Eco called on me early the next morning, brimming with news.
"Papa, have you heard what happened at Lepidus's house yesterday, after the contio?"
"Yes."
"Quite a battle, apparently. Blood all over Lepidus's house, they say. His ancestral busts ruined beyond repair. The yarn for the ceremonial looms all a tangled mess. But now he'll always be known as the interrex who held firm against the mob – he got his five days of fame!"
"We were damned lucky the violence didn't start down in the Forum, while we were still in that crowd. What if Milo's little army had shown up there, instead of waiting in ambush at Lepidus's house? I'm an old man, Eco. I can't outrun a mob."
"No one forced you to go to the contio, Papa."
I grunted.
"Don't you trust my new bodyguards?"
I grunted again. "I suppose the senatorial committee will choose a new interrex today."
"That's the word. No one knows where they're meeting-probably outside the city. They've kept the location secret, afraid of another blockade or a battle. The new interrex will have the authority to call elections, but with things so unsettled it seems unlikely that well actually see new consuls in the next five days. Oh, and speaking of unsettled, there's to be another contio today, this one -"
"Called by the not-so-radical tribune Marcus Caelius."
"Yes, and they say that -"
"Milo himself may speak."
Eco looked at me archly. "Papa, you're remarkably well informed for a man who never sets foot in the Forum unless I drag you there. Something tells me you've been in touch with Cicero again. Tell me everything."
I gave him the details of my visit to Cicero's house on the previous day.
Eco drew his own conclusions. "Pompey's behaving like a bastard, isn't he?"
"Oh, I don't know."
"What a back-stabber! Milo was his ally for years, and now -"
"Ah, but little things like murder can sour even the sincerest relationships. If Milo killed Clodius, just how far do Pompey's obligations of friendship extend?"
Eco looked at me quizzically. "Why do you say 'if?"
"What do you mean?"
"You said, 'If Milo killed Clodius.' "
"Oh. I suppose I did…"
"Well, I don't see why you defend Pompey. This 'little thing' -this murder – seems only to have strengthened Cicero's support ofMilo."
"Yes, one can't fault Cicero's loyalty."
"I suppose it's because they're so much alike."
"Cicero and Milo?" I thought of Cicero – frail in youth, dyspeptic in middle age, shrewd, calculating, a model of taste and refinement – and then of Milo, who seemed quite the opposite, with his robust, bullish physique, his bluff manner, and a rough edge to his character that no amount of money or education had ever managed to smooth away. "Alike in what ways, Eco?"
"Well, they're the two brightest of the New Men, aren't they, the two shiniest new stars in the firmament? Or they would be, if Milo could ever get himself elected consul."
Eco had a point. Cicero had been the first of his family to attain a magistracy. He had been born with money and means, to be sure, but none of his ancestors had ever held high office. With his election as a quaestor at the age of thirty, he had become, as the parlance goes, a New Man in the halls of power. This in itself was a great achievement. But Cicero's ascent had not ended with the lower magistracies; he had worked his way all the way up to consul. This was truly remarkable. As a rule the consulship is attained only by candidates already of consular family, men whose ancestors held the consulship before them. Thus do the high nobility, by various traps and schemes, perpetuate their status and exclude newcomers. But against all odds Cicero had attained the consulship, and he was the first New Man of his generation to do so.
Milo was also a New Man. If he became consul he would be only the second New Man in living memory, after Cicero, to do so.
"I see what you mean, Eco. I suppose they see themselves as the only two members of a very exclusive club. They've risen above their birth -"
"So that they can now look down on people like you and me from a comfortable height."
"But they're still outsiders and interlopers to the old aristocratic families who were born to privilege and great expectations."
"Like their mutual enemy Clodius."
"Or Pompey," I noted. "Or Caesar."
"So it's all the better that they're so different on the outside," said Eco. "They get to play each other's alter ego."
"Cicero and Milo, alter egos?.Well, Cicero certainly seems determined to stand by Milo, no matter what he's done, whether the mob likes it or not. And whether Pompey likes it or not, for that matter."
"But to what end?" said Eco.
For my decision to attend Caelius's contio that day, I have no one to blame but myself
The event attracted a considerable crowd – even larger than the crowd that had attended the radical tribunes' contio the previous day. The news of the battle at Lepidus's house had made people even more restless and anxious. As I have said, in times of duress Romans gather by instinct in large groups to listen to speeches.
With Eco's bodyguards helping to clear the way, we managed to find a good spot in front of the speakers' platform, despite the crush. I peered at the sea of faces around us, trying to judge the temper of the crowd. I noticed a number of stuffy, conservative types, men of means attended by large retinues of bodyguards and retainers, dressed in immaculate togas spun from superior wool. Eco pointed to such a specimen nearby.
"Businessman," he said.
"Banker," I countered, merely for the sake of argument. "Pro-Milo?"
"Anti-Clodius, more likely. And probably more outraged by the burning of the Porcian Basilica than the loss of the Senate House."
Eco nodded. "Probably impressed that Milo's men saved Marcus Lepidus."
"Probably hopes there'll be someone to do the same for him if the mob ever attacks his house."
"But is Milo the man for him?"
"Maybe that's what he's here to decide."
More numerous than the wealthy traders and bankers in the crowd were citizens of more modest appearance, who might have been small shopkeepers or craftsmen or free labourers. Eco nodded in the direction of such a man nearby, a glum-looking fellow attended by a single slave and dressed in a toga with a worn hem. "That one looks to have less to lose than our banker friend."
"And less to start with. A fire in his apartment block could wipe him out completely."
"Well, if the worst happened, he needn't go hungry. There's always the grain dole that Clodius established."
I shook my head. "People like him want the state to give them order, more than they want a grain dole. He craves stability no less than our banker friend."
"Do you think that's why he's here? Looking for law and order?"
"Why not?"
"Let's find out." Eco took my arm and together we slid through the crowd, to the consternation of Eco's bodyguards, who were hard pressed to follow.
"Citizen," said Eco, "don't I know you?"
The man looked at Eco appraisingly. "I don't think so."
"Yes, I'm almost certain we frequent the same tavern. You know, that little place-"
"The Three Dolphins?"
"That's it! Yes, I'm sure we've spoken before."
"Maybe." The man's glum expression lightened a bit.
"Oh, you remember, we once had quite a laugh – you know, at that funny fellow who works there…"
"Gaius, you mean? Yes, he's an odd one." The man chuckled.
"And of course…" Eco gestured with his hands to suggest an ample bosom.
The man flashed a crooked smile and nodded. "Ah, the old man's daughter. The one he claims is still a virgin. Ha!"
Eco discreetly tapped his foot against mine, as if to say: The fish is hooked. Gaining the confidence of a total stranger is one of the tricks that Eco learned from me, and he likes to show off to his teacher. I saw him glance quickly at the man's hands, appraising the chapped fingertips and the red stain under the fingernails. "Do you still work as a cloth dyer?"
"What else? Washing and dyeing, washing and dyeing. Over in the Street of the Fullers. Every day for more than twenty years now."
"Is that right?" Eco lowered his voice to a confidential tone. "Say, how much did they give you?"
"What?"
"This morning. You know what I mean. How much did Milo's men give you?"
The fuller looked at Eco and then glanced warily at me.
"It's all right," said Eco. "The fellow's with me. He's a harmless mute."
I discreetly kicked Eco's ankle. This was a private joke – it was Eco who had once been a mute, not me. Now he had effectively prevented me from saying a word.
"So how much did they give you?" said Eco again.
"Same as everyone else, I imagine," said the fuller.
"Yes, but how much?"
"Well, I never like to say exactly. But enough." The man tapped at a purse tucked away in his toga and produced a muffled clink. "And a promise for quite a bit more if I’ll vote for him when the time comes. And you?"
"A hundred sesterces," said Eco.
"What! A hundred! They gave me only half that much!'" "Ah, but the hundred was for both of us." Eco hooked his thumb at me.
The man nodded, mollified by Eco's explanation. Then he frowned. "But if your friend is a mute and can't even shout his support, it hardly seems fair to pay him as much as -"
"Ah, but as you can see, the two of us each have two slaves, men with strong lungs, and you appear to have only one. Even with my friend being mute, that gives us five voices to your two."
"Yes, well, I suppose…"
"So, citizen, what do you make of all this?" With an expansive gesture Eco indicated the whole Forum, and by extension the crisis plaguing Rome.
The fuller shrugged. "Same as usual, only worse. Except that now they've gone from character assassination to assassination outright. We'd be lucky if they'd all kill each other off, starting from the top down. Wipe themselves out! But you know how it is when the big fellows start railing – they fall on top of us little fellows and crush us."
Eco nodded sagely. "Then you're not a particularly enthusiastic supporter of Milo?"
"Fah!" The man curled his hp in disdain. "Oh, he's certainly better than some others, or else I wouldn't be here. You couldn't pay me enough to attend a contio held by the Clodians. That fellow Clodius was worse than a beast in rut. Screwing his own sister! And they say when he was a boy he sold himself to rich old men. You know the song – 'To get ahead, he gave them head, then took his sister to his bed. 'And-"
"But what about the grain dole?"
The man was suddenly incensed. "Just another scheme to make himself more powerful! Yes, Clodius set up the grain dole – and then who was put in charge of keeping the lists of eligible citizens? Sextus Cloelius! That's right, Clodius's number one henchman, the one who torched the Senate House. As corrupt as they come! Don't talk to me about the grain dole. It's all a racket!"
"A racket?" said Eco.
"Of course. You must know how it works." "Enlighten me."
"All right: Sextus Cloelius talks a man into freeing half his household slaves. The slaves become freedmen, but where are they going to go? They still work for their old master, they still live in his house. But as freedmen they can go onto the grain dole, so their master doesn't have to feed them anymore – the state does! For his cut, Sextus Cloelius enlists these new freedmen into the Clodian gang, to stalk the streets at night and show up at contios to terrorize the opposition. And they get to vote, as well. The grain dole! Clodius passed off the whole nasty business as a big favour he'd done for the common man in Rome, people like me, providing us with a way to feed ourselves in bad times. But it was just a way to supply riimself with new voters and gang members – and to feed them at state expense! I tell you, I was born a citizen, and it makes me furious to see Clodius's gang of ex-slaves getting the same privileges as me. What a conniver that Clodius was, right up to the last – they say he was working out more new schemes to give even more power to freedmen. If he'd had his way he'd have torn down the state and put his gangs in charge of everything. Then we'd have had King Clodius, chopping off heads right and left, and a bunch of ex-slaves bullying the rest of us. We're all better off with him dead, that's for sure. Milo did a good thing. I don't mind turning up to shout a few words of encouragement for him."
"And if it puts a little jingle in your purse…" said Eco. "Why not?"
"Yes, why not? Well, I'll talk to you later, citizen. Perhaps we'll meet again at the Three Ducks."
"The Three Dolphins?" said the fuller.
"Exactly!" Eco smiled and withdrew, taking my arm. "Well, Papa, was I right about the fellow?"
"On the contrary, Eco, I was right. Just as I speculated, our friend the fuller came here today to support law and order."
"Indeed not! Papa, the man was bribed to be here, probably like three-quarters or more of the rest of this crowd. I knew I'd seen some of Milo's lieutenants passing out money when I walked through the Forum earlier this morning, on my way to your house. I suppose we should be insulted that we weren't offered anything."
"The bribe dispensers all know us by now, Eco."
"I suppose that's it. This little gathering is costing Milo a tidy sum."
"Yes, but I was still right."
"About what?"
"About why our friend the fuller is here. He's looking for the rule of law and order."
"And a bribe," said Eco. "And a bribe," I conceded.
Caelius and Milo soon arrived, surrounded by a large retinue. As they made their way through the crowd, people craned their necks to get a look at Milo, and when they saw him many began to cheer. Their excitement seemed genuine, and why not? For better or worse, Milo was the man of the hour, and this was his first appearance in public since the incident on the Appian Way. All eyes were on him. All ears were eager to hear him speak.
With or without bribery, Milo had many supporters. He had been campaigning for the consulship for a long time, and in an effort to expand his support beyond the Best People he had spent a fortune on extravagant games and shows. Rome loves a politician who knows how to stage a spectacle. Some magistrates are required to put on shows at various annual festivals, at their own expense, as part of their official duties for the year. Other men put on shows as private citizens, in the guise of funeral games. Whatever the pretext, every politician ascending the rungs of the magistracies is obligated to outdo his rivals in producing the most memorable races and comedies and gladiatorial combats. The practice is so accepted that no one ever seems to notice that providing expensive public entertainments is just as much a kind of electoral bribery as putting coins directly into the purses of voters. Nowadays, people seem to have lost the will to object even to that.
Marcus Caelius ascended the platform and called the contio to order.
Caelius had been trained in oratory from boyhood by both Cicero and the late Marcus Crassus. He was their most brilliant pupil. He had mastered the formal challenges of constructing a speech, as well as the technical skills of modulating his voice and casting it to great distances, but more notably, over the years he had crafted a wickedly sarcastic style which set the tone for his whole generation. When older orators striving for new effects attempted to emulate this style, the result was often blatant and shrill, but it was. never so when practised by Caelius himself This was his genius, that he was able to cast over a large crowd the same charm that he emanated in closer quarters, but without the ironical undercutting that one often felt in his immediate presence. He was able to utter the most vicious innuendoes and obscene double entendres at a public gathering without seeming vindictive or vulgar. Instead, he seemed only effortlessly clever and witty, and quite sincere. This gave him tremendous power as an orator.
Caelius was not really in his element playing the rabble-rousing tribune at a contio. He was more suited to courts of law, especially as a prosecutor, where he could pour his acid over a squirming victim before an appreciative audience of cultured jurors, educated men like himself who appreciated swift, convoluted wordplay. Still, Caelius commenced his contio displaying the self-assurance he was known for, of the sort that cannot be faked.
"Good citizens of Rome! You see beside me on the platform today a man you all know – Titus Annius Milo. His name has been on all your lips of late. You have gone to bed at night thinking about him, asking yourselves just what sort of man is this Milo? You've awakened in the morning wondering where on earth he might be. And every hour of every day you have considered the same pressing question which you must be considering even now: When will this madness be over?
"Well, we are here to get some answers. Not tomorrow, not somewhere eke, but here and now. First, wonder no more where Milo is – he's standing right in front of you, his head held high, proudly showing himself in the heart of the city he has served so long and so faithfully. You may have heard a wild rumour that Milo had left Rome for good and was never coming back. Yes, I see some of you nodding; you know the rumour. Ridiculous! Think of that which you love best in all the world. Would you ever let yourself be parted from it, or abandon it for any reason? No! Not if you had to die first. Not even" – he lowered his voice – "if you had to kill. That is how much Milo loves Rome. He will never forsake her.
"Which brings us back to the first question: What sort of fellow is Milo, what is his character? That's something each of you may decide for yourself, when you have had a chance to hear him out. Yes, Milo himself shall speak to you today. The rules allow him to speak, since Milo is himself the subject of this contio, and I demand that he speak, since I am the tribune who called this contio. Demand him to speak, I say, because Milo did not come here willingly. Oh no! I had to drag him here today, against his will. Do you think he wanted to leave his safe house to go walking in a city where madmen run riot, crying out for his death? Milo is exceedingly brave, but he's not a fool. No, he came only because I insisted that he come, only because I, as your tribune, demanded it.
"Which brings us to the third question, which weighs like a stone on all of us, which fills our heads like the stench from the smoking ruins of the Senate House over yonder When will this madness be over? Not until something is done about the death of Clodius, I'm afraid. Not until the whole ugly incident is put to rest, as the shade of Clodius himself was supposedly put to rest when his friends set fire to him like a faggot in the Senate House. How did Clodius die, and why, and who killed him? The friends of Clodius claim that he was viciously attacked and killed without cause. They point the finger of blame at Milo. They call him a murderer. They insinuate that he intends to kill again, and that next time his victim will be a man far more revered, far greater than Clodius ever was.
"Then let us put Titus Annius Milo on trial. Yes! Right here, right now, let us put him on trial for murder. Not a trial such as the magistrates hold, with jurors chosen from the Senate and the higher orders. It is you, the people, citizens of Rome, who have suffered most from the chaos of the last few days, and so I bring this matter directly to you, the people, and earnestly solicit your judgment You see, I have not come to praise Milo; I have come to try him! And if you should determine that he is a vicious murderer, that he plots more murders, then let him leave our midst. Yes! Let him be banished, let us send him into exile and make that vicious rumour real. Let us drive Milo from the heart of the city he loves into the wilderness!"
At this there were scattered cries of indignation from the crowd, as if the idea of Milo in exile outraged them. I noticed that our friend the fuller was among the first to raise his voice in protest. He was soon joined by a swelling chorus of dissent. Someone had done a thorough job of seeding the crowd. But I noticed that the man I had called a banker was yelling in protest, too, and gesturing for those in his retinue to raise their voices; surely a man of his means had not been bought with a mere fifty sesterces.
Caelius raised his hands for silence and put on an expression of dismay. "Citizens! Please, restrain yourselves! You love Milo, as Milo loves Rome; I understand that. Still, he must be called to account. He must be judged, and we must be sober in our verdict. No more cheering or jeering, I beg you. This is not a candidate's rally. This is a contio held in time of dire emergency, a solemn inquiry into a matter that has crippled our city with riot and fire. What we do here today will be talked about all over the seven hills and beyond the city walls. Those who cannot be here today, great and small alike, will take notice of your judgment. Remember that!"
Eco spoke in my ear: "Another reference to Pompey?"
Caelius stepped to one side of the platform. "Milo, come forwards!"
Proud and with head held high – that was how Caelius had described Milo. Certainly he did not have the scurrying gait or furtive look of a man haunted by guilt. He swept forwards without hesitation and with a grand, almost swaggering air of confidence. His toga was better fitted than the one he had worn at Cicero's house, draped and folded to give the best impression of his short, stocky physique. His usually beard-shadowed jaw looked so pale that I wondered if he had applied some sort of cosmetic.
At a real trial he would have been expected to put on his shabbiest toga, shamble about like an old man, wear his hair unkempt and let his beard grow stubbly; jurors expect an accused man to exploit their sympathies. Clearly, Milo was having none of that. To show himself at a trial, even a mock trial, looking more like a proud candidate than an anxious defendant, was an act of pure defiance. This partisan crowd loved it. Despite Caelius's admonitions, a loud and seemingly spontaneous cheer echoed through the Forum. Milo's lips twitched into a smirk and he lifted his chin several degrees higher.
Caelius put on a stern face and raised his arms for silence. "Citizens, must I remind you what we are here for? Let us proceed. Let Titus Annius Milo make an accounting of his actions."
Caelius stepped back to allow Milo full run of the platform; Milo was of the arm-swinging school of oratory which requires an expansive stage, in many ways the opposite of Caelius. His forte was not the small jest that only later in the speech blossoms into hilarity, or the elegant understatement that veils a pointed dagger. Milo represented what Cicero had once jokingly ridiculed as the hammer and yoke school of oratory: "Pound home every point with a heavy hammer, then yoke up the metaphors and flog them all the way to market"
But not every speaker can be a Cicero or Caelius; every orator has to find the style that suits him, and dogged earnestness bordering on stolid defiance suited Milo. That morning, striding back and forth across the platform waving his arms, he seemed utterly blunt and candid, though I knew that his every word and gesture must have been carefully scripted and rehearsed again and again in Cicero's study.
"Fellow citizens of this beloved city! My friend Marcus Caelius is right – the madness that threatens us all will never be dispelled until the true circumstances of the death of Publius Clodius are made known. I don't know what you've heard about his death -1 can only imagine the ugly rumours that have been flying and the vicious aspersions that have been cast against me, and against my loyal servants, who bravely risked their lives to save my own.
"I'm not the sort to give pretty speeches. I will be brief and to the point. I can only tell you what I know.
"Nine days ago I left Rome and set out on a short journey down the Appian Way. Some of you may know that I hold a local office back in my home town, Lanuvium. Last year my fellow Lanuvines elected me their 'dictator' – a quaint way of saying chief magistrate. The office is not demanding, but occasionally I do have to go home to fulfil my obligations. This was such an occasion. I was called upon to nominate a priest to the local cult of Juno to preside over her festival next month. Juno's patronage of Lanuvium goes back to ancient times, before the Lanuvines were conquered by Rome. Her festival is the biggest day of the year in Lanuvium. Traditionally the Roman consuls attend. So I intend to return to Lanuvium next month, in that capacity -because there will be elections, and I will be elected consul!"
There was an outburst of cheering. Milo waited for it to subside.
"That morning I attended the regular meeting of the Senate, which broke up around the fourth hour of the day. Then I went home to change into travelling clothes. My wife was going with me. I would have preferred to start right away – the trip to Lanuvium is about eighteen miles, an easy day's journey if you get an early enough start. But with all her last-minute preparations- isn't that always the way with a wife? – we didn't leave Rome until well after midday. For her comfort, we rode in an open carriage bundled up in heavy cloaks. I should like to have travelled lighter, but my wife insisted on bringing her serving maids and boys along, so we had quite a long retinue.
"As you all know, the Appian Way heads south, straight as an arrow's flight and flat as a table. It's not until you reach the vicinity of Mount Alba that the road takes a few turns and you begin to ascend a bit. There are some grand homes in that area. Pompey has a villa in the woods not too far off the road. So did Publius Clodius. I wish I had remembered that, and been more cautious.
"Clodius must have known of my plan to go to Lanuvium that day-it was no secret. Perhaps he also knew that I would be accompanied by my wife and her servants, encumbered with a most unwarlike retinue. I'm told that Clodius had said outright and in public, only a few days previously, that he intended to kill me within a matter of days. 'We can't take the consulship from Milo, but we can take his life!' That's what he said. And this was the day he intended to make good on that threat, at that lonely spot on the Appian Way.
"I found out later that Clodius had left Rome – suddenly, quietly -the previous day. To be ready for me, to he in wait. He must have had scouts posted along the way, running ahead to let him know that I was coming. He chose a spot where the higher ground gave him the advantage. There I was, in a carriage, with all those women and servant boys, and there was Clodius with his troop of trained killers on horseback, hidden in the trees off the road, waiting and watching.
"The ambush occurred at about the eleventh hour of the day. The sun was already beginning to dip below the higher trees. And then the attack-confusion, screaming, blood. If I'd been a bird flying overhead, I might be able to tell you exactly what happened. But to me, sitting in that carriage with my wife, it all began in the blink of an eye. All at once there were men with swords standing in the road, blocking our way. My driver shouted at them. They rushed at him, pulled him from the carriage and stabbed him to death right before my eyes! I threw off my cloak. I found my sword and leaped from the vehicle. By Hercules, the screams of my wife still echo in my ears! The men who'd killed my driver came after me, but the fellows were cowards at heart A few swings of my sword and they fled like rabbits!" When Milo mimed the action with broad strokes through the air, it wasn't hard to imagine men fleeing from him.
"Then I realized that more men were attacking the retinue behind me. Amid the confusion I saw Clodius himself astride a hone. He turned and saw my beloved Fausta. He heard her screaming. He didn't see me – the carriage blocked his view. But he must have seen my rumpled cloak and thought that I was still in the carriage with Fausta, slumped over, dead – because he cried out to his companions, 'We've got him! Milo's dead! At last, he's dead!'
"Let me tell you, citizens, it's a strange thing, hearing a man proclaim your death in a gleeful voice. My bodyguards farther back in the retinue tried to fight their way to the carriage to help me, until they heard Clodius gloating that I was dead. Can you blame them for what happened next? They fought to defend themselves, yes, but they also fought because they were furious, because they thought that their master had been murdered and their mistress was in terrible danger. In the midst of the skirmish they came upon Clodius himself, and when the skirmish was over, Clodius was dead. I didn't order his death. It happened without my knowledge and outside my presence. Are my slaves to blame? No! They did exactly what every man here would have wanted his own slaves to do in the same situation. Am I not right?"
There was a roar of agreement from the crowd. I noticed that the banker was especially enthusiastic.
Milo seemed to draw strength from the crowd. He continued to shout above the roar. Veins bulged on neck and his face turned red. "If Clodius had succeeded with his ambush, it's I who would be dead today!" He poked his chest repeatedly with his forefinger, hard enough to bruise himself. "It would be Clodius that everyone would be pointing at. They'd all be accusing Clodius of murder, and saying Clodius was a threat to…" Milo restrained himself. It wouldn't do to say the Great One's name out loud. "But Clodius failed! Clodius lost! He paid the price for his wickedness. He was the cause of his own death, and I won't take responsibility for it!"
This brought even louder cheers. Milo stood on tiptoe, clenching his fists at his sides and shouting to be heard. He had remarkably powerful lungs. "I regret nothing! I apologize for nothing! And I refuse to mouth empty words of comfort to his widow or his children, and certainly not to that vile sister of his. His death was the greatest gift the gods could give to Rome. If I'd strangled him with my own hands, I wouldn't be ashamed to say so! If I'd killed him in cold blood, caught him by surprise and stabbed him in the back, still I would be proud of the act!"
Caelius hurriedly stepped forwards, his face rigid. I leaned towards Eco. "I think Milo has gone beyond his script."
Caelius raised his left hand for silence. With his right hand he reached for Milo's shoulder. When Milo tried to shrug him off, Caelius tightened his grip until I saw Milo wince and shoot him an angry glance.
The crowd ignored the signal for silence. They began to chant as if they were at an election rally. Several different chants started up at once. The result was deafening. The fuller joined in with those reciting an old piece of doggerel about Clodius and his sister:
Clodius played the little girl While he was still a boy! Then Clodia made the little man into her private toy!
This chant was repeated over and over, punctuated by whoops of laughter and shouted louder and louder to compete with another chant taken up by the banker and his retinue:
Grain dole, grain dole, It's all just shit From Clodius's hole! Big pole, little pole, They all disappear Up Clodius's hole!
Up on the platform, Milo burst into laughter. His face turned an apoplectic shade of red. He laughed so hard he began to weep. He seemed to me like a man who has been holding a torturous pose that strains every tendon to agony for hour after hour, and suddenly cannot hold the pose any longer. He shook so convulsively that he seemed hardly able to stand up.
Caelius gave up on quieting the crowd. He wore a bemused, vaguely anxious expression, as if to say: This was not exactly what I intended, but I suppose it will do…
I turned to Eco, curious to see my unflappable son's reaction, but he had reverted to muteness, as confounded as I was. To ridicule the dead is to mock the gods. There was something frightening in the sudden, raging hilarity of the mob, a vertiginous sensation of teetering at the edge of a dark precipice.
The raucous chanting continued, but was suddenly joined by a noise more like screaming than laughter. An invisible, palpable tremor passed through the crowd, a quiver of anxiety. Heads turned in confusion, trying to discern the source. The ripple of apprehension was quickly followed by a wave of panic.
How had Milo described the ambush on the Appian Way? Confusion, screaming, blood – if I'd been a bird flying overhead, I might be able to tell you exactly what happened – but it all began in the blink of an eye…
So it was in the Forum that day, when the Clodians descended with flashing swords like a vengeful army on the contio of Caelius and Milo.
I have never been a military man, but I am not a stranger to battle. In the year that Cicero was consul, I was with my son Meto when he fought for Catilina at the battle of Pistoria. I carried a sword. I saw Romans slaughter Romans.
I have seen battle. I know what a battle looks like, sounds like, smells like. What happened in the Forum that day was nothing like a battle. It was a massacre.
During the massacre itself there was no time to think about anything but escape. It was only afterwards that I was able to ponder exactly what happened.
Some said that the Clodians' attack was spontaneous, spurred by reports of what Milo and Caelius were saying at the contio. Infuriated at the allegation that Clodius had staged an ambush, his grieving followers decided to show the crowd at the contio just what an ambush was like. Others argued that the attack was premeditated, just as Clodius's ambush on the Appian Way had been premeditated, and that the Clodians had only been waiting for Milo's appearance and the first public gathering of his supporters to launch their assault.
Premeditated or not, the attack was well staged. The Clodians arrived heavily armed. They made no attempt to hide their weapons. They carried short swords, daggers and clubs. Some carried bags of stones. Some carried torches. They seemed to appear from all sides at once. The panicked crowd contracted into itself) so that at first there was as great a danger of being crushed or trampled underfoot by friends as there was of being cut open or clubbed to death by foes.
Of course, despite the law which forbids carrying weapons inside the city walls, many at the contio were secretly armed or had armed
bodyguards, and many of them (especially those who were part of Milo's regular gang), had as much experience of street fighting as the Clodians, so the engagement was not entirely one-sided. But the Clodians had the strategic advantage of surprise and the tactical advantage of having the crowd surrounded. They may also have had a considerable advantage in numbers – that was what the bruised and battered adherents of Milo claimed afterwards, but at the time I doubt that anyone bothered to count heads.
Milo's adherents would also claim afterwards that the attackingforce was made up largely of slaves. Clodius's lieutenants, they claimed, now commanded whole armies of slaves and former slaves who owed them allegiance thanks to Clodius's radical innovations, like the grain dole. That was the true crime of what happened that day, Milo's people said: that slaves and ex-slaves had disrupted a peaceable public assembly of citizens conducting state business. What had the Republic come to when such low-born rabble ruled the streets?
But as I say, all these considerations came as afterthoughts. At the time, panic reigned.
Eco and I sensed the danger at the same moment, even though there was nothing yet to see. He reached for my arm. I reached for his. His bodyguards turned outward in a ring and reached for the daggers hidden in their tunics.
Eco pressed his mouth to my ear. "Whatever happens, Papa, stay close to me!"
More easily said than done, I thought, as bodies pressed together and were wrenched this way and that, like links of armour being tested by a smith. To be caught in such a crowd must be something like the sensation of drowning in rough waters. A sea of bodies is a solid, writhing thing that presses back against you, struggling, like you, to stay alive.
The noise became deafening- oaths, curses, screams, grunts, sudden high-pitched wails and guttural, choking sounds. The fuller and his slave were suddenly next to me. He was yelling, to no one in particular, "I knew this would happen! I knew it!"
Suddenly there was a break in the crowd nearby, like a rip through a piece of cloth. The Clodians broke through. Wild-eyed men with upright daggers in their fists rushed towards me. Their hps were drawn back, their teeth clenched. They growled like dogs.
Eco's bodyguards seemed to have vanished, along with Eco. The panicked crowd was at my back, like a solid wall; I could no more melt into it than I could melt into stone. "That one!" cried one of
the attackers, pointing with his knife. "Get the bastard!" He rushed towards me.
I braced myself, fighting the impulse to turn away. I have always promised myself that I would not end up as one of those corpses discovered with wounds in the back. I stared at the man's face, trying to look into his eyes, but his wild gaze was fixed on something beyond me. He veered past me, his knife whistling a shrill note a finger's-width from my ear. His friends followed, shoving me out of the way. From the comer of my eye I saw flashing daggers rise into the air one after another, like long-necked birds craning skyward.
I pressed myself into the fleeing crowd, trying to merge again into its anonymity, trying not to watch. An even stronger impulse compelled me to look back.
The daggers rose and fell, rose and fell. They were met by other daggers. Streamers of blood shot upward like screams congealing in the frosty air. In the midst of the turmoil I saw the man I had taken for a banker. He was the one the Clodians had rushed to attack. His cordon of bodyguards had been breached and decimated. The slaves who fell defending him were crumpled in a mass around him, their bloodstained bodies trapping his legs so that he could not flee. The Clodians circled him like vultures, their knives like pecking beaks. They stabbed him again and again. As he twisted and writhed, his mouth gaping in a soundless scream, greedy hands reached to snatch the silver necklace from his throat and pull a bag of coins from inside his toga.
His assailants circled him once more and then moved on, like a whirlwind. By some miracle the banker remained upright. His eyes and mouth were wide open in astonishment, his toga covered with blood. Suddenly one of his assailants rushed back and quickly, skdlfuly, like a dutiful slave caring for his master's accoutrements, took the man's hand and slipped the gold signet ring from his finger.
The thief might have left it at that, but having come back to finish his business he seemed determined to strike a final blow. He slipped behind the stupefied banker and raised his dagger high, gripping it with both hands. I cringed and braced myself as if the blow were aimed at me.
But I never saw it fell. A strong hand gripped my shoulder and spun me around. I faced a hulking young man with glinting eyes and a grimly set jaw. At the bottom edge of my sight I saw flashing steel and knew he held a dagger.
I have faced the prospect of imminent death on several occasions