Heroes: Saviours, Traitors and Supermen. Lucy Hughes-Hallett

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СКАЧАТЬ was a prestigious and potentially lucrative assignment, but Cato saw it only as a means of getting rid of him. It was one of the fundamental differences between the constitutionalists like Cato and the Populares that the former clung to the anachronistic sense that nowhere outside Rome mattered. When Cicero was appointed governor of Cilicia (southern Turkey) he was to tell his friend Atticus that the task was ‘a colossal bore’. To others it might seem he was seeing the world. But he was pining for ‘the world, the Forum’, which to him seemed to be one and the same. Likewise, to Cato, that cramped and teeming rectangular space at the centre of Rome was the hub of the universe, the only place where words and actions had consequences. He accepted overseas postings grudgingly, and despatched them without enthusiasm. When his term of office as praetor ended he actually turned down the provincial governorship to which he was entitled. Pompey and Caesar, by contrast, made the provinces – the armies they were entitled to levy in order to subdue them and the fortunes they amassed there – the foundations of their power.

      Cato’s role in Cyprus turned out to be one to which he was exactly suited, that of inventory clerk. The island’s ruler was a Ptolemy, brother of the King of Egypt, who was to be ousted ostensibly because he had supported the pirates against Pompey, but also so that his personal wealth and the revenue from his prosperous island could be added to the magnificence of Rome. Cato was not required to act the conqueror. On receiving his letter calling upon him to abdicate, Ptolemy poisoned himself. All Cato had to do was to take possession of his realm and convert his treasure into currency. This he did virtually single-handed, to the annoyance of his followers. Refusing to delegate any responsibility, he personally negotiated with merchants and private buyers, ensuring he got the highest possible price for all the jewels and golden cups and purple robes and other ‘furnishing of the princely sort’ poor Ptolemy had left. ‘For this reason’, reports Plutarch, ‘he gave offence to most of his friends, who thought that he distrusted them.’ The task was immense: the sum he brought back from Cyprus was so great that, when it was carried through Rome to the treasury, the crowds stood amazed at the quantity of it; but Cato insisted on making himself personally responsible for every detail of its collection and transport. He decided how the money was to be shipped and designed special coffers for the purpose, each one trailing a long rope with a cork float attached so they could be retrieved in the case of shipwreck. He had the accounts written out in duplicate. He had called the assignment an insult, but the people of Rome had voted that he must do it, so – punctilious and dutiful as ever – do it he did, with the driven thoroughness he brought to all his appointed tasks.

      While he did so, the Roman Republic staggered under Clodius’ assault. ‘District by district,’ records Cicero, ‘men were being conscripted and enrolled into units and were being incited to violence, to blows, to murder, to looting.’ The collegia’s fighting bands were swelled by slaves. Gangs of swordsmen controlled the city’s public spaces. The Temple of Castor, the building whose high podium dominated the Forum and where Cato had twice suffered violence at Caesar’s hands, was converted from a place of worship and public assembly into a fortress. Clodius had its steps demolished, rendering access to it hard and its defence easy, and made it his arsenal and military headquarters. The political meetings, trials and plebiscites for which the Forum was the venue – all the public business of the state – now took place under the intimidating gaze of Clodius’ enforcers. Meetings of the Senate were interrupted by yelling crowds. A debate on Cicero’s possible recall from exile was broken up by rioters throwing stones and wielding clubs and swords. Some of the tribunes were injured (shockingly, since they were supposed to be inviolate) and several other people killed. When one of Clodius’ associates was put on trial a mob of his supporters invaded the court, overturning benches, dragging the judge from his place, knocking over the urns that served as ballot boxes and driving the prosecutors and jury in terror from the place. No one was exempt. Clodius had appeared originally to be the Triumvirs’ tool but now he turned viciously on one of them. When Pompey attempted to speak in the Forum, Clodius led a mob in heckling him cruelly. A fight broke out between Pompey’s and Clodius’ men: several people were killed and a man was caught apparently in the act of attempting to assassinate Pompey himself. Baffled and afraid, Pompey withdrew to his villa, where he lived virtually besieged.

      By the time Cato returned from Cyprus in 56 BC with his haul of scrupulously catalogued treasure some kind of balance of power had been established, but at great cost to the cause of the constitutionalists and to the stability of the state. One of the new year’s tribunes, Milo, with Pompey’s encouragement and sponsorship, had assembled his own private army of slaves and hired thugs and emerged as a rival to Clodius. For weeks, the two gangs fought for control of the city. ‘The Tiber was full of citizens’ corpses,’ wrote Cicero, ‘the public sewers were choked with them.’ Clodius was at least temporarily contained. Pompey, recovering his nerve, reasserted himself and saw to it that Cicero was recalled amid scenes of public rejoicing all over Italy. Bread was scarce: the people were rioting for food. Cicero, returning a favour, advocated a measure granting Pompey control of the corn supply for the next five years, a commission that gave him ill-defined but enormous power both domestically and (since most of Rome’s corn was imported) throughout the Mediterranean.

      Endemic violence, a near total collapse of the rule of law, disastrous food shortages, the acceptance even by a moderate like Cicero that only an armed potentate could save the disordered state – the situation to which Cato returned was the fulfilment of his direst predictions. At once he resumed his old task – that of preventing the great men becoming greater.

      Caesar, Pompey and Crassus renewed their pact. Pompey and Crassus were standing together for election as the next year’s consuls. The constitutionalists in the Senate went into mourning, as though for the death of the Republic, but no one dared stand in opposition to the two magnates until Cato (who was not yet old enough to be eligible himself) persuaded his brother-in-law, Domitius Ahenobarbus, to do so and to declare that, if elected, he would terminate Caesar’s unprecedentedly long command in Gaul. Before dawn on the morning of the election Cato and Domitius went together to the Field of Mars, where voting was to take place. They were set upon in the darkness. Their torchbearer was killed. Cato was wounded in the arm. With furious resolution he tried to persuade Domitius to stand his ground ‘and not to abandon, while they had breath, the struggle in the behalf of liberty which they were waging against the tyrants, who showed plainly how they would use the consular power by making their way to it through such crimes’. His eloquence was futile. Ahenobarbus, less principled, or perhaps just more realistic, abandoned his candidature and took to his heels.

      Cato, determined that the Triumvirs should not be unopposed, stood for election as praetor. Pompey and Crassus put up a candidate of their own and set about bribing the electorate in a vote-buying exercise of unprecedented scale and blatancy. On the day of the election Pompey had the Field of Mars surrounded by Milo’s thugs. Those who voted the wrong way could expect to suffer for it. Even so, so great was Cato’s prestige, the first votes declared were for him. Bribery and intimidation having both failed, Pompey invoked the gods. He declared he had heard thunder (though no one else had) and, thunder being a sign of divine displeasure, he cancelled the ballot. His supporters went to work on the voters again (whether with their money or their swords is not recorded). By the time a second vote could be held those who had initially voted for Cato had changed their minds.

      Measure by measure the Triumvirs consolidated their power. Pompey and Crassus saw to it that they were assigned, as their proconsular commands, Spain and Syria respectively; they introduced bills allowing them to wage war as and when they saw fit and to levy as many troops as they wished. Pompey, further, had it agreed that he could delegate the government of Spain to his officials while remaining himself near Rome. Each time the people voted in their favour while all but one of the senators, listless in their impotence, allowed the legislation to pass without questioning or comment. The exception, of course, СКАЧАТЬ