had been away. Typically, however, he soon managed to put the lesson to good account:

I now believe the incident benefited me more than if everyone had been offering me congratulations. I realised that the Roman people are prone to deafness, but that their eyesight is keen and observant, and so I stopped worrying what people might hear of me, but made sure that they saw me in person every day. I lived in the full glare of their observation, I was always in the Forum. Neither sleep nor the bouncer by my door ever prevented anyone from getting to see me.
²⁴

For those on the
Cursus
, exposure was all. A new man had to hype himself or else he was nothing. This was a lesson that Cicero would never forget.

He was now fast becoming a fixture in Rome. People who mattered were waking up to the fact that Cicero’s estimation of his own talents was not merely insufferable egotism, and that his genius as an advocate was indeed something exceptional. The more this perception gathered pace, the more Cicero could begin to eye the prospect of a real breakthrough, past the staging-post of the junior magistracies and into the laps where only the aristocracy might normally be expected to advance. To achieve that, however, he would first have to establish his dominance as an orator beyond all doubt. Hortensius had to be toppled, and not only toppled, but comprehensively drubbed. His ‘tyrannical rule of the law courts’
²⁵
had to be brought to a public end.

So it was that when Cicero finally met Hortensius face to face, in a case ripe with scandal and prurient detail, the stakes could hardly have been higher. The defendant was a former governor of Sicily, Gaius Verres, and it was Cicero, breaking the habit of a lifetime, who brought the prosecution. This was a risk, but a well-calculated one. Even upon the modest record of Roman provincial administration, Verres appears to have been a spectacular blot. Treachery and greed had been the keynotes of his career. A supporter of the
Marians for as long as the Marians clung to power, he had soon sensed the way the wind was blowing, and absconded to Sulla with his commanding officer’s cash box. Armed with the favour of the new regime, Verres had duly found himself launched on a series of increasingly lucrative overseas postings. Whether he was really, as Cicero was to claim, ‘distinguished by nothing except his monstrous offences and his obscene wealth’,
²⁶
he certainly seems to have had an eye for ready perks – ships, disputed wills, the daughters of his hosts. Verres’ real specialisation, however, was antiques. Years of pillaging the Greek world had given the Roman upper classes an immense enthusiasm for high art. Officially, this was despised as effete self-indulgence, but behind the scenes Roman grandees would chase frantically after any valuable painting or statue that was going. Now that the days of sacking Greek cities were over, the world’s first art market had developed to plug the gap. Prices had duly spiralled and dealers made fortunes. Verres’ own refinement had been to bring the methods of a gangster to the trade. Even as he was mass-producing fakes he was employing a team of experts, ‘bloodhounds’,
²⁷
to sniff out genuine masterpieces. Verres had a talent for making offers that no one dared refuse. One provincial elder who had tried to outface the governor had been stripped naked and lashed to an equestrian statue in the town’s main square. Since it had been the dead of winter, and the statue had been made of bronze, the old man had soon changed his mind. Other trouble-makers, even Roman citizens, Verres had simply had crucified.

This, then, was the man whom Cicero had decided to go after. Despite the defendant’s record, he knew that the case would be no walk-over. Verres had friends in high places and a long reach. When Cicero travelled to Sicily to pursue the case in person, he found that witnesses had a suspicious tendency to fall silent or disappear. Fortunately, following his quaestorship, he had plenty of
Sicilian contacts of his own. Evidence was everywhere, even in the silence of the countryside, its farmers ruined by Verres’ depredations. Clearly, as a prosecutor, Cicero relished what he found, but as an aspiring statesman he was simultaneously appalled. Verres’ corruption struck at two of his most passionately held convictions: that Rome was good for the world, and that the workings of the Republic were good for Rome. This was why Cicero could argue with a perfectly straight face that the stakes in the coming trial were apocalyptic. ‘There is nowhere, no matter how distant or obscure, within the boundary of the encircling Ocean, that has not suffered from the lust for oppression which drives our people on,’ he warned. If Verres were not convicted, then ‘the Republic will be doomed, for this monster’s acquittal will serve as a precedent to encourage other monsters in the future’.
²⁸
Magnificently over the top though all this was, there was more to it than a mere lawyerly desire to make the flesh creep. For the sake of his political ideals, and his own self-respect, Cicero had to believe what he was saying. If the
Cursus
rewarded greed rather than patriotism, and if a man such as Verres could emerge triumphant over a man such as himself, then the Republic was rotten indeed. Here was an argument that Cicero would cling to all his life: that his own success was to be regarded as the measure of the health of Rome. Genuine principle fused seamlessly with inordinate self-regard.

It did not take Hortensius long to recognise what he was up against. Rather than argue the case on Cicero’s own terms, he instead sought to have the trial postponed. It was finally set for a date just before the law courts went into a lengthy recess. For the prosecution, this was a potentially devastating setback. The conventions governing an advocate’s mode of address were time-consuming, and, if Cicero were to stick to them, the trial might be expected to drag on for months. The longer it continued,
the more opportunities for bribery and arm-twisting Verres would have. As the trial opened the defendant had every reason to crow. Cicero, however, had prepared a devastating ambush. Rather than follow the customary rituals of the law courts, he took the unprecedented step of laying out his evidence immediately in a series of short speeches. Hortensius needed to hear only the first of these to realise that the game was up. He waived his right of reply and the trial promptly collapsed. Verres, not wanting to wait for the inevitable conviction, cut and ran with his art collection to Marseille. Cicero celebrated by publishing the full text of the speeches he would have given, no doubt nicely sharpened for popular consumption, and with a few well-aimed jabs at Hortensius thrown in for good measure. The news was broadcast all over Rome: the king had lost his crown; Hortensius’ rule of the law courts had been brought to a close.

Cicero’s own supremacy was to last a lifetime. The advantages this brought him in terms of influence and contacts were immense. There were also more immediate spoils. At the start of his prosecution Cicero had claimed to have no concern with personal gain. This had been disingenuous in the extreme. As Cicero would well have known, a prosecutor had the right to claim the rank of any criminal he successfully brought to justice. Verres had been a praetor, and so, once he had been convicted, all the perks of his status passed directly to Cicero. Among these were the right to speak in debates ahead of non-praetorian senators. For a man of Cicero’s eloquence this was a crucial privilege. His oratory could now start to weave its magic not only in the law courts, but also in the very cockpit of politics.

Of course, he still had a long way to go, but he had taken great strides. ‘Reflect on what city this is, on the nature of your goal, and on who you are,’ his brother advised him. ‘Every day, as you are walking down to the Forum, turn these thoughts over and over in
your mind: “I am a new man! I want the consulship! This is Rome!”’
²⁹

The ultimate prize was no longer an impossible dream.

Throughout the seventies
BC
the Capitol remained a building site. The great temple of Jupiter rose gradually from its ashes long after Sulla’s own had been scattered on the wind. As the very grandest of the Republic’s
grands projets
, it was unthinkable that such a monument should be jerry-built. Even before its completion Cicero could hail it as ‘the most famous and beautiful building’ in the city.
³⁰
Just as the destruction of the previous temple had been a portent of civil war, so the new one, clearly visible to everyone who passed through the Forum, was evidence that the gods were smiling on Rome again. Peace had returned, and the Republic itself had been restored.

Or so Sulla’s adherents wished everyone to believe. This was why they were so careful to keep supervision of the Capitol in their own hands. After Sulla’s death, official responsibility for the temple passed to his most distinguished associate, Quintus Lutatius Catulus. He was the very embodiment of senatorial hauteur. Distinguished ancestry combined with a reputation for stern, old-fashioned integrity to win him unrivalled authority in the Senate. He was easily Sulla’s most eminent heir. Yet even Catulus’ loyalty had its limits. Sulla had intended to have his name immortalised on the giant architrave of the temple, but Catulus had other plans. Rather than Sulla’s name, he had the temple inscribed with his own.

Catulus’ reputation for austere probity does not appear to have been damaged by this act of one-upmanship. Just the opposite, in
fact. The memory of Sulla was tainted and his name regarded as malign. By promoting himself at the expense of his dead leader, Catulus was effectively acknowledging this. His commitment to Sulla’s legacy remained unshaken, but the way in which it had been imposed on the Republic, at the point of a sword, was an obvious embarrassment to any self-proclaimed conservative. Together with Hortensius, who was not only his closest political ally but his brother-in-law, Catulus sought to uphold a proudly backward-looking ideal, one in which a grateful Roman people would be guided towards honour and glory by the Senate. In turn, the Senate was to be guided by men like himself, embodiments of Rome’s ancient order, bound by the flinty traditions of their ancestors. The Republic, however, had many different traditions, confused and confusing, and defying codification. In the past the challenge for a citizen had always been to negotiate the swirling of their cross-currents, but Sulla, having seen where they might lead, had instead sought to tame and – in some cases – to dam their flow. Like a mighty system of dykes, his legislation served to channel what had previously been unchecked. Ritual and a shared sense of duty and obligation, these were what had defined the Republic for centuries. Unwritten custom had been all. Now that was changed. Implacable traditionalists though they were, men such as Catulus were also the heirs to revolution.