Catilina's Riddle (59 page)

"Cast your minds back two years ago, to the consulship of Cotta

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and Torquatus. In that year the Capitol was struck repeatedly by freakish lightning, which jarred the images of the gods from their pedestals, struck down the statues of our ancestors, and melted the brazen tablets of the law. Even the image of our founder Romulus was struck, that gold-covered statue that shows him suckling the she-wolf. Soothsayers, who had gathered from all over Etruria, prophesied slaughter and conflagration, the overthrow of the law, civil war, and the end of Rome and her empire—

unless the gods could be persuaded to alter the course of destiny. In accordance with these dire warnings, ceremonial games were held for ten consecutive days, and nothing that might appease the gods was left undone.

"The soothsayers commanded that a new statue of Jupiter should be made and that it should be placed in a lofty spot facing the dawn and overlooking the Forum and the Senate House. With the image of the Father of the Gods turned upon our mortal activities, any grave threat to the safety of Rome would be brought to light and made manifest to the Senate and the people. So slowly did the construction of this massive, magnificent statue proceed that only now has it been completed—and it was not ready to be installed in its lofty place beside the entrance to the Temple of Concord
until this very day!

"No man here is so blind that he cannot see how the entire universe, and most specifically this chosen city, is guided and governed by the will and the majesty of the gods. Two years ago we were warned, by those who interpret the signs of the gods, of impending catastrophe and civil chaos. Not all believed the signs, but wisdom prevailed and the gods were placated. Now the time of crisis arrives and—who would dare call it coincidence?—the statue of Jupiter is ready! So timely is the benign intervention of great Jupiter that at the very hour the conspirators were being conducted through the Forum to the Temple of Concord, the engineers were just completing the statue's installation! And now, with Jupiter's terrible gaze upon us, this plot against your safety and the very survival of Rome has been revealed and brought into the bright, harsh light of day.

"Harsher than ever, then, should be your hatred and punishment of these men who have dared to spread the flames of destruction not only to your homes but to the shrines of the gods as well. How proud I would be to assert that their apprehension and arrest is all due to me, but it is not so; it was Jupiter himself who thwarted them. Jupiter wishes for the Capitol to be saved, and for the temples and this city and all of you to be saved as well. In that divine wish I have been his vessel.

"The Senate has decreed a thanksgiving to the gods. Their decree was issued in my name—the first time that such an honor has ever been bestowed upon a civilian. It is framed in these words: 'because he saved the city from flames, the citizens from massacre, and Italy from war.' Yes,

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citizens, raise your voices in thanksgiving, but not to me; render your loving praise to the father who has saved you all, to the destroyer of Rome's enemies, to Jupiter Almighty!"

Cicero raised his arms to the gleaming statue beside him and stepped back. Cheering erupted throughout the crowd, so precisely on cue that
I
wondered at first if Cicero had seeded his partisans among the crowd.

But the ovation was too overwhelming to be false, and why not? It was not Cicero, the mere vessel, whom they were cheering, but the Father of the Gods, who gazed out at us from beneath his thunderous brow.

Even so, as he backed away into the shadows, Cicero wore a smile of utter triumph, as if the cheering were entirely for him.

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C H A P T E R T H I R T Y - S I X

his means the end of Catilina," said Eco that night, reclining T on his dining couch. The meal was finished. The food and utensils had been cleared away and only a pitcher of watered wine remained. Diana was fast asleep in her bed, and Bethesda and Menenia had retired to another room.

"Until today," Eco went on, "no one in Rome was certain what would happen. There still seemed a very real chance of an uprising in the city, successful or not. You could feel it in the streets—the anger, the resentment, the restlessness, the longing for any sort of change at any cost. It was as if people were hoping that the sky would open and reveal a whole new pantheon of gods looking down from the heavens."

"Is this what you meant in your letter to me, when you said you could speak more frankly face to face?" I said.

"Well, I could hardly express such ideas in a letter, could I? Look what's become of Lentulus and Cethegus for putting their incriminating thoughts onto parchment! Not that I sympathize with them, but everyone has to be very careful these days—what one says, to whom one talks . . . "

" 'The eyes and ears of the consul are everywhere,' " I said.

"Exactly."

"And his eyes watch even one another."

"Yes."

"Then it's too bad all Cicero's cross-eyed spies haven't tripped over their own feet!" said Meto suddenly, with a vehemence that surprised us. He had been sitting quietly on his couch, drinking watered wine and listening.

Eco looked at his brother, confused. "What do you mean, Meto?"

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"I mean—I'm not sure what I mean, but I thought Cicero's speech today was sickening." His voice was infused with the fervent passion of those who are very young, very earnest, very angry. "Do you think there was a word of truth in it?"

"Of course there was," said Eco. Meanwhile I kept quiet, leaned back, and listened to them debate. "You don't suppose Cicero concocted those letters himself?"

"No, but who concocted the scheme in the first place?"

"What scheme?"

"The idea for the conspirators to discredit themselves by dealing with the Allobroges."

"Lentulus came up with the scheme, I suppose, or one of the other—"

"Why not Cicero?" said Meto.

"But—"

"I was listening to some men talking in the Forum after the speech was over and the crowd was breaking up. These men were saying that the Allobroges are unhappy with Roman rule, and not without reason.

The Roman officials in Gaul are corrupt and greedy, like Roman officials everywhere. That's why the envoys came to Rome, seeking redress from the Senate."

"Exactly," agreed Eco. "And knowing their discontent, Lentulus saw an opportunity to suborn them."

"Or was it Cicero who saw an opportunity to use them for his own ends? Don't you see, Eco, it's just as likely that it was the Allobroges who approached Catilina's supporters, that the idea came from them, acting secretly at Cicero's behest. He said in his speech today that he was desperate for a way to expose his enemies, to draw them out. Desperate enough to engineer this whole affair himself! Lentulus and Cethegus were set up, and like fools they took the bait. Now Cicero has them in his net, and they'll never get out."

Eco leaned back, looking pensive. "Men were saying this in the Forum?"

"Not too loudly, as you can imagine, but I have good ears."

"It makes sense, I must admit, but it's mad."

"Why? We all know that Cicero prefers to operate in secrecy, with trickery and deceit. Do you think he's above stage-managing the whole incident? It's so simple, so clear. The Allobroges come seeking favors, and the Senate ignores them. Cicero is the most powerful man in Rome; he can get them what they want, if anyone can. He makes them promises, but in return they must act as his agents. So they approach Lentulus and Cethegus, claiming to seek an alliance. Without Catilina to guide them, Lentulus and Cethegus and the rest are getting nowhere on their own, so they eagerly take up the offer. But the Allobroges want an agreement

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in writing—only that will satisfy Cicero—and the fools give it to them.

The envoys pretend to leave for their homeland. Acting on information from Cicero, two praetors stage a dramatic mock ambush on the Milvian Bridge."

"Why 'mock'?" said Eco.

"Because, while the praetors thought the ambush was real, the men they ambushed were expecting them and put up no resistance. Why?

Because the informant Volturcius, who was accompanying the Allobroges, was also in on the game, another of Cicero's agents."

"Were they saying that, too, in the Forum?"

"No," said Meto, with a hint of a smile softening his outrage. "The part about Volturcius is my idea."

"But not unlikely," I said, sitting up and rejoining the conversation.

"We know that Cicero's spies are everywhere."

"Even in this room," whispered Meto, so low that
I
barely heard him. "Still," said Eco, shaking his head, "even if what you say is true, and Cicero set a trap for the conspirators, they needn't have stepped into it. They allied themselves with foreign subjects and plotted war against Rome."

"Yes," I said, "and Meto is right to call them fools for doing it.

The Roman people might forgive a plot to bring down the state from within—many of them might even join in such an insurrection, if only for the chance to plunder—but for Romans to plot with foreigners against the state is unforgivable. It turns them from rebels into traitors. I think you're right, Eco, when you say that Catilina can never recover from this. Really, it's no wonder Cicero gave thanks to the gods at the end of his speech—Jupiter himself couldn't have devised a more foolproof way to discredit Catilina and his followers."

Meto covered his ears. "Please, Papa, no talk about gods! You know how Cicero really feels about religion; he makes quite a show among his intellectual friends of having no belief in the gods at all. He says it's all nonsense and superstition. Yet when he talks to the people in the Forum, he turns as pious as a priest and calls himself Jupiter's vessel. Such hypocrisy! And can you believe that nonsense about the statue of Jupiter being an omen? Don't you find it more likely that Cicero chose the day for the 'ambush' on the Allobroges to coincide with the installation of the statue, so that he could exploit the coincidence? That proves, more than anything else, that he must have masterminded the whole affair and timed it to his liking."

Eco opened his mouth to say something, but Meto wouldn't be stopped. "Do you know what else? I'm not even sure that Lentulus and Cethegus were plotting to torch the city. What evidence do we have for that, except the word of Volturcius the informer—Cicero's hired spy?

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Perhaps Lentulus and Cethegus were stupid enough to have come up with such a plot, or perhaps Cicero simply made up the part about fire to frighten people, just as he made up the stories about Catilina's wanting to lead a slave revolt. Nothing frightens people more than those two things, fire and slaves, running out of control. The rich fear the vengeance of slaves, and the poor fear fire, which can claim all they own in an instant. Even the poorest, who look to Catilina as a savior, would turn their back on any man who plotted arson."

"Thunderbolts, cast into the crowd!" I murmured.

"What did you say, Papa?" said Eco.

"An idea I got from Catilina. Vestal Virgins and sexual debauchery; arson, anarchy, slave revolts; conspiring with foreigners; the will of Jupiter—Cicero seems to have made a science of the words and phrases that will manipulate the masses."

"Don't forget his watchfulness," said Meto. He stood up and put down his cup. His hands were trembling. "At least I can say something no one else in this room can say: I've never served as the consul's eyes or ears." With that he abruptly turned and left us.

Eco stared after him. "Papa, what on earth has happened to my little brother?"

"He's become a man, I suppose."

"No, I mean—"

"I know what you mean. Ever since his birthday celebration here in Rome, he's become more and more as you see him now."

"But these wild ideas, and the depth of his anger against Cicero—

where does it come from?"

I shrugged. "Catilina has slept under my roof several times. I think Meto may have had some private conversations with him while I was elsewhere. You know Catilina's notorious effect on the young."

"But such ideas are dangerous. If Meto wants to brood on the farm, that's one thing, but here in the city I hope he knows enough to keep his mouth shut, at least in public. I think you should have a talk with him." "Why? Everything he says makes perfect sense to me."

"Yes, but aren't you worried?"

"I suppose. But when he left the room just now, it wasn't worry that I was feeling. I was feeling rather proud of him, actually—and a little ashamed of myself."

There are moments in the theater when the characters and events upon the stage seem to become more real than reality itself. I speak not of bawdy Roman comedies, though sometimes even those attain the phe-

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nomenon I'm thinking of; I speak more of those sublime tragedies of the Greeks. One knows that mere actors reside behind the masks, and one knows that the words they speak come from a script, and yet when Oedipus is blinded one feels an anguish more vivid than physical pain and a terror that seems to well up from the deepest recess of the soul.

Gods hover in the air: one knows they are merely men suspended from a crane, and yet one experiences an awe that transcends all reason.

The days that followed Cicero's speech in the Forum were colored with that same sense of vivid, compelling unreality. There was something grand and theatrical, but at the same time grubby and absurd, about the inevitable progression toward the destruction of the men who had fallen into Cicero's power. Ultimately it was not Cicero who decreed their annihilation, but the Senate. Whether that august body acted legally or not is a controversy which I doubt will be resolved in my lifetime.

Roman law does not give to either the consuls or to the Senate the right to put a citizen to death; that right is reserved for the courts and for the people's Assembly. Because the courts are slow and cumbersome and the Assembly is dangerously volatile, neither institution is of much use in an emergency. It might be argued that the Extreme Decree, by which the Senate had empowered the consuls to take any steps necessary to preserve the state, superseded other restrictions and allowed for a penalty of death against Rome's enemies within. Even so, was it right, legal, or honorable to put to death men in captivity, who had laid down their arms and given themselves into custody, and thus posed no immediate threat to anyone? These were some of the arguments that occupied the Senate over the next two days.