Imperium

I know this because, as the meal was ending, I was unexpectedly sent for by Cicero. It was a still night, without a flicker of wind to disturb the candles, and the nighttime sounds of Rome down in the valley mingled with the scent of the flowers in the warm June air-snatches of music, voices, the call of the watchmen along the Argiletum, the distant barking of the guard dogs set loose in the precincts of the Capitoline Triad. Lucius and Quintus were still laughing at some joke of Cicero’s, and even Terentia could not quite hide her amusement as she flicked her napkin at her husband and scolded him that that was quite enough. (Pomponia, thankfully, was away visiting her brother in Athens.)
“Ah,” said Cicero, looking around, “now here is Tiro, the master politician of us all, which means I can proceed to make my little declaration. I thought it appropriate that he should be present to hear this as well. I have decided to stand for election as aedile.”
“Oh, very good!” said Quintus, who thought it was all still part of Cicero’s joke. Then he stopped laughing and said in a puzzled way, “But that is not funny.”
“It will be if I win.”
“But you cannot win. You heard what Pompey said. He doesn’t want you to be a candidate.”
“It is not for Pompey to decide who is to be a candidate. We are free citizens, free to make our own choices. I choose to run for aedile.”
“There is no sense in running and losing, Marcus. That is the sort of pointlessly heroic gesture Lucius here believes in.”
“Let us drink to pointless heroism,” said Lucius, raising his glass.
“But we cannot win against Pompey’s opposition,” persisted Quintus. “And what is the point of incurring Pompey’s enmity?”
To which Terentia retorted: “After yesterday, one might better ask, What is the point of incurring Pompey’s friendship?”
“Terentia is right,” said Cicero. “Yesterday has taught me a lesson. Let us say I wait a year or two, hanging on Pompey’s every word in the hope of favor, running errands for him. We have all seen men like that in the Senate-growing older, waiting for half promises to be fulfilled. They are hollowed out by it. And before they even know it, their moment has passed and they have nothing left with which to bargain. I would sooner clear out of politics right now than let that happen to me. If you want power, there is a time when you have to seize it. This is my time.”
“But how is this to be accomplished?”
“By prosecuting Gaius Verres for extortion.”
So there it was. I had known he would do it since early morning, and so, I am sure, had he, but he had wanted to take his time about it-to try on the decision, as it were, and see how it fitted him. And it fitted him very well. I had never seen him more determined. He looked like a man who believed he had the force of history running through him. Nobody spoke.
“Come on!” he said with a smile. “Why the long faces? I have not lost yet! And I do not believe I shall lose, either. I had a visit from the Sicilians this morning. They have gathered the most damning testimony against Verres, have they not, Tiro? We have it under lock and key downstairs. And when we do win-think of it! I defeat Hortensius in open court, and all this ‘second-best advocate’ nonsense is finished forever. I assume the rank of the man I convict, according to the traditional rights of the victorious prosecutor, which means I become a praetorian overnight-so no more jumping up and down on the bank benches in the Senate, hoping to be called. And I place myself so firmly before the gaze of the Roman people that my election as aedile is assured. But the best thing of all is that I do it-I, Cicero-and I do it without owing favors to anyone, least of all Pompey the Great.”
“But what if we lose?” said Quintus, finding his voice at last. “We are defense attorneys. We never prosecute. You have said it yourself a hundred times: defenders win friends; prosecutors just make enemies. If you don’t bring Verres down, there is a good chance he will eventually be elected consul. Then he will never rest until you are destroyed.”
“That is true,” conceded Cicero. “If you are going to kill a dangerous animal, you had better make sure you do it with the first thrust. But then-do you not see? This way I can win everything as well. Rank, fame, office, dignity, authority, independence, a base of clients in Rome and Sicily. It opens my way clear through to becoming consul.”
This was the first time I had heard him mention his great ambition, and it was a measure of his renewed confidence that he felt able to utter the word at last. Consul. For every man in public life, this was the apotheosis. The very years themselves were distinguished from one another on all official documents and foundation stones by the names of the presiding consuls. It was the nearest thing below heaven to immortality. How many nights and days must he have thought of it, dreamed of it, nursed it, since his gawky adolescence? Sometimes it is foolish to articulate an ambition too early-exposing it prematurely to the laughter and skepticism of the world can destroy it before it is even properly born. But sometimes the opposite occurs, and the very act of mentioning a thing makes it suddenly seem possible, even plausible. That was how it was that night. When Cicero pronounced the word consul, he planted it in the ground like a standard for us all to admire. And for a moment we glimpsed the brilliant, starry future through his eyes, and saw that he was right: that if he took down Verres, he had a chance; that he might just-with luck-go all the way to the summit.
THERE WAS MUCH to be done over the following months, and as usual a great deal of the work fell upon me. First, I drew up a large chart of the electorate for the aedileship. At that time, this consisted of the entire Roman citizenry, divided into their thirty-five tribes. Cicero himself belonged to the Cornelia, Servius to the Lemonia, Pompey to the Clustumina, Verres to the Romilia, and so forth. A citizen cast his ballot on the Field of Mars as a member of his tribe, and the results of each tribe’s vote were then read out by the magistrates. The four candidates who secured the votes of the greatest number of tribes were duly declared the winners.
There were several advantages for Cicero in this particular electoral college. For one thing-unlike the system for choosing praetors and consuls-each man’s vote, whatever his wealth, counted equally, and as Cicero’s strongest support was among the men of business and the teeming poor, the aristocrats would find it harder to block him. For another, it was a relatively easy electorate to canvass. Each tribe had its own headquarters somewhere in Rome, a building large enough to lay on a show or a dinner. I went back through our files and compiled a list of every man Cicero had ever defended or helped over the past six years, arranged according to his tribe. These men were then contacted and asked to make sure that the senator was invited to speak at any forthcoming tribal event. It is surely amazing how many favors there are to be called in after six years of relentless advocacy and advice. Cicero’s campaign schedule was soon filled with engagements, and his working day became even longer. After the courts or the Senate had adjourned, he would hurry home, quickly bathe and change, and then rush out again to give one of his rousing addresses. His slogan was “Justice and Reform.”
Quintus, as usual, acted as Cicero’s campaign manager, while cousin Lucius was entrusted with organizing the case against Verres. The governor was due to return from his province at the end of the year. The moment he entered the city, he would lose his imperium, and with it his immunity from prosecution. Cicero was determined to strike at the first opportunity, and, if possible, give him no time to dispose of evidence or intimidate witnesses. For this reason, to avoid arousing suspicion, the Sicilians stopped coming to the house, and Lucius became the conduit between Cicero and his clients, meeting them in secret at different locations across the city. He was in many respects very similar to Cicero. He was almost the same age, clever and amusing, a gifted philosopher. The two had grown up together in Arpinum, been schooled together in Rome, and traveled together in the East. But there was one huge difference: Lucius entirely lacked worldly ambition. He lived alone, in a small house full of books, and did nothing all day except read and think-a most dangerous occupation for a man, which in my experience leads invariably to dyspepsia and melancholy. But oddly enough, despite his solitary disposition, he soon came to relish leaving his study every day and was so enraged by Verres’s wickedness that his zeal to bring him to justice eventually exceeded even Cicero’s. “We shall make a lawyer of you yet, cousin,” Cicero remarked admiringly, after he had produced yet another set of damning affidavits. I thus came to know Lucius much better, and the more I saw of him, the more I liked him.